Anna Calvi’s debut for Domino was set to be one of the most talked about records of the year. Brian Eno has championed her as the most visionary female artiste since Patti Smith, Nick Cave took her out around Europe as special guest of Grinderman, and Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey’s right hand studio man) produced the music. An inspired guitarist influenced by Django Reinhardt as much as Jimi Hendrix, and with vocals inspired by Nina Simone and Mariah Callas, Anna Calvi’s music is a passionate and incredibly original mix. The live shows with her permanent three piece band are wowing audiences across the land.
An astonishingly confident record; Anna Calvi showcases the unique strengths of her song writing, singing and virtuoso guitar-playing all jumping out of the speaker together. Calvi drew on the ghosts of Nina Simone and Maria Callas for influence to create a stunningly modern sound.
The LP which includes the likes of “Desire”, “Blackout”, “Rider To The Sea” and “Suzanne And I”, will be reissued for the first time on red vinyl, it also features brand new cover artwork and a signed 8-page booklet containing previously unseen photographs.
Commenting on the milestone, Calvi said: “10 years ago, my life was cast open. All the things that I dreamed of, when I was little girl wishing to be a little boy, learning David Bowie songs on my first guitar, being brave enough to start my first band at 14, learning to sing by hiding behind closed curtains when everyone was asleep at 25, trying to ingest the craft of song writing as I wrote my first album – all of this life’s work of learning to be close to what I dreamt of – all of this was realised when I released my first album.”
To date, Anna Calvi has released three studio albums (Anna Calvi, One Breath and Hunter), a collaborative EP with David Byrne (Strange Weather) and the most recent Hunted – a seven-track reworking of Hunter. Additionally, Calvi wrote and performed the score for season 5 of BBC One’sPeaky Blindersand wrote the music for the opera The Sandman, directed by Robert Wilson. Anna is the first solo artist to achieve three consecutive Mercury Prize nominations and has also received a Brit Award nomination. Throughout her career, Calvi has worked with Brian Eno, Marianne Faithfull, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Joe Talbot (Idles), Dave Okumu (The Invisible), Johnny Flynn, Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Courtney Barnett.
Released on May 14th,
10 year Anniversary edition
The debut LP reissued for the first time on red vinyl
The eponymous debut album from Anna Calvi is an astonishingly confident record; the unique strengths of her song writing, singing and guitar-playing all jumping out of the speaker together.
Jellyfish were one of the great powerpop bands of the 90s. Now three of their former members, The Lickerish Quartet, have released their new EP. With their blend of psychedelic indie powerpop, Jellyfish became one of the great cult bands of the 90s. Led in part by songwriter Roger Joseph Manning Jr, they produced two highly influential albums. For his new band, Manning has hooked up again with Jellyfish bassist Tim Smith, who has been part of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds for the last decade, and Eric Dover, who joined Jellyfish in their later years before going on to front Imperial Drag and Slash’s Snakepit. Their current EP, their second, Threesome Vol. 2, is out now and they have now dropped the video for the song “The Dream That Took Me Over”.
Set in Los Angeles, or is it set in a dream? Has this happened before or is this the first time? The Dream That Took Me Over reflects on longing as well as the uncertainty of desire and it’s addictive pursuit. While the singer of this track, Eric Dover roams the dark shadowy alleys and neon-lit cityscapes, curiosity mixes with elements of danger and the surreal. Shot over the course of only a few hours in Downtown LA and the San Fernando Valley, The Lickerish Quartet with their in-house production team filmed gorilla style; not unlike the quest of Eric’s character lurking in secret. The music video was filmed from the viewer’s perspective playing up the voyeur element our world has grown so accustomed to over the last year of lockdowns. You are along for the ride, but keep your eyes open, things aren’t as they seem.
On the song, Dover says: “You are driving without a destination lured by the wanderlust of your own making. You turn up the stereo volume and continue along, moonlight reflecting off the chrome of your vehicle. We invite you to put the top down and take a ride into the inner dialectic of our conflicted protagonist as we answer the question: Is there equilibrium in the chaos or does science hold the key?”
The song has a dreamy 70s vibe as the music shimmers, the visuals fitting perfectly with it. The video is a follow up to the track “Snollygoster Goon”, which drives a more typical psych-powerpop force, just like their previous band.
“The Dream That Took Me Over” · The Lickerish Quartet · Roger Joseph Manning Jr. · Eric Dover · Tim Smith The EP is available directly from Lojinx
In 1978, The Clean were the seeds of New Zealand punk scene. In the years since, they have carved out a big sandbox for everyone to play in, and their influence resonates not only in NZ but around the world. A group that thrives when free of expectations, The Clean’s Robert Scott, Hamish Kilgour, and David Kilgour are, as Tape Op described, “a casually wonderful band.”
If the Clean were motivated by anything other than a seemingly pure love of music, “Mister Pop” would have been a very different album. Since the last time the band made a record, scores of new bands have discovered the awesome early work the Clean recorded back in the ’80s and have incorporated the raw, scratchy, and energetic feel of those records into their sound. The group could have easily tried to capitalize on its newfound icon status and made an album that harked back to its early years. No one would have blamed them for cashing in; nobody would have begrudged them a few minutes of near fame. Instead, the band — still the brothers Kilgour (David and Hamish) and Robert Scott have made a laid-back, hazy, and thickly psychedelic album that sounds more like something the band might have made in the ’90s.
This is a double reissue on the Merge Records label from The Clean’s ‘Unknown Country’ and ‘Mister Pop’ on vinyl. Originally released in 1996 and 2009, respectively.
The Clean have always exuded a casual grace that suggests they’d still be making the same records even if no one was listening, employing the same set of devices ramshackle locomotive rhythms, buoyant basslines, swirling organ lines, and wide-smile melodies irrespective of prevailing fashions, technological developments, or geopolitical unrest. And yet, the Clean’s periodic resurgences serve as a reminder that, in a world of uncertainty, there are still some things you can rely on.”
Originally released in 1996, The Clean’s “Unknown Country” makes its debut appearance on vinyl . Recorded and mixed in two sessions during 1996, The Clean yet again prove to be masters of musical innovation, three guys who can only amaze when they come together and throw all their ideas down on tape. And as a mood of supreme grooviness is all-pervading on Unknown Country, this is The Clean at their most timeless.
The odd pop songs focus on the tension and the release that characteristic of psychedlic rock although Champagne and Misery stays close The Clean’s canon, Wipe Me I’m Lucky experiments shyly, and Walk Walk is warped like a cartoon soundtrack.
David Kilgour on “Mister Pop”: “Mister Pop began in Brooklyn, NY, at Gary Olson’s Marlborough Farms studio and was completed in the basement hall of First Church Dunedin. There is more synthesizer on this album than the others, mainly an old Juno synth. I do remember having a bath in Brooklyn while Robert was downstairs singing and writing. I thought he was singing “he’s a factory man,” so I dried off and went down and wrote “Factory Man” while thinking heavily of The Kinks. Rainy and Geva from Haunted Love did some great work on backing vocals for “Loog” and “Dreamlife.” And old friend and long time Clean collaborator Alan Starrett makes an appearance on “Moonjumper.”
Of this album, The Clean’s David Kilgour writes, “The Clean always wanna try something different, but on this LP, we were obsessed with the idea.” Bandmate Robert Scott agrees, saying, “I really enjoyed recording this as it was free of expectation. Certainly our most experimental album.”
‘Unknown Country’, the third LP by New Zealand indie band TheClean, was originally released in 1996. Whilst they are generally known for their jangle-pop nuggets, this sprawling masterpiece is the result of studio experimentation and spontaneous recording sessions. Gorgeous instrumental tracks such as ‘Wipe Me, I’m Lucky’ and ‘Franz Kafka at the Zoo’ are interspersed with wonky pop gems such as the Pavement-esque ‘Twist Top’. For fans of The Bats and The Chills.
On March 26th Merge Records will reissue The Clean’sUnknown Country and Mister Pop on vinyl Originally released in 1996 and 2009, respectively, this marks the first time each of these albums will be available on vinyl in the U.S. (they’ll also be available worldwide).
Robert Scott on “Mister Pop”: “I remember thinking at the start of the NY sessions with Gary Olson, “Is this the start of a new album?” We were coming up with quite a bit of new stuff, and of course, Gary is great to work with. We carried on at Burlington St in Dunedin with (engineer and Heavy 8) Tex Houston at the controls, good fun from what I remember, lots of mucking around with keyboards and synths. We were going for that Krautrock groove and we sure got it on “Tensile,” one of my faves along with the pure pop of “Dreamlife.” “Loog” was a fun song to put together. “Asleep in the Tunnel” is written about being stuck in traffic in a tunnel under the Hudson River in NY.”
In 1978, The Clean were the seeds of New Zealand punk. They carved out a big sandbox for everyone to play in, and their influence resonated not only in NZ but around the world. This fall’s Mister Pop sees The Clean continue the great pop pastiche. Circus ragas (“Moonjumper”), hazy sunset anthems (“In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul”), and the loose Dada approach to word-smithery continue alongside “proper” lyrical forays and a few Autobahn-referential instro moments to boot (“Tensile”).
The Kiwi Pop giants and lo-fi all-stars return with, incredibly, only the fifth LP in their storied career from 2009. In 1978, The Clean were the seeds of New Zealand punk. They carved out a big sandbox for everyone to play in, and their influence resonated not only in NZ but around the world.
Mister Pop sees The Clean continue the great pop pastiche. both albums are out in March, through Merge Records
2020 was a terrible year for gardening. It was terrible for peppers, it was terrible for tomatoes, it was terrible for the condition of the soul. But Chad VanGaalen somehow raised a garden all the same: carrots and sprouts and broccoli and a revivifying new album, all of them grown at home.
He likes to eat directly off the plant, he says—”I get down on my knees and graze. It’s nice to feel the vegetables in your face”—and the 13 songs on ‘World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener’ were harvested with just such a spirit: in their raw state, young and vegetal, at the very moment, they were made.
What that means is that the Calgary songwriter’s new album is a psychedelic bumper crop. A collection of tunes that does away with obsessiveness, the anxiety of perfectionism, in favour of freshness and immediacy — capturing the world as it was met while recording alone at home over a period of years.
“Don’t overthink it,” VanGaalen told himself again and again, despite the push/pull love/hate of his relationship with song writing. “I’m always trying to get outside of the song—but then I realize I love the song.” This is a record that gleams with VanGaalen’s musical signatures: found sound, reverb, polychromatic folk music that is by turns cartoonish and hyperphysical—like ultra magnified footage of a virus or a leaf. Apparently, the LP began life as a “pretty minimal” flute record. (There’s only a vestige now, on “Flute Peace”—one of three instrumentals.) Later it became an electronic record “for a while” and finally, “right at the last second,” it “turned into a pile of garbage.”
The good kind of garbage: glinting, useful, free. Music as compost leaves, and branches ready to be re-ingested by the earth, turned into a flower. Throughout these 40 minutes, VanGaalen floats from mania to solace to oblivion, searching for zen in all the wrong places. “Turn up the radio / I think we’re dead,” he sings on “Nothing Is Strange”; or, on the inside-out rocker “Nightmare Scenario”: “You’re stressed out when you should be feeling very well.” The singer’s mental landscape is rotting and redemptive, beautiful in spite of itself—and his soundscapes reflect this fertile decay.
He has been influenced by his instrumental work on TV scores (Dream Corp’s third season began this fall), but still “nothing can really replace the human voice,” he admits. Like Arthur Russell or Syd Barrett, it’s VanGaalen’s vocals that shine a path through the swampland from the cello-lashed “Water Brother” to “Starlight” krautrock pipe-dream. These days, VanGaalen cherishes the privacy of the studio, the capacity to wander around, get distracted, and “move at the speed of life.” Whereas once he would obsess over mic techniques, now he puts the microphone in the same place every time trying to capture a song quickly, the idea at its heart.
He’ll act on his infatuations for the flute, a squeaky clarinet, his basement’s copper plumbing (remade into xylophones for “Samurai Sword”)—and then he’ll try to get out, “veering away from responsibility,” before he overdoes his stay. In the end, it’s like gardening.
You have to live with your horrible decision-making; the weather’s going to fuck you if it wants to; and if you plant a hundred heads of broccoli, “now you gotta eat a hundred heads of broccoli—or watch them go to seed.” But mostly VanGaalen just tries to be a deer: “I remember seeing some deer come out in the Okanagan Valley once,” he says, “watching them wait for a sunbeam to hit a perfect bunch of grapes and then eating them right out of the sunbeam. I’d recommend that.”
The majestic new album from multimedia auteur Chad VanGaalen, is out NOW! In celebration of this release, VanGaalen has created a video for the single “Starlight.” The song is a “celebration of our cosmic origins” shares VanGaalen, who fused old Super 8 footage of his family from the ’50s and ’60s, circular photos that were taken in his studio, and quick sketches to stylistically create a visual fusion unique to VanGaalen’s body of work.
On April 8th, VanGaalen will perform a live stream from his Yoko Eno studio via NoonChorus. The show will be available for viewing in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia at 7 PM local time. Ticket holders will be able to stream the performance for 5 days following and will also be able to buy merch.
“No idea is too strange and nearly anything can be used as a musical instrument… Is it incoherent? Absolutely, but that’s all part of the fun.” [8/10] – Exclaim
“A tour de force of all the things that make the Canadian singer-songwriter great, from the kaleidoscopic psychedelia of ‘Starlight’ to the hazy, laid back pop of the single ‘Samuari Sword’.” [8/10] – Loud & Quiet
Chad VanGaalen’s album ‘World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener’ (Release date: March 19, 2021)
Diagonal is a psychedelic six-piece from Chicago. Formed out of the ashes of a local post-punk cover band, the core of the group have been playing music together in one way or another since 2015. Their early works combine hazy waterfalls of shoegaze guitar, serious pop hooks, and layers upon layers of reverb.
They’ve made their way throughout the Midwest bringing a wall of sound to small clubs and festivals like Milwaukee Psych Fest and Detroit’s Echo Fest. They approach the three guitar line-up with nuance, wrangling melodies and riffs in a controlled way leaving room to let the song explode into complete sonic annihilation at any moment, while the rhythm section keeps things running on time. The first single to come out of their current line-up, 2019’s “Detroit”, is a slow driving Motorik drum and bass groove that started as an impromptu basement jam while on tour in Detroit. On the B-Side, the band morphs Gary Numan’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” into an epic 7 1/2 minute guitar exploration.
Weekly garage jams laid the groundwork for the songs that would form their latest LP. In May of 2019, the band recorded four new songs including the follow-up singles “Negatives” and “Anticipation”. After retreating back into the garage to write and demo they made the trip to Key Club Recording in Benton Harbor, Michigan at the end of 2019. In one lock-in studio weekend, Diagonal recorded nearly ten songs, some pre-arranged and others spur of the moment improvisations.
The quintet’s latest single, “Anticipation,” is a catchy and shoegazey groove that makes me feel like I’m inside a lava lamp as I listen to it. Along with the single, they released an 11-minute instrumental jam that keeps the vibe going perfectly. For a taste of their live experience, I would recommend checking out their live sessions of “Negatives” and “Monotony” recorded at DZ Records, which can be found on YouTube. The band recently announced that their upcoming self-titled LP will be released mid February on Little Cloud Records.
The bands line-up features Silas Mishler (vocals/guitar), Dan Jarvis (guitar), Alex Brumley (guitar), Chris Detlaff (drums), and most recently Brad Althaus (organ/keyboards/percussion).
The resulting self-titled LP is a mix of highly polished psych rock, contemplative moments, and angular jams. The band’s first vinyl release will be out in February 2021 via Portland’s Little Cloud Records.
Skullcrusher, the musical moniker of Los Angeles based singer/songwriter Helen Ballentine, has shared a new song, “Song for Nick Drake,” via a video for it. Ballentine spent the fall in rural New York State, working on new material with her collaborator Noah Weinman, and this is another fruit of those sessions. Ballentine and Weinman both directed the video, which seems to have been shot on VHS or some other tape format. Skullcrusher’s understated energy radiates with the atmosphere of waking up to the quiet terror of shapeless, structureless days, but it finds power in eschewing the pressures of careerism and a vapid culture of productivity. Instead, as Skullcrusher, Ballentine has the audacity to be comfortable enough with herself, and to simply accept the unknown as her life.
Ballentine had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Song for Nick Drake’ is about my relationship to the music of Nick Drake. It recalls moments in my life that are viscerally intertwined with his music, specifically times spent walking and taking the train. The song is really my homage to music and the times I felt most immersed in it.”
It follows the previous track “Farm,” a new song released in October. At the same time she also released a cover of Radiohead’s “Lift.” They followed her self-titled debut EP, released in June 2020 via Secretly Canadian.
Skullcrusher featured four tracks, written by Ballentine and produced by Noah Weinman, all about the influx of media she consumed after leaving her 9-5 day job. The EP is available digitally and on Vinyl,
Storm in Summer EP Tracklist: 01. Windshield 02. Songs for Nick Drake 03. Steps 04. Storm in Summer 05. Prefer
Spectres return with ‘It’s Never Going To Happen And This Is Why’, their bluntest, most bludgeoning LP yet. The oft sprawling and trance-inducing explorations of feedback and terror featured on their previous two critically acclaimed albums ‘Dying’ (2015) and ‘Condition’ (2017) have been supplanted by a rifle chamber of condensed noise nuggets firing in at three minutes or less. Spectres have gone pop. Recorded by Alex Greaves at The Nave, a 19th century Methodist church in Leeds, and released on their own new Dark Habits imprint in Europe / Little Cloud Records in the USA, the mischievously titled album sees Spectres at their most radical and playful, splattered with guest spots from experimental artists Klein, Elvin Brandhi, Ben Vince and French Margot.
Massive album! Powerful sound. Hard to say which is my favourite track. Playing it both in track order and randomly brings loads of energy. Spectres can do no wrong to my ears. Been a big fan since “Dying”. I was lucky enough to see them live a few years back and they blew me away. This album is as good, if not better than anything they’ve released to date. A lot of the tracks are considerably shorter than their previous work, but no less powerful. An excellent piece of work and already one of my faves from this year.
Making her stage debut in April 2019 and selling out her first headline show at London’s prestigious Southbank Centre less than a year later, A.A. Williams has hit the ground running. Similarly, the acclaim for her performances and her music has been unanimous from the start. After one self-titled EP and the 10” vinyl collaboration “Exit in Darkness” with Japanese post-rockers MONO, the London-based singer-songwriter has signed to Bella Union and made a stunning debut album, “Forever Blue”.
A rapturous blend of post-rock and post-classical, Forever Blue smoulders with uncoiling melodies and haunted atmospheres, shifting from serenity to explosive drama, often within the same song. Williams is a fantastic musician as well as songwriter, playing the guitar, cello and piano, and her voice has the controlled delivery of a seasoned chanteuse whilst still channelling the rawest of emotions.
Forever Blue is named after a song that didn’t make the album’s final cut, “but it still encapsulated these songs,” Williams explains. “It sounded timeless and in the right place.” The album’s threads encapsulate the anxieties and addiction of love and loss with haunting detail, for example ‘Glimmer’(“I wasn’t meant to see the sun washed out and pale / I wait undone / I wasn’t meant to be the one hollow and hurt and meant for none”), though Williams admits the theme was shaped more by her subconscious than any grand plan.
Therapy is intrinsic to Williams’ approach: to not just express and unpick her feelings of longing and loss but to work through them. “Verbalising something, you feel a weight has been lifted,” she says. The transition can be mirrored in the dynamic shift from ‘quiet’ to ‘loud’, as on ‘Glimmer’ and arguably at its most euphoric on ‘Melt’. “There’s something very satisfying and elating about songs that have that drop in them, to stomp on the guitar pedal on and let it all out.”
Forever Blue will spread the news of A.A. Williams’ extraordinary talent far and wide – and once lockdown is over, she and her band will be taking the next steps on her journey by touring the record. She’s already come so far but this story is only just beginning. For the past year or so, dark singer/songwriter A.A. Williams has been releasing gloomy, minimal covers that put a hauntingly beautiful spin on the originals, and here’s another great one. She makes the ’60s prog-pop hit sound like something that could’ve come out on ’80s 4AD.
Taken from the album ‘Songs From Isolation’ by A.A. Williams
The Pet Parade marks a milestone for Eric D. Johnson, who celebrates 20 years of Fruit Bats in 2021. In some ways still a cult band, in other ways a time-tested act, Fruit Bats has consistently earned enough small victories to carve out a career in a notoriously fickle scene.
While many of the songs on The Pet Parade were actually written before the pandemic, it’s impossible to disassociate the record from the times. As an example, producer Josh Kaufman (The Hold Steady, Bob Weir, The National, and Bonny Light Horseman, in which he plays with Johnson and Anaïs Mitchell) was brought in for his deep emotional touch and bandleading abilities. However, Johnson, Kaufman, and the other musicians on The Pet Parade—drummers Joe Russo and Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Fleet Foxes, Muzz), singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels, pianist Thomas Bartlett (Nico Muhly, Sufjan Stevens), and fiddler Jim Becker (Califone, Iron & Wine)—were forced to self-record their parts in bedrooms and home studios across America.
“This was definitely not a coronavirus record,” Fruits Bats’ Eric D. Johnson says of “The Pet Parade”, his indie-folk project’s ninth album. “What I mean by that is that I think everyone who writes songs is going to be coming out with a quarantine record at some point in the next five months, but about half of these songs were written before the pandemic. Then again, the record couldn’t not be informed by what was taking place, and a few of the songs I had already completed were weirdly prescient.”
Beyond colouring Johnson’s lyrical content, the pandemic certainly played a role in the process of creating the album. In early March, producer Josh Kaufman visited Johnson in LA for prep work, and the pair planned to re-group for some more formal sessions a few weeks later in Kaufman’s native New York. However, COVID-19 scuttled those plans and, when the two resumed work on the album, they did so remotely, enlisting drummer Joe Russo, The Walkmen/Fleet Foxes drummer Matt Barrick, singer Johanna Samuels, keyboardist Thomas Bartlett and bassist Annie Nero, who is also Kaufman’s wife, to record individual tracks from their home locales.
Though “The Pet Parade” marks the first time that Kaufman had produced a Fruit Bats record, the project immediately proceeded their collaboration with Anais Mitchell as Bonny Light Horseman.
Johnson is quick to note that while Thom Monahan had served as producer of his three previous Fruit Bats albums, 2011’s Tripper, 2016’s Absolute Loser and 2019’s Gold Past Life, that “Thom had gotten really busy as of late.”
“We’re always going to work together; he’s one of my closest friends and we already have plans for other stuff,” he continues. “So when I finished the Bonny Light Horseman record, I was like, ‘I want to keep living in this world. I would love to see what Josh does with some of my other original songs.’ I just wanted to see what his touch would bring.”
As for working with the personnel on The Pet Parade, Johnson likens the experience to “hiring a film director who has his own cast of actors. He brought in the Josh Kaufman Players, all of whom are friends of mine or became friends through Josh. Everyone was in a different room in a different city but, thankfully, all of them had home setups. Then there’s Josh himself. Some of the songs are just the two of us playing everything, which was fine by me because I adore the guy and he is an absolute monster of a multi-instrumentalist.”
The Pet Parade
Josh and I both independently had this idea that we should do a song that was a hypnotic invocation of some sort. We were thinking about Astral Weeks. Now I don’t think it sounds like that album, but the idea was something with two chords that we could float over the top of in some way. The song was originally conceived like that, and then it became something else.
Josh pushed to open the record with it, but that was a scary decision for me to make. I’m a guy who wants to top[1]load the record—not because it’s some Spotify thing but because, going back to The Beatles, that’s just what you do. So even though I think it’s a wonderful song, it’s seven minutes long, it’s slow, you can’t dance to it and it has two chords. But Josh was like, “During this moment in time, you can’t write a song where the first line is, ‘Hello from in here to all you out there/ It feels like it’s been years’ and not open an album with it.”
I realized he was right. With this record, I’m inviting people to be patient rather than giving them a two-and-a-half-minute banger at the start to suck them in. It’s kind of like telling people: “Do you trust me? Come on in.”
One of my great musical mentors, Jim Becker, plays fiddle on the song, which was a real joy. He’s an old Chicago pal of mine and probably best known these days as a member of Iron & Wine. He’s played on records of mine in the past, but he’s somebody that I hadn’t made music with in a long time. That’s him playing those gorgeous Cajun-y fiddles.
Cub Pilot
This is one of the earlier demos that I had written. I guess you could say it’s a pre-quarantine song. Originally, in a way, it fell into the lyrical thematic territory that I dug into on Gold Past Life, which was kind of like talking to someone and being encouraging to that person. In this case, it was kind of a love song, and as I was writing it, I was either going to be singing it to someone, to you, or I was going to put it in the third person. But when we were putting the song together, all the stuff was going down with the George Floyd protests. Now for better or worse, I’m not a topical songwriter. I love that other people do that and, although my music is on the side of righteousness, it typically exists outside of that in a different world.
So while this song is in no way about the protests, I changed the lyrics from “you” to “we” so that it became sort of a love song to the world. That sounds very grandiose but it felt weird, at that moment, to be writing to an individual. I didn’t want to be talking to just one person.
Discovering
This is the oldest song on the record. A few years ago, before we had even conceived of Bonny Light Horseman, I went out to New York to work with Josh. I wasn’t really thinking of him as a producer. It was just an excuse to hang out and write something together. We did this song and it had mumble lyrics on it, which happens sometimes. I put it aside for several years but once Josh agreed to produce this record, I was like, “Oh, we should do that one,” because I always really liked it, although it was never finished.
Now, sometimes, mumble lyrics can be actual gibberish but, in this case, it was real words and the first line was “He has lived through another night and is quite likely to wake up again.” It seemed weird to have that first line in this moment with the spectre of death feeling close.
“Discovering” is kind of a song about isolation, but isolation in which you can take yourself outside. So it’s about walking around alone outside. I’m not trying to write about it in a romantic or starry-eyed way; it’s a little more like a neutral Zen song about just getting yourself outside and breathing in the air.
The Balcony
This song is about a dream location, which is the balcony of my grandmother’s apartment. We moved around a ton as a kid, but my grandma lived in the same place. She’s no longer with us but my aunt lives there now.
It’s an apartment on the ninth floor and it’s been in my life forever. I often dream about the balcony there, which overlooks a very mid-century stone rec centre. There’s an outdoor pool that is sometimes this lonely, drained thing in the Chicago winter, and then off in the distance is a sliver of the Chicago skyline. I found it to be a very evocative place when I was a little kid for a million reasons, and it exists in my dreams forever.
The song is not really about that, but somehow it just worked its way into the song. It’s a song about patience and it’s probably informed by the quarantine. We almost left it off the record but it’s the most legit up-tempo song we had. So it ended up getting back in, and I’m glad it did.
Here for Now, for You
“Here for Now, for You” is a pretty sad song with some references to suicide, having lost a few friends like that. It’s another one where I kind of spit out the first line, sort of as a mumble off the top of my head. It was, “I feel sometimes like I want to get off the ride, like, you know, that I’m getting called home,” which is a pretty dark line.
I wrote it a long time ago. The music portion of the song has gone through a lot of permutations. At one point, there was a crazy ‘80s pop jam in there, with Joe Russo shredding on drums, but it continued to evolve. It’s a sad song but it’s also about devotion.
On the Avalon Stairs
“On the Avalon Stairs” is probably my favourite vocal performance that I’ve ever done for one of my own records. Singing is always the most intimate and strange part of record-making. I’ve produced other people’s records, I’ve guested and I’ve been there for other people’s processes. It can be hard and I can be very self-critical about it.
I was a singer before I could play any instruments and I’m aware that it’s probably my strong suit. I’m not going to come guest on your record and shred lead guitar—that’s just not what I do. But I can come and sing harmonies and maybe something good will come of it.
In this case, it was very strange being in a room alone, kind of comping my own vocals. That’s the easiest way to get into a wormhole of your own brain; those sounds are coming from close to your brain. I did a couple of takes and I wasn’t feeling it, but then I did one take that was a breakthrough moment. I remember being happy with that vocal take and I don’t usually feel that way.
Eagles Below Us
This is a song about wanting to climb in someone’s head, which is something that we all believe we can do. It sort of sounds like a love song, and it is in some ways. But it’s also a platonic love song, which all of my love songs are—you can sing them to a friend. The great Annie Nero is on bass and Joe Russo is on drums.
When we were on the Bonny Light Horseman tour, we were driving somewhere in the mountains. There was a cliffside to the right and, when I looked down, there was an eagle flying 20 feet below us. I thought it was such a great image.
“Eagles Below Us” was also the working title for the album because I really like that notion. However, it ended up losing out to The Pet Parade, which kind of came in at the last minute and was more elemental sounding.
Holy Rose
“Holy Rose” might be the most direct song on the record as far as being about something. I wrote that one about the 2017 Sonoma County Tubbs Fire. It was one of the first songs we worked on and, as we continued from summer into early fall, these fires started happening again. My wife is from Sonoma County and it’s about her experience watching her childhood burn away.
I realized, after the fact, that each verse and chorus is written from a different character’s perspective. Some of the song is saying, “Get out of there,” and some of it is saying, “I’ll never leave.” I’ve seen the heartbreak of native Californians watching their lives burn. There’s a symbolic notion in the line about “the ghosts of everyone you’ve ever known.”
The original arrangement was going to be a soft sort of waltz, but Josh and Matt Barrick interpreted it as very angry, which I thought was cool. So it’s still a waltz, but it hits hard and kind of feels like a fire.
All in One Go
“All in One Go” was a late add. I wrote it all in one blast— which I may have had in mind when I was working on it—and then named the song.
It seems like all my records always have a song toward the end that takes the form of a gentle acoustic guitar track. I’ll sit down with an iPhone and an acoustic guitar and do something that’s sort of informed by the record as a whole. It’s a little bit of a denouement, which is how “All in One Go” ended up in that position as the third to last song.
Gullwing Doors
Sense of place is huge for me. In fact, that was one of the working titles for Gold Past Life and the original theme of that album. I’m nomadic. I kind of live everywhere and nowhere, too, but for the past 15 years, it’s mostly been back and forth between LA and Portland. When I leave one city, I always write a love song to the other.
“Gullwing Doors” is somewhat about the back[1]and-forth drive up Interstate 5 between LA and points north, which can be the world’s longest and bleakest drive. It’s a driving song, like my song “Absolute Loser” [the title track to his 2016 album], although that one was about driving between Portland and Seattle in the rain. This one is more about driving around Stockton at dusk.
There are also some thematic tie-ins to the other songs on this record. It has a similar theme to “Eagles Below Us” in that it’s a song about human connection. It’s also a little bit related to “Holy Rose” with that sense of deciding between letting go of a place or holding onto a place.
Josh brought a lot out of this one. At first, it was more of a double time, almost disco-y song, but he saw it as a half[1]time kind of epic thing. Josh laboured over all these songs, but I have good memories of him being excited about this one. He did a number on it in a good way.
Complete
Here’s my theory about the last three songs on a record. It’s different than the first couple songs on a record because there are a lot of different ways to look at those. You might put a couple of super jams up front to get people invested or, like in this case, put a floaty song up front so that you can get people in a meditative mood.
But while there are a few ways that you can treat the beginning of an album, I always see the end the same way. I feel like the second-to-last song is the last song because the last song is kind of like the epilogue. The album is done and now you’re watching the closing credits. So that makes the third-to-last song really the second-to-last scene. That’s how I’ve always envisioned it. The second-to-last song is really the end, and the last song is the closing credits.
“Complete” is just me singing and playing guitar at the same time in a room. There are no overdubs, I’m just playing to a click track. I tried to make it an invocation, a little bit of a prayer and a wish for everyone: “You shall be complete.” I know we’re all feeling like there are holes in us right now, so it’s a prayer for good, as best as I can say it.
Fruit Bats is back with their second studio album on Merge Records,The Pet Parade, out March 5th.
Lana Del Rey revealed news of her Norman Fucking Rockwell! successor “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” in May, announcing it along with her first published collections of poetry. She teased one unreleased song called “Tulsa Jesus Freak,” tagging frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff, before sharing the new track “Let Me Love You Like a Woman” in October. On January 11th, she’ll share the music video for the Chemtrails title track, and she’s said to expect the whole album some time in March.
No stranger to vintage cinematic flair, Lana Del Rey reaches for both sumptuous glamor and retro horror in her latest video. Bedecked in pearls and lace, the singer and her friends lounge by a pool, watch old home movies, and ride around in a candy-apple-red convertible (where she also shows off that infamous bejeweled mask). A darker theme tugs at the corners of the relaxed scenes when a Wizard of Oz-style tornado sucks up the titular country club. Suddenly, Lana and her crew turn into werewolves and dance around a crackling bonfire, flipping this moneyed portrait into a decadent nightmare.
Since releasing Norman Fucking Rockwell! (among our favourite album’s of 2019), Lana Del Rey did some side projects, but 2021 will be the year Norman finally gets its highly anticipated followup, Chemtrails Over The Country Club (which, like Norman, was produced by Jack Antonoff). “I love it. It’s folky. It’s beautiful. It’s super different from Norman,” Lana said.
The New Album ‘Chemtrails Over The Country Club’ – Out March 19th
The Fat Angel Sings 