“Pacific Kiss”, the fourth album from Australian musician David West’s underground pop band, Rat Columns, is out today. Alongside the usual formats, two different vinyl pressings of Pacific Kiss are available – classic black and ‘pastel pink’, both of which are limited to 250 copies.
Pacific Kiss was primarily recorded in a dingy but comfortable practice space in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The core of the record is DW, bassist Max Schneider-Schumacher, drummer Dylan Stjepovic and keyboard wiz Joey Fishman. Additional fairy dust was sprinkled by Amber Gempton and Raven Mahon (vocals), Jef Brown (saxophone) and Mikey Young, who found time to contribute some off the wall guitar solos during the mixing process. Pacific Kiss is a record for those astral voyages into the spheres conducted from bedrooms, kitchens, grassy fields and open car windows.
We’re only just announcing this now, but it’s out tomorrow, in stock and shipping. The new record from the Western Australian post-punks adds a layer of jangle hypnotism rarely heard in this context. Pacific Kiss plunges headfirst into an azure sea of upbeat and meditative jams.
Taken from the album, Pacific Kiss, out 12th Feb ’21 on Tough Love.
Irish alt-rock trio Bitch Falcon had their debut album “Staring At Clocks” released last year – and it’s one of the strongest debuts of 2020. We have a brand new, limited tape a which features live versions of 5 tracks from Staring At Clocks.
Small Pond have released our studio sessions on Spotify and all major online platforms. The release features an exclusive performance of “Gaslight” and oldie but a goodie “Of Heart”. Combining the shimmering melody lines of 80s indie-pop enigmas Cocteau Twins, post-punk’s urgency, the raw edges of Seattle grunge and lush, claustrophobic shoegaze, the Irish trio have created a heavenly yet spiky squall.
Bitch Falcon; a name you won’t forget and a band who won’t let you forget them. This trio from the vibrant, much-hyped music scene of Dublin was formed by front-woman Lizzie Fitzpatrick with her friends in a small kitchen in the city in 2014. Since these freshman days, the line up has galvanised around the rhythm section of Barry O’Sullivan on Bass and Nigel Kenny on Drums.
Bitch Falcon have been around since 2014, but it feels like the pan is now coming to the boil. Formed by force of nature guitarist and vocalist Lizzie Fitzpatrick, the band have worked through several personnel changes before landing on the current lineup of Lizzie, Nigel and bassist Barry O’Sullivan.
Expands on Sam Bern’s previous project Date Stuff, complex math guitar now with a fuller sound. Things seem to evolve naturally for Floatie. Friends become bandmates and riffs become albums. “Shiny,” the first song on their debut album says it best, “Some luck, it’s happenstance, or consequence / I guess that’s the way it goes.” The Chicago quartet have been playing shows and making music together in one form or another for nearly a decade, but it wasn’t until 2018 that Floatie came to light. It’s a project that is both exceptionally tight and radiantly enjoyable; the efforts of friends making music with dear friends.
While the band made an instant impact at live shows with Ratboys, Pile, Spirit of the Beehive, Peaer, Moontype, Stuck, and more, they’ve done so without recordings or demos. After gaining support in the close-knit Chicago music scene, the band recorded a full length debut at Chicago’s Pallet Sound with Seth Engel at the tail end of 2019, and then the pandemic happened. That record, “Voyage Out”, is worth every last moment waited, an album that’s as expansive as it is repetitive and as weird as it is inescapable. Floatie take a visionary approach toward creating music that can feel both tangled and hypnotic, challenging and comforting, all at the same time. Formed by Sam Bern (they/them) and Luc Schutz (he/him), the duo were soon joined by Joe Olson (he/him) and eventually Will Wisniewski (he/him), each member’s contributions fusing together to create a sound that relies as much on austere construction as it does on finding joy in their time spent together. The results of rigid assembly and blissful collaboration often yields results aptly described as mysterious.
Floatie offer a tongue-in-cheek view of their creative efforts, noting that “the song writing process is as arduous as it is mysterious. To discover a riff that we all enjoy playing is a blessing, and to sequence such riffs in such a way as to communicate something as complex and vast as human feeling seems insurmountable at times.” Voyage Out never fails to share those human feelings, even if often done from a more alien perspective. In “Catch A Good Worm,” Bern’s voice hovers over taut percussion, urgent guitar and murky synths: “Bright lights spreading vast and wide, beings at the gate / Rewind, cut off their supply, now we can escape.” The search for personal identity and a place in society can be felt throughout songs that dazzle with a sombre charm that feels both reflective and wide-eyed to a reality that is more complicated than immediately apparent. Bern expands on the single: “Two options could never represent the complexity of human expression. I think a lot of people could benefit from not having predetermined expectations of themselves in place upon arrival. Sometimes the pressures of challenging these patterns make me think that this is how I was born so that is who I’m meant to be. When the reality is that I can work towards being whoever I want.”
The band tackle questions of personal choice and acceptance over an ever shifting landscape of knotted progressions and dreamy technicality. “Shiny” for instance is “about finding the drive to make choices that will give you self-assurance and help you to feel worthy of others’ companionship. It is about forcing your own luck by committing to your decisions.” It’s in that determined commitment that Floatie reside; with a sound that is layered and involved. Yet the band does so without dissonance and abrasive feedback, instead relying on their mesmerizing connectivity. Voyage Out weaves together riffs and rhythms with an extraterrestrial precision and a cosmic grace.
The Band:
Sam Bern- guitar, vocals Joe Olson- bass vi, vocals Will Wisniewski- guitar, synths, vocals Luc Schutz- drums
Greta Van Fleet have shared the latest single from their forthcoming album, “The Battle at Garden’s Gate”. “Heat Above” Rooted in the reality of these trying times, the song comes as an inspirational response to the ongoing negativity in the world. “There’s plenty of love left in this world, even though it may not seem like it,” bassist/keyboardist Sam Kiszka said in a press statement. “And that’s what ‘Heat Above’ is about, rising to the stars together.”
The song’s positive vibe paired with the typically triumphant delivery of Greta Van Fleet make “Heat Above” particularly grandiose. Vocalist Josh Kiszka continues to hit the high notes with ease, and the band sounds as confident as ever, building a soaring crescendo. While Greta Van Fleet initially drew comparisons to Led Zeppelin on their previous EPs and the debut album, the band appears to be exploring a more prog-rock sound on the new effort, with “Heat Above” even giving off some Rush vibes.
As Sam explained, the song bridges the gap between the band’s early material and the new album. “Well, in a way, it acts as a bit of a thesis in this whole body of work,” he told Zane Lowe in an interview for Apple Music. “And it really does, I think, particularly bridge the previous album with this newest album. Years in the making. This song has been years in the making. This particular track. I think it’s the oldest track on the album. We wanted to do the track for a while and just haven’t really gotten around to it. And we pulled it off the shelf, dusted it off and reformatted it and we did some other writing on it.”
The Battle of Garden’s Gate is the follow-up to the band’s successful 2018 debut, Anthem of the Peaceful Army. The previous single, the seven-minute “Age of Machine”, also showcased a more progressive side of Greta Van Fleet, while the first taste of new music, “My Way, Soon”, delivered a more breezy sound.
New album, “The Battle at Garden’s Gate,” available 4.16.21
Did you see Black Country, New Road at Future Yard festival in 2019? They were hot property even then, with just two singles to their name; now, they’re the most talked about band in the UK. The seven-piece’s debut album, For the first time, was released on Friday, and I’d be surprised if you missed it: the album was 6 Music Album Of The Day as well as Rough Trade‘s Album Of The Month; there was a Guardian interview, an Apple Music 1 feature and great reviews from NME and Loud And Quiet.
Black Country New Road’s thrilling debut – “For The First Time” – our February Record of the Month. It is aggressive and inspiringly searching music, they are doubtless one of the most exciting artists to have emerged in the last few years. It’s far from easy going, but it really is a must-listen. London post-rock septet Black Country, New Road hail from the famed Brixton Windmill scene (Fat White Family, black midi etc). ‘For the first time’ is their debut album and follows the highly-rated singles ‘Athens, France’ and ‘Sunglasses’. The engaging, literate lyrics contain stories of terrible sex and tabloid pop culture references whilst the music is reminiscent of Slint and Sonic Youth experimenting with jazz maybe.
Their much-anticipated debut album “For the first time” was released on February 5th 2021. Recorded with Andy Savours (My Bloody Valentine) during the early part of this year and then finished at the end of the nationwide lock-down, the album is the perfect capturing of a new band and all the energy, ferocity and explosive charge that comes with that whilst also clearly the work of a group who have no interest in repetition, one-note approaches or letting creative stagnation set in. Featuring six new songs including reinterpretations of early tracks “Sunglasses” and “Athens, France”, “For the first time” is a sonic time capsule that somehow manages to bottle the past, the present and the future.
“We wanted it to sound exactly how we love to sound live,” says saxophonist Lewis Evans. “This is basically representative of our first 18 months”, continues frontman Isaac Wood.
Indeed the band found they had to stop themselves running too far ahead in order to document this album in a way that felt as truthful as possible.
“We see this as being a stop in the road” explains Isaac. I’ve always been interested in a really honest portrayal of what a band is and what they’ve been working on. I think it’s really nice if people can see an artist like: this was them in the early days, this was their next phase and that they’re quite clear and honest about genuine progression as people and musicians.”
The band have today also shared the new track, “Science Fair”. Minimalist and foreboding, “Science Fair” opens around their rhythm section, precise percussion and bass locking in to allow a residual build from the rest of the band, viola and sax loop and layer over fits and squalls from dual guitars, a synth break and an ever-anxious narrative laid down by Isaac Wood. Climbing towards his desperate exclamation of – “it’s black country out there!” – the song caves in on itself during a blistering, caustic final breakdown. Already a live favourite, “Science Fair” is paired to a video directed by Bart Price who said the following about its themes:
“When developing the music video for ‘Science Fair’, I was thinking about fictitious worlds that we visit through our screens, such as the American high school. Despite our lack of direct experience, these worlds become a universal means of communicating about and understanding things like what it means to grow up, or what it means to be in a friendship group, or to be in love. I wanted to create such a world around Black Country, New Road, placing their music at the heart of a small American town, that in a sense we’ve all been to and lived in.”
Despite having just those two early singles to date, Black Country, New Road – their name originally found on a random Wikipedia generator – have made an impressive impact on fans and critics alike. Declared “the best band in the world” by The Quietus, with glowing reviews from The New York Times to The Guardian, a cover feature for Loud & Quiet, a live BBC 6 Music session, selling out shows across the country (including 1700 tickets in London), being invited to festivals around the world including Primavera and Glastonbury, and finding themselves on French TV sandwiched between Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien.
Their live performances gaining legendary status among fans of the emerging scene that coalesced around vaunted south London venue The Windmill, and which gave rise to many of their peers and contemporaries such as Fat White Family, black midi and Squid, artists with whom they have variously supported, toured with and collaborated with over the years.
Taken from the album ‘For the first time’, released 5th February on Ninja Tune:
Fleetwood Mac have unveiled a Super Deluxe reissue of their 1980 live album, “Fleetwood Mac Live”. The LP captured the iconic line-up in top form at tour stops along their global trek in support of their 1979 studio album, “Tusk”.
Three songs from Tusk are featured on “Live!”, including “Sara,” “Over and Over” and “Not That Funny” – while the rest of the track listing included a selection of highlights from throughout the band’s storied career, including massive hits like “Dreams,” “Go Your Own Way,” “Don’t Stop” and “Rhiannon.”
The upcoming 3-CD/2-LP expanded reissue features a newly remastered version of the original 1980 release, plus more than an hour of unreleased live versions of classic Fleetwood Mac tracks, recorded between 1977 and 1982. The 14 live tracks that debut on the Super Deluxe Edition include “Tusk,” “Gold Dust Woman,” “Songbird” and “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown).” The set also includes a bonus 7-inch single featuring previously unreleased demos for “Fireflies” and “One More Night”
An unreleased live performance of “The Chain” recorded in Cleveland in 1980 is available now as a digital download/streaming services.
The Fleetwood Mac Live: Super Deluxe Edition is presented in a 12 x 12 rigid slipcase and comes with a booklet filled with rare photos, a full itinerary for the “Tusk” Tour, plus a history of the live album by writer David Wild. He writes: “Then and now, Fleetwood Mac Live artfully marks a fascinating time period for a group that, in one form or another, has been on the global stage for more than half a century… It’s a wildly entertaining rock ’n’ roll circus in full swing under a big tent of the band’s own creation as they leave audiences dazzled in locales from Paris, France, to Passaic, New Jersey.”
The majority of the original album was recorded live between 1979 and 1980, save for a few exceptions: “Don’t Let Me Down Again,” was recorded in 1975 during the tour for Fleetwood Mac;Dreams” and “Don’t Stop” are from the band’s soundcheck in Paris; while “Fireflies,” “One More Night,” and a cover of the Beach Boys’ “Farmer’s Daughter” were all recorded in California during a special show for the band’s crew, family, and friends.
In addition to the Super Deluxe set, a special limited Tour Edition will also be available. With only 1,000 copies being released, this set adds a replica ticket, backstage pass, ad, button, sticker and iron-on patch from the era to the collection.
Armed with a freer, more collaborative approach to both writing and recording, Teleman‘s 11-track album “Family of Aliens”, is a fluid collection of glorious pop-songs fluent with new electronic textures and united by the sharp lyricism, buoyant guitars and instantaneous melodies that are synonymous with Teleman.
Teleman’s third studio album is the alluringly named Family of Aliens.
“We want to keep evolving and keep discovering. This band is one long journey for us, and we never want to stop developing and finding new ways of creating music. I’m always wanting to better what we’ve done before. To go deeper, to find something more beautiful, more catchy, more challenging, more interesting … just more.”
It’s evident the much-loved quartet have evolved, cultivating and honing their sound as a very-welcome and anticipated proposition for 2018.
Oscar-nominated composer and songwriter Owen Pallett releases “Island”, an album of lush and shimmering orchestral textures, that explores the very essence of what it is to be alive. “Island”, the latest album from Oscar-nominated composer and songwriter Owen Pallett, released on Domino / Secret City Records (Canada). Almost entirely acoustic, Island begins with 13 darkened chords and was recorded live at Abbey Road Studios with the London Contemporary Orchestra. The introduction is the sound of waking up alone and on the shore of a strange land. What follows is a shimmering and luscious orchestral album that draws across the full breadth of Pallett’s discography, from ‘Heartland’’s Technicolor to the glittering, fingerpicked guitar that marked Pallett’s first records with their trio, Les Mouches.
Recorded live at Abbey Road Studios with the London Contemporary Orchestra, Pallett draws across the full breadth of his discography from Heartland’s Technicolor to the glittering, fingerpicked guitar that marked Owen’s first records with the trio, Les Mouches, he has produced an album of such celestial, lush orchestral beauty, that once lost you may wish to be never found.
“Owen Pallett’s new album may be his best yet” The Quietus” A gorgeous, immersive listen” Clash 8/10
Owen Pallett – “Paragon of Order”, taken from the album ‘Island’, out now on Domino / Secret City.
With recording as basically the only medium in which to experience new rock bands these days, the full-throated belting and high energy antics which work on-stage aren’t always the way to tap into an audience’s feelings. The truth is, the opposite tactic does the trick. Today, from our homes, we seek connection, communion, and acknowledgement that all this isolation is hard. And giving into the gloom – even just for the length of one, intimately recorded EP – can be more of a cure than ignoring the darkness by pumping your fist.
“All Night” was fully recorded and produced in Loveland, Colorado, though IsadoraEden’s residential history includes New Orleans, Brooklyn and her current home, Denver. The soft elocution in her young, muted alto reflects this well-travelled soul; one who’s stories we believe regardless of how few words they contain or how many years they took to accrue. Together with co-writer/band-mate Sumner Erhard, Eden builds thoughtful musical structures and well-woven instrumental textures throughout.
All Night’s producer, mixer and mastering engineer Corey Coffman (Gleemer, Slow Caves, Corsicana) should be given due credit for framing Eden’s minimalistic, melodic exhilations with just the right amount of dramatic rock beauty. Like a shoegaze-y Soccer Mommy cloaked in timid sincerity, Eden’s voice offers sad solidarity to those who will listen, while she, Erhard and Coffman carry her shy messages on the shoulders of stately guitars, dignified drums and echoey atmosphere.
When Carole King began her career in the late 1950s, Phil Spector had just begun to redefine the sound of pop. Elvis dominated the US charts, rock’n’rock was here to stay – at least. King records her first songs with a certain Paul Simon, marries Gerry Goffin in college a little later and makes music with him. The two had their first hit in 1960 with “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” for the black girl group The Shirelles. For the duo, it’s the beginning of a steep career: The Monkees, Aretha Franklin and Dusty Springfield all have their numbers at Rolodex. But the two separated in 1968, King moved to California and tried to boost her still moderate career as a performer. She collaborates with Joni Mitchell and finds a new composition and studio partner in James Taylor, who also accompanies her on her debut on guitar. This is what she soberly calls “writer”. She can write songs after all, but she doesn’t like the role as a potential pop star.
Originally released on February 10th, 1971. Carole King’s “Tapestry,” surely one of the greatest singer-songwriter albums of all time…abetted by Joni’s wonderful voice, of course….
She will nevertheless be one when “Tapestry” is released in February 1971, on which you can also hear the song co-written with Taylor, which will later shape the “Gilmore Girls”. The album becomes one of the best-selling in history, but the others usually collect the fame. “You’ve Got a Friend” becomes world-famous in his simultaneously released version of Taylor, “(You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman” is still remembered by most as an Aretha Franklin number and even “Where You Lead” celebrated its greatest commercial success in the interpretation by Barbra Streisand. King probably won’t have bothered her any further, because she is also more songwriter than singer on “Tapestry”, interested in the perfect pop formula and what can be expressed in it. That’s a lot about twelve songs precisely because King’s approach is characterized by telling reduction.
This does not mean, however, that “Tapestry” is not exactly the stylistic patchwork promised in the title. Starting with the thunderous blues of “I Feel the Earth Move” or “Smackwater Jack” over the quasi-soul of “It’s Too Late” to the piano-emphasized ballads, King absorbs the essence of this and that genre, integrating it with quite reduced means – piano, sometimes guitar, drums, bass, less often supplemented by other instruments – in songs that do not seem to make much concessions to this or that convention. , but to express their own standards. It’s all about song writing, not individual self-expression. To pop music in its purest form. The arrangements are waterproof, solos are hardly any and if they are, they are short. “Tapestry” is in its own way an album without ego and thus an absolute anomaly of its time and beyond.
This can be seen above all in King’s singing. It’s not expressive, it’s inductive: big gestures, wild phrasings, there’s no such thing on this album. A lot of content in a few words. After all, it is not a question of communicating a singular emotional world in the most impressive way possible, but of finding an expression of the general from the individual. The lyrics deal almost exclusively with absences and the desire for presence, for love, friendship, human bonds and desires. The big pop themes, that is, which in 1971 have already completely overstretched and merged into words. Why King’s lyrics take on almost small-talk character at times and thus circumvent the pathos: “So far away / Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore” is the motto at the beginning of “So Far Away”. At first, this reads not for personal sensitivities, but for an all-too-familiar commonplace: a casual, annoyed remark in which much resonates – anger, powerlessness, despair. In “Tapestry” many such phrases are woven in, which in themselves mean nothing and in the context of King’s songs everything. Better, because simpler lyrics were hardly written in pop history.
King was and is a hit supplier who turned others into pop stars with her music and, as if by mistake, became one herself. “Tapestry” is full of songs that, once they’re in it, don’t go away so quickly. However, it is also an outstanding album, which with a lot of modesty transfers big themes into songs that after a long time resemble a coming home. Even if in the meantime they become independent as earworms and eventually begin to annoy. Because that’s really big pop. It was rarely larger than on “Tapestry”
The cover photograph was taken by A&M staff photographer Jim McCrary at King’s Laurel Canyon home. It shows her sitting in a window frame, holding a tapestry she hand-stitched herself, with her cat Telemachus at her feet.
Legendary voice and songwriter born in Brooklyn in 1942. She released 20 albums between 1970 and 2012
