Opening with the subtle rumble of early morning Chinatown, hazy instrumental shape into focus with languid guitars, gently welcoming you into a dream . The Manchester-based multi-instrumentalist/producer Ryan Kennedy,and hisdream pop group Horsebeach. Based around chiming guitars and Kennedy’s downbeat croon, Horsebeach draw inspiration from classic jangle pop. Becoming critics’ favourites with the release of their eponymous debut album in 2014,
The summery groove and the pop majesty of ‘It’s Alright’ soon sends you spinning into infinity, cares eased by the warm tones of chiming guitars, while Beth de Cent’s smokey vocals come together in perfect harmony with Kennedy’s. ‘Andy’ treats you to a yearning tale of forbidden love, packed with erotic overtones so full blooded they’d make Morrissey blush , while the marbled melodies of ‘Broken Light’ come on in nostalgic ripples and waves of sepia-tinged beauty. ‘Let You Down’ finds Kennedy’s voice sounding better than ever, detailing visceral regret over a full bodied groove .
Opening the B-side with a masterful subtlety, synth led instrumental ‘Midnight Pt.2’ sees Kennedy taking us for a moonlit stroll by the ocean before ‘Dana’ ushers in the dawn with the greatest X-Files inspired song ever written (sorry Cerys). The antithesis of over-serious hipster cool, the earnestly emotional lyrics, anthemic chords and shimmering should be enough to prompt John Hughes to rise again and make a much needed sequel to The Breakfast Club. ‘Disappear’ finds Kennedy and drummer Matt Booth drinking in the cosmic vintage of Düsseldorf ’72, as their chiming West Coast guitars are joined by celestial keys, head nodding bass grooves and a motorik rhythm. ‘Clouds’ draws us back into the haze as Kennedy’s multi-tracked vocals gently melt into the swirl of flanged guitar, while ‘Avoid The Light’ closes the LP with a plea to stay in the dreamworld just a little longer.
Alive with lyrical depth, melodic intricacy and lush production, ‘II’ is the work of a confident and mature multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, and it’s your new favourite LP all of a sudden.
Wrecking Ball is the seventeenth studio album by American recording artist Bruce Springsteen, released March 5th, 2012, on Columbia Records . It was named best album of 2012 by Rolling Stone Magazine and along with the album’s first single, “We Take Care Of Our Own” which was nominated for three Grammy Awards.
Around the time of the 2008 economic collapse, Springsteen was working on a gospel music album. When he found that particular style of music didn’t suit his anger and frustration regarding what he was hearing in the news, and seeing happen to friends and relatives, he scrapped the entire record and started over.
The Boss began to write what started as “folk songs” about the current state of America and what he perceived as inequality, corruption and a lack of care. As a songwriter, Springsteen was about as angry as he’d ever been.
“You can never go wrong pissed off in rock ’n’ roll. The first half of [the album], particularly, is very angry,” Springsteen told a group of reportersin 2012, the year’s of the record’s release. “The genesis of the record was after 2008, when we had the huge financial crisis in the States, and there was really no accountability for years and years. People lost their homes, and I had friends who were losing their homes, and nobody went to jail. Nobody was responsible.”
Springsteen wrote “We Take Care of Our Own” as a question that could “gauge the distance between American reality and the American dream.” He penned “Easy Money” about a street thief taking inspiration from the crooks on Wall Street. He came up with “Death to My Hometown” about the havoc that was wreaked on the working class – not by wars or tyrants, but by greed.
As the new album began to take shape, Springsteen mostly eschewed the E.Street Band for the assistance of producer Ron Aniello, who helped flesh out the songs into bigger arrangements. Aniello brought some more contemporary touches – loops, hip-hop affectations – to Springsteen’s classic sound, although the tracks also included country influences, Irish folk constructs, gospel tinges and bedrock arena bombast. The diversity of sound wasn’t an accident, but something meaningful to Springsteen.
the only E Street Band members to appear on the album are Clemons, Steve Van Zandt, Max Weinberg , and Patti Scialtha. Patti Scialfa adjunct members Charlie Giordano and Soozie Tyrell are also heavily featured. The album features members of the Sessions Band including the horn section, and special guest appearances by Tom Morello and Matt Chamberlain .
“If you listen to the record, I use a lot of folk music. There’s some Civil War music. There’s gospel music,” he said of Wrecking Ball. “There are ’30s horns in ‘Jack of All Trades.’ That’s the way I used the music – the idea was that the music was going to contextualize historically that this has happened before: it happened in the 1970s, it happened in the ’30s, it happened in the 1800s … it’s cyclical. Over, and over, and over, and over again. So I try to pick up some of the continuity and the historical resonance through the music.”
Springsteen also brought in some songs he had previously written, because they fit the theme. “Wrecking Ball” was written for E Street’s final performances at Giants Stadium, but “Come on and take your best shot / Let me see what you’ve got / Bring on your wrecking ball” seemed to resonate with his idea of a resilient America. The song embodied a certain spirit and it gave the new album its title.
He also employed “Land of Hope and Dreams,” a tune Springsteen originally wrote for the E Street Band reunion tour in the late ’90s. Although the song had appeared on a live album, it had never shown up in a studio version.
“I wrote it before the tour as the band’s current manifesto. In other words, we have stood for these things in the past. This is our current statement of how we will try to stand for these things in the future,” said Springsteen , suggesting the song had roots in the past but also looked to the future. “It’s the train that keeps going when I’m gone, and when your music and these times are just a memory. … These ideas are something that I wanted at the end of this record.”
“Land of Hope and Dreams” also packed an emotional punch. It features a saxophone solo by Clarence Clemons the founding E Street Band member who had died the previous year. Other E Streeters like Steve Van Zandt and Max Weinberg and Patti Scialfa also contributed to what was mostly a Springsteen solo record.
Wrecking Ball, was Springsteen’s 17th studio album, was released on March 6th, 2012, and hit No. 1 in many countries around the world, including the U.S., the U.K. and New Zealand. The record earned mostly positive reviews in the music press, with many writers praising Springsteen’s passion, anger and musical versatility. The man himself saw the album as another installment in a decades-long “conversation” with listeners.
“The only thing I do keep in mind is that I’m in the midst of a lifetime conversation with my audience, and I’m trying to keep track of that conversation,” Springsteen said. “So if the artist loses track of the conversation he’s having with his audience, he may lose us forever. So I try to keep track of that conversation, while giving myself the musical freedom I need.”
Cameron Avery is best known as bassist of Australian psych-rockers Tame Impala, as well as frontman of fellow Australian band The Growl. Over the last few years he’s been building up his very own solo career, doing some opening performances under his own name, including support for The Last Shadow Puppets tour last year .
On March 10th, Avery released his debut solo album “Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams” via Anti Records . He celebrated the release of the album one day early with a performance at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn. The show actually almost didn’t happen, as Avery got held up at the airport until nearly 6pm due to an issue with U.S. customs (something that will sadly probably become a problem for many artists in the next four years). Thankfully, he made it work, and the show went on.
The lineup of his band had changed quite a bit since the last time I saw him, as his band The Growl had joined him to bring his songs to life. Avery expanded the setlist by included a few of The Growl’s songs (“Douse The Lamps” and “John the Revelator”) along with the soulful songs off his record. It was a nice mix that added a little bit of power to the show, and let his band enter their comfort zone for just a moment.
The show was nearly sold out, and based on the crossover appeal from Tame Impala and The Last Shadow Puppets, and the fact that he’s writing some really good songs, it’s only a matter of time until he breaks out on his own. There’s also the undeniable fact that the women at this show were loving him, making it clear that his fan base will be growing in no time at all.
A darkness pervades John Paul Pitts’ lyrics on “Snowdonia”, the first Surfer Blood album since the death, by cancer, of guitarist Thomas Fekete, but the overall tenor is joyful. It’s a rebooted version of the band, with Pitts and original drummer Tyler Schwarz joined by guitarist Michael McCleary and bassist Lindsey Mills—the latter two the source of the breezy harmony vocals that sweetened the arrangements.
This is a zippy power-pop record, full of crunchy riffs and ringing leads, even as Pitts sings of mortality, aging and sacrifice. Pitts stretches out with multi part song structure on the title track and shifts “Instant Doppelgangers” into high gear with some judiciously placed distortion that hearkens back to 2010’s Astro Coast. But most of Snowdonia is immediate and direct, as bright and sharply defined as the weather in the band’s native Florida. At times reminiscent of the Lilys’ Better Can’t Make Your Life Better, Snowdonia works within formulas, but it does so with aplomb.
We are very excited to announce our new album ‘Snowdonia’ will be released February 3rd on Joyful NoiseRecordings!
For more than a decade, singer-songwriter Sera Cahoone has specialized in a shy, introverted kind of folk music: She started her career at the back of the stage, playing drums for Band Of Horses, and the solo songs that followed reflected the gently unassuming nature of a singer who couldn’t showboat in the spotlight if she tried. Instead, Cahoone’s first three records — a self-titled 2006 debut, 2008’s Only As The Day Is Long and 2012’s Deer CreekCanyon, all great settle in as front-porch comfort music, with a lyrical and sonic emphasis on soothing the listener’s aches and woes.
But on “From Where I Started”, Cahoone’s first album in five years, something’s different, and it’s clear in the first words of the opening track. “First years I ever played my, my songs for anyone / My back was toward them and I sang down to the ground. / Got so tired of being nervous that I finally turned around.” That song, “Always TurnAround,” marks the beginning of a clear shift toward putting more of herself into each warm bit of storytelling.
Thankfully, Cahoone has lost none of her easygoing approachability along the way; her songs still amble sweetly and gently, propelled by a voice that radiates kindness. But, starting with “Always Turn Around,” From Where I Started tackles personal realities in ways its predecessors generally didn’t. In “Ladybug” she pays empathetic, finely detailed tribute to a cousin killed by a domestic partner — “All the signs were right there / We just couldn’t believe” — while “Up To Me” offers a bracingly grown-up take on lifetime love. (“I wanna be your lover / Like no other / But it’s not really up to me.”)
Still, Cahoone remains fascinated with contentment, and From Where I Started closes by painting a picture of domestic bliss undisturbed by the constant churn of the world around it. In “House Our Own,” amid a sweet haze of slide guitars, she examines and celebrates the way the right relationship can redefine our concept of home. For all the album’s detours into tragedy and self-doubt, it’s natural that Sera Cahoone would close the proceedings where her solo career started: in the pursuit of freedom from the prison of a worried mind.
Seattle post-punk female four piece return with their second album and their first for Sub Pop offshoot, Hardly Art.‘Time to Go Home’ sees Chastity Belt take the nights out and bad parties of their past to their stretching points, watch the world around them break apart in anticipatory haze, and rebuild it in their own image with stunning clarity before anyone gets hung over. Cool, twangy and languid guitars meet vocals dripping in melancholy.
Let yourself be swept away by this stunning, meditative clip for Chastity Belt’s “Lydia,” off of their widely-acclaimed 2015 album “Time to Go Home”.
Chastity Belt is a rock band consisting of four friends – guitarists Julia Shapiro and Lydia Lund, bassist AnnieTruscott, and drummer Gretchen Grimm. They met in a tiny college town in Eastern Washington, but their story begins for real in Seattle, that celebrated home of Macklemore and the Twelfth Man. Following a post-grad summer apart, a handful of shows and enthusiastic responses from the city’s DIY community led them, as it has countless others, into a cramped practice space. They emerged with a debut album, No Regerts, sold it out faster than anyone involved thought possible, and toured America, a country that embraced them with open-ish arms. Now they’re back and the tab is settled, the lights are out, the birds are making noise even though the sun isn’t really up yet: it’s Time to Go Home, their second long-player and first for Hardly Art.
In the outside world, they realized something crucial: they didn’t have to play party songs now that their audience didn’t consist exclusively of inebriated 18-22 year olds, as it did in that college town. Though still built on a foundation of post-post-punk energy, jagged rhythms, and instrumental moves that couldn’t be anyone else’s, the songs they grew into in the months that followed are equal parts street-level takedown and gray-skied melancholy. They embody the sensation of being caught in the center of a moment while floating directly above it; Shapiro’s world spins around her on “On The Floor,” grounded by Grimm and Truscott’s most commanding playing committed to tape. They pay tribute to writer Sheila Heti on “Drone” and John Carpenter with “The Thing,” and deliver a parallel-universe stoner anthem influenced by Electrelane with “Joke.”
Recorded by José Díaz Rohena at the Unknown, a deconsecrated church and former sail factory in Anacortes, and mixed with a cathedral’s worth of reverb by Matthew Simms (guitarist for legendary British post-punks and one-time tourmates Wire), Time to Go Home sees Chastity Belt take the nights out and bad parties of their past to their stretching points, watch the world around them break apart in anticipatory haze, and rebuild it in their own image with stunning clarity before anyone gets hung over.
TRACK LISTING
1. Drone
2. Trapped
3. Why Try
4. Cool Slut
5. On The Floor
6. The Thing
7. Joke
8. Lydia
9. IDC
10. Time To Go Home
Never the most hell-raising or fiercely innovative band on the scene, Real Estate nonetheless have made a name for themselves for simply sticking to one paradigm – that of bright and deliriously melodic indie-rock – and doing it with so much charm and skill that it would be churlish to criticise. Well hold the front page, they’re back again, and still doing that same old fabulous thing, with guitars never more rich in their jangly filigree nor harmonies more heavenly. Drifting along a continuum that starts with Big Star and takes in Teenage Fanclub and R.E.M. on the way, ‘In Mind’ remains the sonic equivalent of a cool drink of water on a sunny day.
Real Estate – In Mind. The new album, out March 17th.
If you’re a fan of bands like The Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen, you’ll love UNDO’s modern spin on that sound. Their debut self-titled album was released just last week and has already received rave reviews from critics. They have a melancholy vibe with indie and punk influences, and aren’t afraid of making a proper racket. UNDO are newcomers to the scene, so get into them now so you can be that guy that says you knew them before they were famous.
UNDO are a four-piece from Glasgow who combine post-punk-influenced drums, intelligent basslines and hook-laden, destructive guitars with introspective, multi-layered and thoughtful lyrics.
Having only formed in 2016, they’ve already got quite a lot under their belts – thus far UNDO have clocked up appearances alongside the likes of Nothing and performed at Glasgow’s Stag & Dagger festival, as well as touring the UK with Adore//repel. They released their debut single as a split 7″ with Jutland Songs in August of last year and they’re set to self-release their self-titled debut album on 24th February 2017.
That brings us nicely onto new track Paint Me, taken from the upcoming album. As singer and guitarist Iain Bethel says “The song is by far our favorite on the record; it’s a positive (for once) composition about individuality, being carefree and hoping you are being your best self for people. I guess it’s a punk rock song soaked in reverb and chorus.
With the video filmed in UNDO’s own practice space, Bethel cites John Hughes movies and bands like The Cure and The Psychdedelic Furs as inspiration, hoping to create an “80s romantic vibe.” Of the video’s imagery, he explains: “The use of roses is a direct link to the lyrics – ‘Paint roses in my wounds / Paint me in bloom’. It also had to capture the energy of how we play live which it definitely does.
UNDO a rather apt name for this emo/post-hardcore group from Glasgow. A lot of their material seems to reflect on past experiences and things that people generally regret and want to change. However, ultimately their music endorses the idea that one must learn from the things they’ve made a mess of and continue to move forward.
Musically, their style is a hodge podge of many others. A melting pot if you will. The obvious touchstones would be the melodic/post hardcore scenes of Washington, DC and San Diego, but there’s also nods to the 80’s/90’s indie of the UK in the band’s sense of melody and to early post punk in the angularity of the riffs.
Those with a keen ear will hear influences ranging from Drive Like Jehu to Gang of Four. However, UNDO are much more than an oppurtinity to play ‘spot the influence’ as their vigour, dynamic awareness, and melodic sensibility elevate them above the copycat realm.
One of the oldest tracks on the album and one that’s been a constant staple in the set for a few years now. I remember feeling like we had really settled as a new band after our bass player Fraser joining and trying to get the sound back together again. We released this on a split 7″ with our pals Jutland Songs back in May and put a video for it via Ally at Wraith Media. There’s lots of Big Muff Fuzz going on with the lead in the recording too, never enough maybe? I was listening to a lot of the Philadelphia band Nothing at the time who we managed to play with last year.
Lyrically, it’s about never being able to hold onto any great feelings about anything(emo huh?) and generally continuing in a cycle that you feel isn’t changing anything for the better greatly and you have no idea what you’re looking for.
In my opinion, the greatest achievement on the album. We spent a lot of time crafting how everything would play off each other in this song. The combo of myself and Alan’s guitar and also how Fraser’s bass drives the songs changes so smoothly. We always know we have a super solid grounding with Joe’s drums which allows us to experiment with different layers on top. Like I love to soak this song in chorus and delay and always try to give it a kinda Cure/Psychedelic Furs feeling.
Unlike a lot of other stuff on the album, it’s written relative positively from a lyrical standpoint. The chorus words ‘your fate, your way’ is just really about accepting all the horrible shit and getting on with everything that you love. Its also about as positive a romantic song as I’m ever gonna write. It’s also getting a music video and is the lead single from the record.
I think this was the first song we wrote for the record. I love Fraser’s bass line. One of my favourite moments of recording the record was when I recorded the verse guitar line for this and Joe lost his shit. I like to think me and Alan surprise him a lot haha. Its one of the first tracks when we use two lead vocals, Fraser actually being able to sing comes through and puts all my punk moaning to shame.
I love the way the guitars combine on this track too, very clean and with lots of clarity in parts. The lyrics are about never being able to communicate ideas, with yourself and with others. It’s not the cheeriest. I like to think it remains hopeful though.
The bulk of ‘Scarlet’ was written by Alan in one of his hidden bedroom jams that we hardly ever get to hear. I think Alan has multiple records written in his house that he just keeps to himself and they all sound like next level Sonic Youth. This got recorded a lot faster than we had it originally (Joe likes that) but I much prefer it at this pace.
This is my mum’s favourite which is all that matters so Alan should be proud of that. It has a slightly more chilled feel instrumentally than some of the others, for us anyway. A lot of the lyrics relate to fire and brimstone ha ha. Its roughly about struggling to deal with your own mind and how it plays tricks on you. Another super positive spin from the Undo vault.
Our first successful attempt at a quieter song. It has a very reserved feel for the most part, clean simple guitars and a more laid back vocal approach. I really enjoyed recording these vocals with Paul (Mcinally, 45 a side studios) he didn’t have to correct my out of key screaming or shouting, I found it much easier to sing down low. The ending brings in a bit of noise, heavier vocal but for the most part it’s chilled.
I wrote it about perfection or the idea of it and how maybe it can never be achieved completely in my own mind anyway. There’s lots of questioning mortality etc in the words too. Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows as usual.
This song probably didn’t come out the way we intended in terms of how much attack there is in it. It’s a bit more of an onslaught than it probably needs haha. I remember being up really late in the studio through the night adding more and more noise to it with guitars.
I think in my head, it has kind of a post punk vibe to it in the verses. Lots of Wire and The National influences.
I like the way it changes between discordant and melodic. We also got Fraser to sing most of the chorus (see previous vocal post).
It’s a very angry song, feeling like you’re completely invisible and no path you can take in your life will change that. Feeling like you should maybe get that boring job that makes you miserable just so you look less weird to your peers. Something I’ll always avoid.
Listen out for Joe’s screaming rant at the end, we drank a lot in the studio and sometimes he just likes opening up ha ha. We recorded multiple vocals together for the outro and he just kinda lost his shit. He’s some boy.
One of the tracks we wrote quite last minute but one we play a lot live because it’s so much fun. There’s a lot of Zen Arcade era Husker Du influence in this track and it almost wavers into pop punk at points.
The vocal approach probably came out a little more forceful than I intended, It’s kind of just a big ‘Fuck you’ to all the shit that makes me feel insecure about where I’m at in my life. That probably makes me sound really juvenile but in this song I really don’t care. Do what you want to screw everyone else etc etc.
I love the guitar hook in the pre chorus bits too, the ending was never something I thought we would record but you get like twenty seconds of Undo as a hardcore band and as i say it’s a hell of a fun one to have in our set.
I was listening to a lot of the new Ceremony record when we started coming up with ideas for this one. It’s probably about as brooding as we have sounded. The release only really comes near the end, everything stays pretty creepy and dark.
We had ideas of doing a kinda horror film video for it but it hasn’t transpired as of Ayet. There’s lots of tape delay in the guitar towards the end and the drum pace never lets up. Lyrically it’s just me to try and convey as many horrible images as I can. I have a feeling of always holding everything in and never being able to open up.
Ahhhhh ‘The Living’. This was another late bloomer and one we never really managed to quite grasp what we wanted to do with it. I love Alan’s guitar hook in the verses, I think this song sounds a lot better in the album recording than it does when we try and pull it off live.
I think it has a lot of Title Fight influence in it. It was originally called ‘Negative Space’ until I remembered that’s a METZ song.
The song is basically about humanity and how it’s completely fucked forever and how no one, for various reasons, will ever really care. We don’t put this in the set too often but I’m keen to see how people perceive it.
A firm live favourite with the small batch of people who come to our shows. It takes a lot of influence from bands like Drive Like Jehu, METZ, Unwound. A perfect ending for the record I think, it’s a relentless attack of guitars, noise, feedback and rage. As the song progresses, melody creeps in before the final face melt.
The lyrics to ‘Murder’ are about being pushed down and forced to live a certain way. Feeling isolated, powerless but not defeated.
Bristol punk band Idles have been toiling on the circuit for yonks I recall seeing them at Live At Leeds maybe four years ago, without ever getting a further up the venue listings , although they threatened a while back with a clutch of ferocious singles and the Welcome EP, but it wasn’t until last year that they found a new impetus to thrust them into the spotlight.
Their next EP “Meat” saw a gang of snarling, foaming-at-the-mouth brutes amped up on adrenaline and rage but it’s not pointless angst, not by a long shot. It has never been about waving a fist against nowt in particular . Idles have always focused fury into focus that burrows under your skin and leaves a permanent mark.
On their debut “Brutalism”Idles have distilled their emotions into bite-size chunks of raucous noise. It’s punk, or post-punk, with bruised and bruising guitars flailing before grazed bass and drums hit so hard most people’d snap a wrist, but it’s crucially human. mini-hits “Well Done” and “Stendahl Syndrome” . But although Brutalism may have it’s downer moments, the boundless charisma of frontman Joe Talbot shines through and offers a weird kind of optimism. He is effortlessly poignant without pretence, speaking plain and diving deep into assaults on Tory cabals, British society, the downfall of the NHS, the cult of celebrity, drawing deep from his relationships with such topics and blasting them through the prism of wry punk while galvanised by the loss of his own mother.
Nothing is especially new here – punk isn’t new, nor is humour or political lyrics, but what Idles offer is a sincere view from a place of passion, and that is invigorating. They demand change with a smirk and a revolutionary fervour, some of the material on Brutalism is ludicrously catchy. Almost every track on the LP is a potent call-to-arms that beckons action of some kind.
There’s a thrilling danger ever present whenever Idles are around Idles are one of the most exciting British bands right now and “Brutalism” is such proof.
When Dustin Payseur’s band Beach Fossils began making waves, they were lumped into the low-fi indie genre that seemed to be dominating underground music in both the UK and across the pond.
With bands like Wavves, Best Coast and Wild Nothing music critics worldwide were collectively housing them under type,collectively the fact that each of them were glorified bedroom musicians. Here we had a new wave of artists that were producing and releasing track after track for next-to-nothing usually from their own recording studio, they could craft a record all by him/ herself without the need for a big budget. Gone were the days of plush recording studios and a heap of session musicians to pad out your arrangements. These artists were breathing new life into the music industry .
Some of these bands capitalised off the back of their initial success, by going on to gain a cult following worldwide and, while not selling out arenas, released an assortment of singles, EPs and LPs that are still cherished today; one of these bands are Beach Fossils.
When you listen back to the band’s self-titled debut (2010), there’s still an air of excitement and a raw, nostalgic quality to their music. if you caught them live, line-ups would often change, with guest appearances from fellow musicians within the scene with the likes of DIIV;s Zachary Cole Smith regularly jumping in to assist on drumming or guitar duties. There was a similar aesthetic on their EP, What A Pleasure (2011), with an airiness to each composition and, again, guest appearances from their pals on Captured Tracks; the hip independent label to whom they were signed at the time. Production, however, was much crisper on “What a Pleasure” and there was a sense of a band wanting to explore their overall dynamic further.
2013’s “Clash the Truth” exposed the band’s grungier side and, while the song structures were almost identical to the ternary form heard on their debut, there was still a clear progression. As a listener, you could hear a seriousness and professional quality now to the songwriting that Payseur was producing; tracks such as “Caustic Cross” and “In Vertigo” (feat. Kazu Makino)” were standouts.
That brings us to their latest release; “Somersault “(2017). Clocking in at a comfortable 36 minutes, each track is still in the typical Beach Fossils format. All but one (“Be Nothing”) stays beneath the four minute mark and once again follow the basic verse – chorus – verse – chorus structure. Opener ‘“This Year” sets the tone for the album and sees the band mellow out quite dramatically in comparison to Clash the Truth. In-keeping with their current trend, the production seems even more polished with an array of heart-warming acoustic and clean guitars. The key focal point, however, is the introduction of the string section; it sounds amazing!
Finally, Beach Fossils seem to have shaken themselves loose from the shackles of their indie dream-pop days, revealing a band in their prime; Payseur at the peak of his songwriting career. The string section reappears on numerous tracks across Somersault, each time providing ear-cleansing, harmonious arrangements that diatonically compliment the music and guide the listener throughout a euphoric journey.
Somersault wouldn’t be a Beach Fossils record if there weren’t a few collaborations though and, as expected, there’s no exception here. “Tangerine”, features Slowdive band member Rachel Goswell, has a much dryer feel with dominant acoustic guitars and, again, that sexy string section in the chorus beneath Goswell’s distant vocals. “Rise (feat. Cities Aviv)” sees the band branch out and explore R&B, with saxophones and a lazy kick/ snare pattern. This is a first for Beach Fossils, but you wouldn’t think it and, weirdly, the track doesn’t seem alien to the album; it fits in nicely. “Sugar” is a killer track its aching synth progression and floating nature.
Overall, the most amazing aspect about Somersault is that it still has that bedroom-composed feel. While Payseur has matured dramatically over the last decade, he still manages to consistently produce records that reflect his roots and he highlights just how easy it is to create a catchy, successful LP .
When Dustin Payseur’s band Beach Fossils began making waves, they were lumped into the low-fi indie genre that seemed to be dominating underground music in both the UK and across the pond.
