Michael Nau is just 6 months on from putting out his first album under his own name and is now preparing for it’s follow up with a sense of immediacy. A new collection of twelve songs entitled Some Twist represents some of his most sharp and moving work to date, and finds the Maryland-born singer songwriter looking to move quickly enough to avoid some of the stop/start nature that had previously left large gaps of time falling between his output.
While last year’s Mowing and its standout single ‘Love Survive’ can be viewed as commercial and critical successes for Nau, it was the act of putting the album out to begin with that was perhaps the biggest victory. After veering away from two different outfits he had fronted in the mid-to-late aughts, Nau had spent an a good deal of time overthinking his next move to a semi-paralyzing degree:
‘‘Mowing felt like a success for me because I had just spent so long with no idea if was ever going to put out a record again. I felt like I was going to write music for the rest of my life and maybe go play some shows, but in the back of my mind I wasn’t sure I still had the courage to put an album out into the world. I spent so much time passing through, working on things and then just throwing them away and moving on to the next thing. So really, it was a success because it came out at all. At the time I would tell people in my life that I was working on a record, but nothing would happen. So when it finally came out it felt like getting over a wall in a way, because I had somehow forgotten how to put things together and finish them.’
Upon the urging of others around him, Nau did eventually put Mowing together and saw fans and the critical community alike respond in 2016. “His masterful instinct for arrangement, along with his reedy voice, earns Nau a place in the rock’n’roll underdogs’ Hall of Fame”. Shortly thereafter, the uplifting single ‘Love Survive’ caught the attention of various BBC Radio DJs & programmers leading to an extended run of airplay that has spread to a brand new audience throughout Europe.
But Nau is resisting the urge to fall into the same habit of tinkering for too long again. Some Twist was recorded just after Mowing saw its release in Europe, wrapping it up in early January 2017. February saw Michael debut some of the new material live on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic. March will see the album’s first single ‘Good Thing’ released, a driving flurry of introspection laid within a piano and fuzz arrangement.
Some Twist will see its release on June 16th of this year via Full Time Hobby. Overall, the album splits its time between feeling both energized and unhurried, while featuring the same penetrating songwriting that has led fans to latch onto Nau since he arrived.
Flat Worms really belt-sanded us with their Red Hot Sand 7” vinyl single on Volar, and we are proud as new papas to present their debut LP. They continue their ride on a buzzsaw wave of feedback-tipped riffs into the middle distance, smog choked sunset receding in the rearview, a thousand yard dead-pan surgically pinned to a high octane set of boredom energized punk pistons. One of the best albums of the year. Raging but with style, panache and tunes. Debut album of LA post-punk band featuring Will Ivy (Dream Boys, Wet Illustrated, Bridez), Justin Sullivan (Kevin Morby, The Babies) and Tim Hellman (Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, Sic Alps).
Flat Worms – an ears-a-ringing missive from the end of the cul-de-sac, the mirage of direction wavering above a mid-sized American suburb at dusk, constellations bleached black by the sprawl. A little Wipers, a little Wire, and a lot of late-capitalist era anxious energy – Flat Worms scratch the itch quite nicely, we think. It’s out on Castle Face Records October 20th.
“I feel like this record kind of saved me,” says Jane Wiedlin, of her duo Elettrodomestico’s lush psych-pop debut “If You’re A Boy or a Girl”. “I was in such a dark place, and now I’ve finally come out of it. That’s the power of music, whether you’re writing or listening to it.”
David Bowie’s death in January of 2016 had plunged Wiedlin into a deep depression. “He was my lifelong idol,” she explains. “I wasn’t even a teenager when I discovered his music and just became obsessed with him. I don’t claim that my music sounds like him, because he’s a genius and I’m just regular, but he was just so good. It’s kind of a cliche, but he was otherworldly, he was so good. I think in the future, people are going to look back on him as really standing out as a 20th century musician. So when he died, I sank into this insane depression, and just started writing like a maniac, because I didn’t know how to handle my feelings.” She’d met fellow musician Pietro Straccia recently while he was recording a solo album with Travis Kasperbauer, who’d also go on to produce the Elettrodomestico album, at Wiedlin’s home studio. Something about their approaches to songwriting and arranging had just automatically clicked; she’d contributed some harmonic backing vocals to his album, and they’d sensed in one another kindred spirits.
Living in Hawaii and immersing herself in Bowie’s discography, as well as going down to her local tavern to check out the acts playing there, finding inspiration in the musicality of native Hawaiian musicians in particular, Wiedlin started writing lyrics and sending them to Straccia. Long-distance musical collaboration can be difficult for some, but the duo’s bond was stronger than even they knew, manifesting, well, psychically. “It was such a weird thing,” Straccia says. “The moment she sent me the lyrics, before I even received them, there was a music that came to my mind. The intention behind it was already [complete]. This happened again with another song, where she’d written [her lyrics] down on a piece of paper. I didn’t look at them, I just folded it and I put it in my pocket. In that moment. just by reading the title, I knew that the song was done. That was ‘Mail Order Bride.’
If You’re A Boy or a Girl thrums with emotion, immediacy, and personality. It plays smartly with gender and sexuality, with both musicians taking on “male” and “female” parts in a way that feels fluid and refreshing. It’s meticulously crafted, right down to the last textural detail, but it lacks the sense of distance that big-time pop can have. Wiedlin, of course, is perhaps best known for her time in The Go-Gos, though she’s also done plenty of work as a solo musician, co-written with huge artists like Keith Urban, has a vibrant acting and voice acting career, and is a lifelong animal rights activist. And perhaps a little bit of Elettrodomestico’s urgent feel is due to her original punk spirit. “My style of playing [guitar] is really rudimentary more than anything,” she laughs. “It’s punk. I just play rhythm guitar, and I like a distorted sound, and I like to play kind of jagged things, so it was fun—when I got to play guitar it added a little something to the mix.” Her favorite punk band is the Buzzcocks, and one can definitely hear a Shelley/Devoto-esque melodicism and sass in Elettrodomestico’s sound.
There’s more than the Buzzcocks and Bowie in there, though. Wiedlin’s love of the Beatles is well-documented, and she certainly believes that her early childhood fascination with the Fab Four has played out in her career-long interest in harmonics, which comes into sharp focus here. Both she and Straccia loved Nirvana dearly, and one can hear a bit of that group’s dark heart and desire to approach alienation from a place as personal as it is universal. And Straccia’s found inspiration for their psychic musical connection in a classic, beloved Italian pop duo—Mogol-Battisti. “Lucio Battisti, an Italian singer that passed away now, he’s the equivalent of the Beatles in Italy, basically,” he explains. “His melodies, he’s an Italian hero. He teamed up with this poet [Mogol] very early on. I always admired [their partnership] in a way. [Battisti] would go and present the song to [Mogol], and [Battisti] would just kind of sing gibberish, and then [Mogol] would be able to extract from the melody these beautiful words. They sit so beautifully. There were already the lyrics in the melody in a sort of way. He just needed to extract them, make that emotion verbal. I think something very similar happened with this. The lyrics inspired the melody, and vice versa. It’s such a cool thing.”
The respect and care Wiedlin and Straccia have for one another lights up Elettrodomestico, and the joy they take in one another’s friendship is evident not just from the way they talk about one another, but in the music itself. And they love pop music as a whole as much as they love one another. “Music is one of the only things that really unites people and is universal, which I love,” Wiedlin says. “It makes me happy to be part of something like that, because it’s really positive. The last years in the Go-Gos, I started analyzing what I was doing, and I realized that what I get to do as my job is bring joy to people. How much more awesome does life get than that? ‘Cause the world’s fucking depressing.”
As a parting shot, Wiedlin brings up naysayers who might think she’s too old to still be out there (a concern which certainly doesn’t plague discussions of male musicians the way it does those who aren’t). “This is what I do! And I think I’m going to have this be the first and last interview that I discuss [age] because it’s just dumb,” she says fiercely. “What do you care? If you like the music, what do you care? I know that’s this huge stumbling thing that we’re going to get past or not get past. But you know, with the Go-Gos, it was that we were chicks. People just couldn’t wrap their heads around it. Maybe I can be the new face of age or something.” Her laugh sparkles; it’s clear that she’s not done until she says she is. And we, as pop listeners and fans, are all the luckier for it.
Sharon Van Etten has become a force to be reckoned with within the world of Indie music over the last eight years, and it all began in 2009 with the release of her debut album “Because I Was In Love”.
Sharon Van Etten has announced (it was) because i was in love, a deluxe remixed and remastered reissue of her debut 2009 album featuring two bonus tracks. It will be released digitally on all services and platforms, but the vinyl will be available exclusively through Vinyl Me Please and Van Etten’s online store. The vinyl version will include new artwork and liner notes. Of the album, Van Etten wrote in a statement: “It was an innocent and beautiful record, which some of my newer fans may not even know about. This seemed like the perfect time to remix and remaster it, and give it a new life.”
She opened up quite a bit about what her life was like around the making of the record and the different twists and turns of recording it, and talked about its new reissue as (it was) “Because I Was In Love”.
A limited edition, remastered vinyl reissue of Sharon’s debut, now titled (it was) Because I Was In Love,
‘(it was) because i was in love’ out November 17th, 2017.
Black Lips will release new album Satan’s Graffiti or God’s Art? on Vice Records. The album was produced by Sean Lennon and features guest appearances by Sean’s mom, Yoko Ono, as well as Saul Adamczewski of Fat White Family. You can check out first single “Can’t Hold On,” along with album art and tracklist, below.
The band will be on tour later this spring, playing Birmingham’s Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath. Tickets for that show are on sale now. All dates are listed below.
Saul of Fat White Family is also in The Moonlandingz, whose new album was also co-produced by Sean Lennon and also features Yoko Ono, and came out today. Black Lips were born of DIY ethic, working their way from sweaty basement shows in Georgia to huge crowds at international music festivals (including a performance at Fun Fun Fun Fest that appears in Terrence Malick’s forthcoming film Song to Song) to tours in such far flung locales as India, Jordan, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraqi Kurdistan, the United Arab Emirates, and many more. Their latest album, Satan’s graffiti or God’s art? vindicates Black Lips for sticking it out through many years of shifting trends and buzz bands; a sonically captivating document that is as creatively unhinged as it is precisely executed, one of the rawest and most expansive albums in the band’s storied history.
Almost five decades ago, the toll of a bell and rolling thunder marked the conception of an ear splittingly monolithic riff. In that moment, Black Sabbath and the sound of Heavy Metal were forged. The band embarked on what Ozzy describes as “the most incredible adventure you could think of”, a journey that would go on to define a genre.
Black Sabbath performing “N.I.B.” live for the very last time.
“The End” is a celebration of Black Sabbath’s final hometown concert at Birmingham’s Genting Arena on 4th February, 2017. This unforgettable farewell show from one of the biggest bands in the world will be released by Eagle Vision on 17th November 2017.
“To bring it all back home after all these years was pretty special,” Black Sabbath said in a statement. “It was so hard to say goodbye to the fans, who’ve been incredibly loyal to us through the years. We never dreamed in the early days that we’d be here 49 years later doing our last show on our home turf.”
“We’re definitely finishing in Birmingham,” he said. “We’re not going to re-form after five years and say, “Because of public demand …” Black Sabbath has been up and down and ’round the mulberry bush so many times.”
Ezra Furman will return with new album ‘Transangelic Exodus’ on 9th February 2018.
Transangelic Exodusis a new landmark for the American singer-songwriter: “Not a concept record, but almost a novel, or a cluster of stories on a theme, a combination of fiction and a half-true memoir,” according to its author. “A personal companion for a paranoid road trip. A queer outlaw saga.”
Furman, who’s queer and gender-fluid, speaks from experience. “What’s essential is the mood—paranoid, authoritarian, the way certain people are stigmatised. It’s a theme in American life right now, and other so-called democracies,” he continued. The inclusion of the word “trans” in the album’s title was similarly deliberate.
Furman also said he wanted to make the new record feel “more original,” a process that involved multiple demo versions and rearrangements. He’s renamed his backing band for the occasion: formerly known as the Harpoons and then as the Boy-Friends, they’re now called the Visions. Truthfully, none of this information is required to enjoy “Love You So Bad”—it’s just a good song by Ezra Furman.
Says Swans frontman and head of Young God Records Michael Gira, James Jackson Toth’s “got that picaresque quality that Dylanhad in his heyday, wherein the shambolic narrator undergoes various travails and epiphanies—harrowing, bleak and darkly comical—in the course of a narrative, then leaves you mystified, both smiling and sad.” They are collections of outtakes, demos and songs that never, for one reason or another, made it onto his other recording output.
Toth’s Law, Volume II
The response to the first volume of home recordings (Toth’s Law Vol. I, now deleted) was really positive, so here’s a second batch, with a third (and likely final) installment to come before the end of the year. All songs here written / recorded sometime between 2008 and 2016.
This time I thought I’d provide a little context by offering a few brief notes on the songs: “Drug Sniffing Dogs”
About conflicts of interest and cognitive dissonance. I was probably also thinking about Fugazi’s “Great Cop.” “Paralyzed”
Considered (but not recorded) for the upcoming One Eleven Heavy project (shhhhhh!). This song has been kicking around, in various forms, since at least 1998. Can’t seem to get it exactly right. “You Could Have a Job”
Self-explanatory. “Hall of Mirrors”
The first of two songs re-recorded for the Carlos The Second album, Regal Beast (available elsewhere on Bandcamp). “Art of War”
Written after being challenged to write a jingle about a work of literature. After the first few lines it went somewhere else. “Rockabye Kid”
Recorded with the Briarwood Virgins band around the time of the Briarwood LP, left off the record for reasons I no longer remember. Full band version will be released on limited edition single later this year; this demo version originally appeared on a scandalously limited lathe cut 7” released on the Sonido Polifonico label. “Don’t Let Love Make a Liar Out of You”
Eventually re-recorded for the album Regal Beast by Carlos The Second, a band I co-founded with good friend and collaborator Ryan “Coupler’ Norris, and featuring guest vocals by old pal Langhorne Slim. This is the original, previously unreleased demo version, exclusive to this release. “One Can’t Only Love”
A sort of ‘answer song’ to the similarly titled “One Can Only Love,” found on the most recent Wooden Wand album, Clipper Ship (Three Lobed Records, 2017). Still not sure which side I’m on. “Fuzzy’s Smokehouse”
A tribute to the operator of said smokehouse, and a very dear friend. “Everything I’ve Lost”
A sequel to my own song “Collateral Damage,” also about a dog. Dogs pop up in a lot of my songs.
As always, I reserve the right to delete this release without notice (and probably will) so grab it while you can.
Déjà Vu might be the preferred choice of critics, no doubt due to the presence of Neil Young, but CSN, the trio’s glorious debut is arguably a much superior representation of their sound, and certainly a much purer one. And while some have described CSN as the ‘60s first true ‘supergroup,’ the same title could also be applied to Cream, who’d already formed and broken up long before Crosby, Stills and Nash had even made their first recording.
David Crosby, having been kicked out of The Byrds during recording sessions for 1968’s The Notorious Byrd Brothers, loitered around Laurel Canyon, pondering over his next move. It wasn’t until he hooked up with GrahamNash (ex-Hollies) and Stephen Stills that the idea of forming a new band became a real possibility.
Nash remembers: “We were in Joni’s living room – or was it Cass’s kitchen? – and David and Stephen began singing “You Don’t Have To Cry.” I asked them to sing it again then I added my harmony to it. The heavens opened: it was an unbelievable sound and we knew we had to make music together.”
In England they approached Apple, the independent label founded by The Beatles, but were rejected after hearing what they were given. CSN returned to America where, thanks to the enthusiasm of David Geffen and AhmetErtegun, CSN were subsequently offered a contract with Atlantic Records, the same label that would soon sign Led Zeppelin. Stills dominated the recording of the album. Apart from drums, handled by Dallas Taylor, he played nearly all of the instruments on the album. Nash played acoustic guitar on two tracks and Crosby rhythm guitar on a few. Stills played all the bass, organ, and lead guitar parts, as well as acoustic guitar on his own songs.
Recorded at Wally Heider’s Studio III in Los Angeles in early 1969, and released in May that same year, Crosby, Stills & Nash would go on to eclipse anything by The Byrds, The Hollies, or even BuffaloSpringfield. Also, by employing their surnames in the band’s title, instead of adopting an actual name, such as The Zombies, Jefferson Airplane etc, meant that CSN were already destined to stand out.
Right from opening Acoustic Guitars of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (written about Judy Collins) and when those magical three voices blend – you realise you’re in the presence of something very special. Although the song is 7:24 minutes long , Its a marathon-like ode to his failed relationship with singer Judy Collins. Progressive-folk, raga, country-blues, even Spanish lyrics, “Suite” is an opus that takes the listener on a personal and deeply moving journey, and remains the one song that CSN should be best remembered for. Nash’s catchy “Marrakesh Express” might seem a bit twee now, at least to modern ears, yet back in the day, even a title such as that meant it was fully loaded with all manner of connotations. It’s followed by the stunning ethereal beauty of “Guinnevere” sashaying into your living room with a softly plucked Acoustics. Then you get hit with the full harmonious power and beauty of those three voices as a wall of one. When the trio first got together in Joni Mitchell’s house – they noticed the ‘timber’ of the combo.
Stills’ “You Don’t Have To Cry” is the song which started it all, and is a delightful country-blues number complemented by some exquisite three-part harmonies, followed by the trippy “Pre-Road Downs,” written by Nash, and which closed side one of the original record.
Flip the disc, and we begin with the iconic “Wooden Ships,” which would turn up on the Jefferson Airplane album “Volunteers” in November of 1969 (it was a co-write with Paul Kantner) and I’ve always loved both versions – a strange hybrid of Soulful Rock that seemed to belong to California in 1969. CSN’s original take is shorter and amps up the Guitar and Organ . The bass and rhythm section is so warm and sweet but it’s the Stills vocal followed by Crosby and back again that impresses . The lyrics describe a handful of survivors living in a post-apocalyptic world. The song was included in the Woodstock movie, thus helping to propel the group’s popularity ever further. The gentle “Lady Of The Island,” written by Nash, is a delicate love-song devoted to JoniMitchell, while “Helplessly Hoping” picks up where “You Don’t Have To Cry” left off, full of delicious harmonies and subtle acoustic guitar.
Crosby’s “Long Time Gone” had been floating around David’s head for a while, before nailing the master (a very early demo was included on the Voyage box set). Stills explained the process: “So with a song like “Long TimeGone,” I’d say, ‘Cros, go home.’ David would come back in the morning, and I’d say, ‘So, how do you like your song?’”
Clearly, Stills’ experience working in various studios over the years, meant that he knew exactly what to do when it came to overdubbing his instruments, as evidenced on “49 Bye-Byes,” a tune practically built from the ground up thanks to Stills’ knowledge of recording technology.
On the cover the members are, left to right, Nash, Stills, and Crosby, for no particular reason, the reverse of the order of the album title. The photo was taken by their friend and photographer Henry Diltz before they came up with a name for the group. They found an abandoned house with an old, battered sofa outside, located at 815 Palm Avenue, West Hollywood, across from the Santa Palm car wash that they thought would be a perfect fit for their image. A few days later they decided on the name “Crosby, Stills, and Nash”. To prevent confusion, they went back to the house a day or so later to re-shoot the cover in the correct order, but when they got there they found the house had been reduced to a pile of timber
Dallas Taylor can be seen looking through the window of the door on the rear of the sleeve. In the expanded edition, however, he is absent. The original vinyl LP was released in a gatefold sleeve that depicted the band members in large fur parkas with a sunset in the background on the gatefold (shot in Big Bear, California), as well as the iconic cover art. A long folded page inside displayed the album credits, lyrics, track listing,
The truly dedicated listener will likely want the 2006 HDCD expanded edition, which includes early takes of “TeachYour Children,” “Song With No Words,” “Do For The Others,” a tender folk ballad by Stills, and a cover of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’.” the group continued recording that year and the HDCD disc has four bonus tracks come from those sessions. “Do For The Others” would eventually show on “Stephen Stills” – his debut solo album from late 1970. The second it opens – you can hear why its been included on this Expanded CD Edition – not only is this song gorgeous to listen too – it’s beautifully recorded – essentially a Demo with Stills on Lead Guitar while the other two harmonise. It’s a genuine wow. Second up is another harmony winner in “Song With No Words” where they “dah dah” the melody that would eventually appear on David Crosby’s magnificent “If I Could Only Remember My Name” debut solo album in 1971. Truly beautiful is the only way to describe the Trio doing Fred Neil’s classic “Everybody’s Talkin'” made famous by Nilsson’s cover as used in the movie “Midnight Cowboy”. Crosby describes it in the liner notes as “Stills at his best…” There’s a demo of the “DéjàVu” classic “Teach Your Children” which is nice but nothing as good as the magical trio that preceded it. Fans will know that there are five other ‘outtakes’ from the period on the “Carry On” 4CD Box Set (1991) – one day we might get a Deluxe Edition 2CD set covering the event in its entirety.
While Crosby, Stills & Nash can never betray its hippie, idealistic origins, the record itself provides a timeless window into the lives of three young men whose unique, creative chemistry would inadvertently give rise to a whole new musical genre, one that included Poco, America, and most famously, The Eagles.
Years afterwards, Crosby would go on to sum up that special chemistry: “For whatever reasons, I think you get very few records like that in your life, which you can put on twenty years later and they still hold up. To this day, that first record comes on, and you don’t want to take it off or skip a tune. You just want to let it run.”
David Crosby – vocals; guitars on “Guinevere”; rhythm guitar on “Wooden Ships” and “Long Time Gone”
Stephen Stills – vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards, percussion all tracks except “Guinevere” and “Lady of the Island”
Graham Nash – vocals; rhythm guitar on “Marrakesh Express” and “Pre-Road Downs”; acoustic guitar on “Lady of the Island”
Dallas Taylor – drums on “Pre-Road Downs,” “Wooden Ships,” “Long Time Gone,” and “49 Bye-Byes”
Jeff Lynne’s ELO packed London’s enormous Wembley Stadium to the rafters this past June with a greatest-hits set featuring many of the band’s most classic songs including “Mr. Blue Sky,” “Evil Woman,” and “All Over theWorld.” Now, that gig is getting a wide release this Friday, November 17th. Wembley or Bustwill arrive on that date from Columbia Records in a variety of formats: 2CD/1DVD; 2CD/1BD; 2 CD; and 3LP.
Jeff Lynne’s ELO performing Telephone Line (Live at Wembley Stadium). (C) 2017 Big Trilby Records, under exclusive license to Columbia Records,
Recorded on June 24th, the Wembley concert has been described by recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Lynne as “the best time I ever had in music” and “beyond anything I could have imagined.” The upcoming release preserves the 23-song marathon setlist, which in addition to the famous ELO songs, also included The TravelingWilburys’ “Handle with Care” – a particularly poignant inclusion now after the untimely passing of Lynne’s friend and bandmate, Tom Petty. The nostalgic ballad “When I Was a Boy,” from ELO’s acclaimed 2015 album All Alone in the Universe, was also played.
You can watch the trailer for Wembley or Bust at the link below, and the track listing and pre-order links are also available now! Look for this joyful release this Friday, November 17th
