Crying began as a chiptune/power pop band who embraced their love for stadium rock to write infectiously melodic tunes on a massive scale. The new incarnation retains Elaiza Santos‘ personal, conversational vocal delivery put over progressive guitar riffs, spaced out synths and gargantuan, energizing production. Put your fear of change aside and enter into the new era of Crying. Band is awesome live too, I was introduced to this band when I listened to ‘Beyond the Fleeting Gales’ . That record is probably the best record I have heard this past decade! This band truly is magical and is now one of my favorite bands of all time!
Band Members
Elaiza Santos – Vocals
Ryan Galloway – Guitar and Synth
Kynwyn Sterling – Drums
Unless you lived in the Washington DC metro area in the early aughts, it’s likely you’ve missed out on Chad Clark’s Beauty Pill. Founded around the turn of the millennium, put on hiatus in 2007 when Clark was stricken with a rare heart condition, and revived a few years later, after he recovered, it’s post-rock with an undertone of angularity appropriate to its label, Dischord. When Beauty Pill’s songs do have lyrics, they’re some of the strangest and most philosophical we’ve heard. Start with this EP — and particularly its darkly comic, retro-futurist title track — and then devour the whole back catalog.
From the album The Cigarette Girl From The Future Deluxe expanded reissue available on Butterscotch Records
Young Jesus, are a indie rock band born in Chicago and now residing in Los Angeles, they have just signed with Saddle Creek Records with an album release due February 2018. Their lead single is nearly 10 minute track that wanders all over the place. Herre’s a little something about the band.
Young Jesus, looks to communicate the tensions between proximity and distance, chaos and order. On their upcoming debut record S/T, released by Saddle Creek, the band focuses on seemingly small moments in everyday life: phone calls with Mom, landscapes along the highway, crows in a tree. Yet with time these strange intimacies add up to a life. A life full of anxiety, confusion, sadness, joy, boredom, and ultimately wonder.
Band Members
John Rossiter (Guitar/Vox)
Kern Haug (Drums)
Marcel Borbon (Bass)
Eric Shevrin (Keys/Vox)
Acclaimed US electro pop duo Sylvan Esso bought out their warmly received second LP “What Now” out this year . For quite some time this blog-hyped, neon-synth deploying duo from North Carolina have been in the peripheral vision of the cool kidz’s vision.
The North Carolina folk-meets-electro duo return with a bigger, bolder take on their sound with WhatNow?While the instrumentals are as euphoric as ever, the album also reflects the troubled and anxious environment in which it was created.
“I think we definitely write music about exactly how we’re feeling at any given moment. When I listen to it, I hear how anxious we were and I also hear how joyous we were. I hear the claustrophobia in the production of what we were working with, and even lyrically, I think I hear us looking around for meaning…” – NickSanborn says on the origins of the album’s title, selected in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.
They write bedroom-pop (or is it on-the-go commuter headphone pop?)
Comprising of vocalist Amelia Meath from acclaimed indie folk outfit Mountain Man and producer Nick Sanborn, the pair issued debut LP Sylvan Esso to sizeable praise in May 2014, scoring widespread acclaim and a place on the US Top 40 Album Chart.
Signed to Loma Vista Recordings “What Now” received similar praise,The LPs lead single Die Young has scored almost a million YouTube views and a recent BBC 6 Music session for Lauren Laverne has spread word of group’s beguiling electro-pop .
In their current state of designed perpetual flux WIBG has found some serious footing. Since 2012 Justin Fowler, and Dan Galucki have consistently churned out shimmering, spasmodic psych rock of an exceptional degree. Since joined by Nathan Moore and Cory Gray in 2016, the crew has found a sort of chaotic cohesion. Many tours across the United States and Europe with the likes of FUZZ, Built to Spill and countless other groups of questionable individuals have left WIBG wise, weathered and thankful for the opportunity to shred. On tip toes and with bloody hands WIBG creates something more than songs. Their singular style is an organic cacophony of scattered metallic sway and lascivious throbbing that will leave you writhing and shaking into the wee hours.
King Gizzard have announced plans to release their fourth studio album Polygondwanaland, and it will be free to download later this week.
“This album is Free,” wrote the band announced. “Free as in, free. Free to download and if you wish, free to make copies. Make tapes, make CD’s, make records.” “If u wanna make cassettes I don’t really know what you would do,” say the band. “Be creative. We did it once but it sounded really shit. Maybe try the WAVs idano. Ever wanted to start your own record label? GO for it! Employ your mates, press wax, pack boxes.”
Along with the new record and studio advice, the band have shared new song ‘Crumbling Castle’:
Arguably the most overtly political act on the folk-rock scene right now, we suspected this new album from AlyndaLee Segarra and co would be a bit of a call to arms. Indeed, it is, and it delivers. “The Navigator” is the sixth full-length studio album by Hurray for the Riff Raff, released by ATO Records last March 2017. The album was produced by Paul Butler, a member of the band The Bees. This powerful album has musical diversity, consistent quality and gripping songwriting all while feeling effortless,
“The question of identity is touched upon throughout the songs here (national, political, gender), but in terms of musical identity, Hurray for the Riff Raff know exactly who they are.
Neil Pennycook returned as Meursault this year, with the three-year break for the project allowing Pennycook to recalibrate; the result is an album of majestic, sorrowful beauty and touches of light. From the scratchy yet delightful Pissing On Bonfires / Kissing With Tongues to the slicker, more fully formed Something For The Weakened, Scottish band Meursault have always displayed a charm and panache that set them apart from their peers full of gorgeous melodies and gentle, lilting harmonies. . Raw emotion and personal tumult have been fertile ground for Neil Pennycook & co. but it’s not all sad strumming and “woe is me” laments; their songs bite and swoon and soar, sometimes softly, sometimes majestically. And while they’ve been getting steadily more uptempo and polished in their writing, Pennycook’s voice can still stab like a dagger of ice to the heart.
His star burnt only briefly but to lovers of 1980s power pop Phil Seymour was a shining light. This collection of his finest work is enhanced by 11 previously unreleased recordings. Collection released this month on Ace Records.
For many of us who grew up in the 60s, one thing we missed most in the following decades was the short, quick jab of a powerful 45 from groups such as the Who, the Searchers, the Kinks, the Hollies and the Beatles. Where had all those punchy pop songs gone? Phil Seymour grew up listening to all those British Invasion bands in his home city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and with kindred spirit Dwight Twilley forged a determination to bring back melodic pop songs. They spent several years mastering harmony, piano, guitar, drums and the art of crafting a high-quality song, building a home studio where they spent endless hours recording under the name Oister.
In 1974 they set off for Los Angeles and were soon picked up Denny Cordell and Leon Russell’s Shelter Records. Cordell was rather taken with Twilley’s name and renamed them the Dwight Twilley Band. Soon they were in the US Top 20 with ‘I’m On Fire’, but frustrations followed as Shelter struggled with financial difficulties, and Phil decided to go solo. Initially he struggled to find a foothold but once the new wave hit America, the Phil Seymour Band stormed Hollywood and became one of the hottest acts on the circuit.
Signed to Neil Bogart’s Boardwalk label, by 1981 Phil was at #22 on Billboard’s Hot 100 with the self-penned classic ‘Precious To Me’. More terrific releases followed and for a while he was the brightest star on the horizon, but Bogart’s death in 1983 meant the end of Phil’s Boardwalk contract. He doggedly continued to make good music but contracted lymphoma and died in 1993 at age 41.
Handsomely packaged with a 20-page booklet sporting rare photos and extensive notes incorporating interviews with bandmate Michael Anderson and recording engineer Bill Cooper, our collection comprises 13 of Phil’s finest recordings and 11 never-before-heard gems. Pride of place among the previously unissued tracks goes to nine demos cut at producer Richie Podolor’s American Recording Company studio in Los Angeles’ Studio City in 1980. As wonderful as the later released versions are, nothing can match the primitive excitement that pervades the demos, which bristle with life, energy and the sheer joy of knowing that something very special is being created in the studio. Altogether a fitting tribute to this much-missed prince of power pop.
Spinning Coin are the latest in a long line of top-notch Glasgow guitar bands. On their debut full-length, the five-piece pull together elements from a host of their forebears into a new and exciting whole. Given all the “legendary” names attached to Spinning Coin’s debut album, Permo – a reference to being on a permanent drug trip as made famous by Glasgow comic Limmy – one might be surprised that they’re not superstars already. In their three years as a band, though their story as Glasgow art-school musicians goes much further back, they have toured with Teenage Fanclub, signed to The Pastels’ Domino imprint Geographic Music and recorded with Edwyn Collins, with upcoming shows with Girl Ray and Dinosaur Jr. to come.
There’s a playfulness between songwriters Sean Armstrong and Jack Mellin that keep things fresh and exciting even when the band are at their most reminiscent of 90s jangly indie-rock. New single Sleepless for instance has a Pavement-esque slacker quality to it, showing their ambitions lay far beyond just Glasgow, while Sides, which precedes it, is a post-punk song of Wedding Present distraction. However, for every stirring pop song, there are also the more intentionally awkward songs like Metronome River, or the mysterious Starry Eyes which shows an inventiveness that goes beyond pure pop.
On top of working with those aforementioned highly notable names, Spinning Coin manage, across the 14 songs of their first full length, to sound like a cross between all of them. The quintet may wear their influences on their sleeve, and pretty broadly at times, but there is such a fascinating range of them for such a young band that Permo can only be seen as a success, both as a record but also within a long line of great Glasgow bands. Long may it continue – Spinning Coin are clearly destined for far bigger stages.
