Though they already have two EP’s under their belts, Plastic Mermaids is the delirious but delightful new band you never thought you needed. Perforating a gigantic chamber pop sound with woozy hues of space rock and ornate orchestral flairs, Plastic Mermaids brandishes a richly-textured blueprint that few can replicate, and ‘Taxonomy’—the latest cut from their debut album out now via Sunday Best Recordings—offers an apt glimpse into their wacky world of sound and visuals.
In celebration of today’s release of the Suddenly Everyone Explodes, the Isle of Wight-based five-piece has also unveiled a bizarre new music video for their fourth and final single.
As they’ve so peculiarly accomplished through their music, the band also has a knack for weird world-building through their videos. ‘Taxonomy’ is yet another dizzying visual effort that pairs perfectly with their brand of psych-pop, but this time they follow the route of clay animation in the same vein as Bruce Bickford who created stop-motion animations for the great Frank Zappa. While the result is no Bickford, Plastic Mermaids self-produced endeavor comes pretty damn close with the help of about 20 of their fans.
On the track, the band reflected on the grueling production of the new video: “Doug did some maths and realized that if we shot one frame every minute it was going to take us 54 hours of constant animation. Not wanting to die of exhaustion we decided to put a message out on our socials to see if we could get any extra helpers and we had about 20 Plastic Mermaids fans (of all ages) come and help us with the model making and animating. It was still a pretty intense experience trying to average one frame every 30 seconds and if we hadn’t had anyone help us we’d probably still be animating now!”
The claymation visual is disorienting and at times unnerving as disfigured clay beings hallucinate after feasting upon some DMT-infused ice cream served and sold by a creepy little mustache man. But the strange concept doesn’t end there. After tripping out, those who ate the ice cream experience explosive side effects—literally.
Our debut album ‘Suddenly Everyone Explodes’ is out now
Paul McCartney is reissuing four live albums on CD and vinyl, with limited coloured vinyl editions available.the legendary artist announced a look back at his past live performances with four new titles: reissues of Wings Over America, Choba B CCCP, and Paul Is Live, plus the world premiere of the complete Amoeba Gig. All four albums will be released on July 12th from MPL/Capitol/UMe in digital formats, on CD, and on both black and limited edition color vinyl.
The following descriptions have been provided by Macca: himself
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“Amoeba Gig:”
Amoeba Gig is the first full length commercial release of Paul’s surprise free concert at Hollywood’s Amoeba Music on June 27th, 2007. To date only four songs have seen wide release as the Amoeba’s Secret EP, two of which were nominated for Grammy Awards in 2008: “That Was Me” for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance and “I Saw Her Standing There” for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance. A few years later in November 2012, an extended 12-song excerpt of the Amoeba show titled Live in Los Angeles – The Extended Set was made available free to PaulMcCartney.com premium members for a limited period. And come July 12, 2019, a full 21-song recording documenting possibly the most intimate L.A. show Paul has ever played will be made available to the public for the first time. The millions of people not among the luckier than lucky few hundred rubbing elbows with the likes of Ringo Starr and Woody Harrelson during that once in a lifetime in-store set will be able to experience those performances of Beatles classics “The Long And Winding Road,” “I’ll Follow The Sun” and “I’ve Got A Feeling,” Flaming Pie’s “Calico Skies,” plus Carl Perkins’ “Matchbox,” Jan Garber’s “Baby Face” and an emotional rendition of “Here Today.” Additionally, the LP will include an exclusive soundcheck recording of “Coming Up.”
Amoeba Gig has been newly remixed by Paul’s engineer Steve Orchard and will be available in configurations including CD, 2 x 180g black vinyl, and limited edition color vinyl (LP1 – clear, LP2 – hazy amber transparent).
Paul Is Live:
Recorded during the U.S. and Australian swings of the tour in support of 1993’s Off The Ground, Paul Is Live is Paul’s fifth live album. Originally released that same year, the album is famous for the multiple meanings and clues embedded in its title and cover art, all of which play on the “Paul Is Dead” conspiracy/hoax. In addition to a wealth of Wings and Beatles classics, covers of Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight” and Leiber and Stoller’s “Kansas City” and more, Paul Is Live also offers a peek behind the curtain: Three songs improvised on the spot and exclusive to the album, all recorded during rehearsals in various locations over the course of the tour.
Paul Is Live has been newly remastered at Abbey Road Studios and will be available in configurations including CD, 2 x 180g black vinyl, and limited edition color vinyl (LP1 – opaque baby blue, LP2 – plush peach white opaque).
Choba B CCCP:
The live-in-studio Choba B CCCP (Russian for “Back In The USSR”) was released in the Soviet Union in 1988, making Paul the first Western artist to issue an album exclusively for that market. In a conscious decision to get back to his roots, Paul spontaneously spent two days covering his favorite hits from the 1950s. The sessions produced 22 songs in total (and one of the outtakes being a version of The Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There”). Choba B CCCP was a deeply personal album and a way to acknowledge fans who had supported him and The Beatles since the start. “When I was very young I asked my dad if people wanted peace,” Paul explained at the time. “He said to me, ‘Yes, people everywhere want peace – it’s usually politicians that cause trouble.’ It always seemed to me that the way The Beatles’ music was admired in the USSR tended to prove his point, that people the world over have a great deal in common. In releasing this record exclusively in the Soviet Union, I extend the hand of peace and friendship to the people of Russia.” Choba B CCCP was released in the rest of the world following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
Choba B CCCP has been newly remastered at Abbey Road Studios and will be reissued as the original 11-track Russian release. It will be available in configurations including CD, 180g black vinyl, and limited edition opaque yellow vinyl.
Wings Over America:
Rare No. 1-charting triple live album, Wings Over Americais a document of one the most sophisticated and dazzling rock shows of the 1970s or any decade. Paul and the band would eventually perform to more than 600,000 people at 31 shows in the US and Canada, ending with three historic nights at The Forum in Los Angeles. It’s no exaggeration to say that the excitement that greeted Paul McCartney & Wings (Linda McCartney, Joe English, Denny Laine and Jimmy McCulloch) in the spring of 1976 as they embarked on what would become their one and only North American tour was overwhelming. Having released four consecutive chart-topping albums — Red Rose Speedway, Band on the Run, Venus and Mars and At The Speed Of Sound – not to mention 1973’s Academy Award-winning James Bond theme “Live and Let Die” – Wings’ career was in full flight… and as Paul’s first U.S. tour since The Beatles, the sheer joy of both the band and its fans were off the charts throughout the 90 hours of recordings distilled into this triple album. Wings Over America was last reissued in 2013 as part of the Paul McCartney Archive Collection series winning the Grammy Award for Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package.
Wings Over America will be available in configurations including double CD, 3 x 180g triple vinyl, and limited edition color vinyl (LP1 – transparent red, LP2 – transparent green, LP3 – transparent blue) both come with original souvenir poster.
In 2017 British art-rockers Wild Beasts announced their breakup in a typed up statement, signed by the band and posted to Instagram. That was followed by a final EP, Punk Drunk and Trembling, three farewell concerts came in February 2018, and a final album, February 2018’s live in the studio release Last Night All My Dreams Came True (which featured new interpretations of songs from across their catalogue).
Hayden Thorpe formerly their singer is about to release his debut solo album, “Diviner”, via Domino Recordings. this week he shared one last pre-release song from it, “Earthly Needs,” a track built around a hypnotic beat and Thorpe’s very distinctive emotive vocals.
Back in February Thorpe shared the album’s title track, “Diviner,” via a video. When the album was announced in April he shared another song from it, “Love Crimes,” . Diviner was written in California, Cornwall, and at Thorpe’s home in London.
A previous press release described the album as such: “Diviner is a deeply emotional album: lyrically generous in its candid tone and self-awareness, the melodies resonant with sense memory. The album feels like a startling departure from Thorpe’s previous work with Wild Beasts and also unlike anything else being made at the moment.”
Thorpe had this to say about the album in the previous press release: “My adulthood was based on a certain belief system, a band, a family. When it shifted entirely, I had a ghost I had to find a new haunt for…. I believe in the medicinal properties of songs. I believe in their healing properties, Songs defy time, they don’t erode or denature, they come with you and reform anew in your mind as and when you need them…. I broke up with myself. So this is a break-up album, but not about a relationship. It’s a break-up from a past self, it’s a breakup from the old idea of yourself and therefore every relationship, of all kinds, that you’ve ever had.”
Hayden Thorpe – the debut album Diviner, out 24th May 2019 on Domino Recordings.
The Flaming Lips released their 15th album, ‘King’s Mouth: Music And Songs’, as a Record Store Day exclusive limited to 4000 gold vinyl copies back in April. Before being made available to the rest of the world on July 19th, the band have gifted fans with new single ‘Giant Baby’.
Featuring Mick Jones, The Clash guitarist narrates a story about a giant baby over the track’s spacious and simplistic backdrop. Thanks to the odd intro and acoustic guitar and electronic drum kick accompaniment, in the right setting the track could be described as refreshingly psychedelic.
Meanwhile, The Flaming Lips will mark the 20th anniversary of their album ‘The Soft Bulletin’ by performing the classic album in full during a special UK tour.
Released in 1999, the critically acclaimed ninth record from the band features the singles ‘Race for the Prize’ and ‘Waitin’ for a Superman’.
Kyle Craft, along with his now solid backing band dubbed Showboat Honey, their self-titled album, the contemplative yet restless Showboat Honey (Sub Pop Records), due out July 12th, 2019 reflects that sturm und drang. “This is basically an album centered around bad luck and good fortune hitting at the same time,” Craft explains “Then, out of nowhere, I find love. Everything went to shit except that. I guess that’s how life works.”
No track better captures this duality than the sweeping “Sunday Driver,” about sticking to your guns, despite a universe of blowback. “At this point, you get baptized by certain fires and start to walk with the dead a little bit, like nothing can harm you anymore,” says the Portland-based musician. “That’s what self-love sounds like to me, as aggressive as that sounds.”
The sticky-sweet title of the album is lifted from the brightly choral “Buzzkill Caterwaul” (“Once you were the showboat honey/ But your ship sailed out”). “I wanted to make something that sounded like a raucous collision of Leon Russell and Patti Smith,” he says, “But ‘Buzzkill Caterwaul’ was the only tune that ended up showcasing that vision.”
Though aesthetics veer from song to song, Showboat Honey’s steadfast formula remains the same. Drummer Haven Mutlz holds down the machine with a ’60s/’70s fast-molasses groove that locks in with the slinky rolling bass of Billy Slater. When Kevin Clark isn’t bouncing across the piano, his mellotron strings swell in and out of frame. Jack of all trades Ben Steinmetz’s organ parts well up from the deep of the songs, while lead guitarist Jeremy Kale’s solos rip through them like electricity. On top of it all, sits the tongue-in-cheek phantasmagoria created by Craft’s lyrics.
Lyrically, perspectives shift to imbue life into a cast of intriguing, mysterious characters, à la Bob Dylan. (“There is not a single thing in my life that has affected me more than the first time I heard Dylan,” says Craft. “It immediately changed my life.”) “Johnny (Free & Easy)” is seemingly about a date gone awry at a swinger’s party in the Hollywood Hills. And the twangy pop of “O! Lucky Hand” appears to shadow a poor sod desperate to elude a hex. Its antidote is the stunning, cinematic “Deathwish Blue,” which sounds like a deep cut from the book of John Lennon, about the lovesick salvation found in his bride to be, Lydia.
If that’s not head-trippy enough, the carefree sing-along “2 Ugly 4 NY” features a lyrical reference to a previous incarnation of Craft. Its lyrics—“Don’t wanna see Death strum for cash downtown/ Or the look on his face when the change hits the case on the ground”—call out his early days in Portland when he went by the moniker of Hobo Grim. Busking downtown, he’d cover country tunes while dressed as the Grim Reaper so as to conceal his true identity.
Craft started writing about as soon as he could play the guitar at the age of 15. He grew up in the isolated Mississippi River town of Vidalia, Louisiana where his chops weren’t honed in a woodshed, but rather an old, dingy meat freezer that was out of commission. When asked about the first song he’d ever written, he laughs, saying it was an “angsty-rock tune” and “a rare bird of how bad a song could be.”
After years of touring, two LPs with Sub Pop Records, and solidifying the band, he’s since grown into a prodigious songwriter, to say the least. The band recorded Showboat Honey—co-produced by Craft, Clark, and Slater—at their own Moonbase Studios in Portland over 2018. “We approached this record differently for sure,” Craft says. “I’d make a demo, and after putting the songs together, shoot it to the band for ideas.” Tracks such as “Broken Mirror Pose” ended up being highly collaborative, while others settled into Craft’s original vision. “Deathwish Blue,” for instance, was tracked in a similar fashion to his solo debut, Dolls of Highland, with Craft tracking every instrument by himself.
Kyle and the members of Showboat Honey worked at such a feverish wine-fueled pace that they actually ended up with two completely different albums. But at the end of the day, they decided to combine the two into what is now Showboat Honey, a moonstruck rock ’n’ roll record teeming with reckless abandon.
“We thought we had the album done at one point. But at the last minute, I was like, ‘Shit, this isn’t the album. This isn’t it,’” Kyle says. “It was just a gut feeling. I’m glad for that because I feel like I ended up writing some of the best songs I’ve ever written.”
‘Showboat Honey’ (Release Date: July 12th, 2019) Sub Pop Records
The debut album from Amyl and the Sniffers is the sound of 21st century Australia recorded in Sheffield with producer Ross Orton. It’s primal and explosive with a love of glam, the 70’s Sharpie movement and good time rock n roll backed with lyrics that somehow are simultaneously bleak and nihilistic, yet humorous and celebratory. The album is full of beefy riffs and stomping drums that rages and rolls and lives up to all the hype. It has attitude, sass and Amy’s sore throat howl.
Australia’sAmyl and The Sniffers reputation for raucous garage-punk mayhem has garnered huge buzz around the world, and today they’ve finally released their hotly anticipated debut album. Amyl and The Sniffers was produced by Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys) and features 11 blistering tracks boasting 70’s throwback anthemic guitars and breakneck drumming with human firecracker Amy Taylor leading the 29-minute auditory assault.
“Aussie punk outfit Amyl & The Sniffers continued to stake their claim as one of the planet’s most explosive new bands – NME “Amy Taylor cements her rock star status” – Pitchfork
“Taylor is a certified butt-kicking, drink-sculling, rock star…” 4/5The Herald Sun “Amid the aggro, Taylor’s intense stack-heeled charisma dominates: whether raging (Gacked On Anger) or romancing (“Beer in the cupboard, your eyes to mine”), she’s the queen of this glorious chunder from Down Under.” – Mojo 4/5 album review
“Its 11 breathless tracks bottle the barely-controlled explosion of energy that masquerades as their live show, then sprays it all out again like cheap lager.” – Q Magazine. 4/5 album review
“Amyl and The Sniffers is a thumping, screaming, wailing, magnet for misfits, losers, and outcasts, a clarion call for rejects and mis-shapes that is also an obscenely good time.” – Clash *8/10 Review
Stockholm band Melby bring a mildly psychedelic and moody outlook to dream pop on debut full-length, “None ofthe This Makes Me Worry”. While the band favors strong, instantly earworm-y melodies and baroque instrumental choices, the songs here are just slightly too long, sophisticated, and altogether downbeat to be pigeonholed as sunshine pop. But there’s also a playfulness in Melby’s approach that recalls psych’s more childlike impulses, with Matilda Wiezell’s subtly emotive vocals contributing to the band’s balance of modern and warmly nostalgic sounds.
Chris Forsyth’s All Time Present is an adventurous and, considering its length, remarkably tight double LP of riff-heavy rock solid enough to bang your head on, but not really to bang your head to as the overall vibe here is of a vintage that pre-dates punk. But that’s not to say this is dad rock—All Time Present gives the classics an almost ambient treatment, flattening out the edges of the songs while preserving the technical frills, ultimately landing somewhere around a less self-interested style of prog. This is rock music for the people. That said, fair warning to all ye who enter: things start to get real groovy around track three, “The Man Who Knows Too Much,” after which Forsyth and company plunge fully and without reservation into a heady well of eerie psychedelia and British folk-rock whimsy on the following track, the 11-minute long number “Dream Song,” which also features some appropriately hazy double tracked vocals from Rosali Middleman. But never fear, intrepid listener. Trust in Forsyth to lead the way through long stretches of extended, expansive jamming, and by the time you get to final track, “Techno Top,” it’s 1980 and we’re all dancing to the Talking Heads.
Chris Forsyth – guitar, vocal, Space Echo
with Shawn Edward Hansen – Prophet 12, Mellotron, piano, saxophone Ryan Jewell – drums, percussion Peter Kerlin – bass guitar Rosali Middleman – vocal on (4) Jeff Zeigler – Onde Magnétique on (5)
“…a near-perfect balance between 70s rock tradition and present day experimentation,”
“…one of rock’s most lyrical guitar improvisors,” -NPR Music
Mavis Staples has never shied away from making a statement, going all the way back to the raw vocal power and unshakeable commitment of The Staple Singers’ 1965 civil rights anthem “Freedom Highway.” The records she’s been making on ANTI for the last 15 years — the overt examples being We’ll Never Turn Back and If All I Was Was Black— have been increasingly oriented toward raising consciousness and, considering Americas’s current state, we need Staples’ fiery forward momentum more than ever.
The message is clear from the get-go on We Get By, as the dirty, grinding blues riffs of Staples’ bandleader/guitarist Rick Holmstrom power opening cut “Change.” “What good is freedom if we haven’t learned to be free?” asks Staples, and the band’s gritty rumble underlines her outrage.
Jeff Tweedy produced and wrote her last album, and wasn’t above gently pushing the envelope, but Ben Harper fills the writer/producer role by just letting Mavis be Mavis on We Get By. Harper takes her down a vintage Staple Singers path with the funky “Brothers and Sisters,” and when she sings, “trouble in the land, we can’t trust that man” her intentions aren’t exactly elliptical. The classic vibe is carried forward with Holmstrom’s doomy Pops Staples-style guitar licks on “Heavy on My Mind.”
Staples’ gospel repertoire comes to the fore on the sanctified stomper “Sometime,” when she utilizes simple, gospel-style lyrics to passionately reiterate the need for change. It’s not all current affairs though — for all the biblical allusions, when Mavis sings “Nothing in the world is stronger than my love for you” in blues-rocker “Stronger,” she seems to blur the line between earthly and spiritual. And she allows a peek at her intimate side on when she dips into her sensual side for the slow-burning, love-hungry, “Chance on Me.”
Nearly 80 upon the album’s release, Mavis is the last surviving member of the Staple Singers’ ’70s lineup. But closing out the album by calling for “One More Change,” she makes it plain that her struggle is our struggle, and it goes on.
Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real have released the title track from their forthcoming album Turn Off the News (Build a Garden). The song features backing vocals from Sheryl Crow. Take a listen below. The album is out June 14th (via Fantasy). It features guest appearances from Neil Young, Margo Price, Kesha, and Lucius, among others. Lukas’ father Willie Nelson and his brother Micah Nelson also contribute to the LP.
Along with Lukas Nelson, Promise of the Real features bassist Corey McCormick, drummer Anthony LoGerfo, percussionist Tato Melgar, and multi-instrumentalist Logan Metz. The band has toured and made multiple records with Neil Young. Lukas Nelson prominently appeared in A Star Is Born as a member of Bradley Cooper’s band. He also co-wrote several songs on the soundtrack.
“Turn Off The News (Build A Garden)” is the title track off the new album from Lukas Nelson & Promise Of The Real, available everywhere June 14th.
