Each Anthony Green album has been a invitation to read his most personal pages of his secrete journals. We get to experience every drop of the grief, joy, anguish, torment, self-doubt, destruction, hope, unification and brilliance this one man has to offer. His bare soul lives between the melodies. These albums are a measure of not only his own self-preservation and redemption but throwing the rest of us a life line;
Keep Your Mouth Shut by· Anthony Green from the album Would You Still Be In Love on Memory Music Records
In 2011, Deafheaven founders George Clarke and Kerry McCoy used their debut album, Roads to Judah, to establish their new band’s sound: a mix of sparkling post-rock guitars, wistful shoegaze, blast beats and, most conspicuously, Clarke’s strangled, hissing vocals, obviously influenced by screamo and black metal bands.
Then in 2013, the rest of the world caught on via the band’s second album Sunbather, which presented Clarke and McCoy’s yearning romanticism, genre-blind approach and clean-cut look through a polished lens. Reviews were overwhelmingly positive and the band’s audience grew significantly, but purists from many corners of the musical world
Clarke and McCoy did what any good punks would do: They went harsher and heavier and darker on their third album, New Bermuda, stripping away some of the daydreamy haze of their previous works. Not that it mattered much. For most listeners (the ones who would ever encounter Deafheaven, at least) their opinion of the band had been formed. They were either brilliant stylistic synthesists or eternal poseurs. There is no in between,
On Ordinary Corrupt Human Love, Deafheaven gets back to being exactly what it wants to be, and they waste no time diving way down into the deep end. Opening track “You Without End” is more or less a piano-pop song with a vaguely ’80s vibe, adorned with a spoken-word piece by Nadia Kury, decidedly non-blast drum beats and guitars that swoop and soar. Deafheaven, without question, has a distinctive sound. Here, however, they don’t sound like themselves until Clarke comes in halfway through, howling about dark tunnels and glowing orbs and love. Later, “Night People” and “Near continue the band’s explorations; the former a goth-rock duet with Chelsea Wolfe, and the latter a pillowy psych number reminiscent of Pink Floyd. Clarke sings cleanly on both; no snarls, no growls, and so on. The guitars have always been Deafheaven’s bleeding edge, even when they were obscured by black metal vocals or handsome haircuts or bright pink album cover art. Deafheaven is a ambitious heavy rock band, a gathering of innovative musical minds, and one of the very best guitar bands on Earth. Ordinary Corrupt Human Love is strong evidence of all three.
This group of teenagers from Brisbane could be your favorite new band. The Goon Sax frontman Louis Forster sings with a David Byrne-like delivery when he says the line that won me over, to his tenuous lover: “Let’s get nervous in your room again.” That’s the moment I turned up the volume.
As often as songs tackle the subject of love, (the wanting, the yearning, the rejection) what’s often missing is earnestness. The Goon Sax are full of that and a dose of humor as well. “Make Time 4 Love” is a song about defeat. Louis Forster wrote to say it’s also about “learning to live with yourself and accepting that everyone’s impulses seem irrational to someone else.”
Musically the Australian trio of James Harrison, Louis Forster and Riley Jones, takes creative impulse from ’80s, punky dance bands. “It was really inspired by [the bands] ESG and Liquid, Liquid, who we were all listening to a whole lot. And we just wanted to make the song really dancey.” In fact, Louis Forster’s dad was in a band from that time period that did pretty well, The Go-Betweens.
The video for “Make Time 4 Love” is directed by Ryan Daniel Browne and is inspired in part by a 1926 animated German fairytale, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, as well as by the 1968 Hungarian animated short, The Kidnapping of the Sun and the Moon. “The video takes place in three worlds,” says Louis Forster. “Wicked, regular, and a third – removed fantasy.” It also draws some of its dark imagery from album art. “The album covers of Tilt and The Drift by Scott Walker were another critical clue for us, and Riley actually bought a copy of Tilt on tour which we listened to and it got us in the right head space.”
Taken from the fothcoming album, We’re Not Talking (out September 14th on LP, CD and digital) via Wichita Recordings and Chapter Music
The Goon Sax are headed to UK/Europe in September/October to celebrate the September 14th release of their second album We’re Not Talking.
Amber Arcades has shared glorious psychedelic hymn ‘Alpine Town’.
The Dutch musician will return on September 28th, when new album ‘European Heartbreak‘ drops via Heavenly Recordings. New song ‘Alpine Town’ is online now, and it opens in sparse, languid territory, before the arrangement suddenly powers forward.
Annelotte De Graaf’s wonderfully moving vocal sits at the forefront, and the songwriter comments:
“I wrote this song exactly a year ago while on holiday in Guillestre, a small town in the French Alps. I was kind of in a sad place and my boyfriend had dragged me along to get away from all that, but I guess it doesn’t really work like that, ha. It just made me reflect on the sad part of the tourist condition as a metaphor for life, man.”
Tour Dates:
July
26 Cambridge The Portland Arms
27 Oxford The Cellar
28 Derbyshire Indietracks
It’s been 12 years, but Elephant 6 legends The Essex Green are back this 2018 with “Don’t Leave It in Our Hands.” Written about our generation’s increasing reliance on phones and technology, it’s a song that’s charged with equal amounts anxiety and pep, with the New York City trio’s power pop prowess shining through in the track’s brilliantly melodic chorus.
From the album Hardly Electronic, out June 29th, 2018 on Merge Records.
Shadow On Everything, is the third LP by Bambara and their first for Wharf Cat Records, represents a decisive step forward for the NYC-via-Georgia trio. Frontman Reid Bateh, drummer Blaze Bateh, and bassist William Brookshire have always been adept students of noise rock and post-punk, mining the work of bands like Swans and The Birthday Party to construct what NPR called their “beautifully dynamic nightmares.” Now, they’ve transcended their early influences to produce a Western Gothic concept album that sounds as big as the desert sky looming over its characters’ lives.
This is Gothic piece of Americana with many echoes of Nick Cave’s early work – seedy characters; tragic, violent tales; pulsating, writhing guitars. this is the type of rock album that comes along only once in a very long time.
As with all previous Bambara releases, the musical center of Shadow on Everything is its impossibly tight rhythm section. Blaze’s frenzied yet metronomic drumming and William’s prominent bass lines have plenty of personality on their own, but they also provide a perfect canvas for Reid’s wild guitar squalls and howled vocals. While Reid’s lyrics have always been a critical part of Bambara’s songs, his voice is pushed to the front of the mix on Shadow, placing his damaged characters and seedy locales at center stage. A stridently experimental record, Shadow features everything from violin to saxophone arrangements, and is meticulously interspersed with outré ambient noise loops distilled down from hours of manipulated vocal collages that the band sifts through to find the perfect textures.
The production by Andy Chugg (Pop. 1280, Pill) is crisp and clear, giving life to the band’s decision to foreground the vocals, but it splashes enough darkness on the songs to help them retain their pitch-black atmosphere. By far Bambara’s most ambitious album, Shadow On Everything shows a band operating at absolute peak creativity and execution.
Bambara has performed as a five-piece since Reid broke his hand on stage in 2016. Their pummeling and unpredictable live set has made them favorites on both under- and above-ground circuits in New York City, having impressed noise-pop auteur Angus Andrew to the extent that he asked Reid and Blaze to join Liars as members on 2017’s worldwide tour. Additionally, Bambara has toured the US and Europe extensively alongside the likes of Liars, Metz, Girl Band, APTBS, Algiers and more.
Once the intro to opener “Human” gives way to its fully-realized sonic purpose, it’s obvious that Harlan T. Bobo’s fourth proper album, A History of Violence, is quite different from his previous body of work. The classic historical emotional heft of a songwriter trying to make sense of life’s chaos, think mid-70s Lou Reed, especially Coney Island Baby, is a thread that can be heard running through the album’s mid-tempo tracks like “Human” and the miniature literary tragedy that is “Nadine”. The punchier tracks on the album, like “Spiders”, might conjure very early Green On Red, what X’s mid-80s output could have been, or even the roots-rock tendencies of overlooked genius.
Though this is the first proper full-length by Harlan since 2010’s Sucker, the last eight years have in no way framed a musical hiatus of any sort. Bobo contributed to The Memphis Symphony Orchestra’s conductor-less “Opus One” project for the 2010 and 2011 seasons, in which his original songs were classically arranged by participating MSO players and performed as chamber pieces for non-traditional audiences at rock clubs. Also in 2011, Harlan, and fellow Memphis music notables Jack Oblivian and Shawn Cripps (Limes) successfully Kickstarter-funded a 40-show “Memphis Revue” style tour through Europe. Already splitting his time between Europe and the States as this decade opened, Bobo continued to perform solo and tour Europe as such while also forming a Memphis super-group of sorts known as The Fuzz in 2013, which included former members of 90’s scuzz-punks Action Family and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments. Playing 2013’s Goner-Fest 10 and subsequently releasing a self-titled album of garage-ragers on Italy’s Munster Records later that year, The Fuzz (not to be confused with Ty Segall’s band of the same name) expanded Harlan T. Bobo’s musical frame of reference nicely.
Bobo established his base of operations as Perpignan, France, in 2014, the hometown of his then-wife and where Harlan has also been busy raising their son. 2014 also saw the re-release of Bobo’s much-heralded 2006 album, Too Much Love, via both Goner Records stateside and France’s Beast Records.
By 2014, Harlan T. Bobo had amassed two album’s worth of solo material for the planned follow-up to Sucker. However, as they say, life has a way of intervening in dramatic and not entirely positive ways. If the new album’s candid gloom is any indication, the last few years in Europe raising a son and trying (unsuccessfully) to keep a marriage together has been difficult, to say the least.
A History of Violence still highlights Bobo’s whiskey-and-cigarette-informed vocal style, and on the more intimate tracks, it’s a distorted ear candy that warbles into increasingly sunken, uncomfortable places, like that of the songwriter with which comparisons have followed Bobo throughout his career: there is a richer canvas on which to work this time out, not to mention a decidedly heavier and darker one. The album was recorded in Memphis with Doug Easley, who has previously worked with Cat Power, Pavement, Wilco, Sonic Youth, Jon Spencer, and Jeff Buckley. Bobo also brought in Steve Selvidge (The Hold Steady, Bash & Pop) on bass and Jeff “Bunny” Dutton (Action Family) on guitar, along with regular contributors Jeff Bouck (Polyphonic Spree) and Brendan Spangler (Viva l’American Death Ray). The result is a naturally dynamic album that seems equally at home with howling guitars and heavy bass lines as it does with haunting piano and humble pleas. A History of Violence is Bobo’s most complex — and complete — album to date.
Released June 22nd, 2018
Recording in Memphis, TN by Doug Easley Harlan T. Bobo – vocals, guitar Steve Selvidge – bass Jeff “Bunny” Dutton – guitar
Another hit of post-punk credulity from Phobophobes to go with your morning coffee. With a string of singles hanging lowly from their belt already it was only right the band announced their debut LP Miniature Worlds
To add to that little nuggets of loveliness the band have also shared the title track from the album, it’s an absolute barnstormer. Powerful, poignant and completely Phobophobes, this latest release speaks highly of the album.
The band has this to say “Miniature World was spawned from long jam over a monotonous old drum machine, we hacked away at it to form a purposefully relentless, repetitive and simple structure that oscillates between the absurd and the familiar.
“We self-referenced the content of the song which questions the productive and reductive nature of modern communication, it acts as an ‘interruption’ within the setting of the album. The way the final chorus climaxes and diminishes into the bands layered vocals rhetorically wailing “miniature world?”, I wanted the chorus’ to advertise the rest of the song, and the song to ironically advertise the rest of the album which is also titled “Miniature world”.”
“Child Star” by Phobophobes is taken from their debut album ‘Miniature World’ released via Ra-Ra Rok Records.
Paris-via-Bristol songwriter Kate Stables is revisiting her acclaimed fourth album as This Is The Kit, last year’s wonderful “Moonshine Freeze”, in the form of a new remix EP. “I spent way more time than usual working on it, trying to do it some justice,” Andy Dragazis (aka Blue States) says of the remix. “I love the vocals, so the aim was to keep true to those and add my own bells and whistles around them.” The result is a mesmerizing rework that stands apart from “Bullet Proof” while remaining true to the wistful beauty of the original composition
The new remix EP, out today, July 19th, on Rough Trade Records. Moonshine Freeze Remixes comes in the form of its opening track, “Bullet Proof (Blue States Remix),” You can hear the gorgeous vocals of Kate’s rework. We share Dragazis’ admiration for Stables’ “uniquely bone-chilling voice,” deemed the LP ”[her] best album to date.”
“Such an honor to be remixed by Blue States. He’s done a very lush job,” Stables says. “I love getting to hear glimpses of my twin sister’s voice on the track. And he’s managed to bring out some of the details in the original recording and build them into a whole new space. It’s given the song a totally new lease of life.”
Album opener “Bullet Proof” is one of three Moonshine Freeze tracks to get the remix treatment on Stables’ new EP, which also includes reworks by Drones Club (“Moonshine Freeze”), Clas Tuuth (“Two Pence Piece”) and LONA (also “Moonshine Freeze”). The original song’s delicate, chamber-folk sound doesn’t exactly scream “ripe for a remix,” but Blue States makes synth-pop magic with it, expanding on the stripped-down track’s subtle electronic accents and building out its minimalist percussion. The result is a mesmerizing rework that stands apart from “Bullet Proof” while remaining true to the wistful beauty of the original composition.
Listen to Blue States’ “Bullet Proof” remix below, and find the Moonshine Freeze Remixes tracklist.
Moonshine Freeze Remixes Tracklist:
01. Bullet Proof (Blue States Remix)
02. Moonshine Freeze (Drones Club Remix)
03. Two Pence Piece (Clas Tuuth Remix)
04. Moonshine Freeze (LONA Remix)
Rhino will issue a four-disc 40th anniversary deluxe edition of the Ramones fourth studio album Road To Ruin.
The 1978 album was the first to feature drummer Marky Ramone and includes the classic track I Wanna Be Sedated.
The deluxe set comprises three CDs and a vinyl LP. The first CD features a newly remastered version of the original stereo mix and a new 2018 stereo remix, called the ‘Road Revisited Mix’. The latter has been created by producer/engineer Ed Stasium and in the words of the record label “strips off the original record’s commercial gloss and restores the album to its punk rock core.”
The second CD offers up over twenty unreleased recordings, including rough mixes for every album track, different alternate takes of two songs, and two unreleased outtakes: I Walk Out and S.L.U.G. Another notable inclusion on this disc is the Ramones-on-45-Mega-Mix! from 1988 (issued as part of the campaign for the RamonesMania compilation).
The final CD has a previously unreleased recording of the band’s entire 1979 New Year’s Eve concert, which was mixed live by Stasium, and broadcast on WNEW-FM. This was recorded in New York City at The Palladium, and the audio has been sourced from Tommy Ramone’s original cassette of the console recording!
The 180g vinyl record features the new Road Revisited Mix and not the original version of Road To Ruin.
