Julie Byrne is one of the most itinerant artists around right now. The Singer Songwriter Not only has moved around the U.S. living in places like Buffalo to Pittsburgh; Chicago, Seattle and New Orleans they have all been temporary homes , but that all leads to some wonderful, varied music. Someone so keen to see new places and different environments writes beautifully about the natural world – as one might imagine. Double rainbows are featured in the gorgeous Follow My Voice; Natural Blueis about the waking dawn and new day. Scattershot themes run right through – it is one of the most adventurous records you’ll hear from a thematic perspective but is all bonded and fantastic because of Byrne’s exceptional, luscious voice. If you are looking for a singer that can buckle the knees and take you somewhere special then there are few as qualified as Julia Byrne. Synths, dreamy melodies and finger-picked songs might not sound like the ingredients to pull in the hardened Rock elite. The great thing about “Not Even Happiness” is how wide-ranging and universal it is.
Julie Byrne performs “Sleepwalker” live at The End Of the Road Festival.
Grand Rapids, MI band Heaters are back with their second album “Baptistina” which is out now via Beyond Beyond is Beyond. The band’s sound like The Byrds dragged though a gutter in Berlin — is a little more focused this time out as guitarist Nolan Krebs told us. “The music that has really kind of moved us lately is heavier, motorik-type shit – so this is a little bit of a step in that direction for us.” A stream of the whole record premiere in this post — check it out below. Heaters are currently on tour and will be in the UK for the Dot To Dot Festival .
Heaters, a garage rock band out of Michigan who have a good handle on the whole garage-surf sound thing. You might know of their debut album, Holy Water Pool, from our coverage last year. Well, they’re back and releasing an album on August 5, and we couldn’t be more excited.
Today we bring you “Elephant Turner,” a new song off their upcoming album Baptistina. It’s a dirty, groovy, heavy track featuring the band’s unique vocal tics. Their songs are fairly classic garage rock, but when Andrew Tamlyn, Joshua Korf, and Nolan Krebs come together they create a sound that is equal parts spacey and psychedelic.
When asked about the song, Tamlyn commented: “Parts of Baptistinawere created very much in the moment, as we had a small window to finish recording before going overseas for the winter. “Elephant Turner” is a good example of that; a sort of off-the-cuff, late night jam in the studio that ended up being one of our favorite songs from the record to play live.” Listen to the song now, then check out the tour dates, then go swimming. Baptistina is out August 5 via Beyond Beyond is Beyond.
Dawes are excited to share “Alternative Theories of Physics”, a film about the making of their latest album “We’re All Gonna Die”, which includes interviews with the band and behind-the-scenes footage from the studio. Alternate Theories of Physics was directed, shot and edited by Kevin Hayes.
Alternative Theories of Physics is a film about the making of We’re All Gonna Die with Blake Mills, and includes song-by-song interviews with Dawes, along with behind-the-scenes footage from the studio
A movie about the making of We’re All Gonna Die by Dawes.
Back at the start of the year, with the cold nights and dark mornings closing in Moon Duo, fittingly, released the first of two parts to their latest album.
The Portland duo – guitarist Ripley Johnson and keyboardist Sanae Yamada – deliberately went with the dark stuff first, as our writer David Zammitt commented at the time in his review of ‘Occult Architecture Vol. 1’.
Meaning all things magick and supernatural, the root of the word occult is that which is hidden, concealed, beyond the limits of our minds. If this is occult, then the Occult Architecture of Moon Duo’s fourth album – a psychedelic opus in two separate volumes released in 2017 – is an intricately woven hymn to the invisible structures found in the cycle of seasons and the journey of day into night, dark into light.
Offering a cosmic glimpse into the hidden patterning embedded in everything, Occult Architecture reflects the harmonious duality of these light and dark energies through the Chinese theory of Yin and Yang.
In Chinese, Yin means “the shady side of the hill” and is associated with the feminine, darkness, night, earth. Following this logic, Vol. 1 embraces and embodies Moon Duo’s darker qualities — released appropriately on February 3rd, in the heart of winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
“If you’re going to sing something, it might as well be something important,” says The Black Angels’Alex Maas. That ethos is the pulsing heartbeat of Death Song. Written well before the vitriolic election cycle, Death Song is part protest, part emotional catharsis, this is a troubled record for troubled times, and in that sense, it’s classic Black Angels. Album opener “Currency” sets the stage in an explosive way, with ground-shaking low end and searing guitar riffs wrap around lyrics dealing with the desires that draw us to the brink of ruin. As the album unfolds, subsequent tracks reveal similar self-perpetuating cycles. Romance, violence, religion, health; for The Black Angels, everything is connected. On “I’d Kill for Her,’ Maas steps inside of the mind of a man driven by the twisted belief that there’s beauty in brutality, while “Half Believing” tackles modern apathy, and “Grab As Much As You Can” is a musing on the nature of greed. The surreal, Krautrock-influenced “I Dreamt” envisions a reality in which our true selves can be shared through artistic expression, and in that sharing, a new, more harmonious way forward is revealed. If there’s a way out of the mess, Death Song suggests that it’s not through consumption, but rather through creation. And fuzz… Lots of fuzz.
“Medicine” is an awesome song from the new album “Death Song” (2017).
Rod Stewart was doing double duty with the Faces at the time of 1971’s ‘Every Picture Tells a Story,’ so his band mates’ contributions boost the loose, boozy vibe. As the decade progressed, Stewart would try on a few other hats soft-rock lothario, swarthy disco guy – but he’s at his best when he puts his throaty voice behind pure rock ‘n’ roll.
The album is a mixture of rock country, Folk and blues and some soul, and includes Stewart’s breakthrough hit, “Maggie May” and the Tim Hardin cover “Reason To Believe” taken from Hardin’s debut album of 1966. “Reason to Believe” was released as the first single from the album with “Maggie May” as the B-side, however, “Maggie May” became more popular and was a No. 1 hit in both the UK and US.
The album also included a version of Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right (Mama)” and a cover of the Dylan song “Tomorrow Is A long Time” that was an outtake from Dylan’s 1963 “Freewheelin” album.
All five members of the Faces (with whom Stewart at that time was thier lead vocalist) appeared on the album, with guitarist/bassist Ronnie Wood and keyboardist Ian McLagan on keyboards being most prominent. Due to contractual restrictions, the personnel listings were somewhat vague, and it was unclear that the full Faces line-up . Other contributors included Ray Jackson on mandolin (though Stewart forgot his name and merely mentioned “the mandolin player in Lindisfarne on the sleeve). Micky Waller on drums. Maggie Bell performed backing vocals (mentioned on the sleeve as “vocal abrasives”) on the title track, and Madeline Bell sang backup on the next track, “Seems Like A Long Time”. Pete Sears played all the piano on the album except for one track, “I’m Losing You” which featured Ian McLagan on piano, along with the Faces as a band.
Released on 2nd June, The Age Of Anxiety is a brave step forward from Pixx’s first release, 2015’s Fall In EP. A deeply personal document of heartbreak, those four folk-infused torch songs drew early critical praise, with the Sunday Times hailing it “one of the most arresting debuts of the year,” and led to tours with the likes of Daughter, Lush and Glass Animals.
Instead of tales of loss and affairs of the heart, The Age Of Anxiety finds Hannah Rodgers ostensibly place herself outside looking in. Her twelve-song collection seeks to address a generation increasingly isolated by an unprecedented new world order, from the pressures of social media to ever-changing political turbulence.
This bold debut borrows its title from W.H. Auden’s final poem, charting one man’s quest to find substance and identity in a shifting and increasingly industrialised world. Published in 1947, Auden’s six-part rumination on human isolation in the modern age parallels the overarching themes of Pixx’s work some 70 years later.
Originally from Chipstead, just beyond the fringes of south London where suburban sprawl start to break into countryside, Rodgers experienced a year-long period of insomnia caused by recurring nightmares at age 9 – her first awareness of anxiety. It left a lasting impression, inspiring a fascination with different states of consciousness, and is one of many somnolent events she draws upon for The Age Of Anxiety.
The National’s massive triple-disc Grateful Dead tribute album “Day Of The Dead” still keeps throwing out some classic covers. It’s took me an age to get through this album and still I keep discovering some beautiful gems. Already we’ve heard a whole pile of songs from it. the people behind the album have shared most of the tracks, and there are some heavyweights on them. For our purposes, the biggest of these is probably the version of “To Lay Me Down,” done as a funeral duet from Perfume Genius and Sharon Van Etten. Also we get to hear My MorningJacket frontman Jim James doing “Candyman,”
‘Candyman’ by Jim James & Friends, from ‘Day of the Dead’, is a tribute album to the Grateful Dead curated by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National, with all profits going to Red Hot Organization. ‘Day of the Dead’ was released on 20th May via 4AD Records. Featuring an incredible cast list, the compilation is a wide-ranging tribute to the songwriting and experimentalism of The Grateful Dead which took four years to record and features over 60 artists from varied musical backgrounds, with 59 tracks and a duration of almost six hours. The limited edition 10xLP ‘Day of the Dead’ LP boxed set is released today via 4Ad Records, on individually coloured vinyl.
Among others are Unknown Mortal Orchestra covering “Shakedown Street,” Bonnie “Prince” Billy singing “Rubin & Cherise,” and old-school soul howler Charles Bradley teaming up with soul/funk revivalists the Menahan Street Band for “Cumberland Blues.”
The tracks curated from Bryce & Aaron Dessner ,The compilation was produced by Aaron Dessner and co-produced by Bryce Dessner and Josh Kaufman. Grateful Dead tribute album were released a year ago. Considering the album has 59 tracks, this is just a small sampling. Last March, a whole bumch of coversfrom the record were released, including takes from the National, Courtney Barnett, the War on Drugs, Bruce Hornsby with Justin Vernon’s band DeYarmond Edison, and Phosphorescent with Jenny Lewis., the National and Grizzly Bear members also performed a’ 17-minute cover of “Terrapin Station Suite” .
Seattle’s Mike Hadreas spent the best part of his first two full-lengths under the Perfume Genius moniker finding ways to weather and draw strength from humanity’s darker moments. On his third record, Hadreas finally appears to have found a sound palette as provocative, forward-thinking and confrontational as his vehement, brave lyrical style – alongside new ways to step out of the haze and to explore himself, his sexuality and the world around him.
On this his third album Mike Hadreas aka Perfume Genius, performed something of a career u-turn. Whilst his previous records presented us with a series of heart-achingly beautiful piano ballads, here he gave the listener not just a new sound but a new attitude. Where previously he was a deeply emotional and somewhat miserable soul, here he presented not sadness but anger. Take the albums lead single “Queen”, a bile-fuelled attack on homophobia and gay stereotypes, set not to a plaintive piano but to crashing drums and the swaying lilt of a synthesiser and as he yelps “no family is safe when I sashay” the whole song erupts into a stunning waltzing crescendo, it’s the albums unmissable highlight.
Elsewhere the album goes from the shrieking distorted electronica of My Body, to the frankly bizarre, unique and unnerving “I’m A Mother”, as a collection of tracks it’s never short of challenging and fascinating, and there’s even some time for a few absolutely gorgeous piano ballads, almost as a reminder of what a supreme talent he truly is.
An artist of rare calibre, Aldous Harding does more than sing; she conjures a singular intensity. Her body and face a weapon of theatre, Harding dances with steeled fervor, baring her teeth like a Bunraku puppet’s gnashing grin.
Her debut release with 4AD Records, “Party”(produced with the award-winning John Parish; PJ Harvey,Sparklehorse) introduces a new pulse to the stark and unpopulated dramatic realm where the likes of Kate Bush and Scott Walker reside.
Comprising a formidable clutch of songs, 2017’s Party sees Harding shape-shift through a variety of roles: chanteuse, folk singer and balladeer – all executed with her twisted touch of humour, hubris and quiet horror. In other words, she’s having a good time. Stretching her limbs with playful cunning; every note, word and arrangement posed with intellect and inventiveness.
Created in Parish’s hometown of Bristol, “Party” saw Aldous Harding depart her New Zealand base in the antipodes for an intensive two-week immersion in the studio. Articulating her ambitions for “Party” to Parish was a galvanizing process for Harding, met with stunning results. The pair developed a near non-verbal shorthand, audibly evident in a raft of musical contributions from Parish. Alongside such special guests as Perfume Genius’Mike Hadreas (having worked with Parish and toured with Aldous, it only took asking once), there is an exhilarating sense of risk throughout the record as Harding’s muscular wingspan extends. Teased out with inflections of experimental instrumentation and arrangements; “Party” is always anchored by Aldous’s intimidating command of her own songs.
First single ‘Horizon’ is a lover’s call to arms, powerful for its brutal simplicity and rawness of feeling, love and loathing colliding to devastating effect. “Aldous Harding repeats the line as a mantra, as a truth, as a reality. It’s as if the gift of life is right here, with all its beauty and its limitations”, said NPR.
‘Imagining My Man’ commands an air of delicacy as Aldous explores the curiosity of a lover’s idiosyncrasies; steering listeners into a state of intense intimacy laced with hyperactive shots, dirgey saxophone and Harding’s aching voice. The track is one of two that Mike Hadreas lends his inimitably sultry vocals to, the other being the intimate Party closer ‘Swell Does The Skull’.
‘Blend’ sensitively ushers the mood of Harding’s flourishment throughout Party. Its opening lines a nod to the mood of Harding’s last record; sameness is quickly quashed with an electronic drumbeat and the announcement of Aldous Harding as an artist of stirring ambition and trajectory.
The album’s eponymous single ‘Party’ harks to Aldous’ earlier work; delicately pulling at the threads of a seemingly late-night love affair. Again, it’s not long until the rug is pulled out, with a searing chorus – Harding’s electrifying vocal accompanied by a choir of women and waves of percussive bass clarinet – piercing the balloon of expectations around Harding’s new record with effortless vigour.
