The Paranoyds released visuals for “Egg Salad” off of their debut album Carnage Bargain! Directed by Nicole Stunwyck, “constructed of splinters from classic girl group, lo-fi guitar pop, and the forceful impact of Riot Grrrl.” The Paranoyds tap into both sides of Los Angeles life
“Egg Salad’ is an homage to a spoiled brat from the Valley. She keeps sneaking cash outta mom’s purse, doesn’t have any ambition or goals in life, just wants to party, and keeps getting away with minor crimes. Sometimes she even makes it to Hollywood!!! (“walk down Cherokee looking for a treat”).
“We were so excited when Nicole reached out. It’s honestly been a fantasy of mine to have a pen pal creative project with someone across the world! Plus, her aesthetic and previous work are all amazing. We are so stoked to be able to indulge in technology for this reason- creating projects that would otherwise be impossible. Ambar and Max are our HEROES. They nail every project, and we barely have to have a conversation beforehand. I guess they believe in us like we believe in them, and that really makes my heart swell! We have the same taste in everything, and I feel like we’re all sharing the same goggles when we do projects together. We are so grateful that they hopped on board this project and believed in Nicole’s work too.” – Staz Lindes of The Paranoyds
“The video presents the glitzy & glamorous world of a teenage girl who, after accidentally catching a beauty pageant on TV, dreams of her rise to stardom & subsequent downfall…It’s not a commentary on anything but an experimental depiction of my own personal fascination for young tragic starlets alà ‘Valley of The Dolls.'” – Director Nicole Stunwyck
The Paranoyds “Carnage Bargain” out on Suicide Squeeze Records
On “Reptilians”, STRFKR’s second full-length album and first for long-time label home Polyvinyl, the band built on what they had accomplished with their self-titled debut album (2008) and the the Jupiter EP (2009) to create an infectious combination of acoustic instrumentation and electronic production.
Originally released on March 8th, 2011, Reptilians has since become one of the band’s most intriguing and successful releases to date. Featuring fan favourites “Bury Us Alive” and “Julius,”Reptilians was written almost entirely by principal songwriter Joshua Hodges with help from bandmates Shawn Glassford, Keil Corcoran, and long time friend Randy Bemrose. The band mixed with Jacob Portrait in the famed Portland studio The Odditorium. Lyrically, the album focuses primarily on death and the end of the world, two subjects intertwined at the forefront of Hodges’ mind following the passing of his grandmother.
To celebrate its 10-year anniversary, Reptilians will be released as a deluxe reissue (2xLP) with 4 bonus tracks and reimagined artwork by original artist Sohale Kevin Darouian.
Out in the Storm, Katie Crutchfield’s fourth album as Waxahatchee and the follow-up to her Merge debut Ivy Tripp, is the blazing result of a woman reawakened. Her most autobiographical and honest album to date, Out in the Storm is a self-reflective anchor in the story of both her song writing and her life. Katie Crutchfield’s southern roots are undeniable. The name of her solo musical project Waxahatchee comes from a creek not far from her childhood home in Alabama and seems to represent both where she came from and where she’s going.
The album was tracked at Miner Street Recordings in Philadelphia with John Agnello, a producer, recording engineer, and mixer known for working with some of the most iconic musicians of the last 25 years, including Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth. Agnello and Crutchfield worked together for most of December 2016, along with the band: sister Allison Crutchfield on keyboards and percussion, Katherine Simonetti on bass, and Ashley Arnwine on drums; Katie Harkin, touring guitarist with Sleater-Kinney, also contributed lead guitar.
At Agnello’s suggestion, the group recorded most of the music live to enhance their unity in a way that gives the album a fuller sound compared to past releases, resulting in one of Waxahatchee’s most guitar-driven releases to date.
Award-winning, revered singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams is working to help independent music venues during this time with the announcement of Lu’s jukebox.
Scheduled as a six episode series of mostly full-band, hd video performances in-studio, Lu’s jukebox will feature a themed set of songs by other artists curated by the multi-grammy award winner. the first episode kicks off on October 22nd with “Running Down A Dream: a Tribute to Tom Petty”, featuring songs from his celebrated career in advance of his 70th birthday.
Drawing the album art for the cover of this adventure straight from Tom Petty’s album Full Moon Fever, it doesn’t take long to know that you’re in for a sincere treat, and while all of the material is drawn from Petty’s most beloved numbers, you’ll find that these tracks have been bathed and blessed in the waters of Lucinda Williams … meaning that while you’ll recognize each and every one, they’re all now owned by Ms. Williams.
Lucinda commented on these recordings by saying, “We’ve actually wanted to do a cover series for a long time now, but never had the time due to my touring schedule, so I guess the silver lining in all of this (Covid 19) has been to be able to really get inside the songs of some of my favourite artists and see what makes them tick.” With the presentation being drawn from a Lu’s Jukebox live streamed concert (and there will be six more like this in the future).
Lucinda’s chat in between the songs was both insightful as well as heart warming, making it obvious she’s a real fan. Lucinda’s voice is remarkably suited to his repertoire, as she and Tom Petty are both southerners by birth. I do hope at some point you get to view this concert as she has a fabulous band that made this all the more enjoyable to watch. The show came to a sup rinsing conclusion with the new song “Stolen Moments” that Lucinda wrote with Tom in mind, and dedicated it to his widow.
Talk about a match made in heaven! Lucinda opened for Tom Petty at the last concert he played before his death, and they seem like kindred spirits in every sense.
this ‘lu’s jukebox’ series was a string of livestreams she did last fall to benefit music venues during the pandemic, and if there was ever a cause near and dear to my heart, you know that’s it. of course she put together a killer band for the occasion, they sound amazing. a real treat, either artist or just wanna support a good cause.
A guitarry hybrid of AZ’s edgy rock/soul/r’n’b sound. Grooving good times, acerbic exchanges overheard in the street, shifts in community, the losses you will carry always, dark recesses late at night that echo with a wonder you’ve never felt before. Life! All instruments played by Azita; the wackest, most Azita-harmonious sounding pop album yet.
For those who find the passage of time a one-way process of attrition, here’s good news for you. In the eight years since AZITA’s last long-player her fevered brain has barely rested and the proof is a new album of unbounded physical and mental activity, music and entertainment, entitled ‘Glen Echo’. The worlds of the previous Azita’s have left their unmistakable essence. Her singular conception of pop music – the idiosyncratic songs, singing and playing that have graced seven acclaimed releases – is in verdant recurrence on ‘Glen Echo’, blossoming a new, cutting sharply in the spirit and image of her ever evolving, always questioning style.
Writing and arranging on keyboards since the time of her solo debut, Azita focused on guitars for this set of songs. Not simply for swagger or a fresh approach to soloing but as part of a way to elide expected singer-songwriter tropes, to democratically populate the sound-stage in equal partnership instead. This is a key aspect of the ‘Glen Echo’ sound, one that determined another new choice.
Previous long-players ‘Enantiodromia’, ‘Life On the Fly’ and ‘How Will You?’ were achieved via close work with players and engineers who took the compositions from the demo to a finished form. Invariably though, something would get lost in the transmigration somewhere. With ‘Glen Echo’, Azita comes through fully, jaggedly, most vividly, owning her intention entirely in the dialogue of singing and playing her rock and rhythm and blues.
The lyric sheet is riddled with language that circles, through the many moments of life, aspects of the passage of time, the pre-empted dreams and strangeness of the present and the way we invent an idealized past in response to the changes, guiding the narrative… where? It’s all banded together by AZITA’s wit, equal parts droll and dire, her dispassionate view of fates and outcomes for all of us here together on the planet, textured with unique, cinematic details and sudden dives into a deeply felt, utterly OG sense of soul.
In ‘Glen Echo’ are a multitude of sounds – all the moments in a life: the good time grooves, acerbic exchanges in the street, shifts in community and generosity, moments of loss you know you will carry forever, reflection upon unknown futures and pasts, the dark recesses late at night that echo with a wonder you’ve never felt before. You name it, AZITA’s got some sweet and sour theme music for it.
Released March 5th, 2021
Written, performed, and recorded by Azita Youssefi
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis released a new album titled “Carnage”. It was somewhat of a surprise release, although Cave had previously hinted at the album on his website. While the album works well as a complete piece, we picked album highlight “White Elephant” for this list. It features Cave tackle somewhat current events with such striking lyrics as “A protester kneels on the neck of a statue/The statue says, ‘I can’t breathe/The protester says, ‘Now you know how it feels’/And he kicks it into the sea.” Cave is backed by an incredibly deep bassline and ominous strings, before a choir erupts midway through the song, singing, “A time is coming/A time is nigh/For the kingdom/In the sky”—and suddenly it’s a Spiritualized song.
Carnage is available now digitally via Goliath, and will be available on CD and vinyl on May 28th.
Cave describes the album in a press release as “a brutal but very beautiful record nested in a communal catastrophe.” Ellis adds: “Making Carnage was an accelerated process of intense creativity. The eight songs were there in one form or another within the first two and a half days.” For such a literate person, Nick Cave does his new album with Warren Ellis a bit of a disservice by choosing to describe it as “a brutal but very beautiful record nested in a communal catastrophe.” That is, of course, an accurate description of what this music is, but it doesn’t really encompass everything Carnage can blossom into once it reaches the listener’s ear. Part of what’s made Cave and Ellis’ voluminous body of work so beguiling is the way that primary-colour descriptors like “brutal” and “beautiful” lose their meaning in the endless shades the two musicians have at their disposal. And to prime the audience to expect something that slots neatly into Cave’s setup is to constrain an extraordinarily complex work of art.
In November of last year, Cave put out a solo live concert album, Idiot Prayer – Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace, on Bad Seed Ltd.
The Feelies-inspired Scottish/Spanish duo The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness released their sophomore effort in early February, a 10-song, 26-minute collection of seamless pop-rock that does their namesakes proud. Andrew Taylor (Dropkick) and Gonzalo Marcos (El Palacio de Linares) recorded their parts in Edinburgh and San Sebastián, respectively, working from beyond-social distance to create an album that shows us the past through “Rose Tinted Glass,” allowing us to savor “a life that might never return,” per their album bio. This is lovely jangle-pop without an ounce of fat on it, sunny and soft, with the breezy energy that can only come from feeling truly carefree.
From vocal harmonies and retro synth frills to an always-accessible blend of acoustic and electric guitars, The Boys paint from a familiar power-pop palette, but create something uniquely beautiful—not even these times of loss and isolation can take that away from us. This is without an ounce of fat on it, sunny and soft, with the breezy energy that can only come from feeling truly carefree. From vocal harmonies and retro synth frills to an always-accessible blend of acoustic and electric guitars, The Boys paint from a familiar power-pop palette, but create something uniquely beautiful—not even these times of loss and isolation can take that away from us.
The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness Released on: 2021-01-20
After collaborating for more than a decade together, the Norwegian duo of artist and writer Jenny Hval and multi-instrumentalist HåvardVolden will release their first album as Lost Girls, Menneskekollektivet (“Human collective,” from the Norwegian). The album draws on the creative chemistry Hval and Volden honed via their time performing together in Hval’s live band, as well as their 2012 collaborative album as Nude on Sand, but sounds quite unlike either of those efforts.
Lost Girls began recording in March 2020, before the songs felt ready, and as a result, improvisation factors heavily into Menneskekollektivet, a surreal blend of synth loops and drum machines with Hval’s sometimes-spoken, sometimes-sung monologues, through which she brings her subconscious to the surface. “Making me an opposition,” she murmurs on “Love, Lovers,” entangled in her own mind, yet determined to capture her innermost wonder.
Recorded just as the world fell apart in March last year.
From the upcoming album “Menneskekollektivet” out March 26th on Smalltown Supersound.
Jeremy Earl (Woods) & Glenn Donaldson (Skygreen Leopards, The Reds, Pinks & Purples) met sometime in the mid-oughts and bonded over a love of tambourines and DIY sounds. They shared many stages since, and their first serious collaboration was on the 2011 Woods album Sun & Shade. Around 2018, Earl was restless in upstate NY and accepted an invite to record in Donaldson’s studio in an undisclosed rural coastal town in Northern California. In a week they emerged with nearly an album’s worth of hazy folk-rock and psych-pop with touches of more outré lo-fi noise. Jeff Moller (The Papercuts) added bass, and they put the finishing touches on during quarantine. Heaven and Holy ebbs and flows like coastal fog between songs and dreamy instrumentals splitting the difference between The Clean’s Unknown Country and The Byrds Fifth Dimension.
Jeremy Earl: Guitars, Vocals, Drums, Percussion, Mellotron, Casio Glenn Donaldson: Guitars, Organ, Casio, Backing Vocals Jeff Moller: Bass, Electric Piano on track 11
William The Conqueror have paid their damn dues. Like the sportsman cutting chipped teeth in the lower leagues before shooting to the very top, this band have lugged all the amps, placated the in-house sound guy for an easier life, their nails dirty, their hair unkempt. Enough. Naming yourself after one of British history’s most pivotal figures is a bold move, but then William The Conqueror could scarcely be accused of lacking ambition.
A group whose literary flair and in-depth musicality marks them out from the crowd, the three-piece set about constructing their new album last year.
Except it’s never enough, because despite their slinky, swampy, razor-sharp, blues-drenched, guitar thrashed alt. rock songs that form new album, Maverick Thinker and suggest that the door is opening for bigger rooms and broader audiences, it’s those sticky basement bar stages where the songs have always shed a skin and come alive. The record put the three piece behind the glass at Sound City Studios in LA, treading the same carpet as the likes of Nirvana, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, and Fleetwood Mac, and they might well have inhaled the spirit of them all.
William The Conqueror’s protagonist is Ruarri Joseph who knows his way around a melody and a verse. Joseph’s wryness suggests life just ain’t plain sailin’ and he fizzes that sigh and lament into something that breathes heavy with heart and with soul.
Pieced together as the world seemed to collapse, ‘Maverick Thinker’ is shot through with a don’t-look-back attitude, imbuing each song with a potent form of energy.
William The Conqueror began when Ruarri Joseph, a singer/songwriter in his own right, decided to retire his solo career after catching a glimpse of his own tour poster and realising the picture before him didn’t really represent reality. ‘It just seemed totally alien to me,’ he admits. ‘It didn’t seem like anything I’d done necessarily spoke of who I was.’
Soon after, he began experimenting with bassist, Naomi Holmes, and drummer, Harry Harding, examining themes from his childhood through the lens of a teenager named William. Starting out with secret gigs, Joseph emphasises the importance of playing those small venues and going back to their roots. ‘That was the cool thing about scrapping being a solo artist and starting completely from scratch, and building from the bottom all the way up. You’ve got no one looking over your shoulder. It takes away the insecurities I suppose.’
After their debut album Proud Disturber of the Peace, the band worked with esteemed producer, Ethan Johns, for their follow up, Bleeding on The Soundtrack, and recently signed to Chrysalis Records. Initially planning to make their latest release, Maverick Thinker, in a home studio, they were later persuaded to make a trip to Sound City Studios. The intention being to immerse themselves in the vibrant musical culture and artistic scene of Los Angeles, but, instead, found themselves in a ghost town as the pandemic hit.
Despite the strange circumstances, William the Conqueror continued with their work. The album was self-produced by the band along with recording engineer, Joseph Lorge, who also, after the band were forced to fly home early, played the guitar solo for the title track. ‘Having an engineer you can trust, you can focus everything about yourself on the performance. He knew the studio inside out.’ Though the location may have changed, they took their customary recording approach of tracking live, capturing the spirit and integrity of their shows without losing themselves in the production.
For a three-piece, William the Conqueror live up to their name and fill an incredible amount of space – commanding your attention with the depth and vitality of a much larger outfit. ‘It was an economical thing to begin with,’ says Joseph. ‘I have this thing about working in threes. I like the format.’ So far, Joseph hasn’t been tempted into arranging beyond their current numbers, with the recorded output staying mainly faithful to their on-stage sound. ‘There’s something quite nice about some kind of creative restriction,’ he says – ‘it makes you think outside the box.’
‘Working in threes is always nice – a little treble approach with a three-piece band. I had the idea of a trilogy in my head – a child, father, mother kind of thing. Then I read something by Herman Hesse about the three stages of development in life being innocence, disillusionment, and faith – the idea, that we all go through that kind of journey.’
When it comes to song writing, Joseph takes a more relaxed approach which is evident in his colloquial vocal tone and conversational manner. ‘My favourite kind of writing is the stuff where you’re not really aware of what it is that’s going down on the paper at the time.’ The band’s recent single, Move On, was written in this way. ‘It came from the idea of being overwhelmed – drowning in ideas and not knowing where to begin.’ Together, with a roving bassline and restless high hats, the imagery depicts twists in the roads and towns by the coast. It was a retrospective realisation that the song was about a hitchhiking trip his mother had embarked on in her youth.
Maverick Thinker’s second single, Jesus Died a Young Man, is an ode to some of Joseph’s early religious experiences and features staggered guitars and a mantra-like chorus that wouldn’t feel out of place at a faith healer show. Joseph’s vocals are dry and almost conversational – culminating in an exasperated wail, amidst the pounding rhythm section. ‘I was quite lost and looking for something to show me the way out of curiosity. Had I encountered a really good teacher, I probably would have fallen for it because of that charlatanism – drunk on the spirit, hands in the air kind of stuff,’ he says. ‘There’s something particularly sinister about televised evangelists – it’s a sort of next-level possession.’ Accompanied by a video featuring a channel flickering between swaggering televangelists, news channels and predatory nature clips, there’s a definite cynicism and an unsettling air.
As well as writing, recording and releasing music, Joseph has also authored an accompanying novel as well as producing a podcast adaptation. ‘The music and the book – they fit together. If you read the book and listen to the record, you can hear things crossing over.’
Joseph has been keeping himself busy during lockdown. When not writing songs, you can witness his other creative efforts through the band’s latest music videos including Wake Up – made entirely of 1920s horror movie footage. ‘That’s what you have to do when you’ve not got a budget for a music video.
The Fat Angel Sings 