Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner Detail New Album as Big Red Machine.
Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and the National’s Aaron Dessner have detailed their debut album as Big Red Machine. The self-titled LP is set to come out August 31st via their PEOPLE digital platform, as well as on vinyl, CD, and cassette in partnership with Jagjaguwar. Big Red Machine includes the four songs that Vernon and Dessner released last month (“Forest Green,” “Lyla,” “Gratitude,” and “Hymnostic”).
Vernon and Dessner developed Big Red Machine over the last two years. They produced the album together with frequent collaborator Brad Cook. Big Red Machine was recorded and mixed by Jonathan Low, mostly at Dessner’s Long Pond studio in upstate New York (where the National also recorded much of Sleep Well Beast).
In a press release, Dessner stated, “I don’t think the record would exist without the community that came together to make it.” He continued, “We took the music to a certain point, and then we reached out and sent it far and wide, inviting friends to contribute any and all ideas. We’ve viewed the record and the process from a community standpoint. We’re incredibly excited about it, as excited as we would be for any album we might make in another situation that’s more conventional. But this feels like something new the process felt different and the outcome felt different.”
I’m All Ears, the stunning new album by 19-year-old experimental duo Let’s Eat Grandma, is full of loud moments; but one of its most impactful is actually its quietest. “Ava” is a slight three-minute ballad that takes the penultimate place on the tracklist. While elsewhere, Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton work with producers SOPHIE and The Horrors’ Faris Badwan to creating ground-shaking setpieces like “Hot Pink”, and while synths dazzle like disco lights on the euphoric dream “Falling Into Me”, “Ava” is a simple piano affair. It speaks softly, and plainly, on an experience that has rarely been articulated so well in song; the feeling of watching on the sidelines as a loved one battles mental health issues.
The Ava of the song’s title is depicted as a scarred, withdrawn, afraid individual, one who cries out, “What do you want from me?” The voice that answers her, in a call-and-response narrated in Rosa Walton’s gliding, robust vocal, is a gentle one, but one brimming with frustration and pain. “Why’d you take it as final, when you’re starting to spiral? / Girl, why can’t you see?”
The lyrics give voice to an ache that is so hard to articulate because it is, by nature, a secondary pain. It’s the feeling of being trapped on the sidelines of a catastrophe. “You know I know you can do it”, Walton urges, with a note of desperation. The inherent tragedy of loving someone with mental health issues is the powerlessness of it; you can tell someone you think the world of them, that they are special, that they are loved, but you can’t force them to believe it.
In a press release on the song’s release last month, Hollingworth elaborated on the story the duo are telling. She said “Ava” is about “the realisation as you get older that some things are more complicated, and from the outside looking at a person you can’t always see how difficult some problems are to solve.”
“‘Ava’ is a song about the reality of being someone who is there – someone who not only checks in, but promises an unwavering support – but somehow still can’t be enough”
Perhaps one of the reasons this song cuts so deep in this particular moment is the way in which the frantic public conversation around mental health, and particularly depression, has exploded in recent weeks. Following the tragic suicides of designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain in June, there was a wave of well-meaning, earnest discussion online about what can be done about an invisible epidemic. Per the New Yorker, suicide in the US has risen by 25% in the past two decades.
When news related to mental illness breaks, the trend is for many people to tweet and otherwise signal that those of us who are depressed should reach out for help, and the rest of us should “check in” on our loved ones. People reach for the right, reassuring words to say in a crisis – it’s only human. But it can also, sometimes, blur the issue. It’s comforting, but a sweeping oversimplification, to imagine that people suffer mental illness only because they don’t have people who “check in” on them; to assume they don’t have people who are actually desperate to help them. As one writer tweeted in June, “suicide is not simple, it can’t be solved by a lunch date.”
“Ava” is a song about the reality of being someone who is there – someone who not only checks in, but promises an unwavering support – but somehow still can’t be enough. It expresses a feeling of an overwhelming need to fix something that you can’t fix, to be let in when you’ve been shut out. This is a reality for a lot of people, but one that’s rarely been spoken to so cuttingly and directly in a pop song.
The lyrics of “Ava” show the kind of intense, loving bargaining that you go through when trying to help someone out of their own personal darkness. But Walton’s delivery also contains complexity. She’ll help Ava, she promises on the refrain, whether“this” happens “once, or twice, or… again…”. That ellipsis is felt. Her voice becomes much softer as she breathes through the word“again”, heavy with the weight of realisation that there is a mountain before her. Steeling herself, she takes an emotional run-up to her next repetition of the word: “againnnnn”, she intones over rising chords, her gentle voice made hard with determination.
In 2013, when last we heard from No Age, the duo were tearing down the mid-’00s drone-punk sound they helped define. Five years later drummer/vocalist Dean Allen Spunt and guitarist Randy Randall came back together to rebuild it into something even bigger and more self-assured. Snares Like A Haircut plays almost like a revue of the band’s career, with all-out punk stompers nestled next to shimmering instrumental meditations, shoegaze ballads, and combinations of the three. Most striking, though, is the poise with which the band has returned to this material, assembling this worthy comeback with even more confidence and musical depth than they showed off at their peak.
Track from LP/CS/CD “Snares Like a Haircut”, released January 26, 2018 on Drag City Records.
The Essex Green are a neo-psychedelic pop outfit from Brooklyn, NY, via Burlington, VT. The band is primarily composed ofsongwriters Jeff Baron, Sasha Bell, and Chris Ziter and specializes in a classic sound inspired by 1960s–1970s pop and folk in the tradition of bands like The Left Banke and Fairport Convention.
American Treasure, is a 60-track box set featuring previously unreleased live and studio material from Tom Petty, will be released on September. 28th. The songs on the collection are reportedly drawn from all phases of Petty’s career with his longtime band the Heartbreakers.
Full details including a complete track list are expected to be announced soon. The news was revealed today on Petty’s SiriusXM radio station, along with the debut of the first track from the box set, 1982’s previously unreleased “Keep a Little Soul.” American Treasure was reportedly compiled by Petty’s daughter Adria, his wife Dana, Heartbreakers guitarist and keyboardist Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench and “studio collaborator” Ryan Ulate.
After the countdown clock emerged this morning, many fans speculated that the news would be concerning the release of a double album version of Petty’s 1994 record Wildflowers. He had originally intended for the album, his second solo effort, to be a double album, but, at Warner Bros. request, he scaled it back to a single disc.
In 2014, it was reported that a set expected to be called Wildflowers: All the Rest, that restored the complete track list, was in the works to coincide with the album’s 20th anniversary. Only the song “Somewhere Under Heaven” has officially surfaced, appearing during the closing credits of the Entourage movie.
He was planning to support the release with a unique tour. “I want to take the Heartbreakers and whoever else I need to reproduce every sound in a big way,” he had said. “That album was really about sound in a big way. I would like to go out there and perform the entire album as it was originally conceived with all of the songs.”
“That would have been smaller-scale, away from the hits,” guitarist Mike Campbell later added. But he said that the plan, to which Norah Jones had signed on, was scrapped in favor of a career-spanning trek to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Heartbreakers. Unfortunately, Petty died a week after the last date of the tour, a September. 25th show at the Hollywood Bowl.
Tom Petty‘s family and former collaborators compiled the four-CD box set of previously unreleased material by Petty and the Heartbreakers, for release on September 28th, SiriusXM announced. The release, called An American Treasure, marks the first posthumous album of Petty material since his death in October. The SiriusXM broadcast debuted a clip from one of the unreleased songs from 1982 called “Keep a Little Soul.”
An American Treasurewill contain previously unreleased studio recordings, live recordings, deep cuts and alternate versions of popular Petty songs,. The collection will encompass 60 tracks in total. A less expensive two-CD set will also be available for purchase.
Petty was as prolific as he was talented. During the Eighties and Nineties, he released albums at a rapid pace. His studio productivity dipped slightly in the new millennium, when he put out an album roughly every four years. The last album Petty released under his own name was 2014’s Hypnotic Eye. He also contributed to 2016’s Mudcrutch 2 with members of his pre-Heartbreakers band.
Petty was found unconscious at his home in Malibu on October 2nd, 2017. He was taken to the hospital and put temporarily on life support. He died hours later.
In January, a medical examiner ruled that the singer died of an accidental overdose. Petty had been prescribed drugs to treat emphysema, knee issues and a fractured hip, according to a statement from his family. “On the day he died, he was informed his hip had graduated to a full-on break,” Dana and Adria wrote. “It is our feeling that the pain was simply unbearable and was the cause for his overuse of medication.”
After we lost the iconic rocker Tom Petty. The 66-year-old died of cardiac arrest. In his memory, a new tribute collection called “An American Treasure” features previously unheard recording and live performances. Anthony Mason spoke to Petty’s daughter, Adria, in her first TV interview since her father’s death.
1 Surrender Previously unreleased track from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sessions-1976
2 Listen To Her Heart Live at Capitol Studios, Hollywood, CA-November 11, 1977
3 Anything That’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Live at Capitol Studios, Hollywood, CA-November 11, 1977
4 When The Time ComesAlbum track from You’re Gonna Get It!-May 2, 1978
5 You’re Gonna Get It Alternate version featuring strings from You’re Gonna Get It! sessions-1978
6 Radio Promotion Spot 1977
7 Rockin’ Around (With You) Album track from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers -November 9, 1976
8 Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It) Alternate version from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers-1976
9 Breakdown Live at Capitol Studios, Hollywood, CA-November 11, 1977
10 The Wild One, Forever Album track from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers-November 9, 1976
11 No Second Thoughts Album track from You’re Gonna Get It!-May 2, 1978
12 Here Comes My Girl Alternate version from Damn The Torpedoes sessions-1979
13 What Are You Doing In My Life Alternate version from Damn The Torpedoes sessions-1979
14 Louisiana Rain Alternate version from Damn The Torpedoes sessions-1979
15 Lost In Your Eyes Previously unreleased single from Mudcrutch sessions-1974
CD 2
1 Keep A Little Soul Previously unreleased track from Long After Dark sessions-1982
2 Even The Losers Live at Rochester Community War Memorial, Rochester, NY-1989
3 Keeping Me Alive Previously unreleased track from Long After Dark sessions-1982
4 Don’t Treat Me Like A Stranger B-side to UK single of “I Won’t Back Down”-April, 1989
5 The Apartment Song Demo recording (with Stevie Nicks)-1984
6 Concert Intro Live introduction by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Forum, Inglewood, CA-June 28, 1981
7 King’s Road Live at The Forum, Inglewood, CA-June 28, 1981
8 Clear The Aisles Live concert announcement by Tom Petty, The Forum, Inglewood, CA-June 28, 1981
9 A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)Live at The Forum, Inglewood, CA-June 28, 1981
10 Straight Into Darkness Alternate version from The Record Plant, Hollywood, CA-May 5, 1982
11 You Can Still Change Your MindAlbum track from Hard Promises-May 5, 1981
12 Rebels Alternate version from Southern Accents sessions-1985
13 Deliver Me Alternate version from Long After Dark sessions-1982
14 Alright For Now Album track from Full Moon Fever-April 24, 1989
15 The Damage You’ve Done Alternate version from Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) sessions-1987
16 The Best Of Everything Alternate version from Southern Accents sessions-March 26, 1985
17 Walkin’ From The Fire Previously unreleased track from Southern Accents sessions-March 1, 1984
18 King Of The Hill Early take (with Roger McGuinn)-November 23, 1987
CD 3
1 I Won’t Back Down Live at The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA-February 4, 1997
2 Gainesville Previously unreleased track from Echo sessions-February 12, 1998
3 You And I Will Meet Again Album track from Into The Great Wide Open-July 2, 1991
4 Into The Great Wide Open Live at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena-November 24, 1991
5 Two Gunslingers Live at The Beacon Theatre, New York, NY-May 25, 2013
6 Lonesome Dave Previously unreleased track from Wildflowers sessions-July 23, 1993
7 To Find A Friend Album track from Wildflowers-November 1, 1994
8 Crawling Back To You Album track from Wildflowers-November 1, 1994
9 Wake Up Time Previously unreleased track from early Wildflowers sessions-August 12, 1992
10 Grew Up Fast Album track from Songs and Music from “She’s the One”-August 6, 1996
11 I Don’t Belong Previously unreleased track from Echo sessions-December 3, 1998
12 Accused Of Love Album track from Echo-April 13, 1999
13 Lonesome Sundown Album track from Echo-April 13, 1999
14 Don’t Fade On Me Previously unreleased track from Wildflowers-sessions-April 20, 1994
CD 4
1 You And Me Clubhouse version-November 9, 2007
2 Have Love Will Travel Album track from The Last DJ-October 8, 2002
3 Money Becomes King Album track from The Last DJ-October 8, 2002
4 Bus To Tampa Bay Previously unreleased track from Hypnotic Eye sessions-August 11, 2011
5 Saving Grace Live at Malibu Performing Arts Center, Malibu, CA-June 16, 2006
6 Down South Album track from Highway Companion-July 25, 2006
7 Southern Accents Live at Stephen C. O’Connell Center, Gainesville, FL-September 21, 2006
8 Insider Live (with Stevie Nicks) at O’Connell Center, Gainesville, FL-September 21, 2006
9 Two Men Talking Previously unreleased track from Hypnotic Eye sessions-November 16, 2012
10 Fault Lines Album track from Hypnotic Eye-July 29, 2014
11 Sins Of My Youth Early take from Hypnotic Eye sessions-November 12, 2012
12 Good Enough Alternate version from Mojo sessions-2012
13 Something Good Coming Album track from Mojo-July 15, 2010
14 Save Your Water Album track from Mudcrutch 2-May 20, 2016
15 Like A DiamondAlternate version from The Last DJ sessions-2002
16 Hungry No More Live at House of Blues, Boston, MA-June 15, 2016
Ahead of their upcoming album Chosen Family, Thin Lips have released a second single, titled “Gaslight Anthem (The Song Not The Band)” featuring vocal contributions from Frances Quinlan of Hop Along, Brendan Lukens of Modern Baseball, and Zoe Reynolds of Kississippi. And if that lineup doesn’t get you excited to hear it, what will?
Jumping right in with their characteristic interlocking riffs, frontwoman Chrissy Tashjian’s vocals layer on top wonderfully, mixed to perfection with the slightest bit of distance, singing “here I thought I was right next to you”. The chorus is even more touching, with all the vocal cameos entering. In lieu of exchanging vocals or harmonizing, here it feels more like paints mixing, one voice blending into the other, and the solos featuring slide guitar add a greater depth to the song’s already rich texture.
Between this track and the previous single, “A Song For Those Who Miss You All The Time,” one can get a sense of the crunchy, catchy brand of indie-punk Thin Lips are bringing to their new album, dropping July 27th on Lame-O Records
As The New York Times declared in a roundtable of female rockers last summer, “Rock’s Not Dead, It’s Ruled By Women.” And Screaming Females’ latest LP,All At Once, is Exhibit A, a big, burly, joyous, angry guitar-rock record whose feet are as nimble as its shoulders are wide. Bent over her guitar like a determined commuter forging through a blizzard, frontwoman Marissa Paternoster coaxes everything from furious fretwork to booming sludge to mellow surf-rock from her instrument over the course of the 15-song album, tied together by a thought-provoking lyrical through line exploring themes of freedom and oppression. The queen of rock ’n’ roll has announced herself; long may she reign.
So what has Anna Calvi been doing in the five years since releasing her stellar sophomore album, 2013’s One Breath, this English art-rocker Anna Calvi has kept extremely busy: writing a song for the film Insurgent, releasing a David Byrne-featuring EP, appearing on two David Bowie tribute albums, and oh, writing an entire rock opera. Her third full-length album release, Hunter, looks to retain the singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso’s flair for drama, this time “exploring sexuality and breaking the laws of gender conformity.” With production by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, Grinderman) and featuring Bad Seed Martyn Casey and Portishead’s Adrian Utley, Hunter promises to be as compelling musically as it is thematically.
Anna Calvi – “Don’t Beat the Girl out of My Boy”, from ‘Hunter’ out 31st August 2018 on Domino Record Co.
While Jackson C. Frank s eponymous 1965 album and other material has enjoyed numerous official and unofficial reissues, Jackson C Frank: The Complete Recordings is the first to compile his entire recording career. Released in conjunction with Jim Abbott s book, Jackson C. Frank: The Clear Hard Light of Genius, The Complete Recordings contains a total of 67 tracks, 24 of which have never appeared before. Every song has been mastered or remastered, a number of them straight from the original, brittle reel-to-reels on which they were originally laid down. Plagued by tragedy with the most haunting music to show for it, Frank s life can be heard through his music, which has been covered by the likes of Nick Drake, Simon & Garfunkel, Fairport Convention, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Colin Meloy of The Decemberists, John Mayer, and sampled by Nas for Undying Love.
While never fully recognized as one of the great musicians of the 60s, Frank clearly had his fans. The artist s story is a cautionary tale for the dangerous pitfalls of a life lived. At the age of eleven, he was the victim of the infamous Cleveland Hill School Fire in a New York suburb, leaving him burned and disabled, and killing fifteen of his classmates. He spent an agonizing eight months in the hospital, during which time he picked up a guitar for the first time. Scarred both physically and psychologically, and left a shell of his former self, Frank would never fully recover from the wounds. His never-released second album was to include the song Marlene, which honors his childhood girlfriend lost in the fire. After an aborted attempt at college, where he formed a folk trio, Frank, along with a Martin guitar and his then-girlfriend Kathy Henry, caught The Queen Elizabeth in February 1965, on which he apocryphally wrote his first, and now his most famous, song Blues Run the Game. He soon found himself making the rounds of the London folk clubs and rubbed shoulders with Jansch, Renbourn, Roy Harper, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Paxton, Mike Seeger and Sandy Denny (who became Jackson s girlfriend and later wrote the somber song Next Time Around about him). Frank s music caught the interest of another young American songwriter in London named Paul Simon, who offered to record and produce his album Jackson C. Frank in 1965. Simon brought Al Stewart along to play guitar, while Denny, Judith Piepe and Art Garfunkel kept them company (and supposedly even ran out for teas for the performer). After recording his album, however, Frank s health took a turn for the worse and the following years were unkind. He met future wife Elaine Sedgwick, cousin of Edie Sedgwick, at a London party, and when his money began to run out he left London for Woodstock, where they married. The relationship was marked by a miscarriage and the death of their first-born son to cystic fibrosis, and Frank s subsequent mental unraveling. He was later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and battled excessive weight gain from a thyroid problem developed after the fire. Additionally, he went through bouts of intermittent homelessness between stays at various upstate shelters. One day, while Jackson waited in a park to be moved to a new facility, he was shot and blinded in his left eye by neighborhood children with a BB gun. The light from this period of his life came from Jim Abbott, who looked after Frank until his death in 1999. Frank s recordings span four decades of a hard-lived life, and every experience, every trial, is reflected in his voice. If ever a person s individual journey could be traced through his music, it s Frank s, and The Complete Recordings is nothing less than a representative map of the artist s high points and deepest, most shadowed valleys.
Jackson C. Frank “The Complete Recordings Volumes 1-3 Bundle” Limited Edition Wood Box: 6xLP + 3xCD + BOOK . This is the definitive and official Jackson C. Frank release. All tracks have been restored and remastered.
LP Volume 1 includes the classic Jackson C. Frank album from 1965, and unreleased traditional songs from 1961.
LP Volume 2 includes the 1968 Peel Sessions, “Blues Run The Game” 45, unreleased songs from 1972 and Jackson’s earliest recordings from 1958.
LP Volume 3 includes studio recordings for a never-completed second album from the 1970s, and Frank’s final recordings from the 1990s.
Alejandro Escovedo has one of the most fascinating career paths in music and his upcoming album is another example of his singular vision. The Crossing, due out this September, is a suite of songs that chronicle the stories of two young immigrant rock and rollers, Salvo from Italy and Diego from Mexico, as they meet working in a Texas restaurant while each pursuing their vision of the American Dream.
The albums’s version of that dream is soundtracked by punk pioneers The Stooges and MC5 and populated by people who read both Mexican philosopher-poet Octavio Paz and the beat poets of the 1950’s. In fact, that’s very much the story of Alejandro Escovedo and this song cycle is a return to his punk roots as much as it is an exploration of the themes of cultural identity.
“Sonica USA” is the first single off the upcoming album and the track is a loud and boisterous reflection — featuring Wayne Kramer of MC5 on guitar on Escovedo’s youth growing up in Austin when he and his brother Javier played in a punk-before-it-was-punk band called The Zeros.
In the song, and in a quote released with the track, Escovedo insightfully positions Mexican American youth as a critical part of punk history.
“When we were playing as the True Believers early on [in the 1980’s] we’d play San Marcos, San Antonio and get all these Chicano kids in denim vests and Iron Maiden patches,” Escovedo says. “I remember thinking they were into us, not necessarily for the music, but for the fact we were there on stage. They loved that we were doing what we were doing.”
True to Escovedo’s nature, the upcoming album comes with a curious twist: It was recorded with Don Antonio, a group of young Italian rockers he recently toured Europe with as a backing band. He developed such a strong bond with the band leader, Antonio Gramentiere, that they ended up writing the songs for the album after riding around Texas soaking in the open landscape and eating both pasta and tacos.
The result is The Crossing, a power collection of songs that may in fact be the most succinct statement of Alejandro Escovedo’s musical and personal story ever. “Sonica USA” only whets your appetite for what lies in store on the rest of the album. The Crossing is due out on Sept. 14 via Yep Roc Records.
