Sofia Verbilla adopted the Harmony Woods moniker when she began releasing music last year, allowing for a deflective distance from her vulnerable and big-hearted songs. Her debut full-length, Nothing Special, is demarcated by a series of numbered vignettes that split up the songs “proper,” but really all of her songs are vignettes of a sort, snapshots of worry and distance and ache. Verbilla’s smoky and powerful voice belies the insecurities she lays bare in her writing as she confronts the unstable ground that life is built on. It’s a contrast that works wonders, and Nothing Special’s title even begs you to contradict it, to assert that, of course, she’s certainly doing something very special indeed.
All songs written by Sofia Verbilla
Vocals/rhythm guitar/keys by Sofia Verbilla
Lead guitar by Brendan Lukens
Bass by Sophy Kelsall
Drums by Jeremy Berkin
It’s not as catchy a ‘Westgate’ or ‘Balaclava Lover Boogie’, rather, it’s a fierce, 47-second rant that advocates violence in a way that’s unmistakably Aussie and so relatable that it’s a little confronting. “Rack off mole / I wanna see some biting, I wanna see some biff,” Amy Taylor yells over an urgent three-chord riff. The lyrics could be confused as flippant or sarcastic, but Amy insists she’s serious. “It’s about this chick that I was hanging out with and I got really fucken sick of her so it’s a bit of a biff song.” She pauses for a second, then clarifies, “Well, not a biff song, but it’s like, ‘Fuck off, bitch.’”
‘Mole’ is also about Amy’s preference for audience participation at her shows: “I just want everyone to push each other and go nuts and have a go,” she explains. “I don’t want everyone to just stand there and chill.” Amyl and the Sniffers gigs aren’t supposed to be chill.
A bit over a year ago, the members of Amyl and the Sniffers were living together in a sharehouse in St. Kilda. They’d been talking about starting a band “for ages”, then one day they all got home from work, uni and whatever else they’d been doing and spontaneously wrote and recorded their first EP. They called it Giddy Up and Declan, the guitarist, was still wearing his Big W uniform when they finished it. It took them just four hours to get the whole thing done, after which they released it for free on Bandcamp. “We were like, ‘We’ll start a house band, play at parties and it will just be something funny we can do,’ ” Amy explains.
“I don’t really know what the fuck has happened between now and then,” says Amy, “but it’s crazy.” Indeed, Amyl and the Sniffers have some pretty big gigs lined up: they’re touring with the Aussie punk legends, the Cosmic Psychos in November, then playing Gizzfest, Meredith and touring with the Foo Fighters in January. In addition to all that, they just scored a deal to put out a tape with California label Burger Records.
None of this would be particularly surprising if they were playing the kind of radio-friendly rock and roll you commonly hear on a station like triple j, but Amyl and the Sniffers are a garage punk band who sing about biffs, blowjobs and Chiko rolls. They’ve all got mullets and they look like the sort of people who could drink a Tasmanian skateboarder under the table. They’re proudly sporting shitty tatts and they named their band after a seedy drug that provides a brief, intense euphoria, followed by a brutal headache—which may or may not be a metaphor. They give off the vibe that while they’re stoked to be playing gigs, they’re not taking any of it too seriously.
With the mullets, the aggression and the unflinching embrace of Australiana, Amyl and the Sniffers have been likened to the sharpie subculture of the ‘70s—a pre-punk movement that was birthed in Melbourne and characterised by “sharp” outfits and that quintessential Aussie larrikin attitude. The soundtrack to this era was Australian boogie: bands like Skyhooks, The Coloured Balls and AC/DC. Amy says she and the boys are definitely influenced by that ‘70s Aussie rock, but lyrically, she’s also intrigued by the storytelling of country singers like Dolly Parton; she likes the cheek of a Southern woman in the 1960s singing about cheating on her husband.
Amy grew up in Mullumbimby, a small town just north west of Byron Bay, which, coincidentally, is also where I grew up. We agree that the music scene in Northern NSW always seemed to be wildly polarised—a typical gig was either some soul-surfer guy with an acoustic guitar or a brutal hardcore band playing an all-ages gig at the youth centre. At 15, Amy gravitated towards hardcore shows, “I was pretty into it because in Mullum everyone’s so focused on being chill and happy and nice, but I felt like that was the only scene where people were ok with being violent. I was like, ‘Yeah, this is sick.’ ”. Amy mentions her appreciation for shitty tattoos, muscle cars and touch-footy, which segues into a story about her favourite tatt—the words “GIDDY UP”, which she stick-and-poked into her own foot one night in her living room. “We were just drinking goon at home and I was pretty pissed and I was like, ‘I should do a tattoo,’ ” she says, “You can read it but it’s pretty shocking.” The boys in the band have similar stories, Amy explains: “The other night Gus [the bassist] got Bryce [the drummer’s] middle name tattooed on his leg.” The plan was for Bryce to return the favour but they ran out of ink so it wasn’t to be.
With the record deal and all those upcoming shows, Amy says that while the band just want to “fuck around and have a bit of fun”, they’re also pinching their pennies for a tour overseas at some point. At the moment, there’s not too much holding them back. She explains: “Declan works at Big W, Bryce works at Woolies and me and Gus are unemployed at the moment so everything’s pretty casual. Like, we don’t take work too seriously.”
New album Playing House may only hint at the full scope of Brigitte Naggar’s talents. The Montréal musician known as Common Holly counts few common threads from song to song besides her mesmerizing voice and distinct sensibility. Album closer “New Bed” amounts to little more than that (and that’s all it needs), while on opener “If After All,” acoustic guitar and orchestral accompaniment give way to booming drums and gnarly alt-rock power chords. Her array of cinematic ballads make diverse use of minimal arrangements, venturing into chamber-pop, country, post-rock, and other styles in service of compelling narration about a romantic relationship falling apart. (From the title track: “I’ll play mama, you’ll play daddy, and we’ll ruin us beyond repair.”) Ultimately it’s a singer-songwriter album that plays with an auteur’s vision, one that suggests Naggar’s horizons are broad.
Alex Lahey was going to draw comparisons to Courtney Barnett. She’s a young singer-songwriter from Melbourne who, initially and somewhat incorrectly, comes across like a witty slacker-rocker similar to Barnett. Lahey’s recent debut I Love You Like A Brother boldly underscored the fact that she’s onto something very different. Songs like “Lotto In Reverse” and “I Haven’t Been Taking Care Of Myself” burst into huge, cathartic choruses more akin to ‘90s and ‘00s alt-rock than anything in today’s indie sphere. Lahey’s got a way of capturing the particular anxieties and frustrations of the listless years of post-college life. And while her songs convey all that, those giant hooks tell a different story: the triumphant and defiant part where you kick the door down to life’s next phase.
Dawes are pleased to announce that they have recorded and released a live album titled We’re All Gonna Live. The album includes selections recorded over the first four shows of the An Evening With Dawes tour, and was mixed, mastered and released within 15 days. We’re All Gonna Live is available through streaming services HERE.
Dawes have teamed with Record Store Day to participate in this year’s Small Business Saturday. The band is releasing We’re All Gonna Live on vinyl, which was previously released as a streaming-only project.
We’re All Gonna Live is the first official live concert recording from Dawes via their own HUB Records, and will now be released on limited-edition vinyl (2000 copies) on November 25th, 2017
“With this tour we’ve felt like we’ve begun to turn a corner as a live band so we figured it was time to share some of it with everyone. It’s not the full length experience but we’re hoping that it’s enough of a taste for people to take a little bit of the show experience back into their homes with them and hopefully inspire them enough to come check out the show once we get into town.” – Taylor Goldsmith.
The band recorded the fifteen-song album during the first four shows of their 2017 An Evening With Dawes tour.
WE’RE ALL GONNA LIVE
Track List / Side Splits:
Side A
1. Coming Back To A Man
2. One of Us
3. Right On Time
4. Quitter
Side B
5. Somewhere Along the Way
6. Roll With The Punches
7. A Little Bit Of Everything
Side C
8. Less Then Five Miles Away
9. Things Happen
10. From The Right Angle
Side D
11. Still Gonna Die
12. We’re All Gonna Die
13. Picture of a Man
14. When The Tequila Runs Out
15. All Your Favorite Bands
It’s tough to keep up with garage rock’s wunderkind Ty Segall. Between his steady release schedule of LPs, raucous side projects like Fuzz and GØGGS, and collaborations with fellow songwriters Mikal Cronin and Tim Presley, it’s as if a season can’t pass without Segall dropping a new record. And that’s not even taking his cassettes, splits, and EPs into consideration. Fortunately, Segall’s bottomless well of creativity, production savvy, and boundless fascination with the various niches of the rock world makes every new release an occasion to celebrate. Suicide Squeeze Records is proud to offer the latest entry in Ty’s impressive canon with the Sentimental Goblin 7”. Side A features “Pan”, a fuzz-soaked proto-metal jam that links Beatles’ pioneering guitar dirge “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” to later lurch classics by Sir Lord Baltimore and Pentagram. In true Segall fashion, he switches gears on side B and conjures the erudite pop appeal of T. Rex and Bowie with the lush glam rocker “Black Magick”. Suicide Squeeze Records is proud to release Sentimental Goblin to the world on March 17, 2017. The initial pressing consists of 1000 copies on half blue / half yellow vinyl and includes a download card. The third pressing consists of 1000 copies on half pink / half purple vinyl and includes a download card. In a testament to his restless creativity and tireless work ethic, Ty also provides the artwork for the record.
You can always expect honesty from the former Smiths frontman Morrissey—especially on the tracks that make up his forthcoming album “Low in High School”. He’s already shared the cynical “Spent the Day in Bed,” and now, after previewing the song on BBC 6 Music, he’s officially released its second single “I Wish You Lonely.”
Morrissey maintains a synth-heavy, rock-forward beat as a vehicle for vigorous lyrics, taking a stab at the selfishness of world leaders: “Tombs are full of fools who gave their life upon command of monarchy, oligarch, head of state, potentate, and now, never coming back, never coming back.” In the lyric video, the song’s rousing message is displayed on the sign a boy is holding while he sits in a shopping cart.
Morrissey will be taking tracks from Low in High School on the road to spread the politically charged gospel before his album comes out November. 17th, Morrissey performed two tracks “Spent The Day in Bed” and “I Wish You Lonely.” on Later… with Jools Holland, BBC Two (3rd October 2017)
It brings me great pleasure to announce our new record. It’s called Offerings and it is a seventy-minute exploration of memory and sacrifice in three movements, the first of which is available now for your immediate listening pleasure.
Without giving too much away. I wanted to share with you an email I wrote to our manager back in May. I had just sent him the final masters and he was asking the sensible question: What is it all about?
It’s a record from the perspective of a mind losing its memory at precisely the same time the world is willfully forgetting its history. The urgent question becomes: without casualty, without structures of meaning, without essential features of rational thought, is there anything that can save us from violence / oblivion?
With no past and no future, there is only suffocating, annihilating present, looping on and on ad infinitum (to me, one plausible definition of hell) and the best you can hope for is that somewhere in the void there exists some small, irreducible certainty—a fragment, a kernel, something—that you may have the good future to stumble upon before it’s all over.
You know, a boy/girl-meets-girl/boy-everyone-dies-in-botched-attempt-at-neo-pagan-sacrificial-ritual-on-global-scale kind of thing.
FLOODPLAINS Down in the floodplains waiting on a cure Blessed be the water may the water make us pure Forms will be unborn in the mirror within the mirror Rejoice now, Rejoice now The Reckoning is here.
WAKE Wake and I have been reborn. The tide concedes that homely shore and I am benighted. All my lines unlearned. Cry out will God (or somebody) please turn the light on. Restore me to that empty room—expands out like hot air balloons. A woman comes she brings me food. I shit the bed in solitude. My life one brief unbroken loop—goes round and round with nothing left to hold onto. But if there’s nothing, if there’s nothing, then what’s that song that keeps hounding me? In the still dark of the morning. Just one more cradle down the creek. Au revoir my little memories. Tell me: This is not your loss. This is your offering.
RORSCHACH Eyes on the screen. We have all the information now but what does it mean? Reason’s a tease. Drank up all that hemlock, here I am just reading the leaves. Left wondering: what happened to the life we lost, that got lost in the living? All this fiction makes me nervous, turns out it was blood spilled on the canvas we admired just like some Rorschach painting. The film in your brain—it edits to remember, keeps the figure in the frame. A sacrificial violence, all those passed over in silence then cast out with the blame. And I’m trying to stay sane—meanwhile, the river of forgetfulness starts spilling the banks. Caught in a lie and instead of fessing up we’d sooner just go out of our heads. I’ve been holding up my end when I should have doubled down on my own atom bomb shelter instead.
EMPIRICIST Empty room. Cast about for a familiar object. Because my body needs coordinates to move. In the dark. Range of motion shrivels all around me. All my nightmares I am slowly being cocooned. A single calf in the hecatomb. Crescent moon. Hollowed out of all my fabled insides. Occam shave me down to primal truth—return me to the womb. Mother pulled from father’s ribs, little baby in a crib, hands reaching up. Before the blinding light is split through the prism of your organs into color. All that being and nothingness, on the same möbius strip. Sleep and waking up. On the first day. Wipe the blank slate. And you join the banquet. Served up helpless on a plate. You find your land legs. And you learn to imitate. You’ll wear any feathers and hope that your efforts attract a mate. One day your children find you, locked in the bathroom, staring in horror at the reflection of your face. You say you’re sorry to the guests at your party. But you can’t help wonder, who is this person you celebrate? And so the light fades. It’s still your birthday. Blow out your past lives like they’re candles on the cake.
ALGERNON A woman leans in her chair. Holds her face close to mine. She’s curious, am I comfortable? Would I care to give it one more try? She holds the picture up while she studies my eyes. I’m trying hard to recall the routine, but I can’t and so I improvise. This one’s of my father. Wearing ladies clothes. I walked in on him once as a kid. Must have thought nobody else was home. It’s a lie and she knows. But there’s no other use. And anyway what you want and what you want to be are easily confused. The moment stretches on. Like the first day of school and I’ve answered wrong. Like a self-enclosed short-circuit goes around forever until it’s gone. A woman shrinks in her chair. She says the picture’s of you. I have no idea what she’s talking about but I nod my head as if I do. Look at there such a strong man. All the virtues of youth. You led a good life by every account. There were people who looked up to you. I say enough is enough. You have found me out. You have called my bluff. I don’t know anything about this stuff. I’m just tired and I’m waiting for my wife to pick me up. A woman slouched in her chair disrupts the silence to say. The part of you that I love is still in there even if it doesn’t know my name. The moment stretches on. Like the colonnade at the Parthenon. It’s an unmarked grave but somebody’s laid some flowers for Algernon.
Typhoon is an indie rock band from Portland, Oregon.
Floodplains – featuring the songs “Wake”, “Rorschach”, “Empiricist” and “Algernon” – is the first movement of Typhoon’s forthcoming full length album, Offerings. Offerings will be released on January 12th, 2018 on Roll Call Records.
The Tame Impala ,”Currents Collectors Edition” box set includes the album on limited edition red marbled vinyl with alternate artwork, a 12” featuring two remixes, and a 7” and flexidisc with three b-sides. Plus a poster and a zine of images and scribbles offering a candid glimpse into the making of “Currents”.
Now, just over two years since it was released, Tame Impala’s modern classic is getting the deluxe treatment, with a collector’s edition of the record set to be released next month.
Tame Impala first hinted at the emergence of this release way back in July of last year, but now we’re seeing something a lot more concrete. Announcing the news via social media and YouTube earlier , Tame Impala shared a video of Kevin Parker in the studio back in 2014, crafting one of the unheard songs that is set to appear on the new version of the record. With a release date set for November 17th, theCurrents collector’s edition is set to include a gigantic array of fan-pleasing goodies, including the entire album on red marbled vinyl, with alternate artwork. Also included is a 12″ record with two remixes, a 7″ and a flexidisc record containing three B-sides, including a poster and zine, which contains a whole bunch of handwritten notes made by Kevin Parker during the recording session for the album.
While we wait for the collector’s edition of Currents to drop next month, check out Soulwax’s remix of ‘Let It Happen’, which we’re hoping will be included in the new edition.
If you’re keen on grabbing yourself a copy of the new edition of the record, head over to Tame Impala’s online store to pre-order yours. While there’s been no official announcement about it yet, some folks over on the TameImpala subreddit on Reddit have discovered that the box set seems to be limited to 2,500 copies, so you might want to get in quick.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that Tame Impala have released an expanded version of their records. Back in 2011, they released a new edition of their debut record “Innerspeaker”, which featured an extra disc titled Extraspeaker that included a bunch of rarities and remixes.
It doesn’t take a musicologist to detect the influence of Dylan on Adam Granduciel of The War on Drugs. When he sings, Granduciel leans into a line with the same needling inflections as Bob, aping his world-weary wheeze as well. The music Granduciel writes can’t help but make you think of another Dylan-devotee Mark Knopfler.
The War on Drugs explores the dreamy realms Dire Straits once roamed. The songs tend to last long—at least six minutes a piece, and up to eleven on the new album—luxuriating in sumptuous production, gripping melodies and guitars that glisten. Granduciel has been honing his valorized view of classic rock over four albums now, culminating in the new . He formed his band in Philadelphia in 2005, though they didn’t release their debut until three years later. The disc, titled , Wagon Wheel Blues glazed through an ambient haze. Granduciel has been clarifying his sound ever since. The latest album, the band’s first on a major label, shows the escalating budget in the lush production.
It also focuses Granduciel approach to his guitar. In his recordings, he favors sustained notes and repeated refrains over the more elaborate extensions he allows live. Luckily, the parts he writes for his sterling instrument have enough urgency to make his repetitions hypnotic. Some songs feature freer guitar work and a faster pace, like “Holding On” , with its bossy bass, and fleet drums. But more often the music holds to a measured beat and a cowed mood, mirroring lyrics that explore what Granduciel calls “the space between the beauty and the pain.”
Still riding the momentum from this recent release and their acclaimed fourth album A Deeper Understanding, The War on Drugs have shared the video for “Nothing to Find,” starring young actress Sophia Lillis (of IT fame), who embarks on a road trip with some sort of plant man.
Directed by Ben Fee, the offbeat video “presents the bittersweet story of two friends on a not-so-classic road trip adventure,” per a press release, following Lillis’ character and Plant Man as they commit petty theft, commune with nature, shoot pool and have a dance party, until eventually Plant Man falls ill and returns to the earth. For all its sweetness, the video is awfully sobering: Whether plant or person, we all have our time, it reminds us—or as Adam Granduciel sings, “There is nothing I can do if I am going away.” But the video’s closing moments, which we won’t spoil for you here, offer a glimmer of hope for what we may find in the hereafter.
