Formed back in 2014 following the demise of their previous band Golden Grrrls, Sacred Paws are a band who are steadily making impressive waves. Their 2017 debut album, Strike A Match, saw the duo bag the prestigious Scottish Album Of The Year prize, tour across Europe and receive near universal critical acclaim. They made the probably sensible decision not to rush a follow-up out into the world, and thankfully the wait seems to be drawing towards a close with the release this week of a brand new track, “Brush Your Hair”.
In many ways, “Brush Your Hair” picks up where the band left-off, the intricate guitar work, perfect vocal harmonies and infectious rhythms remain; equal part punkish energy, artsy experimentation and perhaps most crucially, a lot of fun. It’s near impossible not to have a good time listening to Sacred Paws, we find our feet involuntarily twitching with the snare drum, our knees shimmying in time to the rapid-fire guitar work. With the promise of more news to come soon, Sacred Paws could just be the sound of 2019.
Brush Your Hair is out now via Rock Action Records.
Hailing from the musical hotspot that is Athens, Georgia, Deep State have been making music for the best part of four years with a modicum of success, and today look to take a big step forward with the release of their third album, The Path To Fast Oblivion. Ahead of that release the quartet have shared their excellent new single, “Son”.
Inspired by an, “inherent desire to instill wisdom into someone younger”, Son is a musing on whether the older generation should look to guide the youth of today, or let them make their own path. Musically, the track is the sort of restrained-riot that Deep State do so well; like a beautifully constructed wind-up toy, they seem to burst into life both furiously fast and perfectly controlled. Bringing to mind the likes of Wolf Parade or Clap Your Hand Say Yeah, this is rambunctious rock’n’roll with enough brains to keep it interesting, and it doesn’t get much better than that.
“Son” written and performed by Deep State From the album The Path To Fast Oblivion
The Band:
Taylor Chmura: guitars, vocals, electric piano, percussion
Christian DeRoeck: guitars, whammy bar, vocals
Michael Gonzalez: drums, percussion, piano, “bizness”
Brandon Page: bass, fuzz
The music of You Tell Me exists in this glorious place where several decades of British pop gently collide. That is to be expected considering the pedigree of the two singer/songwriters at the helm of this project. Peter Brewis is one-half of the flint-edged post-punk group Field Music, and Sarah Hayes has logged time in the glittering indie pop outfit Admiral Fallow and dabbled in traditional folk as a solo artist. Add in the detail that the pair met for the first time at a Kate Bush concert and the sound of You Tell Me may start coming into focus even before you get a chance to listen to their self-titled debut. The pair’s 11-song album weaves in and out of those varied sonic worlds with ease and wide-eyed joy, often grabbing little fragments into a lovely patchwork. Opener “Enough To Notice” layers the dreamy spirit of The Pentangle and their ‘70s psych-folk ilk with bubblegum pop, while “Water Cooler” and “Get Out Of The Room” imagines The Blue Nile’s sophisticated gleam meeting a hearty post-rock rumble.
There is a tendency within the running time of You Tell Me for the duo to maintain their cruising altitude for long stretches when they clearly have the abilities to hit the accelerator and soar. The languid pace that they lend to the majority of the songs here suits them just fine, but put up against the peppier numbers, you may long for a bit more variation.
At the same time, You Tell Me concocts such a spell with their debut that the journey will still delight and intoxicate.
Fuzzy garage rock has rarely contained this much wistful heartache. The previous album from Los Angeles-based musician Mike Krol, 2015’s Turkey, clocked in at just 18 minutes, but packed in a year’s worth of rambunctious potency. His new record, “Power Chords”, clocking it at nearly double the length of its predecessor, feels almost indulgent in comparison, but with its added running time comes a bit more thematic focus. Power Chords is a distinctly ugly record, but that’s part of the appeal. Though its sonic palette isn’t wide-ranging by any means, Krol’s grubby rock is better when its knees are scraped, eyes are bloodshot and heart is ripped open. Krol risks overshadowing his angsty songs with his thick, Stroke-like vocal filters, but they bring this angst to life by adding a dimension of teenage nostalgia with its bedroom DIY feel. While the sonics can feel tiresome after a while, Krol ends on a high note with his extremely muddy cut, “The End,” which is nicely offset with a piercing synth interlude.
“Hold me close / Don’t ever let me go / Cause I’ve been waiting / All my life for the moment / To tell you so / With a couple power chords / I’m gonna let you know / That revenge is better / When you come from down below.”
That’s the chorus of the first song, “Power Chords,” on my new album of the same name, which is released into the world today. Touring for my previous album, “Turkey,” ended in December of 2015, and by February of 2016, I found myself without an apartment, without any money, and had just ended a 3 year relationship. I put all my belongings in a storage unit in Glassell Park, and got a one-way ticket to Wisconsin to move back in with my parents. I was 31. Completely disillusioned and frustrated with “music as a career,” I began searching for the spark of what made me excited about songs in the first place. I sat in my old childhood bedroom, with a guitar in hand, trying to fall in love with music again. Eventually I saved up enough money to move back to LA, got a new place to live, met new people, had new experiences, and slowly but surely I started to compile the songs that would make up this album.
Music is a crazy thing. It can make you feel a range of emotions within a few seconds. It can transport your mind instantly back to a person, a place, a time, or a memory, as soon as you hear the first notes. Find something that makes you feel invincible, that gives you hope, and changes your life. To quote my press release, “Music ruined Krol’s life. And then saved it. In chronicling that process, Krol has made his best record—painful, voyeuristic, and angry, but ultimately transcendent and timeless. It is the sound of Krol giving in to a force greater than himself, as though the chords are playing him rather than the other way around.”
Power Chords is much more lyrically mature and musically adept than your average garage rock record, and its teenage sheen might urge you to fanatically scroll the lyrics on your notebook or bedroom wall of choice.
Australian quartet The Jungle Giants will be bringing sizzling hot indie rock anthems to Liverpool Sound City this summer 2019! Creators of music that ‘makes you want to dance, but also clench your fists,’ singles such as ‘Used to Be in Love’ and ‘Feel the Way I Do’ have been racking up millions of streams in their homeland. With 3 albums to boast and a number of sellout tours under their belts, it is only a matter of time before The Jungle Giants make a name for themselves on this hemisphere. check out the album “Quiet Ferocity”:
Listen to The Jungle Giants third studio album Quiet Ferocity and one thing becomes clear: they’ve found their sound. The band – featuring Sam Hales on vocals/guitar, Cesira Aitken on lead guitar, Andrew Dooris on Bass Guitar/Backing Vocals and Keelan Bijker on drums/trombone – met in Brisbane at Mansfield State High, and since their first performance in 2011, they’ve released two EPs (The Jungle Giants, 2011 and She’s a Riot, 2012) and two studio albums (Learn to Exist, 2013 and Speakerzoid, 2015).
Quiet Ferocity combines the signature melodic arrangements of their first album with the percussion-laden production of their second and catapults them into asonic stratosphere that is entirely their own sound.
“After Speakerzoid I didn’t write for a while,” Sam says. “I needed to figure out what I wanted to do. I had to get out of my head. Then one day I was in the pool. It came to me, and I made this conscious decision. I told the band I wanted to make banging indie rock. I wanted to make a strong record that I would be happy to play live.”
Band Members
Sam Hales – Vocals/Guitar
Cesira Aitken – Lead Guitar
Andrew Dooris – Bass Guitar/Backing Vocals
Keelan Bijker – Drums
With their powerful harmonies and imaginative songwriting in full force, Girlpool are making new creative leaps with their new album, “What Chaos Is Imaginary”. Combining elements of shoegaze, folk, and 80’s postpunk with their own melodic gifts, these two great songwriters come up with a modern classic full of great tunes and sonic surprises. Impressive growth for this already celebrated band.
The music Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad release as Girlpool occupies a transient space. Their constant evolution makes it perfectly impossible to articulate exactly where their project falls within the contemporary musical canon; this is one of the many reasons Girlpool’s music is so captivating.
They met in November of 2013, and released their self-titled EP just 3 months later. Both were playing in multiple bands at the time. Harmony was 18. Cleo was 17.
The growth they have fostered in one another over the years explains the project’s disparate discography; each record is a photograph of Girlpool, growing over time. Their roots are a certain shade of punk—organized chaos dressed as earworms. “Where You Sink,” one of the first singles off their upcoming record, What Chaos Is Imaginary, gives you an idea of how much things have changed since 2014.
It’s not all good.
“I was experiencing a lot of mental health issues,” says Tividad of the title. “That song comes from a place of being disconnected from reality. The world is so complicated. It’s hard to believe in magic, or that anything exists.” Notice the order: magic, then the principle existence of things. A peak into Harmony.
Though it is the 3rd track on Girlpool’s newest record, “Where You Sink” was written at a time when the two were living in different states on the East Coast. It proved to be a period of immense change for the both of them; each focused—more than they ever had before on their solo music.
“Before, we would build our songs together with four hands, from the ground up,” says Tucker, referring to the songwriting process that produced the debut EP and 2015’s critically acclaimed follow-up, Before The World Was Big “Our songs used to be intertwined in a different way. We brought our separate experiences to the songs that we crafted together, we valued understanding that they were multidimensional.”
Their solo work consistently breathes new life into Girlpool. The two have since become comfortable with the process being more independent, more fluid. They both take part in the production and arrangement of the music, but they’ve strayed from beginning hand in hand in every instance. They connect somewhere along the way, working together when it feels right.
Discussing the new process, Harmony says, “It’s helped me find validity in parts of my writing I found to be unapproachable. I thought my stream-of-consciousness was unsophisticated.” There’s probably a great pun available re: shedding self-consciousness to release a more sophisticated stream-of-consciousness. In any case, What Chaos is Imaginary—the record and the song—is what the stream looks like when self-consciousness is shed.
Where Harmony embraces chaos, Cleo organizes it. “It’s hard for me to feel completion without achieving a vision that I have. I’ll imagine the kind of climate I want to create inside a song,” says Cleo of his process. “Once I fall in love with the direction, it’s getting there that can take time.” Finishing a song may take time and even prove to be difficult for him at times, but the product is invariably polished. Considering the near-perfect balance in the songs on What Chaos is Imaginary, their dynamic makes sense. “It took a really long time to record this record. It feels like a photograph of a very transitional time.”
What Chaos is Imaginary is a collection of songs unlike any Girlpool songs you’ve ever heard, exactly what Powerplant was to Before The World Was Big. For the first time, it is clear who wrote what song. 2019 will see drum machines and synthesizers and beautiful/new harmonies and huge guitars and at least one orchestral breakdown by a string octet.
“It was invigorating playing stripped down and raw when Girlpool began. As we change, what gets us there is going to change too.”
It’s hard to imagine what might follow What Chaos is Imaginary. Girlpool’s growth has a steady momentum forward, towards something greater with every stride that they take. By the time the record comes out, they’ll be far from here, wherever here is.
Elena Tonra is the singer, songwriter and guitarist for Daughter. This is her first album for the new project that she runs simultaneously alongside Daughter. The album was recorded with Fabian Prynn (4AD producer/engineer) with Josephine Stephenson on cello and inspired by a shattered relationship. ‘Romance’ is the first single taken from Ex:Re’s self titled debut album, digitally out now on 4AD & Glassnote Records.
Running parallel to Daughter, Elena has assumed the pseudonym Ex:Re(pronounced ex ray) for her eponymously-titled debut solo album. The 10-track album ‘Ex:Re’ out now.
Warm, rattling, reassuring strings, tickling percussive beats and rhythms. Soft soothing vocals pair with warm strings, wrapping themselves around the vocals and hugging the strings of your heart. Sliding, picked strings match heartbeat rhythm pulses. The intimate, warm sound of home. Mood is turned into an instrument and a feeling of closeness surrounds you. Eastern tinges edge into the music, climbing vocals and sinuous, resonating drums. An eloquent tale, a catharsis of feeling. The sound of a heart breaking is something to fall in love with.
Elena has said of the album,“Although the record is written for someone, a lot of the time it’s about the space without that person in it. In every scenario, there’s either the person in memory or the noticeable absence of that person in the present moment. I suppose it is a break-up record, however I do not talk about the relationship at all, and he hardly features in the scenes. He is only felt as a ghostly presence.”
The band will perform Our Endless Numbered Days in its entirety (and with an orchestra) in Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Sub Pop Records and Iron & Wine will celebrate the 15th anniversary of Our Endless Numbered Days with the release of a newly expanded deluxe edition on CD/2xLP/DL worldwide on March 22nd, 2019. This version will feature eight previously never before heard demos, new artwork, and a 12-page booklet including liner notes from author Amanda Petrusich. You can now hear the demo version of “Passing Afternoon” here.
Iron & Wine received its second Grammy nomination in two years as “Best Folk Album” for 2018’s Weed Garden. Their previous nomination was for “Best Americana Album” for 2017’s Beast Epic.
Sam Beam, aka Iron & Wine, released Our Endless Numbered Days, his second album, in March of 2004. It followed his seemingly out of nowhere debut arrival, The Creek Drank the Cradle (2002) which was a quiet word of mouth treasure. Our Endless Numbered Days was recorded in Chicago and was the first in a string of releases to be produced by Brian Deck (Red Red Meat, Modest Mouse, Ugly Casanova, etc.).
Our Endless Numbered Days, which has sold over 556,000 copies, marked many firsts for Beam both professionally and personally and as Petrusich so rightly calls it in her liner notes “Our Endless Numbered Daysis a timeless record about the passage of time.”
Upon its release SPIN called the record a “masterwork” one that is “self-assured, spellbinding, and richly, refreshingly adult.” Pitchfork, which gave the original album “Best New Music,” had this to say, “An astoundingly progressive record: Beam has successfully transgressed his cultural pigeonhole without sacrificing any of his dusty allure.”
Our Endless Numbered Days (Deluxe Edition)is now available for pre-order from Sub Pop Records.
Ian Sweet has been the source of and solution to many of Jilian Medford’s deepest anxieties. But now, two years after her soul-bearing debut LP Shapeshifter, Medford is confronting that reality with surprising optimism on her new full-length Crush Crusher. After relocating to Los Angeles, Medford has decided to make the project a solo endeavor once again (as it had been in her salad days in the Boston DIY scene) and took the opportunity to compose some of her most self reflective and emotionally analytical songs to date.
In writing Crush Crusher, Medford committed herself to exploring her own issues with self-image, self-respect/worth, and the responsibility she has felt to others. Album opener “Hiding” was one of the first songs she wrote for the record while living in a frigid Brooklyn apartment during a winter break amidst her grueling tour schedule. In the song, Medford reflects on an interpersonal relationship that fell apart because of an inability to feel supreme comfort in sharing all the pieces of herself with someone. Nevertheless, a hopeful demeanor shines through on “Hiding” and in her writing across the album, with lyrics that embrace life’s hurdles and make them feel a little less scary.
Much of Crush Crusher’s songs deal with Medford’s internalized pressure to become a caretaker in many of her close friends’ lives. As a defense mechanism for her own insecurities, Medford projects a sense of invincibility and benevolence to feel more deserving of the love received from others; we hear this on “Holographic Jesus” when she repeats the phrase “the sun built me to shade everybody,” characterizing the sacrifice and responsibility she feels in ways that could easily go unnoticed. “Holographic Jesus” ultimately represents a façade of strength that Medford has clung onto and, in true Taurus fashion, is stubborn to let go of.
Musically, Crush Crusheris full of dissonant open chords and abnormal progressions, finding beauty in a level of conflict not seen on Shapeshifter. To help achieve this expansive-but-focused sound, Medford enlisted the help of someone who was just as ambitiously experimental in their approach, producer and engineer Gabe Wax (Deerhunter, The War on Drugs, Soccer Mommy). Medford and Wax set up shop at Rare Book Room studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and completed the basic tracking with musicians Simon Hanes on bass and Max Almario on drums. “Coming into a space where some of my biggest inspirations like Bjork, Dirty Projectors, and Deerhunter had all once also recorded, I felt determined to push myself and test every boundary that I may have subconsciously created along the way. Gabe made me feel comfortable with attempting anything,” Medford says. By the end of the recording process, Ian Sweet wound up with an unconventional assortment of songs featuring disparate elements of psych-rock, trip-hop, and shoegaze that together forged a sound uniquely her own.
Crush Crusher’s closing track “Your Arms Are Water” serves as a thematic reprise for the whole album, telling the story of an inspiring relationship in Medford’s life that was drowning in doubt. The song’s nuanced perspective captures the record’s thesis—that to escape your misery sometimes requires accepting your imperfections. Such compassionate and densely-realized observations make Crush Crusher more nourishing food for thought for fans of Ian Sweet.
Trip out to the digital dimensions of “Holographic Jesus” from Ian Sweet’s 2018 album Crush Crusher.
Run, don’t walk. With our boys KG & the LG blowing up the way that they have it seems to give a rub to the other acts on Flightless, but especially the ones directly related to his majesty.
This is their third LP, and their last one sells for stupid amounts now. Like I said, FOMO is real.
Their last record was a great discourse on the trappings of Australian psychedelic rock that was steeped long and hot in American soul and r&b and it was just so, so amazing.
Our new album ‘Old Locomotive’ will be released on July 28th, 2017 onFlightless Records
