Menace Beach – Lemon Memory
“Lemon Memory” is, for Menace Beach at least, an exercise in restraint, the fuzz and distortion turned down, a big last chorus avoided. Liza explains, “The one ‘rule’ thing we went into the album session with was to keep in mind that sometimes doing The Opposite is much more interesting”. Liza takes the lead vocal as she does on much of “Lemon Memory”. Indeed, if debut LP Ratworld was Ryan’s record, “Lemon Memory” is very much a Liza record. Ryan explains “Liza got that look in the eye and a head-down-blinkers-on thing, and only a moron would try and get in the way of that. It’s all about keeping those ideas in their purest form and diluting as little as possible.”
Written in Ibiza and recorded in Sheffield with Ross Orton (MIA, Arctic Monkeys, The Fall) “Lemon Memory” is in part an effort to lift a citrus based curse – trust us, it’s a real thing – Ryan and Liza believe was placed on their house, via the hexbreaking power of music. It’s also the sound of a band finding their own identity, edging closer to some sort of grimy truth.
Foxygen – Hang
On their first proper studio record, the Los Angeles pair once again present their uncanny knack for pulling together myriad strands of influences to an elaborate, uncompromising vision. And this time, they’ve gone true big band! Every song on Hang features a 40-plus-piece symphony orchestra arranged and conducted by Trey Pollard with additional arranging from Matthew E. White. Additionally, Hang was recorded with the brothers rhythm section duo of Brian and Michael D’Addario, also known as the Lemon Twigs, and features Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips on select tracks. Written and produced entirely by Foxygen, Hang was recorded on 2” tape at Electro Vox Studios in Los Angeles.
Lead single, “Follow The Leader,” is one of the album’s most upbeat songs. As described by the band, “it was a blast to make! It’s a positive anthem, with some lyrical scenarios we don’t quite understand.” The song’s video was directed Cameron Dutra (who directed Foxygen’s “San Francisco” video).
It’s with great excitement that Cherry Glazerr announces their new album, Apocalipstick, out January 20th. The band’s first album for Secretly Canadian was recorded at Hollywood’s iconic Sunset Sound studio with acclaimed producers Joe Chicarrelli (The Strokes, My Morning Jacket, The White Stripes) and Carlos De La Garza (Bleached, M83, Paramore).
To celebrate, the band is sharing “Nurse Ratched,” which was written by lead singer Clementine Creevy as she mused on the evil Nurse Ratched character in Ken Kesey’s masterpiece, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. The track’s slasher flick video is directed by horror film director/producer Roxanne Benjamin, who is known for her films Southbound and V/H/S, among other work. Perfectly timed for its release on Halloween, watch as what appears to be an innocent albeit bizarre hitchhiking ride turns into a bloody massacre. “Nurse Ratched” is the second single to be heard from the forthcoming record and follows the previously shared “Told You I’d Be With Guys.”
Proper Ornaments is the project of James Hoare (Ultimate Painting, Veronica Falls) and Max Oscarnold (Toy, Pink Flames). Debut LP ‘Wooden Head’ (FortunaPop 2014) perfected the unique slant of their previous work. James and Max started out writing the follow-up in January 2015. On ‘Foxhole’ they’ve sliced away a whole stratum of their sound, removing some distortion and lowering the frequency of plectrum strokes to allow more nuanced, piano-led ideas to emerge.
The title isn’t a reference to Television’s jaunty proto-punk record but seems to be more of a dark, protective interior, a head space sketched out on ‘Jeremy’s Song’. While their particularly recognisable production style (a bright, frozen counterpoint to the airless mixes one encounters more often) remains, three things stand out as likely reasons for the shift in mood. By the time they got around to recording again in James’ bedroom in Finsbury Park that Summer, the instability around the recording of ‘Wooden Head’ (and the five years before) had slid into a deep and seething acrimony. Second, they both bought pianos. Third, when the band, with Daniel Nellis and Bobby Syme joining on bass and drums went to record at Tin Room in Hackney in June, the pinch wheel on the 8 track machine was broken and somehow no one noticed. All but one recording, ‘The Frozen Stare,’ was hopelessly warped, so they went and did it all again from scratch back at James’. “We ended up doing the whole thing there as the atmosphere suited the direction of the foxhole and we were more comfortable working on it in our own time,” says James.
That’s why the record has a laid back, conversational, not imposing or anxious feel in my opinion. If ‘Always There’ was the most melodically fluid but dimly lit point of the first record, there are another half album of songs here at least that are as strikingly gorgeous and unsettling. ‘Memories,’ ‘Just a Dream,’ ‘The Frozen Stare’ and ‘When We Were Young’ are in this mould, as is the icy, slightly devastated goodbye that closes the record ‘The Devils,’ filled out with piano reminiscent of Big Star’s ‘Third’ or Lou Reed’s ‘Berlin’ and cracked double bass.
