There’s a lot to like about new indie pop Brooklyn collective Barrie. Lead by frontwoman Barrie Lindsay, the five some hail from all over the world, with members from London, Brazil as well as a criss-cross of the US. They’ve been delighting us over the last few months with a series of excellent singles and now it’s finally timed for their debut LP. Lindsay takes a fresh, dreamy approach to classic pop that’s at its most captivating on their debut record “Happy to Be Here”. Awash with major-key synth hooks, and tight, discerning lyrics about moving to New York and finding your people, Happy to be Here is a record you won’t want to miss.
Co-produced by Lindsay and Snail Mail/Solange knob twiddler Jake Aron, their debut album Happy To Be Here is a joyful collision, a carnival of sound and an awful lot of fun.
This Brooklyn based five-piece Barrie have released their debut album, Happy to Be Here, this week. Barrie’s leader Barrie Lindsay wrote the album’s songs late at night alone in her apartment, plays various instruments on the album (guitar, piano, synth, and bass), and co-produced the album with Jake Aron (Snail Mail, Solange, Grizzly Bear). But Barrie is not simply a solo project, the band also features Dominic Apa, Spurge Carter, Noah Prebish, and Sabine Holler, who had to record her backing vocals remotely from Germany due to visa issues. The band members are from all over, having previously lived in Boston, Baltimore, Upstate New York, London, and São Paulo via Berlin, but came together in New York. Barrie’s pleasing dream pop/indie pop that would appeal to fans of Yumi Zouma, among others.
“The scaffolding of this album is moving to New York and finding these people that make up the band,” Barrie said in a press release announcing the album. “We’re very different, but we cover each other’s gaps personally and creatively, and are eager to learn from each other.”
Barrie’s debut album Happy To Be Here is out May 03rd, 2019 via Winspear.
Scottish Fiction are proud to present tonic youth, the brand new single from Glasgow four-piece Wojtek the Bear. “Tonic Youth” is the first of four singles being released by Wojtek the Bear during 2019, which will be collected on a limited edition 10” vinyl, old names for new shapes, in the autumn.
Coming straight off the back of their well received debut album, a talent for being unreasonable, Glasgow’s Wojtek the Bear have wasted no time in getting back into the studio to furnish us with fresh music for 2019. Recording in the legendary Chem 19 with producer Jamie Savage [The Twilight Sad, Miaoux Miaoux, The Phantom Band, RM Hubbert], the band, with chiming melodies, pulsing bassline and swirling guitars, aim for that musical sweet spot between Camera Obscura’s Lloyd I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken and Real Estate’s It’s Real.
Of the track, lead singer Tam Killean reveals; “When I first moved into Glasgow in my early 20’s I quickly encountered people at parties I’d never been exposed to before; kids who’d never worked a day in their life, spent their summers in Val-d’Isére or Biarritz and all seemed to have fucking ponies. This song is about how initially on coming into contact with them I had a bit of a crisis of confidence, thinking that I’d wasted my life by just getting absolutely smashed from the age of 15 onwards.”
‘Hard to Believe’ is a song about being addicted to a bad relationship, and the endless cycle of trying and failing to end one,” explains Charly Bliss frontwoman Eva Hendricks. “[Drummer Sam Hendricks] wrote the guitar riff very early on in the writing process of Young Enough and we’ve always been obsessed with playing it because it’s so insanely catchy.” It certainly is. “Hard to Believe” is Charly Bliss power-pop in its purest form, an effervescent rocker that goes down like a shotgunned soda. As is customary for the band, the song’s bubbly instrumental blast belies harrowing emotional turbulence, a heavy weight masked by lightness: “I’m kissing everything that moves / I’m kissing anything that takes me far away from you,” sings Hendricks, unflinching in laying her conflicting feelings bare.
It’s hard to put into words how excited we are to share our second album “Young Enough”, out May 10th, with all of you. This album was a joy to make. We worked harder and were more focused than ever before, and our confidence and trust in one another and ourselves grew with every song we wrote.
This album is a celebration of personal growth, meant to be danced and cried to in equal measure. We can’t wait to share more songs and more information with you in the comings months, but for now, we hope you enjoy our first single, “Capacity” and the beautiful video directed by Michelle Zauner and shot by Adam Kolodny. Also, Also, a huge thank you to Ebru Yildiz for our beautiful album cover and press photos. In addition, we’ve added a handful of European tour dates in May.
British art-pop group ALASKALASKA are on a roll. Following their 2017 self-titled EP and 2018 singles “Meateater” and “Monster,” the South London sophisti-pop outfit are ready to unleash their debut full-length The Dots with firm footing. Their horn-laden, ever-morphing pop skyscapes and dancefloor fillers are always catchy, but never in a predictable sense. Led by principal songwriter Lucinda Duarte-Holman and bassist and producer Fraser Rieley, ALASKALASKA are willing to experiment with any groove or sonic texture that will further cultivate their heady, intoxicating art-pop.
ALASKALASKA vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter Lucinda Duarte-Holman says of the band’s new single, “Tough Love’ is a protest and a paradox. It is an invite to each individual listener to interpret however they like.” Duarte-Holman wonders “who gives a shit about my opinions / who gives a shit about my point of view / who gives a shit about anything lately” to open the song, struggling to reconcile the many contradictions of our current cultural moment over nervy guitars, shuffling drums and steadily escalating synths, all combining to evoke both confidence and near-collapse.
This week sister duo Bleached (Jessie and Jennifer Clavin) announced a new album, “Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough?”, and shared a video for a catchy new song from it, “Hard to Kill.” Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough?is due out July 12th via Dead Oceans.
The songs were written in Los Angeles and Nashville. Jessie did most of the instrumentation and Jennifer mainly did the lyrics and melodies. Shane Stoneback (Vampire Weekend, Sleigh Bells) produced the album. The album is the follow-up to 2016’s Welcome the Worms and 2017’s Can You Deal? EP. A press release says Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough?is the band’s “first LP written from a place of sobriety.”
Jennifer had this to say about the album in a press release: “Writing these songs while sober became somewhat of a spiritual experience. I had to let go, trust the process, and allow an energy beyond my control to be present.”
“Hard To Kill” by Bleached off ‘Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough?’ out July 12 on Dead Oceans Records
There is no other band in pop or rock who is able to master the balance between gloom and radiance quite like The Cure. And when it was released on May 2nd, 1989, no other album in their catalouge reflected both the darkness and light of their sound like “Disintegration”.
The band’s eighth LP was intended to be a return to the more oblique, gothic undertones of their landmark 1982 LP Pornography The epic, synth-heavy pastiche of opening track “Plainsong,” “Closedown” and the nine-minute “The Same Deep Water As You” all remain beacons of beautiful sorrow that seemed miles away from the pop vibrancy of such mid-80s faves as The Head On The Door and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me.
Disintegration and this particular classic lineup of The Cure, comprised of fearless leader and vastly underrated guitar hero Robert Smith; longtime bassist Simon Gallup; guitarist Porl Thompson; drummer Boris Williams; keyboardist Roger O’Donnell; and original drummer Lol Tolhurst, who didn’t play on the album but provided the basis for the song “Homesick” managed to channel the pop maneuvering of songs like “The Love Cats,” “Close To Me” and “Just Like Heaven” into a dark wave of black romance throughout the record’s 72 minutes.
The romantic gloom on Disintegration is more achingly beautiful depressive wallowers everywhere rejoiced. Perfect for any introspective occasion it also happens to be the perfect breakup album, including the album title! If there was a class called Album Openers , “Plainsong” would take up the first and last sections of the course. We relive the happy times captured in pictures “Pictures of You”, experience the high of expressing one’s love and devotion (“Lovesong”) only to experience the sadness of impending heartache (“Last Dance”) and the nightmares that follow (“Lullaby”). There’s also anger and desperation in songs like “Fascination Street,” “Prayers for Rain,” and “The Same Deep Water as You” in which Smith laments “can’t you see I try?/swimming the same deep water as you is hard.” With the sounds of breaking glass the epic title track begins where Smith describes his own failings. “Homesick” has Smith begging for another “go” before walking away and the album closer (“Untitled”) has Smith sadly admitting that he’ll “never lose this pain/never dream of you again.” Full of shimmery guitars, synths, and emotional lyrics, the album creates a lush atmosphere of love and loss. Perfect for heartbreak in the dark.
Each of the four singles taken from Disintegration provided more momentum for The Cure’s visibility and success on the charts across the globe. And while songs like “Fascination Street,” “Lullaby” and “Pictures of You” did, “Fascination” peaked at No. 1 on the Alternative Songs chart, it was the album’s most pop-positive moment, “Lovesong,” that skyrocketed them to the No. 2 position as well as largely universal acclaim to music listeners beyond the goth crowd.
“Despite making challenging music that deals with the biggest themes, their impact has been gigantic,” proclaimed Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails in his speech inducting The Cure into the 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “They’ve sold the best part of who gives a shit how many million records and been an essential touchstone in the genres of post-punk, new wave, goth, alternative, shoegaze and post-rock. They’ve been in and out of fashion so many times in the last four decades that they ended up transcending fashion itself. Though they might be a hip name to drop in 2019, this wasn’t always the case. Their dedication to pushing sonic and artistic boundaries while making music for the ages wasn’t always rewarded with glowing reviews in the press. But they never failed to attract a passionate, intelligent and loyal fanbase who always knew the truth: The Cure are one of the most unique, most brilliant, most heartbreakingly excellent rock bands the world has ever known.”
‘Disintegration’
Dropping through sky, through the glass of the roof, through the roof of your mouth, through the mouth of your eye, through the eye of the needle / It’s easier for me to get closer to heaven than ever feel whole again I never said I would stay to the end / I knew I would leave you with babies and everything.” Running more than eight minutes, the title track to the band’s best album features Robert Smith at his wordiest … and nastiest. It’s basically a cycle-of-life thing, with childhood abuses giving way to similar adult patterns. Chilling.
‘Pictures of You’
“Pictures of You” is the fourth and final single from the British rock band the Cure’s 1989 album Disintegration. Called “chilly goth-rock” and “accessible…synth-pop”, the song has a single version which is a shorter edit of the album version.
“If only I’d thought of the right words, I could have held on to your heart / If only I’d thought of the right words, I wouldn’t be breaking apart all my pictures of you.Robert Smith has said that he wrote ‘Pictures of You’ after a fire at his home. Among the remains were some pictures of his wife in a wallet. But read the lyrics, and you’ll discover something that cuts way deeper: a broken heart and shattered memories.
‘Fascination Street’
a 1989 North-American-only single by the English rock band The Cure from their album Disintegration.Their American record company refused the band’s original choice of song“Lullaby” as the first single (it was the lead single in the UK and was released in the U.S. later) and used “Fascination Street” instead.
The song is notable for its extended bass introduction. “I like you in that like I like you to scream / But if you open your mouth, then I can’t be responsible for quite what goes in or to care what comes out.”The first single from the Cure’s breakthrough U.S. album is one of Robert Smith’s vaguest songs. Is it about sex? Control? A breakdown of a relationship? We can’t say for sure, but the menacing rhythm hints that something sinister is going on. A perfect summation of the Cure at their best.
“Lovesong”
The Cure, released “Lovesong” as the third single from their eighth studio album Disintegration in 1989. The song saw considerable success in the United States, where it was a number two hit.
The song is performed in A minor and is built around a distinctive bass riff. The verses follow an Am/G/F/Em chord progression, which changes to F/G/Am/C in the choruses. The lyrics are simple, with each verse having the same structure (“Whenever I’m alone with you / you make me feel like I am … again”). Speaking of its simplicity and unusually upbeat nature compared to the other tracks on Disintegration, Smith stated, “It’s an open show of emotion. It’s not trying to be clever. It’s taken me ten years to reach the point where I feel comfortable singing a very straightforward love song”
The single version of the song is almost exactly the same as the album version, but the mix is slightly different, with extra reverb and harmonies added to Smith’s vocals. In addition, in the instrumental section between the first two verses, the guitar doesn’t join the keyboards like it does on the album.
Caamp formed in Columbus, Ohio when Taylor Meier and Evan Westfall met and bonded over a shared love of music and of their home state, specifically the inspiration they culled from the Midwest lives they grew up in. The two began writing and performing and quickly grew a rabid fan base. A self-titled 2016 debut album and single “Vagabond” rapidly began to take flight across streaming platforms and took the band to new heights. By and By, their upcoming sophomore album, marked the first time the duo recorded with outside help. Block and Jenkins helped expand their sonic horizons and through the recording process, Caamp also brought on a third and permanent member, Matt Vinson.
With the announce of Caamp, we are excited to give you the first single off Mom + Pop Records called, “Penny, Heads Up” and the announcement of their sophomore album “By and By”.
Although based out of New York for over a decade, it’s arguably her home city of New Orleans that’s a more obvious musical influence on the sound of Erin Durant. Erin caught the ear of many with her 2016 debut, “Blueberry Mountain”, not least with TV On The Radio’s Kyp Malone, who was enamoured enough to produce Erin’s upcoming second record, “Islands”. This week ahead of Islands’ June release, Erin has shared the latest track from it, “Highway Blue”.
Discussing Highway Blue, Erin has suggested the track is a musing on, “the space of what’s left when someone is gone”, and space seems to be an equally important factor in the sound of the track. Erin’s crisp, soaring vocal is given plentiful room to breathe, as lush Joanna Newson-like piano and gorgeous brushed drum-patterns carry the track along, with plentiful flourishes of harmonica for company. To share a track so sparsely produced as this takes a great confidence in your songwriting, and on this evidence Erin Durant has every reason to be confident.
For the past two years Saddle Creek Records have been doing their part to support the DIY community beyond their Omaha scene with the Document Series, an ongoing collection that shines a light on the radiant pockets of indie rock throughout the country. They’ve previously featured Posse, Palehound, Hand Habits, Hovvdy, etc. and now New Orleans’ Treadles are the next in line. One of our favorite new bands from the Crescent City, the quartet released “Bees Are ThievesToo” back in 2017, their first release as a full band. The years since have found KC Stafford (guitar, vocals) busy as a member of experimental doom metal favorites, Thou, but some point they found enough time to record a few new Treadles songs. Their return is triumphant on “Cold b/w Iron”, the new 7” single handpicked by Saddle Creek, is due out May 24th.
“Cold,” the single’s A-Side is a procession of textures both gentle and raw, from the warm picked intro into the deep plodding bass line. Stafford and Emily Hafner offer a gorgeous harmony, their voices a perfect pairing to sink into hazy emotional atmosphere, punctuating the pull of gravity as they sing “morning comes with the sun but I can’t pick me up from off this dirty ground.” Ian Paine-Jesam casually works an entrancing floor tom and snare rhythm as the band break toward ethereal clarity in the song’s bridge, shifting toward a knotted progression, one that weaves itself tighter as it evolves. The intensity eventually boils over with the structure erupting yet remaining impeccably tight. Treadles work themselves into the oncoming chaos with grace, becoming ever so unglued as they “try not to think about it.”
Treadles – Cold from the Saddle Creek Records Document 7″ vinyl Cold b/w Iron Out May 24th 2019!
In the years since Big Thief released Masterpiece, they have become enormously popular, touring at a near-constant clip. Sophomore album Capacity was critically lauded for its ability to tell small stories that spoke to a universal truth, and lead songwriter Adrianne Lenker is now widely regarded as one of the most technically skilled and lyrically incisive musicians to emerge over the past five years. Her affect is often described as “mystical,” and her songs have the predictive quality of an oracle, she can tell the story of an entire life in under five minutes.
Cycles fascinate Lenker. Her most recent solo album, 2018’s abysskiss, opens with “Terminal Paradise,” a song about energy transference or reincarnation. “See my death become a trail/ And the trail leads to a flower/ I will blossom in your sail/ Every dreamed and waking hour,” she sings. A reworked version of the song appears on Big Thief’s new album, U.F.O.F., as does abysskiss track “From.” This is Big Thief’s first album for 4AD Records and it’s being billed as their most collaborative to date, but the re-imagining of two of Lenker’s solo tracks emphasizes how inextricably tied to her vision this band really is.
Though Lenker, guitarist Buck Meek, and bassist Max Oleartchik all attended the prestigious Berklee School Of Music, both Masterpiece and Capacity favored deceptively simple song structures over noodly, dense arrangements. U.F.O.F. maintains that sense of ease, but it is more impressionistic and more exploratory than the band’s previous work. Opening song “Contact” is slow and somber from the outset, but it descends into chaotic improvisation soon after. This album is, to put it plainly, loose and jammy at certain moments, which is the result of so much time spent on the road. Lenker is prolific, and writing on tour is as much a necessity as it is a method of self-preservation. “I’m not nervous to open up into that place,” she said of writing in front of her band mates during in-between moments on tour. “If I couldn’t write in front of them, I’m not sure how much I would write at all, because I’m always with them.”
It’s a crisis of capitalism that in order to flourish as a musician one must endure a relentless touring schedule, but through Lenker’s gaze, there’s something unquestionably romantic about her vagabondish lifestyle. On “Century,” she captures memories in short, bright flashes while James Krivchenia’s drums pitter patter like a gentle storm: “Dogs eyes/ In the headlights on the driveway/ Cool autumn rain/ Bugs died/ On your windshield on the freeway/ Wonder if you’ll be the same.” Still, transience means saying goodbye over and over again, and there is a sadness underlying many of the songs on U.F.O.F. The title track’s melody shifts with the changing wind as Lenker bids farewell to a “UFO friend,” her words dripping out in rapid succession, like a leaky faucet. Lenker’s best songs can often read as wordy on paper, a little bit overstuffed. When she sings, though, they tumble forth as if conjured from someplace outside of the atmosphere. It’s hypnotic.
That Big Thief were inspired by New Age music while writing this album is no great surprise. The natural world, and the forces that guide it, have always been of interest to this band, and though many of their songs address anonymous women (Jodi, Betsy, Caroline, Violet, and Jenni in the case of this album) they invoke Mother Earth with unrelenting regularity. Single “Cattails” contemplates nature’s steadfast hold, the elements that remain long after someone beloved passes away. In grief, it is only human to seek out places that remind you of the person you lost, and Big Thief lean into that instinct here: “With your wrinkled hands/ And your silver hair/ Leaving here soon and you know where/ To where the cattail sways/ With the lonesome loon/ You’ll be riding that train in late June.”
Death is the only constant, and as much as Big Thief languish in the beauty of the surrounding world, fatalism grounds this album in an unsettling certainty. “Orange” is a love song arranged simply on acoustic guitar that contemplates the inevitable death of a partner. As Lenker’s sights grow darker — hound dogs howl at the stars, pigeons fall like snowflakes — she works herself up to a climactic realization: “Fragile is that I mourn her death/ As our limbs are twisting in her bedroom.” On the hazy “Open Desert,” you hear Meek’s fingers slide across the fretboard as Lenker contemplates another ending, picturing the “white light of the waiting room/ Leaking through the crack in the door.”
These are the preoccupations that keep people up at night, but Big Thief don’t wallow in angst on U.F.O.F. Moments of bliss eclipse the sorrowful. The fact that this album was recorded live off the floor gives some tracks an in-the-moment, improvised quality. “Strange” is a jaunty funhouse of a song that unwinds like a twisted nursery rhyme, as Lenker sings about seeing a luna moth cry “lime green tears/ Through the fruit bat’s eye.” As Big Thief tunnel further into this psychedelia, the accompanying arrangement starts to lose its footing; Oleartchik’s bass bubbles up from below, Lenker’s voice reverberates outward, and a synthetic sighing mist descends. Something similar happens toward the end of the arid, hallucinatory “Jenni,” when Meek suddenly breaks free to play the same sustained chord over and over again, to be eventually overtaken by Krivchenia’s thundering drums.
Big Thief get weird on U.F.O.F., to great effect. On the earlier Masterpiece and Capacity, they were making folksy rock songs U.F.O.F. isn’t an outlier, not exactly, but it isn’t as conventional, and it’s exciting to consider the directions Big Thief might go in from here. Lenker has been putting out music since she was a teenager, and while it’s long been established that she’s a formidable songwriter, U.F.O.F. documents a band coming into their own, messing around with new ideas and having fun doing it. Listening to it feels like sharing in that experience.
