Ian St. Pé’s always been a frontman at heart, and in the former Black Lips guitarist’s new band (aptly named Saint Pé), he doesn’t need to share the spotlight with anyone. That’s not to say his bandmates are inconsequential; on the contrary, Saint Pé features an impressive collection of members of Turf War, Concord America and Zoners. But SaintPé is called Saint Pé for a reason, and it’s very much his project.
It’s got that dirty south garage flavor, those whoop / yelling / singing vocals that remind you of Warren Zevon. But instead of the Black Lips’s jangly garage-attack, Saint Pè is a little bit poppier… maybe even a little bit sunny? And gone are the Atlanta vibes, coming out the EP Secular Music on Ian’s own record label theFixedFocus.
On Saturday at Side Bar, Saint Pé kept it loose, cracking jokes and playing songs from the band’s recently released EP, Secular Music, as well as some of his work from the Black Lips (“Time”) and Diamond Rugs (featuring a special appearance by his D-Rugs cohort T. Hardy Morris).
River Whyless announced their new album, Kindness, A Rebel – due out June 8th . This is the follow-up to the band’s 2016 breakout success We All The Light.
Produced & mixed by Paul Butler (St. Paul & the Broken Bones, Michael Kiwanuka), Kindness, A Rebel is some of River Whyless‘ most dynamic and heartfelt material yet. The album goes beyond the divide of our current political & societal state, as the band tries to understand what things are happening in our world, why, and how they can help to make it better. This band is an amalgamation of folk and pop and beyond. Brilliant harmonies and words. An abundance of talent from this Asheville band,
John Fogerty has written some of classic rock’s most enduring compositions, for Creedence Clearwater Revival and for his own solo career. Last September. 30th marked the 50th anniversary of the start of his writing one of his best ever known songs.
“Today is a pretty important day in my life,” he says. “Fifty years ago, in the summer of ’67, I was released from active duty in the Army Reserve. I got home to the San Francisco bay area, right in the middle of the Summer of Love. I bought myself a little binder and on the first page I wrote the words ‘Song Title.’ And then I sat down and waited for something to happen.
“After about a week, I finally had an inspiration and I wrote it down in my little music book. The inspiration was the words ‘Proud Mary.’ I didn’t write the song right away. A few months later, right when I had received my honorable discharge from the Army, I was so happy and excited, I ran in the house and started messing with my Rickenbacker and some chords came together and some words came together and I realized I was writing a song about a river boat.
“I got my little song book and opened it up and right on the first page were those words, ‘Proud Mary.’ And, by golly, I decided that’s the name of the boat!”
It wasn’t until January 1969 that “Proud Mary” was released as a single. It became the first of CCR’s five songs to reach #2 on the charts. (Though they scored nine Top 10 hits, but they never earned a #1.) In 2005, Fogerty was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Recorded by John Fogerty (lead guitar), Tom Fogerty (rhythm guitar), Stu Cook (bass), and Doug Clifford (drums) at RCA Studios in Hollywood, California, with John overdubbing instruments and all the vocals later
A final clip of ‘All I Wanted’, recorded live in one-take at the Asylum Chapel in Peckham, London.
Composer Josephine Stephenson oversaw the new arrangement, with Elena joined in the chapel by string & vocal quartets.
The original version of ‘All I Wanted’ features on the ‘Music From Before The Storm’ score, which today received an Ivor Novello Awards nomination in the Best Original Video Game Score category.
‘All I Wanted’ original song by Elena Tonra. From ‘Music from Before the Storm’:
Japanese Breakfast’s Soft Sounds From Another Planet is less of a concept album about space exploration so much as it is a mood board come to life. Over the course of 12 tracks, Michelle Zauner explores a sonic landscape of her own design, one that’s big enough to contain her influences. There are songs on this album that recall the pathos of Roy Orbison’s ballads, while others could soundtrack a cinematic drive down one of Blade Runner’s endless skyways. Zauner’s voice is capacious; one moment she’s serenading the past, the next she’s robotically narrating a love story over sleek monochrome, her lyrics more pointed and personal than ever before. While Psychopomp was a genre-spanning introduction to Japanese Breakfast, this visionary sophomore album launches the project to new heights.
Boyish from Soft Sounds From Another Planet. Out now on Dead Oceans
Michelle Zauner goes for sci-fi New Wave, expanding the introspective tunes she wrote on last year’s Psychopomp into trips like the six-minute “Diving Woman,” where she vanishes under the sea to be alone with her scary self, or the shoegaze doo-wop of “Boyish.” “I can’t get you off my mind/I can’t get you off in general” could that be 2017’s answer to Lit’s “You make me come/You make me complete/You make me completely miserable”? (Probably not.)
Japanese Breakfast performing live in the KEXP studio. Recorded February 15th, 2018.
Songs: Diving Woman, Road Head, The Body Is A Blade, Boyish,
The Juliana Hatfield Three has reformed with the original lineup of Todd Philips (drums), Dean Fisher (bass),and Juliana Hatfield (guitar, vocals, keyboards, percussion) to release their sophomore album Whatever, My Love.
Recorded at Nuthouse Recording in Hoboken, NJ and co-produced by Hatfield and Tom Beaujour (Nada Surf, Guided By Voices, Minor Alps), the twelve songs on Whatever, My Love are gorgeous and punk, sleazy and sweet, unsentimental and funny. Hatfield, humble as always, acknowledges that, “We haven’t totally reinvented the wheel or anything” with this new album and that the recordings exhibit “stuff I am sort of known for, I guess”: a guitar-centric melodicism and lyrical examinations of emotional confusion. “But I am a lot more confident now than I was then with the first album. And I had more fun recording this one.”
Whatever, My Love comes 21 years after the trio’s Become What You Are debuted on Atlantic Records. The 1993 album was an influential force of uncompromising, original guitar pop/rock and secured a permanent place in alternative rock history with the radio hits “My Sister” and “Spin The Bottle.”
With their new album, The Juliana Hatfield Three has in a sense responded to its former directive to “become what you are” by making an album that is exactly what it wants to be, identifiable in its acceptance–and celebration–of the eternally unknowable and unsolvable.
The Pistol Annies cowgirl brings all her sardonic country realness, teaming up with guiding spirits as her fellow Annies, Ashley Monroe and Miranda Lambert, yet belting wise-ass outlaw tunes that sound like nobody but her. “I thought I’d change the world with three chords and the truth I’d be like Elvis but with lipstick and boobs” – instead, she ends up with low-rent road tales like “Groundswell” and “Motel Bible.”
From a certain angle, it might seem that Angaleena Presley has reigned in her ambition on her second album, Wrangled. Where her 2014 debut, American Middle Class, tackled precisely what its title promised, Wrangled seems like nothing more than a collection of songs. A closer listen reveals how Presley ties together stories and character portraits of women battling the currents of contemporary society. Presley doesn’t push the point, but as the tales of dashed dreams, teen pregnancy, outlaws, and good girls pile up, it’s clear she’s charting the many ways society throws up roadblocks at females of all ages. She’ll fight back — “Country,” with a head-spinning verse from rapper Yelawolf, pushes against the conservatism of country radio — but she can also twist the knife with a smile (“Bless My Heart”) and achieves an aching sincerity with her slower songs. Presley deliberately evokes older country rebels — she co-writes with both Guy Clark and Wanda Jackson and offers a salute to the late Merle Haggard with “Mama I Tried” — but she’s not a retro act, no matter what the record’s clever throwback cover may suggest. She may emphasize her ties to the past but she’s intent on expanding the tradition, turning country music into a bolder, more inclusive place, and that desire is what makes Wrangled such a compelling listen.
“Imaginary Dog Walker” is a sprawling and dynamic coda, ending Two Parts Together with unsettling doubt. The song finds Joe Galarraga staring into a lake (a recurring thematic element of the album), wondering what lies beneath. “We all want the same thing/ And that is to thrive,” he declares, “So why hold our breaths/ Kill the life inside?” Propelled by vivid, destructive imagery, tense repetition, and agitated guitars, “Imaginary Dog Walker” is an aggressive-yet-meaningful meditation on the human experience.
On September. 30th, 2016, ABKCO Records released a massive box set including all of the studio albums released in mono by The Rolling Stones in the 1960s. The Rolling Stones in Mono, available in both 15-CD and 16-LP vinyl configurations, as well as Standard Digital, Mastered for iTunes and True HD (96k/24 bit, 192k/24 bit and DSD), contains a total of 186 tracks, 56 of which had never before been heard in mono since the advent of the digital age, according to the original announcement from ABKCO, which retains the rights to the Stones’ early recordings.
The Rolling Stones in Mono covers the formative years of 1963-69 featuring hits like “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Get Off Of My Cloud,” “19th Nervous Breakdown” and “Paint it Black,” to name a few. The idea behind releasing the collection, the 2016 press release explained, is that, “Most rock and pop recordings were originally recorded in mono, with stereo often an afterthought, dealt with only following the completion of the original (mono) version of a given track.”
Recording engineer Dave Hassinger, who worked with the Stones from 1964-66, explained how he mixed the Stones in mono: “They always played together at the same time,” he is quoted as saying. “They would run the parts down, work out the changes here and there, nail it down, then start recording.”
Fast forward to May 22nd, 2018, and ABKCO has released an official lyric video for the group’s 1967 smash hit, “Ruby Tuesday,” to coincide with The Rolling Stones’ 2018 #NoFilter tour of the U.K. and Europe.
From the announcement: “For this hauntingly beautiful ballad the goal was to create a romantic and evocative visual inspired by 60s design and an independent, free-spirited woman. To enhance the wistful, baroque feel of the verses, densely decorative floral and paisley patterns which form throughout each scene create a rich tapestry of detail. The choruses cut to kaleidoscopic patterns set against a bright ruby red backdrop, ensuring a big hit of colour in contrast to the verses.”
More on “Ruby Tuesday” from the announcement: “The song was written, for the most part, by Stones guitarist Keith Richards in 1966, inspired by Linda Keith, his girlfriend at the time, who had recently left him for a poet named Bill Chenail; soon thereafter she began dating rising star Jimi Hendrix.” “That’s the first time I felt the deep cut,” Richards recollected in his 2010 autobiography Life. “The thing about being a songwriter is, even if you’ve been fucked over, you can find consolation in writing about it, and pour it out . . . It becomes an experience, a feeling, or a conglomeration of experiences. Basically Linda is ‘Ruby Tuesday.’”
The recording features Brian Jones on recorder, Bill Wyman fretting a double bass (with Keith Richards bowing it) and outside help from arranger/composer Jack Nitzsche who played piano on the track. Initially released in January 1967 as a B-side to “Let’s Spend the Night Together,”
“Ruby Tuesday” was featured on the American release of the 1967 album, Between The Buttons. This version features Mick Jagger on vocals, Keith Richards on guitar, Charlie Watts on drums, Ronnie Wood on guitar, Bill Wyman on bass, Matt Clifford on keyboards and French horn, Bobby Keys on saxophone, Chuck Leavell on keyboards, Bernard Fowler on backing vocals, Lisa Fischer on backing vocals, Cindy Mizelle on backing vocals, and the Uptown Horns.
There’s a bittersweet beauty to the passing of time, the changes it brings are just as often heartbreaking as they are heartwarming. The inevitable tension that arises from that sway is Gretchen Peters’ most trusted muse. With melody supporting that melancholy, the songs on Peters’ new album, Dancing With The Beast, combine to lift the effort over the high artistic bar set by her last outing, 2015’s award-winning Blackbirds. Strung together and populated with strong and broken female heroines, those vignettes make up Dancing With The Beast and, indeed, Peters’ entire discography.
Dancing With The Beast puts female characters at the fore, from teenage girls to old women. And intentionally so. With the 2017 Women’s March and #MeToo Movement as bookends to her writing time, Peters knew that a feminist perspective would be the critical core of the record. She admits, “You can trace the feminist DNA in my songwriting back to ‘Independence Day’ and probably before. The thing that 2017 did is just put it front and center.”
Beauty tempered by dread, sorrow buoyed by hope, these are the ever-present tugs of war that make life worth living and songs worth writing. And they are the over-riding themes that make Gretchen Peters one of her generation’s most compelling singer/songwriters.
Strung together and populated with strong and broken female heroines, Dancing With The Beast has a bittersweet beauty that lifts it over the high artistic bar set by her last outing, 2015’s award-winning Blackbirds”
“Beautifully defined and utterly compelling album.. Peters’ ability to give voice to believable characters is unbeatable.” –
“Right now, you would be hard-pressed to find a better songwriter than Gretchen Peters. Her willingness to sing about tough, somber subjects is a rarity in the industry, and on her new album, Dancing With The Beast (due out May 18th), she continues to prove her mastery.” – The Shotgun Seat
“50 minutes of exquisite-sounding emotional devastation, depression, murder and heartbreak” – The Tennessean
