New Zealand trio The Beths channel their friendship into high-energy guitar pop with a smart lyrical bite. 2018 was their breakout year, beginning with signing to Carpark Records and Dew Process, before releasing the internationally acclaimed debut album “Future Me Hates Me”, which was heralded as one the stand-out music releases of that year. The Beths have toured relentlessly on the back of Future Me Hates Me, getting audiences hooked on their ebullient sound. After selling out shows across Australia, New Zealand, North America, the UK and Europe in 2018, the band are proving to be one of the most in-demand live acts on the planet.
We are really lucky and grateful that the four of us will be able to get together for this one and play as a full band. We’ll once again be announcing something new, playing some songs and having some yarns. It’ll be on Youtube this Mon/Tue, if you need time-zone assistance comment your location and i’ll help.
Artists like The Beths have been greatly impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. Donations can be any amount of your choosing. If you have the means, your support would be much appreciated!. “Dying To Believe” is taken from The Beths’ forthcoming record, “Jump Rope Gazers”, out July 10, 2020 on Carpark Records.
Artists like The Beths have been greatly impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. Donations can be any amount of your choosing. If you have the means, your support would be much appreciated! “I’m Not Getting Excited” is taken from The Beths’ forthcoming record, “Jump Rope Gazers”, out July 10, 2020 on Carpark Records.
We hope that if you join us you’ll consider donating to the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, which protects and defends the human rights of Black Transgender people, or to Bail Funds.
Songs Featured in this Show:
3:49 i’m not getting excited
10:13 future me hates me
21:45 river run lvl 1
32:36 out of sight
41:33 if swearing makes you nervous cover your ears or something
42:16 idea/intent
THE BETHS ARE:
Elizabeth Stokes,
Jonathan Pearce,
Benjamin Sinclair,
Tristan Deck,
The singer and guitarist of Los Angeles based punk quintet SPANISH LOVE SONGS is referencing his band, but he could just as easily be talking about himself. Since forming in 2014, Spanish Love Songs certainly have been heard, from legions of underground audiences at The Fest and South By Southwest to outlets like NPR, who hailed the group’s 2018 album, “Schmaltz”, as a “wellspring of big ideas, bigger riffs and the biggest possible feelings about love, war, fear and existential crisis.”
“Schmaltz” was an album coloured by guilt and self-doubt, an insular collection of soul-searching songs that found the singer amplifying his grief while kicking back at a world that seemed to be doing its best to keep knocking him down. It was a cathartic album, one that admittedly took a lot of Slocum’s soul to create. (“I don’t want to be the band where each album is me complaining about myself for 40 minutes,” he says.)
So instead, Slocum decided to look outward for Spanish Love Songs’s third album, “Brave Faces Everyone”, released in February 2020 on the band’s new label, Pure Noise Records. Steeped in the same detail-rich storytelling of Bruce Springsteen, The Menzingers and Manchester Orchestra and filtered through the band’s sweat-soaked punk fervor, the songs on “Brave Faces Everyone” represent the situations Slocum and his bandmates — guitarist Kyle McAulay, bassist Trevor Dietrich, drummer Ruben Duarte and keyboardist Meredith Van Woert — experienced during 30-some weeks of rigorous touring during the “Schmaltz” album cycle.
These are character stories set in small-town America and anxious urban jungles alike, unfurling heart-breaking tales of addiction, depression, debt and death juxtaposed alongside looming societal bogeys like mass shootings, the opioid epidemic and climate change. They’re all at once personal vignettes and universal truths of life in the 2010s, the lines blurred between Slocum’s own experiences and those of his friends and acquaintances. Because, as he sings in “Beachfront Property,” “Every city’s the same/Doom and gloom under different names.” These are the things that affect us all.
But for all its emotional heft, Slocum doesn’t see “Brave Faces Everyone” as a pessimistic album. Rather, the album — produced by McAulay at Howard Benson’s West Valley Recording seeks to find balance between realism and optimism. It implores us to harbour less judgment and more empathy, to talk less and listen more. To understand that life never goes off the rails all at once. Rather, it’s a years-long series full of seemingly imperceptible events that snowball into life-altering issues like heroin addiction, mental illness or suicide. But just as things didn’t break overnight, happiness and redemption aren’t as simple as a flip of the switch. It’s a day-by-day, step-by-step climb we have to work to attain.
Ultimately, “Brave Faces Everyone” boldly declares that even though things might be bad, they’re not hopeless. On the appropriately named “Optimism,” Slocum sings, “Help me weather this high tide/But don’t take me out back and shoot me,” while the album-closing title track bears the album’s central thesis: “We were never broken/Life’s just very long.”
Ultimately, Spanish Love Songs are trying to break through that pessimism however they can. Sometimes that’s as simple as a hopeful lyric or soaring chorus to cut the tension in an otherwise weighty song, a brief respite that gives listeners a comforting melody to rally around.
“If you sing something loud enough and long enough,” Slocum muses, “hopefully people are able to find some peace in that.”
Experimenting with more traditional song structures and fewer forwardly caustic moments this time around haven’t dulled the band’s sound. If anything, they’ve accentuated the most important parts of it. When everything is loud and urgent, nothing is. But when Slocum’s voice swells to a roar on a song like “Generation Loss,” the undeniable power grabs you by the collar and forces you to pay attention — and that’s the difference between simply being heard and truly being understood.
It’s not every day you encounter a full-length album with only three tracks, This 38-minute debut LP from San Francisco Bay Area-based rock trio Terry Gross is a krautrock odyssey of epic proportions, and a sustained rock ‘n’ roll explosion you can’t help but move to. Guitarist and vocalist Phil Manley (Trans Am, Life Coach), bassist Donny Newenhouse and drummer Phil Becker co-own San Francisco’s El Studio together—it’s there they started jamming, primarily so as to put the studio itself through its paces, but one thing led to another, and the result is “Soft Opening”. Near-20-minute opener “Space Voyage Mission” is a roving, sci-fi-inspired motorik chug that speeds and slows like a workout for your ears, ending in a psychedelic bit of studio wizardry that sounds as if the song has narrowly escaped being sucked into a black hole. “Worm Gear,” too, is a like watching a flame flicker in slow-motion, with ever-shifting, serrated guitars atop Newenhouse and Becker’s pulsating, pounding low end.
Their loose, organic chemistry burgeoned into a deep camaraderie and a sound both expansive and exacting. The three experienced musicians crafted their first full-length album through the pure joy of playing together with no expectations. With the tapes rolling on their rehearsals, the band captures the exuberance of live performance and elevates those recordings through a deft use of the studio as their collective instrument. On their debut LP Soft Opening, Terry Gross channels their cosmic powers and considerable chops into a gleefully mesmerizing odyssey fit for an arena.
Closer and single “Specificity (Or What Have You)” is Terry Gross at their most accessible, but by then, you’ll have long since left the ground, riding “Soft Opening” into the stratosphere.
Specificity (Or What Have You) available now through Thrill Jockey Records
Peter and David Brewis have been releasing records as Field Music for over 15 years, and in that time a few things about their music has been constant: it’s all erudite and thoughtful, it’s all wonderfully melodic in a very “raised on Paul McCartney” way, and the music is performed and recorded with a clinical precision. Their best songs make the most of their raw skill and stoic formalism, and their more forgettable work strains against the limitations of their apparent repression and uptight musical inclinations.
“Orion on the Street” is definitely in the former category. It’s a song about death and mourning the loss of someone close, and it’s very much written from the “acceptance” stage of grief. The sorts of messy emotions that would characterize the other stages wouldn’t be the best fit for the Brewis aesthetic, but the brothers are exceptionally well suited to capture the graceful clarity of processing loss and seeing some beauty in someone moving on, even if you’re a bit agnostic on what actually comes next. A sparkly piano part and a very George Harrison-y lead guitar part are the most musically beautiful parts of the song, but the most lovely sentiment comes when they reckon with the notion of the afterlife: “Belief in further lives / separate, but true / if I thought you were anywhere / I would be there too.”
The band wrote: “Here’s the video for our new song Orion From The Street, put together by Peter and our multitasking guitar/synth/design whizzkid Kev. Cleadon Mill never looked so cosmic (except to those teens on shrooms back in the day)”.
A new, as yet unnamed album has also been announced for release later in the year.
Chapterhouse were a British shoegazing/alternative rock band from Reading, Berkshire, . Formed in 1987 by Andrew Sherriff and Stephen Patman, the band began performing alongside Spacemen 3. They released two albums entitled Whirlpool (1991) and Blood Music (1993). After the band split in 1994, Sherriff later formed Biocom. The group temporarily reformed in 2008 after being asked to join Ulrich Schnauss onstage to perform his cover version of their song “Love Forever” at the Truck Festival in Oxfordshire. The band finished the brief reunion with two gigs in London (2009–2010) and tours in North America and Japan in 2010.
Chapterhouse took the unusual step of rehearsing and gigging for well over a year before recording even a demo tape. Initially lumped in with the British acid rock genre, this became modified to shoegazing, despite early sojourns including supporting Spacemen 3. They were deemed to have joined fellow shoegazers such as Lush, Moose, Ride and Slowdive.
Bassist Jon Curtis left early on to study, being replaced by Russell Barrett . Chapterhouse signed to the newly formed Dedicated label, releasing a series of singles, including “Pearl”, which featured guest vocals by Rachel Goswell of Slowdive .
The band’s first album, “Whirlpool”, released in 1991, has been cited as one of the genre’s high points, but failed to capture a wider market In the same year, Chapterhouse also appeared in their home town Reading Festival immediately following Nirvana’s performance.
The band’s second album “Blood Music”, stylistically different, was released in 1993. Singles from the album, “She’s a Vision” and “We Are the Beautiful”, were relatively successful. Some copies of Blood Music included a bonus disc “retranslated” by Global Communication, called Pentamerous Metamorphosis that was withdrawn due to a sampling lawsuit, but later reissued in a slightly altered version.
The band then released no further new material other than a double album, Rownderbowt in 1996, compiling their singles, various B-sides, rarities and unreleased demos which featured Slowdive drummer Simon Scott. Sherriff went on to form Bio.com and Rowe went on to play guitar for Mojave 3. Bates formed Cuba and now plays in the British folktronica band Tunng, and Chapterhouse ceased for almost fifteen years.
The music of Chapterhouse was mostly out of print on CD until March 2006, when Cherry Red Records reissued the album Whirlpool with bonus tracks, and for the first time, lyrics.
The band played a version of “Love Forever” with Ulrich Schnauss on the Barn Stage at the 2008 edition of Truck Festival. In response to requests over the years, Chapterhouse played live at Club AC30’s Reverence show at the ICA in November 2009 along with Ulrich Schnauss and Kirsty Hawkshaw. This was preceded by a warm up show at the Luminaire in Kilburn. The band also played at The Scala in London March 2010, and undertook short tours of Japan in April 2010 and North America in May 2010. The North American tour had to be postponed due to the Icelandic ash cloud cancelling flights, stranding Patman in Japan. Chapterhouse rescheduled the North American tour for September and October 2010. No plans were made for any other shows and the band ended the brief reunion in 2010.
Since 1997, Sherriff has been working as a composer/sound designer for an Emmy Award-winning music production company Adelphoi Music. Patman and Bates joined him later in 2001.
The band comprised Andrew Sherriff (guitar/vocals), Stephen Patman (guitar/vocals), Simon Rowe (guitar), Jon Curtis (bass) and Ashley Bates (drums)
It’s a record that “sounds like an AI supercomputer trying to create a ‘70s rock record… Narrated by a drunk boy who’s just come back from tour.” That’s how Perth’s Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are pitching “Shyga! The Sunlight Mound” – an album title best bellowed out loud in your silliest Mighty Boosh voice.
Shyga! is an atomic blast of a listening experience, featuring some of the band’s fastest, loudest material yet. With enough juice to power a rocket, the ripping lead singles, ‘Tally-Ho’ and ‘Mr. Prism’, gave a good indication of what to expect, and came bundled with mind-melting Claymation videos.
If you dug those high-octane nuggets, you’ll be pleased to know the rest of Shyga!scales similar heights of speedy sonic insanity, evoking the strung out chaos of a week-long bender fuelled by boozy hijinks, debauchery, and – to use the band’s own euphemism – “chemical enthusiasm”. The explosively creative SHYGA! is their fourth album in nearly as many years for the Porn Crumpets, who have consistently delivered on the expectations that their brilliantly ridiculous band name has set.
Their ambitious two-part debut “High Visceral” (released back-to-back in 2016 and 2017) almost immediately established their sound, all tie-dyed riffs that looked back to ‘60s psychedelia but injected with the frenetic garage rock crunch of early Tame Impala, Pond, and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Carving up house parties and venues along the way, they cultivated a bulletproof rep as one of Perth’s gnarliest rock shows.
In recent years, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets buzz from out West went national, and then global, allowing the band to spread their headbanging spectacle to Europe, the UK, and Japan. It was in that Groundhog Day blur of touring life – all celebratory late nights and headache-grey-tour-bus mornings – that Shyga! The Sunlight Mound began to take shape.
Forced off the road by the COVID-19 pandemic, Jack McEwan – the singer, shredder, and creative engine of the wild Psychedelic Porn Crumpets locomotive – used the extended off-cycle period to reflect and rejuvenate. That’s the obvious starting point for countless rock records, but where Shyga! immediately distinguishes itself is in rather than slowing down and ruminating on the bizarre reality of touring life, it attempts to sonically recreate its intensity. The blistering energy “reflects the madness, crazy midweek adventures, highs and physical lows of touring,” Jack explains, “an album where every song is adding to a bender,” and paced like a punishing tour schedule, where moments to come up for air are rare and brief.
Blink and you’ll miss it’ Jack notes on the relatively calm opener ‘Big Dijon’, foreshadowing the scorching pace to come in the 40-min listen before the track detonates into ‘Tally-Ho’.
‘I’m getting used to waking up and feeling rough’ he sings between the squiggled guitar-monies of ‘Tripolosaur’, while ‘Pukebox’ is about “getting home from tour and trying to piece together what happened; it’s all a foggy, hazy memory.” .Rather than glorifying their debauchery, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets aren’t above taking the piss out of themselves. ‘The Terrors’ acknowledges that what goes up must come crashing down, with a battering wall of guitars breaking only for a descending melodic chorus that arrives like a comforting rush of endorphins amidst a hangover.
From the surging ‘Mr. Prism’ to the galloping rhythms of ‘Mundungus’ (honestly, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets should win some kind of trophy for naming things) Shyga! is like a runaway rollercoaster, where it often feels like the only thing keeping these songs from going off the rails is to maintain a breakneck forward momentum. It’s a helluva lotta fun, but it can also be exhausting.
There’s no doubting that Shyga! is Psychedelic Porn Crumpets’ most intense release yet. There’s no room for the lengthy, progressive tendencies of High Visceral, paring back the spacier, experimental moments of 2019’s And Now For The Whatchamacallit in favour of the full-throttle nuttiness of setlist favourites like ‘Social Candy’ and ‘Ergophobia’.
The turn to one lightning-paced belter after another might disappoint fans of the trippier parts of the band’s catalogue, and the way the ‘week-long bender’ concept functions can sometimes make Shyga! feel like one big blur. The mid-section especially risks sounding like too much of the same. But even though it functions like one, epic-sized 40-minute jam, there are dynamics to be found. Warm Melotron and warped string and flute patches occasionally bubble to the surface between the heaving wall of riffs and drums, and the band’s trademark sense of playful humour not only separates them from your standard issue guitar band but finds them pulling absurdist inspiration from the most unlikely of places.
The crunchy jangle of ‘Hats Off To The Green Bins’ channels the dread of cleaning up for a rental inspection, and ‘Sawtooth Monkfish’ is dotted with the vintage sounds of retro Japanese arcade games. “Pretty much a homage to all the pinball we were playing while touring around America,” Jack notes.
‘Mango Terrarium’ sounds like The Beatles had survived the ‘60s and became a ‘70s hard blues band, and the title describes what Jack’s home studio looked like, strewn with empty bottles after he became obsessed with Mango-infused beer. (“My brother described it as what a bee would taste when it extracts nectar from a flower.”)
It may have a penchant for the ridiculous, but the album’s craft is dead serious. They know how to offer an exhilarating album experience, and you can tell Jack paid a lot of attention to the album’s structure and sequencing. “There’s a lot of intentional[ly] shorter tracks on the record, aiming to boost the song following directly after to maintain that feeling of constantly moving forward and upward.”
There’s a method to the ‘Everything Up to 11’ madness, and after all the face-melting fretwork and hectic energy, Shyga! actually ends on a wholesome note. ‘Every old man tells me the same, live while you’re young and enjoy each day’ Jack wistfully intones over the frazzled plucking of closing track ‘The Tally of Gurney Gridman’.
It may not be breaking new ground but “SHYGA! The Sunlight Mound” proves that Psychedelic Porn Crumpets have flair and imagination to spare. It’s arguably their most daring, cohesive set yet and definitely Australia’s first great psych-rock saga of 2021.
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets “Shyga! The Sunlight Mound” is out 5th February.
Juliana Hatfield has announced new album “Blood” that will be out May 14th via American Laundromat Records. Juliana Hatfield has announced the release of her 19th studio album, Blood, which will be out on May 14 via American Laundromat Records. Coinciding with the announcement, she has shared the album’s lead single, “Mouthful of Blood.” Check out the song and see the cover art for Blood ,
I think these songs are a reaction to how seriously and negatively a lot of people have been affected by the past four years,” states Hatfield in a press release regarding her new album. “But it’s fun, musically. There’s a lot of playing around. I didn’t really have a plan when I started this project. I always love coming up with melodies and then trying to fit words into them—it’s like doing a puzzle. And I always find places to use the Mellotron flutes and strings, on every album, because those sounds are so beautiful to me. They are a nice counterpoint to the damaged lyrical content.” Hatfield also speaks a bit on the album’s creation, in which she was forced to record in her home in Connecticut as a result of the pandemic: “Usually I work in a studio. I did more than half the work in my room—with Jed helping me to troubleshoot the technology, and helping with building and arranging some of the songs and then I finished up with additional overdubs and mixing with engineer James Bridges at Q Division Studios in Somerville, MA.”
Hatfield’s most recent album, Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police, a cover album of songs by The Police, was released in 2019. “Mouthful of Blood” released on American Laundromat Records, Inc. Released on: 2021-01-28
Led by powerhouse vocalist, guitarist and ukulelist Willow Hawks, Cleveland quartet The Sonder Bombs are back with the follow-up to their buzzed-about 2018 debut “Modern FemaleRockstar”. As its title suggests, “Clothbound”—produced in quarantine by Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Beach Bunny, Modern Baseball) finds the band interweaving a multitude of ideas, both lyrically and instrumentally. On “k.,” Hawks delivers biting kiss-offs like “Treat your pearls like shit / You’ve always been entitled to it / Run your morgue mouth quick / Parseltongue and electric tips” amid bright ukelele and a pop-punk chug that would make Paramore proud, building to a hardcore breakdown.
Standouts like “The Brink” and closer “Play It By Fear” blend hard-charging punk and hushed pop, excelling in both aspects without selling either short Clothbound is at its best in this sweet spot, with Hawks wearing her emotions on her song writing’s sleeve (“Feeling is fine / You don’t need to be tough / All of the time ’/ We could hit Netflix and a box of wine,” she sings on single “Crying Is Cool”) and couching them in bittersweetly ebullient, multidimensional rock. The Sonder Bombs take aim at the sophomore slump on Clothbound and let loose with both barrels.
I can’t believe the day is here! We’ve been waiting so long to bring you the brand new The Sonder Bombs album entitled “Clothbound”. Please take a listen and remember it’s avail in UK/EU via Big Scary Monsters and in AUZ/NZ via Dew Process. We are so very proud of this band and the album they made!
“a revved-up and catchy rocker about urging your friends to get emotionally vulnerable.“Crying Is Cool” has a big pop-punk chorus, and its lyrics are fully sincere: “No one ever tells us it’s OK/ But it’s OK/ Yeah, you are safe.”– Stereogum
“the lead single, “What Are Friends For?” It nails a balance between subdued, folk-tinged indie punk and bigger, more anthemic rock, and it’s a very fun song that you’ll be humming along to before the first listen even ends.”– Brooklyn Vegan
“The band’s songwriting is more focused and concise than ever, Willow Hawks’ vocals take on a new shimmer as they float atop nostalgic instrumental arrangements that hammer home the quartet’s new and improved sound.”- Indie Mixtape
The Sonder Bombs – “Crying Is Cool” (Official Music Video) From their album “Clothbound” Out now via Take This To Heart Records/Big Scary Monsters (UK/EU)
Frontier Records’ third Lilys re-issue is here! This remastered edition of “A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns” features a previously unreleased track, “G. Cobalt Franklin,” replacing “Glosseder” from the original 1994 10” LP. The songs “Elsa,” “Coby,” “Timber,” and “Hymn” — originally recorded in 1994 during the demoing process for Eccsame The Photon Band — were shelved, and then quietly released in 2000 on the long-out-of-print Lilys/Aspera Ad Astra split EP. “Ginger” is as sweetly sung as any song written in the indie rock canon. These bonus tracks, etc, are also excellent. SOOOO glad to see this reissued!
Tracks 1-5 were performed by Harry Evans, Paul Martin, and Kurt Heasley. Additional vocals by Joey Sweeney. Tracks 6-10 were performed by Erik Sahd and KurtHeasley.
‘Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too’ is the debut EP from Leeds-based artist Amber Strawbridge, someone who records under the name Bored At My Grandmas House. In the same vein as a brace of well-received singles throughout 2020, ‘Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too’ is a collection of five warm, lo-fi studio recordings influenced by shoegaze, dream-pop and indie-rock. Nothing about the sound of Leeds-based songwriter Amber Strawbridge is new. Let’s make this clear from the start. But if you happen to be a lover of warm, dreamy indie-rock with shoegaze like me, her alter ego Bored At My Grandmas House might bring a few moments of delight into your cold and grey lockdown reality. And yes, I fall for that sound less often than I used to in the past but occasionally it happens and the sounds of all the singles of her upcoming EP Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too so far really spoke to me. This title-track I’m showing you right here is a perfect example. And yes, she also has a really great artist name which definitely roots in a real-life-experience because she started to write songs when she was in fact bored at that said place. The EP is out next week, please give it a spin.
Debut EP from Leeds based 19 year old Amber Strawbridge (Aka Bored At My Grandmas House). Starting out as an exercise in passing time when she was quite literally bored at her Grandma’s place. Playing all the instruments and self-recording most of the EP at home, Amber took the tracks to Alex Greaves (Working Men’s Club, Bdrmm) at the Nave studio for live drums and some final mixing flourishes, leaving an EP full of lo-fi charm but with a studio feel.
Inspired by Slowdive, Wolf Alice and Alvvays, Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too showcases Amber’s singular vision of indie-pop, on an EP that deals with topics like humanity, nostalgia and the current refugee crisis.
my new EP ‘Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too’ is available to order now,
The Fat Angel Sings 