23-year-old Londoner Nilüfer Yanya has made waves with her eccentric, indie-rock-tinged soul and pop. Her debut album, Miss Universe, will drop on March 22nd via ATO Records, and it’s filled with hard-hitting, glistening pop songs with a mature and one-of-a-kind artistic vision (the album is interwoven with spoken-word interludes from a fictional medical company, her frantic new single, “In Your Head,” was among our list of Best Songs of January for her sassy vocals, glittery synths and driving indie-rock riffs. Other standouts include the headbanging “Heavyweight Champion of the World” with its wonderfully bare guitar plucks, charming vocal flutters and punchy melodies as well as the electro-rock stunner “Paralysed.”
Nilüfer Yanya’s debut album, Miss Universe, is out March 22.
Indoor Pets (formerly known as Get Inuit) will check boxes for those who love classic Weezer but cringed at their recent attempts at relevance, as well as those who prefer some extra sugar in their indie-rock tea. The British quartet are set to release their debut album, Be Content, on March 8th via Wichita Recordings. With vibrant guitars and frontman Jamie Glass’ high-pitched wails, tracks like “Hi” and “Being Strange” prove they know their way around a syrupy pop hook. It’s not exactly revolutionary to pair angsty lyrics with bubbly pop melodies, but one thing Indoor Pets can claim for themselves is Glass’ distinct, sugary pipes, cheery hooks that are anything but flimsy and riffs that add just enough biting clamor to counteract their highly carbonated pop.
Jim Gordon has played drums on hundreds of hit records, with artists ranging from the Beach Boys to Tom Petty, George Harrison to Hall & Oates to Linda Ronstadt. But you won’t find any gold records hanging in his place of residence: For more than three decades now, Jim Gordon has been locked up, for the crime of fatally stabbing his own mother. His story is one of the great tragedies of the rock world.
It happened on June 3rd, 1983. Gordon attacked his mother, Osa Marie Gordon, first with a hammer before grabbing the butcher knife. He later claimed that voices in his head told him to kill her. Sentenced to 16 years to life in prison, he has repeatedly been denied parole; at one hearing he reportedly refused to admit that his mother was even dead. Diagnosed with schizophrenia after his conviction, he remains, according to prison authorities, a threat. He currently spends his days and nights in the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, California.
It didn’t start out that way for Jim Gordon, of course. Born in July 1945, and raised in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, Gordon was awarded a music scholarship at age 17 and began his professional drumming career backing the Everly Brothers. His credits quickly mounted: the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, The Notorious Byrd Brothers,Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman, Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, John Lennon’s Imagine, CSN’s debut and recordings by Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, B.B. King, Carly Simon, Alice Cooper, Traffic, the Monkees, Barbra Streisand, Jackson Browne, Merle Haggard, on and on and on. At the height of his career Gordon was reportedly so busy as a studio musician that he flew back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas every day to do two or three recording sessions and then returned in time to play the evening show at Caesars Palace.
You can hear him on Ike and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High,” Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made forWalkin’,” Nilsson’s“Jump Into the Fire” (that drum solo!), Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,”Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown” and Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas.” He was, by any measure, a first-call drummer. it’s fairly amazing list of tracks.
Listen to George Harrison’s “What Is Life,” with Jim Gordon on drums. His greatest fame came via his involvement with Eric Clapton, who hired Gordon as a member of Derek and the Dominos, the supergroup put together by the guitar great in 1970, basically purloining the musicians who’d been working with soul-rockers Delaney and Bonnie. Gordon can be heard on the Dominos’ mega-popular album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs and performed with the band in concert during its brief time together. He is credited as the co-author (with Clapton) of the classic title track “Layla” and created the song’s familiar piano coda. In later years, BobbyWhitlock claimed that the coda was not written by Gordon: “Jim took that piano melody from his ex-girlfriend Rita Coolidge. I know because in the D&B days I lived in John Garfield’s old house in the Hollywood Hills and there was a guest house with an upright piano in it. Rita and Jim were up there in the guest house and invited me to join in on writing this song with them called ‘Time.’... Her sister Priscilla wound up recording it with Booker T. Jones.… Jim took the melody from Rita’s song and didn’t give her credit for writing it.
(The group’s members also appear on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, also from 1970.)
That same busy year of 1970, Gordon toured with Joe Cocker’s heralded Mad Dogs & Englishmen troupe and played on Dave Mason’s Alone Together album and much more. But it didn’t take long for things to unravel for him once that decade kicked in; when he wasn’t in the studio or onstage, Gordon’s demons got the better of him. While on tour with Cocker, Gordon allegedly beat his then-girlfriend, singer Rita Coolidge, in a hotel.
Gordon was also part of Frank Zappa’s 20-piece ‘Grand Wazoo’ big band and the subsequent 10-piece ‘Petit Wazoo’ band. Perhaps his best-known recording with Zappa is the title track of the 1974 album Apostrophe (‘), a jam with Zappa and Tony Duran on guitar and Jack Bruce on bass guitar, for which both Bruce and Gordon received a writing credit (Zappa, when introducing Gordon onstage, frequently referred to him as “Skippy”, because of his youthful appearance).
Although Gordon continued to find work as the ’70s rolled on, with Johnny Rivers, Frank Zappa, Chris Hillman (Gordon was a charter member of the Souther-Hillman-Furay supergroup) and others, his erratic behavior was becoming well known among music business regulars. Misdiagnosed by his doctors, who treated him for alcoholism and missed the schizophrenia altogether, Gordon became increasingly violent as his mental illness took hold of him. By the middle of the decade, it had begun to affect his playing and he lost work.
Prior to his murder of his mother, Gordon reportedly heard her voice in his head, and on that horrible 1983 day he finally let the voices take him to that very dark place. His lawyers tried an insanity defense but the court wouldn’t allow it. He was convicted of murder and sentenced in July 1984. As of this writing he is 73, his future prospects looking dim. As recently as 2018, still diagnosed with schizophrenia, Gordon was denied parole again. He will have another chance in 2021.
Whatever might happen to the man, though, his contribution to rock music should be forever cherished. With but a dim possibility for parole, Jim Gordon is the man rock- and-roll forgot. Except, perhaps, for one brief moment on February. 24th, 1993, when, along with Eric Clapton, he was awarded the rock songwriting Grammy for ”Layla”.
Known both as a songwriter in her own right, as well as a very talented drummer who’s played with the likes of Tim Darcy and Molly Burch, Toronto’s Charlotte Cornfield caught the ear of many with her 2016 release, Future Snowbird. Some three years later, Charlotte is back with a new album, “The Shape Of Your Name”, due in April. The record was the result of a residency at The Banff Centre, as Charlotte explains, “my initial intention wasn’t to make a record at all”, yet with a batch of songs as good anything in her career to date, let’s be very glad a record was made.
This week Charlotte has shared the latest single from the record, “Storm Clouds”, one of the first songs recorded during the Banff sessions. Featuring backing vocals from Kevin Drew, alongside contributions from a number of other Broken Social Scene Members, the track reverberates around the central repeated mantra, ‘storm clouds, elation, desire, mania, darkness’, described by Charlotte as a personal meditation, it’s a phrase she’s carried with her without ever quite knowing what to do with. Musically, the track has a loosely folky feel, the Lucy Dacus-like guitar line paired with a warm melody that has a touch of Natalie Prass or the aforementioned Kevin Morby. An album recorded over a three year period and numerous sessions,
The album has a more honed studio sound than Cornfield’s scrappier 2016 release Future Snowbird, and for good reason: it was recorded in 5 different sessions over the course of 3 years. The songs are Cornfield’s strongest and most striking to date – contemplative and contemporary, funny and heart-wrenching – and they’ve got that stuck-in-your-head-for-days quality that Cornfield is known for.
The Shape Of Your Name is many ways a tribute to taking your time; on this sparkling evidence, it’s time well spent.
Band Members
Charlotte Cornfield,
Sam Gleason,
Steven Foster,
Ben Harney,
The Shape Of Your Name is out April 5th via Next Door Records.
And the Kids is a spunky trio who write self-reflective bummer pop jams. Hannah Mohan’s guitar playing is kinetic and aggressive; she bounces between walking scales with fuzzed out, alien tones and ringing out massive chords for the band to contextualize with their heavy-hitting drums and driving bass grooves. The harmonious vocal efforts of Mohan and the band blend to articulate personal revelations sometimes delivered in a round. drumstick between the teeth, playing the kit with one hand and a freakin’ glockenspiel with the other,
Listen to the band performing new tracks here on Audiotree Live.
Session Tracklist: And The Kids perform “I Can’t Tell What the Time is Telling Me”, 2. Kick Rocks, 3. Glory Glory, 4. Picture 5. I Dropped Out
U.S. Girls document the hypnotic quality of their live show with the intimate new “Time” video. Director Alex Kingswell takes a hands-on approach with the clip, filming Meghan Remy and her massive backing band side-stage during their sold-out performance 2018 at Canada’s Sappy Fest. The camera follows Remy as she dances, sings and steps out to a parking lot during a lengthy instrumental jam.
“Time” appears on the latest U.S. Girls LP, the acclaimed In a Poem Unlimited, which was named in most magazine and bloggers top 10 best album of 2018. Remy aimed to push herself from art-pop into more accessible territory with In a Poem Unlimited. she detailed wanting to make “something that could be played in situations where thinking isn’t usually encouraged.”
‘Time’ by U.S. Girls, from the acclaimed record ‘In A Poem Unlimited’, out now on 4AD
With Keep Up, Melbourne three-piece Loose Tooth have inked their impeccable ear for a hook on a fresh sonic palate; the howling guitars of their first EP Saturn Returns peeled back to foreground the striking to and fro of the band’s distinctive vocalists. That’s three for three – Etta Curry (drums, vocals), Luc Dawson (bass, vocals, guitar, keys), and Nellie Jackson (guitar, vocals) – long time friends with a democratic approach to both songwriting and influences.
Where Saturn Returns was squared in youthful abandon, the band’s debut album is the hangover; recognising a tension between keeping up in a shifting landscape of necessity and staking out your own version of happiness as you wave goodbye to your golden twenties.
Raised on the holy trinity of soul, country and Eddy Current, their debut LP is a living reminder that the B-52’s used to be a punk band and the light hasn’t gone out on the storied shores of St Kilda, Loose Toothhave a new clip for ‘Asteroids’ taken from their most recent album Keep Up.
‘A knack for sunny vocal harmonies, addictive basslines and their own take on the striped, sunlight sound made famous by predecessors like the Go-Betweens.” 4 1/2 stars – The Sydney Morning Herald.
Loose Tooth have a new clip for All The Colours Gone from their debut album
‘All The Colours Gone’ is taken from Loose Tooth’s album ‘Keep Up’ out now:
Anteros take their name from the Greek god of requited love, the perfect moniker for a band whose buzzy indie-pop is this easy to fall for. Coming up at a time when guitar music is once again in rude health from Shame and IDLES to Wolf Alice, this London-based four-piece boast influences that range from Blondie to Brandon Flowers, Motown to disco. “We sound like tequila mixed with bananas and a bit of cinnamon”, jokes frontwoman Laura Hayden, a half-Spanish, half-British tour de force and former MTV Spain VJ who helms this self-proclaimed “travelling circus” alongside Harry Balazs, Josh Rumble and Jackson Couzens. The last few years have seen this young outfit hit the road with the likes of Two Door Cinema Club and White Lies, open Glastonbury’s Other Stage, and gain major radio support, garnering the approval of tastemakers including Annie Mac and Phil Taggart. In print, they’ve also been hotly tipped by the Guardian and the Independent, with alt-rock bible DIY noting that they “turn sorrow into something you can dance to”. And, as they prepare to release their debut album, it’s easy to see why so many are already under their spell.
In a time of social media fakery and inauthentic artists, Anteros aren’t pretending to be anything they’re not. ‘We’re definitely not trying to be cool,” says Balazs, a BRIT school graduate who discovered his tribe in Anteros following a stint as a session drummer. Their upcoming debut album When We Land is a collection of sparky, often bittersweet musings on twentysomething life – not least Call Your Mother, a song about the pressures of youth whose relentless, anthemic bassline and jangly, Cure-ish momentum meld with Hayden’s dreamy, Debbie Harry-esque vocals. For bassist Rumble, the line “lightweight young hearts waiting to break” sums up his own relationship with growing up. Elsewhere, other tales come cloaked in a blitzkrieg of grungey electro-pop (Afterglow), at other times via introspective folk-rock earworms (Ordinary Girl). What unites them is a rich sonic palette and poetic lyrics that celebrate the highs and lows of being young in 2018. “My favourite lyric on the album is ‘you don’t know how close you were to being number one [from Ordinary Girl]’”, explains Couzens, a former guitar tech who cut his teeth working with Manchester heavyweights Blossoms. “At that point in the song it kind of lifts up as it goes from minor into major. For us, it represents getting knocked back but coming back and trying harder the next time”.
Indeed, while Anteros have had an impressive few years (Balazs joined in 2015 and Couzens in 2016, while the others had been working on material for some time before) they have, of course, faced the challenges of post-adolescence, and then some. The new band lifestyle has of course involved much time on the road while travelling in cramped vans, and trying to stay true to themselves has at times seemed like a battle in a polished and Instagram-ready age, something Hayden understands better than most having worked as a presenter and model. Besides, they’ve been keen not to be seen as a continuation on a theme. “I do think this is something that happens more with female-led projects, where you get compared to stuff a lot, or put up against other bands,” she explains. “We’re trying to just see it as us, not wanting to be part of a fad, but making stuff that will find its own place”.
Since signing with Distiller last year, Anteros have only become more secure in their identity as a group, thanks in part to an “amazing” period recording at the label’s in-house studio in Bath alongside Mercury-winning producer Charlie Andrew (Alt-J, Bloc Party, Marika Hackman). The version of Anteros we meet on When We Land is confident without feeling cocky, retro while also sounding current. There are even dancefloor-ready moments in the mix, with Hayden describing heady, Moloko-ish single Wrong Side as “disco with a side of rock”, and Rumble – who has experimented with synth bass on the record – adding that it’s “disco recorded in a Motown style … [that period] was gritty sonically”. It seems no coincidence, too, that the coyly funky Ring Ring shares a title with an ABBA song. A highlight for Hayden is fan favourite Breakfast, which “feels more grown up, it was a writing demo when we released it, so this was a chance to do it properly”. Couzens, meanwhile, is a fan of Honey, an “upbeat, dancey, sassy” track that gives way to a darker meditation about a toxic relationship. Similarly, Drive On, inspired by Hayden’s time in LA and realising the limitations of the “Hollywood dream” feels like a fresh coda to the edgy Americana of Hot Fuss.
Whether during their electric live shows or on record, Anteros strike the perfect balance of deeper themes and varied grooves you can’t help but move to. And it seems they have no plans to change their eclectic ways any time soon. “We don’t want to get too comfortable”, adds Hayden with a laugh. “Otherwise it would get boring. We want to make our own space”. And, as they continue to craft it with class, we’re sure to be lending Anteros our hearts as well as our ears.
Self Esteem is Rebecca Lucy Taylor, and a project which began with painting and prints and video alongside her day job writing and performing as one half of Slow Club. Since her musical divergence from the band, Rebecca has revelled in unleashing a whole version of herself with no compromises, no reducing herself, no hesitating. She would go on to write the songs that had been rising up inside her all through the years, big songs, that spoke of love and sex and chaos, that brought in huge basslines, gospel choirs, the kind of polished, provocative production she admired on the biggest pop records.
Compliments Please saw Self Esteem working with songwriter and producer Johan Karlberg, seeking him out because she loved his band, The Very Best, as well as his approach to production. It’s an album that reveals her to be not just a remarkable vocalist, but one of our most powerful and distinctive songwriters.
Chapter Music welcomes Sweet Whirl, aka Melbourne artist Esther Edquist, to their roster with this six song EP , Love Songs & Poetry introduces Edquist as a master of smoky self-analysis, casting a sharp eye over blurry situations and dissecting hazy mornings-after with wry resignation. Using her bass guitar as a singularly expressive lead instrument, Esther imbues bleak moments with space, mystery and romance. The Sweet Whirl band includes drummer James Vin- ciguerra from Total Control, and Liam Barton of Laura Jean and Gregor’s live band, who also recorded the EP.
Esther’s previous band Superstar released two albums of delay-drenched pop on the Bedroom Suck label. She also released a tape of no-fi solo bass and vocal recordings on experimental label Nice Music in 2016.
With Love Songs & Poetry, Sweet Whirl emerges into a world of fully fledged songcraft. The EP’s six songs illuminate questionable life choices, revealing the beauty and glamour lurking within.
“With music this soft on your skin, small acts of rebellion feel big.” – The Guardian
“Beautifully melancholic and ethereal” – Lost At E Minor
“This might not be music for fucking but it could be music for thinking about making love” – Who the Hell
