Atlanta post-punk trio Omni are back with a sharp new song, “Sunset Preacher,” off their new 7-inch. Sunset Preacher b/w Confessional, which follows 2017’s Multi-Task LP, is out April 20 via Chunklet.
Max Freedman called Multi-Task a collection of “hectic but contained collages of young, restless, lonely, and broke twenty-somethings overextending their way through life.” “Sunset Preacher” continues in that vein, finding the band ripping up their signature nimble sound and starting again. Its rhythmic breakdown is sleek yet aggressive, with bright guitar shrieks and pulsing beats.
When Bruce Springsteen joined English singer songwriter John Wesley Harding on “Wreck on the Highway” in 1994, it would be his only performance of that song in a 20-year span. The audio has been officially out there for years, but this week we’re proud to premiere a video documenting that performance.
The occasion: for Record Store Day, Ominvore Recordings is putting out John Wesley Harding’s first covers album, Greatest Other People’s Hits, which includes that live duo performance as well as Wes’s cover of “Jackson Cage” (he likes The River, it seems). It’s the first time on vinyl for both recordings. Look for the LP at indie shops this Saturday, April 21st.
You may now listen to “Perfume”, the latest single off our “Perfume EP”. Perhaps you’ve heard us play it live the last couple of tours and been like “what the heck iz that song?” well now you know!
Smells like 30 new minutes of new music via seven new electric hues, shocks of light that flagrantly provoke the dark, a posy’s clutch of purple, fuchsia, green and snowy white that curl against the stench of plague. With “Perfume”, Wand presents olfactory events that recall futures and pasts.
False Advertising present ‘Belligerent’, a new album collating tracks the band has recorded over the last two years. Due for exclusive release this April via 2670records.
The Blind Owls are a 4-piece Rock n’ Roll band from Corpus Christi, Texas formed in 2012. After nearly three years spent of constant performances around Texas and festivals around the country ferociously banging out an authentic Rock n’ Roll repertoire with passion and fury each performance, 2015 saw the release of their first EP ‘The Blind Owls Say Goodbye,’ followed by their debut album ‘All Day & Night’ from Soundflat Records in 2017. The Blind Owls embarked on their first tour to the West Coast in 2017 where they performed in 6 different states and performed for 3 weeks straight. The Blind Owls continue their momentum into 2018, where they plan on making it another successful and exciting year for their music and performances.
“Their debut LP, All Day and Night, echoes Merseybeat and early Rock n’ Roll with a hint of US garage, played with verve and vigor and a musicality beyond their tender years.” Shindig Magazine (UK)
The Thermals are breaking up. Hutch Harris, Kathy Foster, and Westin Glass have decided to call it a day, issuing the following statement:
We are officially disbanding. After 15 years and 7 records, we feel our band has reached far beyond our initial expectations and goals, and are stepping away from it while we still cherish it. We traveled further, soared higher and played louder than we ever dreamed, and we now look forward to a new chapter in our lives, our art, and our friendship. We would like to thank all the great labels who have released our records, all the amazing people who have worked so hard for us, and most importantly our fans, who we consider to be some of the smartest, sweetest and most compassionate people in the world. We love you, and we hope to see you again some day.
Originally formed in 2002 by Harris and Foster following early folk recordings as the duo Hutch and Kathy, the band’s first album “More Parts per Million” was released on Sub Pop Records in 2003. The band rotated through several percussion players, ultimately recruiting Glass in 2008. The Thermals’ last album “We Disappear” came out in 2016. That same year, the group performed in support of then-Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at a rally in Portland.
The Portland trio called it quits this week, but for many, they leave behind a fiery legacy that can’t be put out.
The Thermals wrote one Perfect Record and like one thousand other great songs, all before the pop-punk revival was a socially acceptable thing, The Body, The Blood, The Machineby The Thermals. its orange and red cover, all thanks to an incendiary anthem I’d heard called “Here’s Your Future.”
The first time I heard “Here’s Your Future” was quickly followed by the twentieth time I heard “Here’s Your Future.” It’s a short tune, In it, frontman Hutch Harris climbs an apocalyptic pulpit to act as the voice of a tyrannical, punishing Christian God who floods the world before lighting it aflame with a sneering indictment: “Here’s your future. It’s gonna rain.”
Legend has it, Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard heard The Thermals’ demo and got them in touch with SubPop. There, they released the scrappy statement of purpose More Parts Per Million (2003), the gut punching Fuckin’ A (2004) and immortal hellraiser The Body, The Blood, The Machine (2006). They then jumped to Kill Rock Stars, recruited Westin as their permanent drummer, and released their deepest, most existential record Now We Can See(2009) and the intimate, slightly experimental Personal Life (2010). They made their final home with Saddle Creek and released the lean Desperate Ground (2013), and, as their surprise finale, the suspiciously titled We Disappear (2016). It’s a shame. The Thermals are a hell of a band to lose at a time whenrighteous indignation from a young generation is offering the greatest push toward progress.
In between records, they toured the world and led sweaty crowds in clubs to scream back several memorable lines of righteous indignation and political outrage, including:
– “They can tell me what to read / They can tell me what to eat / They can beat me and send me the bill / But they tell me what to feel?/ I might need you to kill!”
– “Our enemies lie dead on the ground and still we kick”– “Pray for a new age / Pray for information / I can hope, see? / Even if I don’t believe”
Their main and best mode was loud and fast, but their lyrics—even at their most blunt—kept a sense of nuance: The Body, The Blood is most definitely a middle-finger to theocratic political tendencies, but it’s also a healthy dose of bloodied and bruised hope. It’s the same case forNow We Can See—maybe Harris’s highest lyrical accomplishment to date.
That album is, squarely, all about death, dying, and being dead. But a few spins reveals clever takes on the pitfalls of routine existence (“Liquid In, Liquid Out,”“When We Were Alive”), the clarity of hindsight (“We Were Sick,” “Now We Can See”), and the grace found in accepting our inevitable, eventual demise (“When I Died,”“You Dissolve”). This is the album they wrote nearly ten years before their breakup, mind you. It stands to reason that The Thermals were well prepared for their last hurrah long before we were.
“Eventually,” Harris explained during a live episode of the podcast Song Exploder in 2014, “what represented the Thermals the best was: Everything is kind of falling apart, and everything is just madness, but it’s more of a celebration of it as opposed to letting it get you down.” Given that quote, it makes complete that sense that, after releasing a generous and thankful joint statement announcing their end, Rather than let the world and its growing list of troubles burn them out, the trio is fading away, happy and celebrating, on their own terms. Here’s to your future, Thermals
This June will see the release of a five-disc Kirsty MacColl box set that summarises her time with Virgin Records titled Days (1988 – 1991) .
This 4CD+DVD set effectively brings together new double-disc deluxe editions of Kite(1989) and Electric Landlady (1991). These are similar – but not identical – to the previous 2012 reissues and in total, Days delivers 33 non-album b-sides and 12-inch mixes. Both albums were produced by her husband Steve Lillywhite and delivered many great singles, although only Days from the former and Walking Down Madison from the latter were proper hits.
Kirsty MacColl always attracted great musicians and during this period she worked with the likes of Johnny Marr, David Gilmour, Mark Nevin, Pete Glenister, Elliott Randall and some great Latin musicians from New York.
A DVD completes this new set and includes the seven promo videos Kirsty made for the albums and an 18-minute EPK (electronic press kit) for the Electric Landlady album. This set is presented as a ‘media book’ package which includes credits, lyrics and biographical information by Alan Robinson.
Additionally, Kite will be issued as a clear vinyl pressing and Electric Landlady as a PINK vinyl LP, All three physical releases are due to be released on 15th June 2018, via Edsel.
The follow-up to Jenny Hval’s acclaimed 2016 album Blood Bitch is The Long Sleep, an adventurous new EP that sees the Norwegian multidisciplinary artist embracing an instinctive, even subconscious, approach to creating meaning. In contrast to Hval’s more explicitly conceptual work, The Long Sleep foregrounds the act of composition itself, letting the melodies and structures reveal the other elements of the songs. All of the songs on the EP recycle the same compositional motives, but manipulate them into very different shapes that take them further and further out of their original, “life-like” context.
Hval recorded The Long Sleep with longtime collaborator Håvard Volden and producer Lasse Marhaug, along with an ace new supporting cast of talented players from the jazz world — Kyrre Laastad on percussion, Anja Lauvdal on piano, Espen Reinertsen on saxophone, and Eivind Lønning on trumpet. Hval calls them some of her favorite contemporary musicians, and their musical background helps to give the songs on The Long Sleep their intuitive, improvised feel.
The Nude Party are a six-piece from North Carolina . The fine folks at New West Records will be releasing their debut LP on June 8th. While you wait, check out how they came up with such a unique moniker.
The members of The Nude Party first came together in the freshman dormitories of Boone, North Carolina’s Appalachian State University in 2012. Patton Magee, and later Austin Brose, linked up with childhood friends Connor Mikita & Alec Castillo and stepbrothers Shaun Couture & Don Merrill. The following summer, the young men moved into a lake house outside of town to begin learning their respective instruments and jamming on rudimentary riffs. Friends came by the lake house to swim and party and soon there developed a group obsession with performing in the nude.
They quickly gained a following as the house band at a notorious Boone party palace referred to as the 505 House, and the bare honesty of their performances was so contagious that their audience also started partying au naturel. While these traditions may appear risqué to the casual observer, the band explains, “These weren’t orgies, they weren’t sexual even. It was just kind of a wild exhibitionism that we felt gave us freedom.” Best known around campus as “the naked party band,” this informal aggregation of musicians became a defined unit and chose to call their group simply “The Nude Party.”
Kevin Krauter is a member of the band Hoops, who released a their debut album last year. Now he’s setting out on his own solo voyage with the debut album Toss Up arriving via Bayonet Records in June 15th.
The first cut to be previewed from Toss Up is the utterly charming ‘Rollerskate’, a song that glides on simplistic dreamy indie guitars and drums, then takes an uptick towards the sky on subtle synth melodies towards its conclusion. Through this dreamy haze, Kevin Krauter relays a tale of relinquishing anger in favour of peace – even though there are trigger points all around him as he makes his way through the day. But Krauter is determined to stay equanimous; ‘Toss Up’ builds on the sonic worlds of Krauters’ first releases, conveying a similar mood with a greater array of instruments and influences. An insightful songwriter with a lyrical style that is both economical and evocative, Krauter crafts unique soundscapes that scramble a range of influences
“As I slowly rollerskate through a wall of hate/ I was trying to save my soul/ but what’s it for?” Although Krauter often feels overwhelmed by life’s many tribulations, big and small, he still comes out of the other end with a tranquil mindset. Overall, ‘Rollerskate’ is a perfect vessel for this lightheartedness in times of trouble, as it’s absolutely impossible not to feel like you’re swimming through sunshine as you listen to the glistening melodies and Krauter’s playful lyrics like “feel like every single say is a piece of cake/ I was trying to take some home.”
