Someone give Stella Donnelly one of those vintage ribbon microphones and an early slot at the comedy club. Actually, a guitar and a venue stage should suffice for now, but let it be known that this Australian singer/songwriter rivals Mrs. Maisel in her abilities to pair humor with heartbreak and absolutely command a room. She’s an ace with a crowd, but her real talent for wordplay shows up in the masterful lyrics on her debut EP, Thrush Metal, a name that only serves to sound “cool,” . That title might only be a slick word-pairing, but the music itself is chock full of meaning—wise words on awful men, victim blaming and dwindling relationships, as well as blossoming ones.
Boys Will Be Boys is my attempt at making sense of society’s tendency to blame the victims of sexual assault and rape and make excuses for the perpetrators. It was also my way of dealing with certain events that were occurring in my life at the time. The video itself was intended to express the burden of victim blaming and sexual assault on the victims themselves as the mundane aspects of life go on. A song is just a song but at the very least I hope it will open up difficult yet important conversations between family members, friends, government bodies, organisations and most importantly, boys and men.
It’s hard to decide which is more the standout track, the searing “Mechanical Bull” or “Boys Will Be Boys,” a #MeToo anthem for the ages. Thankfully, we don’t have to choose, but the latter is the song many needed to hear in 2018, especially after Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court: “Boys will be boys” is not a viable excuse for, as Donnelly puts it, “invading her magnificence.” Nor is beer. In fact, there’s never an excuse. And maybe all of the tracks on Thrush Metal are standouts. This EP is a truly magnificent bud to Donnelly’s blooming discography.
Stella Donnelly’s ’Thrush Metal EP’, out digitally released on June 22nd 2018 on Secretly Canadian.
The troubadour originated in the Middle Ages but the folk singers of the ‘60s – Nick Drake, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were the carriers of the torch. Now there’s a new generation of artists taking up the baton and inHaley Heynderickx we have a new master of the art.
Haley Heynderickx’s debut album “I Need To Start A Garden” mixes folk, doo wop, atmospheric guitars with beautiful instrumentation sitting next to stark rawer moments. We already shared the stunning Untitled God Song, and now we have the equally good Worth It, which over the course of nearly eight minutes undulates from soft-hums into moments of crashing catharsis all led by her incredible, arresting voice and distinctive song structure.
Like the true troubadour, Haley Heynderickx is travelling light. For her current European tour she’s got a guitar, a car and the proverbial suitcase of songs. Heynderickx balances playing shows with the hours of solitude that touring alone brings. “It’s weird double-dipping, there’s many different roles to fulfil but this is the dreamiest 9 to 5 I could have ever imagined for my life, which is more like nine pm to two in the morning. It makes people really happy, but sometimes there are moments where I know I can’t give anymore, like in the ‘merch’ moments, but other than that I can’t complain too much about this lifestyle, it fascinates me.”
A conversation with Heynderickx is filled with poetry from the most unexpected of sources. The Oregon-born musician laughs about her fascination with digestive biscuits, which she can’t get in the US. “I’m obsessed with them, but they make no sense. They don’t help my digestion at all, but psychologically I love eating them. They’re like a cookie that makes you feel better, I’ve no idea why they’re so good.”
Her fascination with music also grew through “dating the right people at the right time: introduced me to musical genres that influenced me intensely and changed my life. That’s the secret I don’t tell people.” She discovered ‘60s and ‘70s folk and laughs at the memory of being “forced to watch all these music documentaries about Led Zeppelin, Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan and The Beatles, I watched the whole of Anthology, it’s a lot, but it’s fun.”
Another life-changing moment was meeting two Portland musicians through open mic sessions. The first was Megan McGeorge who she met after supporting “a random band at a jazz club who were very high and didn’t consider how weird it was to have an 18 year old folk singer open for them” which led to meeting Luz Elena Mendoza of Y La Bamba. “She’s a powerhouse in Portland. She’s very spiritual in her music and taught me a lot about being grounded. So I started having this ocean of women influences who helped me to gain the confidence in myself to do this, but I didn’t think it would go this far.”
We met Heynderickx, when she played Green Man Festival . “I only got to experience one day of it and I slept in my car. I got to see Grizzly Bear, Stella Donnelly, Frankie Cosmos and Lucy Dacus, so I pretty much only got to see four concerts.”
Such competition is a world away from the world she inhabits. Lucy Dacus recently claimed she’d “very much like to work with Haley Heynderickx, what a sweet person and wonderful singer.”The new generation of songwriters have instead found a level of mutual admiration and humility.
Heynderickx’s reaction to how people have embraced her songs. “I’m amazed, it’s just me and a nine-string guitar. I’ve always loved playing shows and I got used to three years of just having my friends come, with the rest of the people sitting on the fence. I’m still not used to playing a concert and people saying ‘We came to see you’, it’s a very weird feeling. I’m still shocked the music isn’t enough, oddly, of people wanting to feel even closer to you, to get to know your story and who you are. I’m finding this balance, everyone wants to indulge in music in different ways and if I’m willing to be as vulnerable in sharing these songs then I can give a tiny bit more in saying who I am if that interests them.”
Heynderickx’s initial connection with music was with songs rather than the artists who wrote them. “I just fell in love with the songs, I didn’t think twice about who the musicians were, I didn’t even process you could know about musicians.” She laughs that the music documentaries were a turning point. “I thought we were going to break up if I didn’t watch this damn Robert Johnson documentary! Then I started refining that appreciation to ‘Oh yeah, you can get to know the person.’
Is there a similarity for her own songs, where word of mouth is a key part of the story? “A lot of people approach me and say ‘My brother, or my partner shared this with me.’ To me that signifies human connection and that feels really good but a lot of media and press? That’s freaky.” Heynderickx laughs about the fact she’s started to have what she calls media dreams. “A big article got posted whilst I was sleeping and in my sleep I could feel this static all around me. I felt like I woke up with this noise and I thought of everyone in that moment reading with their fingernails against the glass. It’s mind-blowing, it’s so strange. That’s not how it was 40 years ago, this is a whole new generation of music sharing and experiencing that hasn’t been studied yet, we’re just doing it and full-fledging it. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, we’re indulging right now and its fun.”
Seeing Heynderickx play her songs live evoked the idea of the troubadour, where everything relies on the power of the voice, playing and songs, which in a world of multi-sensory live experiences is a brilliantly brave but risky approach. “Risky is a good word, I agree. I’m honoured if you’re comparing me to a troubadour in that sense, but psychologically I’ve had to get over that.” She says with acoustic music the risk is maintaining the audience’s attention, which she thinks can waver after forty five minutes “so anything after that I kind of feel guilty and indulging and that’s why I feel awkward with encores, it’s ‘Wow, we’re way past the forty five minute mark and you’re just being nice.’ Our attention spans can be really short, so with just guitar and a voice it’s very intimidating to hold that space for that long.” She reconsiders for a moment and adds “but then again, we can talk to the people we love for six hours straight, so maybe it doesn’t matter what elements we choose, as long as we feel like we’re communicating with each other.”
Heynderickx’s between song chat is equal parts hilarious and heart-warming but her guitar playing does a lot of her onstage talking. For a devout finger-picker ironically she took lessons from a bluegrass guitarist: “I think that rebellion grew in me, the more I learned how much I disliked picks the more I got lost in songs like “Blackbird” and old blues and ragtime tunes that required a lot the bass with the thumb. That was so much more fun than this picky motion, I love to use the whole landscape and the older I got the more artists I found that did that, like John Fahey, Leo Kottke and Nick Drake, there’s a lot of weirdos out there that like to play with their hand!”
She adds that another downside of life on the road is finding the right environment to write new songs. What does that mean for her next batch of songs? “I wish I could tell you right now, it’s this weird baby that we all created. We never knew how much it would grow and what it would grow into. I’ve learned that I just can’t write on the road, when I’m recording and when I’m living with people, but I can’t afford to live on my own yet.” Heynderickx describes it as a ‘fun paradox’ where she’s doing what she loves “but there’s this really creepy, little voice on my shoulder saying ‘Ha, ha! What if you never to get write again?’ And I’m like ‘Oh, you’re right, little voice on my shoulder.” So I’m going to enjoy each day, writing is very sacred, it can’t just be A+B=C and cranked out. It has to be of the soul and a moment that’s been poured into, it’s not something that can be casual.”
Heynderickx has tried venturing into the woods to write, armed with a backpack and two guitars. “I think ‘I’m going to do the thing, I’ve got Justin Vernon ringing in my head and I’ve got all these ideas’, but for some reason, even with that intent of ‘I’m going to be in silence and be around no one’ I haven’t been able to write then either.” The songs on I Need to Start a Garden where written whilst Heynderickx was balancing day jobs in a school and a bakery and “playing a ton of shows, being in weird relationships, feeling lonely, stressed, sad and confused, and somehow through all of that I crammed song-writing through each of my days, but now my days can be dedicated to song-writing but it’s like my little song-writing fellow is turning up their nose and saying “Hmm, why are you staring at me so intensely? I’m not going to give you anything, I sneak into your life whenever I want.”
The idea of a troubadour as the minstrel, who can summon a song from nowhere isn’t Heynderickx’s method, instead she takes her time and not just with writing, I Need to Start a Garden was recorded three times before she was happy with the finished product. “I’m going to be a very slow recording artist. I was reading about Mitski’s Be The Cowboy and how she tapped into a character, using fiction to let her mind go free and get away from the personal, that’s pretty neat. There’s plenty of ways to write, maybe I’ll experiment with leaving the first person, but I love writing from the first person, so who knows?”.
The Rising are no longer a 5 piece band; but a tight as a drum 3 piece with Chantelle McAteer at the fore, singing and playing an assortment of keyboards, guitarist Chris Logan and Brian Mellors providing a rock solid bass behind them (drummers and pedal-steel players are added extras).
The aptly titled Moving On opens the album; and the feisty trio throw down the gauntlet not just to their doubters, Chantelle sings as if her life depends on it.
The tempo slows down on next song Forgive and Forget; but the mood of the broken hearted singer remains just as raw, just as it does on the bitter sweet Rebound follows in a similar ‘young love gone wrong path’ path; but is a whole lot more traditionally Country in style and will have them dancing in the aisles whenever played live.
While The Rising will easily fit in alongside The Shires, Jess and The Bandits etc. they certainly have their very own take on what they do, After listening to this album on and off over the last few weeks it’s apparent that this trio who wrote or at east had a hand in writing every song here; write from the heart and their own experiences, both biter and sweet.
Rebound is the first single from The Rising’s new album new album Moving On (Released August 3rd 2018).
The album is called “Moving On” and it reflects the various struggles we went through during the time of making the album. From life-changing breakups, near death experience, changing band members and new life being brought into the world.
Bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp I feel free…Jack Bruce’s voice in this is great and sets the tone of the song. The song charted in the UK at #11 in 1967.
British poet Pete Brown had helped the band write the lyrics. Brown, who was a beat poet, had worked with GingerBaker and Jack Bruce before. He also wrote lyrics to “Sunshine Of Your Love” and “White Room.” EricClapton played a borrowed Les Paul guitar on this track, as his Beano one had been stolen during album rehearsals. It was plugged into a new, 100-watt Marshall amp.
This was the second single from Cream, who despite the rather modest reception to their first single, “Wrapping Paper,” were almost guaranteed success in England based on what their members had done with other groups. Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce had been in The Graham Bond Organization, and Eric Clapton was in The Yardbirds. and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.
This was one of the first times Eric Clapton used what he called the “Woman Tone.” He turned the amp all the way up, boosted the treble, cut the bass, and played a sustained guitar note.
Al Kooper’s Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards says right there on page 82 that Cream’s American debut was a ten-day stage show starting March 25th, 1967, called “Murray the K’s Easter Rock Extravaganza.” He recounts an exchange between himself and Cream member Ginger Baker, asking “What do you think of America so far?” Baker replied, “How the f–k should I know? I’ve only been ‘ere thirty-five f–king minutes, ‘aven’t I?” Kooper reports that their relationship went uphill from there: “By the last night of the show, we were throwing eggs and whipped cream at each other, that old American rock ‘n’ roll ritual that denotes mutual respect.”
A funny thing about punk rock: It’s always been pastiche. The Stooges ground up hammerhead Detroit hard rock with Doors-ian self-laceration and free jazz’s embrace of wild, twisty noise. The Ramones took ’60s garage-rock riffs and Beach Boys melodies and played them as fast as possible. The Sex Pistols were as much a svengali creation as the Monkees or One Direction, but they drew from all the great riffers and snarlers of the previous two decades of rock history. In a sense, punk, as much as rap, is music criticism masquerading as music. Every band picks the things its members like, and it goes running with those things. Sometimes the band changes as it keeps going. Maybe it develops its own language, or it becomes a touchpoint in itself. But it always starts with something. And the Philly trio Dark Thoughts started with the Ramones.
“Dark Thoughts is a Ramones band.” That’s something that frontman Jim Shomo has said, out loud, about his own band. He didn’t need to say it. It’s all right there in the band’s sound: the turbocharged melodies, the wildly economical brevity, the absolute lack of anything remotely pretentious or show-offy. The Ramones are the basic foundational influence of pretty much all American pop-punk, but Dark Thoughts cut that right to the bone. Shomo even sings in an East Coast trash-twang, half-swallowing his words, the way Joey Ramone once did. And the 12 songs on Dark Thoughts’ 18-minute self-titled debut almost play out as one long, euphoric riff-bash, no distinctions between tracks necessary. There are other influences in there, as well. I hear a bit of the Misfits, a dash of Descendents. But even those bands were, more or less, Ramones disciples.
Of course, there have been plenty of Ramones disciples over the years. What makes Dark Thoughts special is the energy and vitality they bring to it. Dark Thoughts play Ramones-style punk rock like they just learned that such a thing exists and they can’t wait to try it out. It’s got this dizzy sugar-rush urgency that I just love. DIY punk bands don’t typically last for more than one album, especially if their sound is as rigid and focused as what Dark Thoughts bring. But At Work does all the things that a sophomore album from a band like this should do. It’s no cleaner or more professional than the band’s debut, and it doesn’t veer much from the formula. (This one is 12 songs in about 19 minutes.) There’s a guitar solo here, a processed backing vocal there, but it’s mostly done in the same all-out mid-fi rush. And yet the melodies sound just slightly more confident, the band just a little closer to what its members probably had in mind.
For me, the best moment on At Work — and the best moment that Dark Thoughts have given us thus far in their brief existence is “With You,” the softest and most sensitive song that they’ve ever made. “With You” is not a a power ballad; it’s a two-and-a-half-minute hookfest. And yet it’s slower and more uncluttered than the average Dark Thoughts track. It’s a straight-up love song: “You’re so smart / Just like S-M-A-R-T / I know one plus one is two / And that’s yoooouuuuu and me.” For the first minute or so, it’s just Shomo and his guitar, but rest of the band lurches into gear at the exact perfect instant, with the pre-hammer-drop peal of feedback even hitting just right. The song transitions straight into the faster, angrier “Watch You Walk Away” in a way that will always pair the two songs up in my head. But the moment that lingers is the one just before that feedback, when we’re listening to a rocker drop his armor for just a quick, tender moment.
One of my favorite things ever is when a pop-punk band stops worrying about being punk, even if it’s just for a second. (Especially if it’s just for a second.) The demo version of the Mr. T Experience’s “Sackcloth And Ashes,” for example, is just Dr. Frank and his tremolo guitar rhapsodizing about a girl’s pretty party dresses and Manic Panic tresses and about the “you” who’s “never gonna stand a chance.” It’s a bitter and nasty song in a lot of ways, but the way Dr. Frank sings it is so soft and lost and hopeless that I find myself loving it anyway. “With You” hits just the same way. It’s a minor miracle, and a clear sign that Dark Thoughts are picking and choosing the absolute right shit from rock ‘n’ roll history.
Julia Holter has described Aviary as “the cacophony of the mind in a melting world”, and it’s easy to feel that mania in its erratic structures and fleeting absurdity. But very often those segments bloom into long and sustained areas of beauty. The thing is, neither the harmony nor the ugliness is given more prominence – they are both valid states and one will always lead to the other.
Aviary is an epic journey through what Julia Holter describes as “the cacophony of the mind in a melting world.” Out on October 26th via Domino Recordings, it’s the Los Angeles composer’s most breathtakingly expansive album yet, full of startling turns and dazzling instrumental arrangements.
The follow-up to her critically acclaimed 2015 record, Have You in My Wilderness, it takes as its starting point a line from a 2009 short story by writer Etel Adnan: “I found myself in an aviary full of shrieking birds.” It’s a scenario that sounds straight out of a horror movie, but it’s also a pretty good metaphor for life in 2018, with its endless onslaught of political scandals, freakish natural disasters, and voices shouting their desires and resentments into the void
Aviary, executive produced by Cole MGN and produced by Holter and Kenny Gilmore, combines Holter’s slyly theatrical vocals and Blade Runner-inspired synth work with an enveloping palette of strings and percussion that reveals itself, and the boundless scope of her vision, over the course of fifteen songs. Holter was joined by Corey Fogel (percussion), Devin Hoff (bass), Dina Maccabee (violin, viola, vocals), Sarah Belle Reid (trumpet), AndrewTholl (violin), and Tashi Wada (synth, bagpipes).
In which MGMT return from the brink of coherence to deliver the weirdo synth-pop album some of their fans have been waiting a decade for. The first words you hear on Little Dark Age are “Get ready to have some fun. Alright, here we go!” The band may have sampled those words in jest — they’re from a workout video, on a song called “She Works Out Too Much” but the album lives up to the promise anyway. The festival-rocking grandeur of Oracular Spectacular is never coming back, but the playful, melodious new wave we get instead here is one of 2018 music’s most pleasant surprises.
MGMT are a little young to be turning into tired old men. Yet, on the duo’s fourth studio album Little Dark Age, co-band leaders Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser sound as if a lot is weighing them down: the current political climate (according to them, the title is meant to be reassuring that this bleak period will only be a tiny one), our tech addictions, regretting one’s wasted time and modern dating. That’s a lot of bitter pills to swallow in one go. But stroking our necks to make the medicine go down is some of the band’s most dreamy and druggy music to date. Working again with Dave Fridmann and with some key assists from likeminded popster Ariel Pink and MGMT touring member James Richardson, the album feels like it’s alternately melting and lifting, warming and woozy. Little Dark Age is sequenced perfectly, slowly and steadily coming into focus over the course of its running time. That may feel a little sneaky, letting listeners finally get their sea legs before fading to black. But isn’t that spirit we’ve come to anticipate with MGMT?
Mercury Prize nominated brothers Peter and David Brewis bring to the table a cinematic score composed to accompany Scottish filmmaker John Grierson’s pioneering 1929 silent film Drifters, which followed fishermen in the harsh conditions of the North Sea. The concept was originally commissioned by Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival a couple of years back, and audiences can soon experience the accompaniment to the documentary live in cinemas around the UK. Alternatively just pop on this silver coloured LP and let Field Music’s two sides of rhythmic instrumental wash over you.
Brooklyn supergroup FITS features members of popular local bands Big Ups, Fern Mayo, and gobbinjr. They’ve carved their own niche in the scene, though, creating an identity out of perfect pop instincts and sheer punk aggression. Their 2017 debut, All Belief Is Paradise, offered a wide variety of complex, oftentimes conflicting emotions: anger, fear, desire, joy, and everything in between. Its 12 tracks are served in quick, easy-to-digest bites — not a single one exceeds three minutes, but each is enormous in power.
“Full of sharp turns, heavy lyrics, and bursts of righteous anger. A fierce will to survive animates these lean, scrappy songs.” – Pitchfork
“A hunk of sweet power pop that’s instantly delightful, but melts quickly.” – Bandcamp
“Everything about All Belief is Paradise is gripping.” – Post-Trash
All Belief is Paradise, named after a line in a Lisa Robertson’s The Weather, honors the spirit of the early material while unveiling Fits’ evolution into a fully formed band. These songs are quick, loud, and rarely content with sticking to any one style, often holding for meditative intervals before launching into full-throttle caffeinated pop. The therapeutic drive behind the songs and the genuine fun of the group’s dynamic make Paradise a rewarding listen and Fits a band that can more than hold its own. Throughout the album Fits shows they’re capable of being thoughtful and bratty, accessible and weird, and tackling it all with confidence, humor, and great hooks.
Band Members
Nicholas Cummins,
Brian Orante,
Emma Witmer,
Joe Galarraga,
Following her debut album ‘Penelope One’ for Optimo Music, antipodean vocalist, musician and soundscaper Penelope Trappes presents sophomore longplayer ‘Penelope Two’, for Houndstooth.
Elements from multiple sources are subsumed by Trappes’ sonic presence; one hears Badalamenti and Julee Cruise’s work for ‘Blue Velvet’ and ‘Twin Peaks’, Slowdive’s dreampop, the scorched comedowns of early Primal Scream, Colin Newman’s dark melancholia, plus contemporaries like Tropic Of Cancer and Sky H1.
These distilled, rarefied creations take echoes as their starting point, with Trappes summoning swathes of tones, textures and emotions into something ethereal but also powerful, like an evocation of spirits. It’s also deeply melodic, with her intimate, maternally-tender voice floating in the middle of each three dimensional, womb-like sonic space. Originally from the Northern Rivers of NSW, Australia before moving to New York and developing experimental electronic projects Locke and Priscilla Sharp, plus her best-known incarnation with partner Stephen –The Golden Filter.
Referencing Scott Walker and This Mortal Coil, Trappes uses a minimal palette to frame her spellbinding, spectral songs in a starkly beautiful sound, suggesting a collaboration between Mazzy Star and Leyland Kirby, or Felicia Atkinson writing for Lynch.
