Protomartyr premiere a new video for their new single ‘Don’t Go To Anacita’.
The track, which will see Protomartyr release their fourth album, Relatives In Descent, is their debut for new label home Domino on Friday.‘Don’t Go To Anacita’, which is strangely straight-forward for Protomartyr, has an unexpected by pleasant anthemic feel and, we’re told, takes place in a fictional town of singer Joe Casey’s invention – a sort of every-town created to catch Casey’s ire.
On top of the new release, the quartet have also announced that they will play London’s Rough Trade East as part of their November European and UK headline tour.
Iron & Wine—the moniker of singer/songwriter Sam Beam, has basically achieved folk-hero status. The former film teacher started sharing his original songs in the early 2000s, which led to a contact with Sub Pop Records. Six LPs and a smattering of EPs and exclusive releases later, the bearded, soft-spoken Beam has become a beacon for the evolution of acoustic music in a time of digital domination.
In August, Beam released his sixth LP, “Beast Epic”, as Iron & Wine. This week, the full-band version of his project sets out on tour with two sold out dates in Chicago. From there, Iron & Wine traverses North America through November, before jetting to Scandinavia, Europe and the United Kingdom in early 2018. So here we take a look at the best of Iron & Wine songs (excluding collaborations with Calexico, Ben Bridwell of Band of Horses, JescaHoop and others).
“About a Bruise”
Born in South Carolina, now residing in North Carolina, with stops in Florida and Virginia along the way, Beam is a true Southerner. While the lyrics of this Beast Epic song can be a bit obtuse, the Southern imagery—from skies full of prayers to duck hunting to mall cops in Mobile—all culminate in a choir proclaiming, “This is Alabama.” If Beast Epic illustrates the cyclical nature of living, the acoustic slapping of “About a Bruise” showcases those musical and lyrics phases in Beam’s life.
“The Sea and the Rhythm”
The title track from this 2003 EP is one of the sexiest songs Beam has ever written. It’d be hard to tell on first listen, though; Beam apparently recorded this collection in his Miami home and the songs all assume a hushed, barely multi-tracked quality. With just an acoustic guitar, some layered vocals and an outro banjo solo, “The Sea and the Rhythm” could be a simple lullaby. But listen closer and you’ll hear Beam’s romantic poetry: “Your hands they move like waves over me / Beneath the moon, tonight, we’re the sea.” It’s no wonder the sultry song was used in the closing episode of the first season of The O.C.
“Joy”
For an album that actually peaked in the Top 10 on the Rock charts, 2013’s Ghost on Ghost contained a few songs that didn’t necessarily fit into Beam’s self-described, AM radio-influenced fifth studio LP. “Joy” is one of those songs. In fewer than three minutes, Beam extolls the tumultuous journey of falling in love, admitting, “I’m only frightened ‘cause you finally gave me something to lose.” But instead of the fingerpicked guitar work that defined previous efforts, Beam takes his exposed playing and transfers it to the piano, lending “Joy” an even brighter sentiment.
“Biting Your Tail”
For many of the other songs on this list, the mainly acoustic versions took on new and improved lives when Beam and co. reinvented them in concert. However, “Biting Your Tail,” a B-side from the Walking Far From Home sessions in 2011, actually functions better in its (presumably) original format—just Beam and his guitar. The fingerpicked ballad serves as prayer and reminder for humility, with lines like, “May your mouth betray your wisdom / May you get what they failed to mention / May your love be your only religion / Preach it to us all.”
“Grace For Saints and Ramblers”
When Iron & Wine unveiled this pop gem as the lead single from Ghost on Ghost in 2013, fans knew they were in a Tilt-A-Whirl of a ride. With the snare-heavy percussion, brass accents and mouthfuls of words, “Grace For Saints and Ramblers” represented a new age of Iron & Wine, moving far beyond its skeletal, folky beginnings. But beneath the flashy (by Beam’s standards) accouterments remains a core of a song that is utterly representative of Iron & Wine—careful, thoughtful and gorgeous.
“Walking Far From Home” “Walking Far From Home” is another example of how four chords and the truth can really set you free. A Bob Dylan-esque epic with lyrics that are easy to get out of order, the magic of track from 2011’s highest charting Kiss Each Other Clean comes from its dynamics. Beam masterfully conducts his accompaniments—woodwinds, brass, backup singers and more—to rise and fall with the intensity of the lyrics.
“Jezebel”
Each track on the six-track Woman King EP from 2005 honors a prominent female spiritual figure. However, Beam takes the titular character, who was associated with false prophets in the Old Testament, and re-envisions her narrative. With sister Sarah Beam’s backing vocals floating higher and higher with each verse and chorus, the acoustic track becomes nearly ethereal.
“Call It Dreaming”
The moment Iron & Wine returned with this song after back-to-back collaborative albums (with Ben Bridwell of Band of Horses and Jesca Hoop, respectively), it was easy to breathe a sigh of relief. “Call It Dreaming” sounds like a return to form. It’s not that those two other albums were bad—there was an sense of exploration and excitement about them—but as a whole, Beast Epic illustrates Beam’s career, in his own words, is the shape of a circle. Plus, the video features Beam and a dog riding around in the bed of a pickup truck, which is pretty great just by itself.
Boy With a Coin”
The first single from 2007’s The Shepherd’s Dog,“Boy With a Coin” showcased Iron & Wine’s new direction in a defiant, yet tempered way. The acoustic strumming that marked Beam’s initial releases wasn’t exactly gone, but layers of claps and drums, vocal, overdubs and electric guitars interjected with feedback fidgeted above them. The video, featuring a ballet troupe emphasizing the tapping percussion, alludes to way Iron & Wine would later turn this song into a danceable romp in live shows to come.
“Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me”
Perhaps the heaviest song Iron & Wine has released, “Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me” opens with a distorted curl of a riff that could be mistaken for a scream of feedback. The bass grooves, laying a foundation for a burst of brass that carries the melody until Beam comes in to retrieve it with his singing. However, it’s the transition to the wholly new second movement is what placed this song so high on this list. About halfway through the song, the horns peter out and the electric guitar skitters to a half time and half as much distortion. And rather than lyrical slights-of-hand of the first movement, the second embraces many visions of reality, all filtered though Beam’s soulful singing of metaphors of what “we will become.”
“Passing Afternoon”
The closing track to Our Endless Numbered Days, this acoustic number is as dreamy as its title implies. In fact, the album title comes from a lyric in this song. Leave it to Beam to write a song about trying to appreciate the tiniest moments in our fleeting lives.
“Such Great Heights”
With all due respect to the adorable, digitized tunes on The Postal Service’s indie cult-classic, Give Up, it seems some of the songs are just better suited for other artists. Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam provided convincing evidence of that when he took the skeleton of “Such Great Heights” and dressed it in the dreamiest of dulcet tones. The signature sounds of hushed guitar plucking and nearly-whispered vocals could easily fool anyone unfamiliar with Ben Gibbard’s early electronic days into thinking the song was an Iron & Wine original.
“Upward Over the Mountain”
Already a hefty six-minute track, this cut from Iron & Wine’s beloved debut The Creek Drank the Cradle wholly transforms when performed in a full-band setting: The tempo picks up, the acoustic instruments are traded for electric ones (that sometimes take solos!) and the outro breakdown has been known to leave fans in a frenzy. Yet, such a song of forgiveness and hope can still resonates in its barest form—this original version from 2002.
“The Trapeze Swinger”
Written in the same time as Our Endless Numbered Days and placed in the film In Good Company, “The Trapeze Swinger” never actually made it on an Iron & Wine album until 2009’s compilation album of B-sides and rarities called Around the Well. Still, the song has been a fan-favorite since at least 2005, as you can hear on the limited release official bootleg Norfolk 6/20/05. Beam typically performs this winding narrative on nostalgia solo acoustic, which helps emphasize the already personal lyrics delivered as snapshot memories verse after verse after verse. Depending on the listeners’ own emotional state, the effect is either comforting or utterly heart shattering—a testament to Beam’s timeless storytelling.
“Naked As We Came”
This acoustic number from Our Endless Numbered Days encapsulates what it’s like to be an Iron & Wine fan. In just two-and-a-half minutes, Sam Beam sings a love song about death, inviting all who join him to pause, breathe, and appreciate it all before it’s too late.
Label mates with Fat White Family & Meatraffle, South East London band Madonnatron and finds a cauldron of sinister excellence and atmospheric post-punk.
Madonnatron are a fairly recent addition to the excellent Trashmouth Records family and a very good one at that. The band have already made waves and received a lot of radio airplay from the likes of Marc Riley and Gideon Coe on their BBC 6 Music slots. Their self-titled debut was always going to be something to pique the interest, and it does not disappoint.
The album starts with both the well-received singles “Headless Children” and “Sangue Neuf”. Both tracks have a sinister post-punk/ psychedelic feel. Madonnatron’s music has a beautiful angst and real feeling, and these tracks are no exception, with Headless Children being especially atmospheric. Sangue Neuf, their first single that Madonnatron released, is more forceful, but still an excellent track.
Tron features some fine vocals, making the most of the multiple vocalists in the band the fairly simple rhythms are perfect. The moodiness Madonnatron do so well remains a constant. There is a great, if sparse, electronic introduction to Be My Bitch before the vocals kick in like the voice of the coven. The ladies again hit the dark side and draw you in to their underworld. The track really kicks in as the rhythm speeds up, becoming more and more insistent before dissolving into a harpy-haze of vocals at the end.
Glen Closer has a stalkerish brilliance continuing the off-kilter feel of the lyrical content – these are no love songs. There is no female subservience on show here; The spoken word aspect of Violent Denial gives the track an interesting twist, but even with the higher pitched vocals, the sense of unease that typifies Madonnatron’s output remains.
Mother’s Funeral is a rock rollercoaster with some fabulous breathy-yet-shouted vocals. The slower section only re-enforces the force of the faster sections, cranking up the energy. Slow and solid, the rhythm is pure blues-rock on Bad Woman. More outsider-girl lyrics push this confessional of a song to another level. Once the speed picks up, the track gets even more interesting. The vocals on Wedding Song are more regular blues-based and very good indeed. The track is fairly short, but another gem.
Cat lady has a hazier feel to the vocals and is slower and the vocals sweeter, but there remains a dusky element to the lyrics. Another impressive track on a winner of an album; the song of the siren. The album retains the bite and occassional savagery of Madonnatron’s live performance. we bring you Madonnatron.”
The cover of Offering, Cults’ third album and their first in four years, says it all. After the opaque nocturnal allure of their earlier recordings, the New York City-based duo of Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion have come out of the dark, drenching their sharp pop songs in a warm, sumptuous glow that makes them more approachable and welcoming. While Offeringdraws on many of the same influences as its predecessors—namely, girl groups of the 1960s, like the Shangri-Las and the Ronettes, as well as chillwave artists like Toro y Moi and occasionally, the airy minimalism of the xx—here, they feel more lived-in. “I Took Your Picture,” for instance, contains echoes of Tame Impala’s kaleidoscopic psych rock, but delivers a human warmth and directness that the former lacks. Later, the thudding piano figures in “Recovery” blur the line between acoustic and electronic instrumentation to captivating effect.
While the song’s narratives aren’t necessarily overflowing with giddiness or optimism, there is a newfound confidence and self-awareness in Follin’s lyrics that melds seamlessly with the songs’ colorful arrangements. The album begins with an intention to live in the present moment—“Know I can’t see it all yet / But it’s so real to me”—and then echoes that sentiment throughout; “Our time is nothing now / It slips through our fingers,” Follin sings later on “I Took Your Picture.” Keeping the forces of time and doubt at bay is never an easy task, she seems to be saying, but it’s worth the battle. Sometimes all you can do is make an offering, and make it as exquisite as possible.
Cinematic, indie-rockers Roadkill Ghost Choir have announced their return with a new album entitled “False Youth Etcetera”, out October 27th via Freakout Records.
“’Classics (Die Young)’ is my tribute to Dylan & The Boss and a reminder to myself to keep on moving forward through the dark days. The tone of the song was inspired by one of my favorite Springsteen tracks ‘Tougher Than The Rest’ and I wanted to chase down that feeling I got from it.” – Andy Shepard (lead singer)
Never Mind The Bollocks was furious, funny, and wildly obnoxious. It also showed that the Sex Pistols knew how to write classic rock songs better than most…
Despite having released only one single by that point, in the spring of 1977 The Sex Pistols were the biggest news in British music. And yet the punk movement’s most high-profile standard bearers still had to prove to a lot of rock fans that punk had some musical substance to back up the hype. The Clash, The Damned, The Jam and several others already had debut albums out, and The Pistols were being swamped by their own self-created chaos. Recorded between October 1976 to March-June 1977.
They’d recently sacked bass player Glen Matlock, and when they went into the studio in March 1977 with his replacement, Sid Vicious, they found that he couldn’t play the required parts.
While the band signed and then unsigned to A&M records after being dropped like a hot potato by EMI, guitarist Steve Jones stepped into the breach to play the bass bits, and eventually, once the band finally inked a deal with Virgin Records, Never Mind The Bollocks… made it into shops at the end of October 1977. A less than promising background then, but as it turned out, it was well worth the wait.
12. Seventeen
Side two’s opener proved to be one of the less focused tracks on this most sharp-eyed of records. There’s a certain weary, can’t-be-arsed quality to it, which, I guess, suits its subject matter. The final rabble-rousing chant “I’m a lazy sod” is one of the few times on this first album that they manage to sound indistinguishable from Sham 69. They could do better, and did.
11. Liar
This one can sound pretty, well, vacant at times, with vague, incoherent lyrics, but the fieriness of Rotten’s delivery, along with some of Paul Cook’s most splenetic drumming and the trademark snarling riff assault, lifts this track above mere filler status.
10. New York
Any group with Johnny Rotten on the mic is always going to sound pretty ferocious, but if anything, the Pistols suited the fast and furious approach that defined punk in the first place, which meant that this slower, sludgier track didn’t stand out as much as some of its neighbours.
9. Submission
Reputedly the result of Malcolm McLaren suggesting the band write a song about S&M, instead they wrote about being on “a submarine mission for you baby”, by way of a two-fingered salute to their beloved svengali. “I can’t figure out your watery love,” growls Rotten, to a slow, sludgy soundtrack. No, us neither, but the track still retains a certain sleazy menace.
8. EMI
Songs about ‘the industry’ are rarely enervating stuff for the listener, but the Pistols had already had enough run-ins with labels to last a whole career. Lyrically, this final, ‘fuck you and goodbye’ track is satisfyingly stinging – “You do not believe that we’re for real, or you would lose your cheap appeal” – and the refrain “Who? EEE-EMM-IIIII!’ always packs a punch. it’s rant first, song second, but few have ever ranted better than Johnny Rotten.
7. No Feelings
A wired, urgent rocker that spews the Pistols’ world-view all over the pavement, and asks us what we’re going to do about it. “I got no emotion for anybody else / better understand I’m in love with myself,” he hollers. Meanwhile, the vim and fizz of the performance suggest otherwise – nihilists or not, they still aim to thrill.
6. Bodies
By the standards of a band who would later release a song called Belsen Was A Gas, a song about a “girl from Birmingham / she just had an abortion” should be relatively easy-going fare. But the brutal judgement served on this woman (“Pauline”, allegedly a real Pistols fan who told them of abortions she’d had) in Rotten’s lyrics make for wince-inducing listening..
Yet it’s one of the strongest tracks on the record, partly because it’s so disturbing – I mean, you weren’t under the impression punk was meant to tread carefully around such topics were you? Pretty much the definition of Uneasy Listening.
5. Problems
Lit up by Steve Jones’ slashingly simple but brutally effective guitar riff, this high-octane rocker could quite easily have been a fifth single from the album, had the band not near-imploded by that point. One of the heaviest tracks on the record and, aside from the singles, certainly among the best.
4. Holidays In The Sun The Pistols’ first post-Matlock composition, and the album opener, began with the sound of jackboots marching and ended with Rotten wibbling incoherently about wanting to go “under the Berlin Wall”, by which point, we were too busy pogoing to question what he was on about.
The main riff may have sounded suspiciously similar to that of The Jam’s In The City, but you make your own rules in the punk game. Lines such as “a cheap holiday in other people’s misery” would prove to be among the best Rotten ever wrote, and the fascistic chant of “Reason, reason, reason” gave it a dystopian edge that only added to the sense of Year Zero that punk loved to promote.
3. Pretty Vacant The Pistols’ third single is lifted to greatness chiefly by one of Johnny Rotten’s finest vocal performances, in which he snarls, sneers and roars an anthem of defiance for a blank generation while sounding anything but vacant – rather he seems to be storing up enough angry energy to fuel Britain’s wind farms for decades to come. As ever it’s built around a blindingly simple base – a handful of chugging power chords, a chantalong chorus and a few well-chosen lines (“You’ll always find us… out to luunch!”), but its powerful enough to shake any laid-back muso out of their complacency.
2. Anarchy In The UK
There can’t have been many more hair-raising couplets in rock history than “I am an anti-christ! I am an anar-kyste!”, and its impact has hardly been dulled with time or repeated listens. The scattershot references to the IRA, UDA, NME and council tenancies, and vows to “destroy passers by” made their singer sound genuinely unhinged and capable of doing serious damage to anyone within gobbing distance, while the pounding, relentless rock rhythm section underneath it make resistance futile.
1. God Save The Queen
Claiming to be an anti-christ, and indeed, an ‘anar-kyste’ were startling enough claims for a rock’n’roll frontman to make, but to then publicly dismiss our reigning monarch, observing “she ain’t no human being” in the year of her universally celebrated Silver Jubilee, represented a whole new level of provocation to the establishment. In terms of timing alone, this is a work of spittle-flecked, petulant genius.
More importantly, though, it’s also a roaring, swaggering firecracker of a rock’n’roll song, the like of which we’ve rarely heard before or since. One that sets your pulse racing just as thrillingly as “A Wop Bob A Loo Bop, A Wop Bam Boom” did 20 years previously
And that coda of “No future, no future for you” summed up much of the uniting sentiments that drew together punk’s audience of disaffected youth in the first place. Punk may have been dismissed as a novelty back then, but they’ll be playing this one long after her majesty is dead and gone.
Black Sabbath’s lavish new 8LP vinyl box set, “The Ten Year War”, which features coloured vinyl pressings of the band’s first eight albums, books, posters, USB stick and more. BMG issue a new limited edition Black Sabbath vinyl box set called The Ten Year War which features the first eight Sabbath albums pressed on coloured vinyl and re-mastered from the original tapes (by Andy Pearce). The hefty (and pricey) set also includes two two rare seven-inch singles, a crucifix-shaped USB stick with high-res audio of the eight albums and various printed material. Watch the unboxing video of The Ten Year War below:
Albums in the box
Coloured vinyl pressings of:
BLACK SABBATH
PARANOID
MASTER OF REALITY (including original fold-out colour poster)
VOL. 4
SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH
SABOTAGE
TECHNICAL ECSTASY
NEVER SAY DIE!
Two seven-inch singles
Evil Woman (Don’t Play Your Games With Me)/Black Sabbath (Japanese version)
Paranoid/The Wizard (Chilean version)
Crucifix shaped Black Sabbath USB stick, exclusive to this box set, with MQA high definition audio of the first eight Black Sabbath albums.
The Ten Year War brochure, reproduced from the original publication.
Hardback book, featuring accolades from the cream of rock royalty, coupled with official and candid iconic photography of the band during their 1970s tours, recording sessions and photo-shoots.
Tenth Anniversary World Tour 1978 Official Programme
Reprinted tour poster from the 1972 Seattle Centre Arena show.
Box set cover art has been created by globally renowned street artist Shepard Fairey
Omni, the Atlanta trio behind one of 2016’s tightest post-punk records, Deluxe, is already back with a new set of wiry, Devo-inspired jams. The band, which includes former members of Deerhunter and Carnivores, piles power riffs on top of propulsive chord progressions and stop-start rhythms, as on the pogoing lead single, “Equestrian.”
Omni might be a trio of indie-rock survivors from the likes of Deerhunter and Warehouse, but they come across like a post-punk band straight out of the early ’80s, from their wiry, jumpy rhythms to the technical appearance of their new album Multi-task’s cover art. That corner of classic alternative music is not mined too often these days, at least not to this extent, and Omni go all in on it — their songs are infectious, bright series of sharp guitar licks and sing-speak vocals. It’s not quite reinventing anything, but if you’re the kind of person who has proclivities for the less brooding strains of post-punk, Omni are the new masters of it.
Every now and then an album comes into your life that utterly wrecks you. It resonates with you on a level where you can’t tell if it’s easing the knife out of your wound or if it’s twisting it more. But you keep coming back even if it’s destroying you because as painful as it might be, Katie Ellen’s ‘Cowgirl Blues’ is one of those albums. From The Ashes of the band Chumped , their first and last album Teenage Retirement,Now comes Anika Pyle’s aka Katie Ellen first solo foray.
Its great Alt-Indie Pop/punk flow with the same biting lyrical content that made her former band a joy to behold with just enough edge to keep things real.
Anika Pyle was a songwriter with much to say and an electrifying way of saying it. She’s extremely good at writing about her personal life in a way that feels vital and universal. Fortunately, although Chumped are dearly departed, Pyle and former Chumped drummer Dan Frelly have relocated to Philadelphia and reemerged as Katie Ellen, a new project for a new phase of life. On their debut album Cowgirl Blues, her old charged-up tales of quarter-life romantic longing and disillusionment give way to more measured tempos and an overall more bleary disposition, Despite the darker shading, her songs remain remarkably catchy and alive perhaps painfully so,
Jay Som aka Melina Duterte takes time to figure it out. And with Everybody Works, she’s figured out that bedroom-pop doesn’t have to sound like it was recorded in a bedroom. Jay Som constructs songs with a painterly eye, augmenting her homespun indie with splashes of horns and piano and accordion. Over the course of the LP, billed as her official debut following last year’s Bandcamp release Turn Into, she moves from candy-coated fuzz-pop and slinky funk to subtle synth-pop and experimental soundscapes. “The Bus Song” is taken from Jay Som’s debut full-length, Everybody Works, out now!
If bedrooms are a new sort of laboratory for music, “The Bus Song” transcends those four walls. It is the perfect marriage of isolation and ambition, both in form and function. “I just want you to lead me/I just want you to need me,” sings Melina Duterte as the music crashes, plinks, and soars around her. It’s like being overpowered by a down-filled pillow. In a year of memorable hooks, “The Bus Song”’s is unforgettable.
