The National inch closer to the release of their new LP “Sleep Well Beast” with the unveiling of new song and video for “Carin at the Liquor Store,” one of the tunes they previously debuted at a show in Paris recently .
The song is the third to have its studio version released, with “System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” and “Guilty Party” also getting their release earlier this year.
Sleep Well Beast arrives on September 8th.
We’re so happy to introduce you to ‘Music From Before The Storm’.
At the end of 2016, we were invited to write the score for the new Life Is Strange video game, ‘Life is Strange: Before The Storm’. We’ve always loved the idea of mixing our music with picture and we were thrilled to be given the opportunity to make our very first original soundtrack!
We felt very moved by the story from the outset, it is such a heartfelt game and an honest portrayal of real life. Writing for the game allowed us to draw inspiration from the characters’ situations (… and re-living some of our own memories) to find a place where our music could live within the story!
As well as being heard within the game, the soundtrack is going to be released 1st September, You can listen to one of the songs “Burn It Down” .
So much love,
Elena Igor & Remi xxx
‘Burn It Down’ by Daughter, from ‘Music from Before the Storm
Bruce Springsteen has just released two new concerts into his ever-growing list of shows available as made-on-demand CD-Rs and digital downloads at nugs.net. The first show is from February 7th, 1977 in Albany, New York and the second is from the next night, February 8th in Rochester, New York. They are significant as no soundboards from this portion of Bruce Springsteen’s touring career have ever surfaced before, and because they also feature a song which sees its first official release here: “Action in the Streets.”
The years 1976 and 1977 were a bit trying for Springsteen. After the breakthrough success of Born to Run in 1975, he and the E Street Band embarked on a long tour to promote the album. The touring was to have lasted about a year and then work was to begin on a new album. However, Springsteen became involved in litigation with his former manager Mike Appel and was barred from entering the studio. Therefore, in order to bring in revenue, the tours continued.
These two concerts kick off what was to become the last leg of the tour, as the various lawsuits would be settled in May of 1977 and Bruce and his band would immediately begin work on Darkness on the Edge of Town. The Darkness song “Something in the Night” is performed both nights with alternate lyrics from the later album version. Two songs eventually cut from the album are also featured: “Rendezvous” and “The Promise.” “Backstreets” from Born to Run also features expanded lyrics in its mid-section. Springsteen covers Eddie Floyd one night with “Raise Your Hand.” In addition, the soul-tinged “Action in the Streets” makes its first official release with these two recordings. Despite being performed at every show during this 1977 tour, Springsteen never laid it down in the studio. Springsteen and The E Street Band are joined here by The Miami Horns in a different line-up from the one that recorded with fellow New Jersey musician Southside Johnny.
These two shows come from Front of House mix tapes recorded by Chas Gerber. There are a couple of dropouts due to the tapes being flipped during the performances. However, between the two shows, a complete version of each song is available. The digital transfers and restoration were made by John K. Chester and Jamie Howarth, using the Plangent Process. The concerts have been mastered by Jon Altschiller.
It’s been less than two years since Sophie Allison started making songs as Soccer Mommy, but in that short period of time everything she’s put out has been consistently rewarding and uniformly excellent. It’s hard to write the kind of music that she does with such skill — her songs are unassuming and simple on the surface, but deceptively complex. Allison’s voice is muted and empathetic, living within the songs rather than overpowering them, and her guitar work is subtle but intoxicating. Everything she writes has the same gauzy sheen, and they could scan as boring if they weren’t held down by Allison’s arresting personal narratives and enough intricate sonic framework to support many repeated listens.
She arrived pretty fully-realized, with a series of EPs with charmingly plain-spoken titles like “Songs From The Recently Sad” and “Songs From My Bedroom”. They felt intimate and universal, like she was expressing a communal grief over adolescent lost loves, told from the perspective of someone who only has nostalgia for the recent past. Allison was 18 when she recorded those songs ,putting them online as she made the transition from growing up in Nashville to moving to New York City for school but they felt like they were written by someone far more worn-out by life, or rather they encapsulated the youthful sort of jadedness
Earlier this year, she put out vinyl 7″with two excellent tracks, “Last Girl” and “Be Seeing You.” It was her first release that featured the full band she had put together to play her shows, and it became clear that Soccer Mommy songs could be much more muscular and peppy than they initially appeared.
Her new video for “Inside Out,” a song that originally appeared on For Young Hearts, shows Allison at the crossroads between her full band (presented here in monster masks) and the project’s solo beginnings.
Taken from the upcoming album ‘Collection’, Out August 4th on Fat Possum Records.
Recently discovered this resurgence of Surf Rock, 60’s inspired, nostalgia inducing genre and I love it!! As soon as I heard Summer Salt I was hooked! . These tracks have got some serious groove! Favorite track:
Summer Salt is a rock’n’roll threesome of best pals. With influences of bossa nova and oldies, we create the perfect soundtrack for chillaxin’ by the pool or the beach. Matt has the voice of an angel, Eugene has that in-the-pocket drummin’, and Phil’s bass is funny.
Bully is definitely not losing these days! Get it? Anyway, they are putting out a new album entitled Losing from the Sub Pop label and this is as in your face as their previous album Feels Like which was highly acclaimed. The difference between their previous album and Losing is going to be refinement and perfectionism. Their first album was gritty, angry and beautifully chaotic stemming from Alicia’s protest on the crap that is life. Losing is coming from a similar place and doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does polish it and give it new tires and such. Check out the single “Feel The Same” below and enjoy Bully. You can get the album at their Bandcamp site or from Sub Pop’s Mega Mart.
Limited edition Clear w/Black Swirl-colored vinyl LP, available while supplies last.
It’s a miracle that the Gin Blossoms breakthrough album, “New Miserable Experience”, exists at all.
When the band left Tempe, Arizona, in 1992, headed for Memphis’ famed Ardent Studios to record their first album for A&M Records, the mood was far from optimistic. A first attempt at cutting the record in 1991 in Los Angeles was a $100,000 disaster. The group teetered on the edge of being dropped, and, most alarmingly, their founder and chief songwriter, guitarist Doug Hopkins, was in the throes of mental illness and alcoholism.
“We were a fragile mess. We were all just treading water trying to make the record. We knew this was our last chance,” says singer Robin Wilson of the album that was just re-released in a vinyl edition. “It was an intense experience on every level.”
Produced by the late John Hampton, who engineered albums by Alex Chilton and the Replacements,”New Miserable Experience” took its cues from Alex Chilton’s Big Star and Paul Westerberg’s alt-rock progenitors, who also both recorded at Ardent.
Like those groups, the Gin Blossoms excelled at marrying world-weary lyrics with ebullient melodies. “We were always about that. The name of the band says it all,” Wilson says. “It sounds really happy, but it represents something dark.”
Superficially, the songs on “New Miserable Experience” were windows-down, carefree anthems, but underneath they exposed heartache, longing and despair. Particularly those written by the tortured Hopkins, who provided the band with its breakout hit, “Hey Jealousy,” .
“One day we get a call from the label that they were going to try ‘Jealousy’ again and make another video for it,” says Wilson, who recalls filming three different clips for the song. “The budget for the first was five grand; the second was 10 grand; and the third was 40 grand. That’s when I was like, ‘Holy shit, they’re serious.’ At that point we had been in the van for six months, just a blur of college cafeterias, interviews and opening for whoever we can.”
Hopkins, however, wasn’t on tour. Or, at that point, even in the band. As the guitarist disintegrated before their eyes during recording, Wilson, guitarist Jesse Valenzuela, drummer Phillip Rhodes and bassist Bill Leen made the decision to fire him or risk becoming a liability for the label. They finished the album without Hopkins, and Scott Johnson stepped in as his replacement.
“There was nothing easy about it,” says Valenzuela. “You’re concerned and you want to help, but we didn’t have the knowledge we have today, so we were kind of guessing and trying to do our best. We didn’t have the understanding of bipolar disease and we were ill-equipped to deal with that.” Wilson remembers an incident that illustrates just how checked-out Hopkins was.
“I came into the studio and Doug was in there with John, and I heard John say, ‘Well, someone is going to have to do these solos.’ Doug said, ‘I guess I’d rather Jesse do my solos.’ I was just floored. I could not believe that was something that Doug was considering. He was giving up. I left the room and almost threw up,” says Wilson.
One solo Hopkins did manage to put to tape was for “Hey Jealousy,” a slashing, frantic yet commanding performance that Wilson says was a scratch take fired off during initial tracking sessions. “New Miserable Experience” began moving units, Hopkins was at home in Tempe. On December 5th of that year, he committed suicide.
“Doug had so much talent. I liken him to a Noel Gallagher. He could have been this bandleader that would have really had a huge impact on the music of the day,” said Wilson . “I think he knew that was right there for him, and instead of stepping up and taking a real leadership role, he fell in the other direction. … It still is heart-wrenching to think about what could have been.”
While Hopkins’ presence is all over New Miserable Experience – he wrote several cornerstone tracks, including autobiographical opener “Lost Horizons,” the Byrds-like “Pieces of the Night” and the Modern Rock Number One “Found Out About You” – Wilson and Valenzuela provided their own songs that further cemented the album as a Nineties alt-rock favorite.
I am enormously proud to share the music video for Preservation with you. I worked closely with Julia Vares, who produced, shot, edited and patiently translated my ideas onto the screen . We shot this film over two days on the streets I grew up on in Port Chalmers, Dunedin, New Zealand. The dancer, Bebe, I met in a record shop in Dunedin and instantly wanted her to be in the film. Her grace, and self-assured-ness was astounding and for me, it fit perfectly. Bebe, and Lisa Wilkinson, who choreographed the dance completely nailed it.
“Preservation” is the title & first song on my second record. There’s an intensity to it, but I actually find it quite beautiful in so many ways. It was cleansing to write. It is about loss, reflection and the future. For some reason, during the release of the album, I struggled to fully understand it’s meaning, there’s this sort of un-conscious state I often need to enter with songwriting, where meanings tend to become clearer and more obvious to me, months, or, years later…Enjoy. NR x
The Rolling Stones would not be the first band one might think of in connection with the Summer of Love and the blossoming sound of psychedelia. Yet the Stones spent much of 1967, on and off, recording the album that became “Their Satanic Majesties Request”. Wholly unique in the band’s catalogue, it fused the band’s gritty sensibility with psychedelic effects, more lavish instrumentation, and experimental sounds. Underscoring its nature as a conceptual work, it was also the first album by the Rolling Stones to feature identical track listings on both sides of the Atlantic. The album is receiving a 50th anniversary box set from ABKCO. On September 22nd, the label will reissue the album as a 2-LP/2-hybrid SACD collection featuring both the stereo and mono versions of every song, as newly remastered by Bob Ludwig. Their Satanic Majesties Request – 50th Anniversary Special Edition is appropriately decked out with Michael Cooper’s original 3-D lenticular cover photograph.
Following the departure of Andrew Loog Oldham midway through recording, after numerous clashes with the band, Their Satanic Majesties Request became the first self-produced album from the Stones. Released in December 1967 as the band’s sixth British and eighth American studio album, it arrived on the Decca label in the United Kingdom and London Records in the United States. Though critics were initially lukewarm, it’s risen in stature over the years, and has attracted cover versions from artists ranging from KISS to The Damned and Arcade Fire. During its recording, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts were joined by guests including a pre-Led Zeppelin John Paul Jones providing string arrangements, plus pianist Nicky Hopkins, and background vocalists Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane of the Small Faces.
Historian Rob Bowman provides the box set’s new liner notes, placing the album into context of one of the band’s wildest periods and making the case for it as a benchmark release as the group transitioned from edgy R&B to pure rock. “She’s a Rainbow” (a minor hit in the U.S.) and “2,000 Light Years from Home” capture the band at their most potently psychedelic, while “Citadel” anticipated the harder-rocking direction that would soon be embraced. “Sing All This Together,” “Gomper,” and “On with the Show” showcase a looser, more freeform style of songwriting and playing. “In Another Land” has landmark status, too, as the only Rolling Stones track both written and sung by bassist Bill Wyman. He was joined on the song by Marriott and Lane (recording next door) on vocals, Marriott on guitar, Hopkins on harpsichord, Watts on drums, and Mick and Keith on vocals.
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Their Satanic Majesties Request – 50th Anniversary Special Edition restores Michael Cooper’s original lenticular cover artwork, and the discs are housed in a fold-out album-style numbered package with a 20-page book including more of Cooper’s photos from the original session. As the album was originally issued in both stereo and mono, the upcoming edition will include the entire remastered album on 180-gram vinyl in stereo, another 180-gram vinyl record in mono, and two hybrid Super Audio CDs (one in stereo and one in mono). Hybrid SACDs are playable in all CD players. No additional outtakes or session material has been added to this collection.
Look for the special edition box on September 22 from ABKCO! Pre-order links are live, below!
The Rolling Stones, Their Satanic Majesties Request – 50th Anniversary Special Edition
50 years after its release, The Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request receives a deluxe 2LP and 2CD reissue, newly remastered and featuring replica ground-breaking 3D artwork plus book. Limited numbers available with free psychedelic slipmat!
Five years after reuniting to play live, The Dream Syndicate plans to release its first new album in 29 years, a collection that bandleader Steve Wynn has revealed will feature a guest vocal by founding bassist Kendra Smith who has sat out the ongoing reunion, but agreed to appear on a song Wynn calls “the perfect coda to the record.”
Wynn announced on his website late last summer that he’d completed work on The Dream Syndicate’s fifth album, the very belated follow-up to 1988’s Ghost Stories. He wrote, “It’s mind-blowingly good and we can’t wait to get it out there,” and said he was looking for the right label to put it out.
The album’s title has not yet been announced, nor a release date confirmed. But Wynn has prepared a new band bio for booking agency Billions that discusses the album recorded by the current lineup of Wynn, original drummer Dennis Duck, bassist Mark Walton (who joined after 1984’s Medicine Show) and guitarist Jason Victor, who plays in Wynn’s band, The Miracle 3.
“Oh, and there was one last surprise, one more perfect link to our past and completing of the circle. One of the more intriguing of the songs we recorded was a hypnotic trance and mantra called ‘Recurring.’ I had a pretty decent lyric and sang a good vocal, but somehow it just didn’t work. The song and the riff were cool, the band’s recording was evocative and beautiful. But I began to realize I wasn’t the right singer for the song. And I knew immediately that the perfect singer would be the only other person to sing lead on a Dream Syndicate song, our original bass player Kendra Smith. I was amazed and delighted that my old friend and band mate agreed to do it and then wrote some astounding lyrics and sang a vocal that at once as true to the spirit of the song and also turned the whole thing upside down. The song, now called ‘Kendra’s Dream,’ is the perfect coda to the record, tying up loose ends from the past and then opening them up again to the future.”
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