Taking influence from 80’s post-punk, Factory & Creation era bands, Winter Gardens have developed their own ‘dream-punk’ sound, with all the ethereal haze of shoegaze & dream-pop combined with the energy of punk.
Based out of East Sussex, Winter Gardens caught the ear of many back in 2020 with their debut EP, “Tapestry”. While there are no plans announced for this year yet, it was a collection of tracks that hinted at a band with a very bright future. Released through Austerity Records, a new socially-conscious independent record label part-owned by the band’s guitarist Jamie Windless,Tapestry is a record heavily influenced by the 80’s indie sounds of labels like Creation and 4AD, bands who fused the worlds of dream-pop and the rawness of punk
Across its four tracks, “Tapestry” incorporates moments of lush introspection, such as the Lanterns On The Lake-like title track, as well as moments of ferocious energy, with the excellently titled Zigzanny, reminiscent of The Joy Formidable. Even if no further new music arrives this year, I can only hope 2021 gives the band the opportunity to take this record out to the live environment, and having already played with the likes of Penelope Isles and Say Sue Me, that’s something well worth being very excited about.
We The People were a garage rock supergroup from Orlando, Florida, formed from members of The Coachmen, the Nation Rocking Shadows, and The Offbeets. The band boasted two songwriters, Tommy Talton and Wayne Proctor. Talton’s ‘You Burn Me Up and Down’ is the second song from We The People featured on Nuggets. It was originally released as a b-side to their third single ‘He Doesn’t Go About It Right’. Note that the header art is taken from a later We The People single – it was the only hi-resolution artwork that I could find.
It’s commendable that the Nuggetscompilers sifted through the group’s b-sides for material, but ‘You Burn Me Up and Down’ is one of the lesser tracks I’ve encountered on Nuggets so far. It sounds inspired by Van Morrison’s Them, with a bluesy feel and authoritative lead vocal.
We The People never released a studio album, but did release enough singles to justify several compilations; notably 1983’s Declaration of Independence. Like The Band and The The, We The People’s Declaration of Independence is not an easy item to find on Google! In an interesting piece of timing, today’s post shares its date with the “We The People” inauguration concert, featuring Fall Out Boy, Carole King, Ben Harper, and James Taylor.
Proctor wrote most of We The People’s material, but it was Tommy Talton who went onto a professional music career. He was part of the country rock band Cowboy who played with the Allman Brothers and Bonnie Bramlett. Cowboy released a reunion album in 2018, titled 10’ll Getcha Twenty.
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era is a compilation album of American psychedelic and garage rock singles released in the mid-to-late 1960s. It was assembled by Lenny Kaye, who at the time was a writer and clerk at the Village Oldies record shop in New York. He would later become the lead guitarist for the Patti Smith Group. Kaye worked on Nuggets under the supervision of Jac Holzman, founder of Elektra Records. Kaye initially conceived the project as a series of approximately eight individual LP installments, each focusing on US geographical regions, but Elektra convinced him that one 2-disc LP would be a more commercially viable format. The resulting double album was released on LP by Elektra in 1972 with liner notes by Kaye that contained one of the first uses of the term “punk rock”. It was reissued with a new cover design by Sire Records in 1976. In the 1980s Rhino Records issued Nuggets in a series of fifteen installments, and in 1998 as a 4-cd box set.
Neil Young was not kidding when he said he was going to start releasing archival material at a much faster rate this year. Just weeks after the release of the 10-disc set Archives Volume II 1972-1976 and the live album/film Return to Greendale, he has announced that “Way Down in the Rust Bucket”, a 1990 Crazy Horse club gig, will come out on February 26th as a film and double album. The show took place November 13th, 1990 in front of 800 lucky fans at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, California, two months after the release of “Ragged Glory” and shortly before the start of a long arena tour with Sonic Youth and Social Distortion.
Recorded on November 13th 1990 in Santa Cruz, CA, where the band were rehearsing for their upcoming Weld tour, Neil Young and Crazy Horse played a club show at The Catalyst which is now released here for the first time. The show comprised three different sets along with a 12 minute encore of Cortez The Killer and all 3 sets including that encore are brought together here in over 2 hours of music.
The 20-song set ran more than three hours and is noted for being the first time Young ever played “Danger Bird,” a track from 1975’s “Zuma”, onstage. He also performed live for the first time six Ragged Glory songs – “Love to Burn,” “Farmer John,” “Over and Over,” “Fuckin’ Up,” “Mansion on the Hill” and “Love and Only Love” – and another obscurity, Re-ac-tor’s “Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze.”
Way Down in the Rust Bucket will be released as both a two-CD and four-LP set, with a Deluxe Edition that adds the video of that performance on DVD. The film was directed by Young using his Bernard Shakey pseudonym and contains a 13-minute performance of “Cowgirl in the Sand” that’s not available on the CD or vinyl versions.
You can check out a preview video of “Country Home” on the Neil Young Archives. “This show is one of my all-time Crazy Horse favourites,” Young wrote. “More songs will be added here before the official release. ”Way Down in the Rust Bucket” is the first in a long list of archival releases that Young is planning for 2021. There are no release dates at this point, but he’s plotting a third Archive Series box set, the 2019 Promise of the Real live album “Noise and Flowers”, the Eighties rarities collection “Road of Plenty”, and an extensive Bootleg Series that will spotlight fan-favourite shows like Carnegie Hall 1970, the Rainbow Theater 1973, and the Bottom Line 1974. Young hasn’t released a new album since 2019’s Colorado, but he recently said that new material is coming. “I have started a new album,” he wrote in response to a fan letter last month. “It’s solo. I’ve been waiting a long time.”
Way Down in the Rust Bucket—which is #11.5 in Neil Young’s Performance Series—is available in a number of variations. A numbered deluxe edition box set contains a DVD of the electrifying live concert—directed by Bernard Shakey and produced and directed for Shakey Pictures by LA Johnson—alongside four LPs and two CDs. The DVD contains one additional performance of “Cowgirl In The Sand” (13 minutes’ worth!), which does not appear on the vinyl or CD editions. The other versions released include a 4LP vinyl box set, a 2CD set and the DVD. Purchasers of Way Down in the Rust Bucket on CD or LP from the Greedy Hand Store
NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE
“WAY DOWN IN THE RUST BUCKET”
Live 1990
2CD, 4LP or Deluxe Box set ( 2CD/4LP/DVD )
Recorded on November 13th 1990 in Santa Cruz, CA, where the band were rehearsing for their upcoming Weld tour, Neil Young and Crazy Horse played a club show at The Catalyst which is now released here for the first time.
The show comprised three different sets along with a 12 minute encore of Cortez The Killer and all 3 sets including that encore are brought together here in over 2 hours of music.What It Is: Two months after Neil Young & Crazy Horse released their excellent “Ragged Glory” album in September 1990, they played a bar in Santa Cruz, Calif. For three hours and three sets, they tore through a career-spanning show.
What’s on It: Ragged Glory songs like “Over and Over” and “Love and Only Love” are here, but so are “Cinnamon Girl,” “Like a Hurricane” and “Cortez the Killer.” The set is filled with raw, sprawling versions of old and new cuts, some making their live debut.
Best Song You Know: This is a previously unreleased record from Young’s archives, so you haven’t heard any of these particular versions before. But the set includes some of his greatest songs played by his greatest backing band during one of their best eras.
Best Song You Don’t Know: “Country Home” opened the original Ragged Glory album, and it was the first song performed at the Catalyst on November. 13th, 1990. There’s no slow build for Young and the band: They start strong and don’t let up at all.
A couple months after Neil Young & Crazy Horse released their great 1990 album “Ragged Glory“, they hopped onstage at a small bar in Santa Cruz, Calif., and played songs from the record for the first time in front of an audience. The nearly two-and-a-half-hour performance includes older classics like “Cortez the Killer” and “Like a Hurricane,” but epic run-throughs of Glory cuts “Over and Over” and “Love and Only Love” fuel this live album, one of Young’s best concert documents.
Lost Map Records, the Isle-of-Eigg based label ran by Pictish Trail’s Johnny Lynch, still seems to constantly find ways to make things a little bit better, via releases from the likes of Martha Ffion, Firestations, Savage Mansion and Alexia Avina. With plenty already in the pipelines for the year ahead, they’ve recently announced the signing of Sulka, “the lo-fi melodic scuzz-rock songwriting and recording project of Glasgow-based Lukas Clasen”, who will release his debut album, “Take Care“, at the end of this month.
DIY in the truest sense, Lukas played every instrument on Take Care, a record that explores a particular period in his life, the post break-up summer of 2019, when he was feeling, “lonely and a bit reckless”. The resultant record seems to be a beautifully explorative affair, channelling the genre mashing style of Alex G, the emotive intensity of Kane Strang and the bedroom exploration of Elvis Depressedly. Having previously supported the likes of Jeffrey Lewis and PAWS, Sulka looks well placed to make a delightfully lo-fi splash.
New Order are one of the most unlikely success stories. When Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis committed suicide on May 18th, 1980 on the eve of their first U.S. tour, the three remaining members of the band — guitarist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris — decided to carry on as New Order, drafting Morris’ girlfriend Gillian Gilbert on guitars and keyboards later that year. Though their first album, “Movement”, would be heavily indebted to Joy Division’s spectre, their interest in synthesizers — and their frequent trips to New York — would quickly change their sound. 1983’s landmark single “Blue Monday” -is still the best-selling 12″ single of all time — set them down a path as club hitmakers, and sunny synthpop tracks like “Bizarre Love Triangle” and “The Perfect Kiss” could not be any further away from Joy Division’s original stark, morose sound.
Through all this, New Order remained one of the most idiosyncratic bands of the ’80s, refusing to put singles on albums, shying away from press interviews and generally not appearing on camera in their music videos. They also never put away their rock band instruments and did more interesting things with guitar, bass and drums than most of their peers at the time. Their catalogue is robust and full of great songs — many of which easily could’ve been singles beyond the obvious ones that everyone knows.
With their 40th anniversary this year, Here are some of New Order’s best deep cuts, which are essential listening to anyone who already loves “Blue Monday,” “Love Vigilantes,” “Age of Consent,” “Ceremony,” “True Faith” or “Regret.” They range from indie-guitar pop, to club-ready bangers, and the kind of moody, introspective dance-rock hybrids that could’ve only be made by them.
“Power, Corruption & Lies” and “Low-Life” are just perfect albums, and Side 2 of “Technique” is up there too. I also stuck with the original 1980 – 1993 era of the band. The records from the 2000s-on, no non-single song from that era really seemed worthy of this list.
New Order — who are still an active band (though without Peter Hook since they reformed in 2011) — are a fantastic singles band, and everyone should own “Substance” there’s so much more beyond “Blue Monday.” –
“Dreams Never End” (1981)
New Order were still underneath the shadow of Joy Division in 1981, a hard shackle to shake. Unsure how to progress after the death of Ian Curtis, both guitarist Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook sing lead on New Order’s debut album, “Movement”, and both sound like they’re trying to mimic him. “Dreams Never End,” which features Hooky on vocals, is musically bright and sunny, with Hook, Sumner and Gilbert’s instruments swirling around Stephen Morris’ insistent, danceable beat. The Cure would crib liberally from this for their 1986 single “Inbetween Days.
“Procession” (1981)
Following their debut single, “Ceremony” (which had been played live with Joy Division), their next release was “Procession” which felt like a natural progression from Joy Division’s Closer, with glacial synths washing over a frantic rhythm section and Bernard Sumner’s brittle guitars. Recorded and released before Movement, “Procession” nonetheless feels past it, with Bernard Sumner coming into his own as lead vocalist. While a single, “Procession” didn’t make it on to the main track list for 1987’s Substance, but was instead relegated to the bonus disc of the CD. But it’s a pivotal song in their evolution.
“Turn the Heater On” (1982 John Peel Session)
Keith Hudson’s “Turn the Heater On” was Ian Curtis’ favorite reggae song, says Peter Hook in his Substance memoir, saying it was where Bernard Sumner “got the got the idea for using the melodica,” an instrument which would turn up in New Order songs like “Your Silent Face” and “Love Vigilantes.” Barney’s only playing guitar at the end, after he’s stopped singing,” adds Hook, only kinda joking that “That became the whole template for the band.”
“The Village” (1983)
Power, Corruption & Lies is a perfect record, and none of the songs were released as singles — “Blue Monday” was tacked onto the U.S. CD release — so every song could theoretically fit on this list. There are moments of sadness and desolation, but there are also songs of unabashed joy. In much the same spirit as “Age of Consent,” “The Village” bounces along like the first day of spring with Sumner singing “Our love is like the flowers / The rain, the sea and the hours.” The mid-section instrumental — with guitars, synthesizers and drum machines joining forces — remains one of New Order’s most magical moments.
“The synths are incredible from 1:45 so in your face but not overpowering … then they disappear – my whole taste in music seemed to change because of this song” – The Charlatan’s Tim Burgess on “The Village”
“Leave Me Alone” (1983)
Many of New Order’s most genius moments come from the interplay between Peter Hook’s bass — which is almost always played high up on the neck to where some mistake it for guitar — and Bernard Sumner’s guitar. Is there a more perfect example than on Power Corruption & Lies’ closing track? The bass hook opens the song, but it’s when the chiming guitar lead enters that “Leave Me Alone” truly blooms. (Gillian Gilbert adds further, crucial, counterpoint guitar lines.) A grey-hued portrait of loneliness (“On a thousand islands in the sea / I see a thousand people just like me”), it’s one of New Order’s crowning achievements, fading out with two more minutes of gorgeous instrumental melancholia.
“Thieves Like Us” (1984)
This is the big concession to the singles rule on this list. While “Thieves Like Us” went to No#18 in the UK in 1984, it does not have the stature of “Bizarre Love Triangle,” “Temptation,” “Blue Monday,” “Sub-Culture,” “True Faith” or even LP tracks like “Age of Consent” or “Love Vigilantes.” But it is one of New Order’s best, most deeply emotive songs — it’s Peter Hook’s favourite track — that needs all six minutes and 36 seconds to work its magic. Bernard Sumner’s vocals doesn’t even come in till two-and-a-half minutes into the song, long after we’ve been seduced by the song’s NYC hip-hop inspired rhythm section and majestic washes of synths. While the song works well as an instrumental — it plays over the “making the dress” montage in Pretty in Pink — Sumner gives a great delivery with a whole lot of “Loves,” in his signature, fragile style.
“Lonesome Tonight” (1984)
“Lonesome Tonight” is, according to Peter Hook, New Order’s ode to Elvis Presley. Bernard Sumner was apparently obsessed with a version of “Lonesome Tonight” (where The King can’t stop laughing) and suggested to the rest of New Order they try jamming it on stage one night. That bit of C-F chord improvisation became this song, which Hook calls “a glorious tune even though it’s nothing like Elvis’, given away in true fashion as a b-side.” (It’s the flip to “Thieves Like Us.”) New Order rarely needed more than two chords to create something amazing (see all of Power, Corruption and Lies), and when the synthesizers crest halfway through, it evokes Joy Division’s “Atmosphere.” If you’re wondering, that is Peter Hook clearing his sinuses at the four-minute mark. “When Barney heard me hocking up phlegm into a handkerchief he suggested we put it on at the end because the contrast between something so beautiful and something so awful might be interesting. He was absolutely right.”
“Murder” (1984)
New Order have always had a way with instrumentals and this one’s a real tour-de-force, a pounding goth nightmare powered by Stephen Morris’ propulsive drumming, a sinister bass line from Hook and Sumner’s three-note, cyclical guitar hook. The song also makes great, creepy use of movie samples of Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Malcolm McDowell in infamous big-budget softcore film Caligula. “Murder,” which has been covered by The Charlatans and K-X-P, was originally only released as a single in Belgium, but later appeared on the second disc of the Substance two-CD set.
“Elegia” (full version) (1985)
An ode to Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western scores, specifically the pocket watch scene from A Few Dollars More, “Elegia” opens side two of 1985’s highly underrated “Low-Life”. While the five-minute instrumental is carefully paced, exploding into full Sergio Leone glory in the last minute, the original 17-minute version is even better. “Dylan Jones – then editor at id magazine –asked us if we’d like to do some music for a short 15-20 min art film,” Stephen Morris says. “We went into a studio in Wembley and did a marathon all night session. The film never happened, but we liked ‘Elegia’ so much it got edited down to fit on the LP.” As Morris says, “Hooky’s bass melodies on ‘Elegia’ are majestic.”
“Elegia” is one of three New Order tracks to also appear in Pretty in Pink (“Thieves Like Us” and “Shellshock” which appears on the soundtrack album, are the others), and you may have also heard it in Stranger Things, and the trailer for video game “Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain.”
“Sooner Than You Think” (1985)
Like “Power, Corruption and Lies”, “Low-Life” is a near-perfect album and picking from the many great songs is difficult. Following “Blue Monday” and “Thieves Like Us,” New Order really came into their own as far as blending rock and club music. While the albums that follow would more often than not have songs that were either “rock” or “synth,” Low-Life let things intermingle in wonderful and surprising ways. After a building, minute-long intro that is mostly guitar, bass and drums, “Sooner Than You Think” shifts gears and lets the keyboards take over. “A very unusual tune, showing exactly why I used to love New Order,” says Peter Hook in his memoir. “We were so versatile.” As the lyrics describe, the song was actually written after “a party in [New Order’s] hotel” in Zurich in 1984. “I think some members of the Furious Five were there, no Grandmaster Flash,” recalls Stephen Morris. “There was a very loud blaster in a very small room – other hotel guests were not amused – complaints were made, maybe I dreamt the Furious Five bit? But not the Swiss police though.”
Here’s a cool live in the studio version with Bernard Sumner wearing some very ’80s shorts:
“Face Up” (1985)
This one should’ve been a single. “When we first wrote “Face up” in early 1984 we thought it was the best thing ever,” says Stephen Morris. “Face Up” is another New Order song where two disparate parts have been grafted together, with an an atmospheric intro (“inspired by Caligula” says Hook) that then drastically shifts gears into music that all but demands you bounce up and down. Sonically, “Face Up” is pure ebullience, the kind few besides New Order can do with guitars, but the lyrics — “Oh how I cannot bear the thought of you” — are a decided kiss-off from a spurned lover. “I couldn’t understand why some people didn’t get Face Up’s euphoria, but maybe you had to be playing the drums to fully get that,” adds Morris.
“Way of Life” (1986)
As the ’80s progressed, New Order became more and more known as a synth pop band, but they remained a clever, inventive rock band on album tracks, as is evidenced by the entire first side of 1986’s Brotherhood. “Way of Life” closes out Side A, beginning with another gloomy fake-out intro before blossoming into a wonderful pop song with a chorus so infectious it seems impossible they would bury it this deep into the album. Hook says “We were trying to emulate ‘Age of Consent’ so I just played the riff backwards, and voilà.
“Every Little Counts” (1986)
New Order were guilty a few times over the years of what Peter Hook calls “five o’clock in the morning lyrics.” Sometimes that meant something special, like “you caught me at a bad time, so why don’t you piss off” (Power, Corruption & Lies’ “Your Silent Face”) and sometimes it gives you the opening lines to Brotherhood’s closing track. “Every second counts when I am with you / I think you are a pig, you should be in a zoo,” which Bernard Sumner cannot get through without laughing. (He also didn’t feel a need to do another take.) And yet, “Every Second Counts” is still pure gold, making great use of orchestral samples, harmony and Sumner’s winning “do de do de dooh” chorus. “Every Little Counts” is also a perfect album-closer, with a massive, woozy swell from their Emulator sampling keyboard — “with Barney holding all the keys down at once, using both arms” — and then a great final joke that definitely freaked out some vinyl listeners at the time.
“1963” (1987)
Like “The Perfect Kiss,” this b-side to 1987 single “True Faith” is a story-song about a doomed relationship — and perhaps firearms — set to ultra-catchy crystalline synth pop. There’s a case to be made that it’s better than the A-side (which was one of New Order’s biggest hits and their first entry into the Billboard Top 40). For people like Peter Hook who wished more of Peter Hook’s distinctive bass stylings made it into the the final product (it doesn’t show up till right before the slow fade out), Arthur Baker’s sublime remix adds in more string instruments — bass and guitar — throughout.
“Vanishing Point” (1989)
Both Stephen Morris and Peter Hook’s favorite song on 1989’s Technique, “Vanishing Point” is one of New Order’s finest electronic dance songs (and it really should’ve been a single instead of either “Fine Time” or “Run”). Like “Thieves Like Us,” this one is in no hurry to get to vocals, with the 90 second lead-in playing like an overture, leading us through the major melodic points; when Sumner does begin with “Grow up children don’t you suffer / at the hands of one another” it’s a cinematic experience. “Vanishing Point” has the best chorus on the album and the best breakdown and “drop” (before they called them that), that was clearly influenced by the two months spent in Ibiza making the album (and spending a lot of time at the clubs).
“Dream Attack” (1989)
The dance and rock tracks on Technique mostly stay in their individual lanes, but the album closes with the glorious “Dream Attack” that brings the whole record together, mixing ragged guitar solos, windswept acoustic guitars, sampled orchestra hits, sequencers and live drums — plus another great chorus — all together as only New Order can do. Bernard Sumner apparently had The Eagles’ “Hotel California” in mind with the song’s two-minute jam outro which, in their hands, works. Gillian Gilbert, who played those wonderful acoustic guitars, says, “To me, Dream Attack’ sums up the whole album. It’s bright breezy and uplifting…a good song to walk off into the sunset to.”
“Special” (1993)
New Order were not especially getting along in the early-’90s, but got back together to make a new album, as they were low on funds after their label Factory Records (which went belly-up the year prior) and their troubled Manchester club, The Hacienda, depleted their bank accounts. “Republic” was, by all accounts, not the most pleasant recording experience with Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook butting heads constantly. There’s not much of Hook’s signature bass on the album, but there is some unfortunate rapping by Sumner. Republic does contain “Regret,” one of their best-ever singles (a Top 40 hit in the US), and some of the old magic can also be found tucked away near the end of Side 2 with the sultry, moody “Special,” which is driven by Hook’s bass and another great chorus. Lyrically the song is perhaps referencing the demise of Factory Records or the group itself: “It was always special, like water down the drain.” New Order went on an eight-year hiatus not long after its release.
Both New Order and Joy Division were among the most successful artists on the Factory Records label, run by Granada television personality Tony Wilson, and partnered with Factory in the financing of the Manchester club The Haçienda. Speaking in 2009, fellow synthpop musician Phil Oakey described New Order’s slow-burn career as cult musicians as being unusually prolonged and effective: “If you want to make a lot of money out of pop, be number 3 a lot. Like New Order did
Peter Hook suggested that the band should stop touring. In early May 2007, Hook was interviewed by British radio originally to talk about his contribution to the debut album of Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell’s new band Satellite Party – and stated that “Me and Bernard aren’t working together.” Further complicating the news, a website with support from New Order management, reported that according to “a source close to the band”, “The news about the split is false… New Order still exists despite what [Hook] said … Peter Hook can leave the band, but this doesn’t mean the end of New Order.” However, Sumner revealed in 2009 that he no longer wished to make music as New Order.
Black Country, New Road are a band who seem to have been tipped for the top ever since they first emerged from a recording studio, pedalling their musical wares. Since first stumbling on their track Athen’s, France back at the start of 2019, I’ve been following their releases with admiration, although nothing has quite sparked my interest in the same way as that first track; that was until this week when the band shared their new single, Track X.
Formed out of the ashes of another band Nervous Conditions, seven-piece Black Country, New Road are one of today’s definitive dark and jazzy post-punk bands. Having released just two singles for Dan Carey’s buzzy Speedy Wunderground label (black midi, Kate Tempest), their surreal sound has already drawn praise from outlets, including Paste and Stereogum, and they were due to storm SXSW this year. While their amusing, slightly gothic debut single “Athen’s, France” dropped Phoebe Bridgers and Ariana Grande references, their nine-minute follow-up “Sunglasses” built to a shrieking horn-laden climax for the ages.
The latest track to be shared from the band’s upcoming album, For the first time, out next month on Ninja Tune, Track X was originally written back in 2018, before being shelved in favour of more immediate thrills suited to the live arena. During the sessions for their new album, the band resurrected the track, embracing the possibilities of the studio to create something expansive and ambitious, as the half-spoken vocals combine with flutters of guitar, stabs of saxophone and violin flourishes.
The music video for ‘Track X’ is about nostalgia for being a kid and happy times with family, stupid moments with friends like feeding Cheetos to a giant horde of birds in a Walmart parking lot, and for Tumblr and YouTube videos of cats. But at the same time balanced with this is a comment on the transience of the past, like with the shots of the abandoned houses, and a sense that maybe what we remember isn’t quite real, like the idealised stock footage. I wanted to combine all of those emotions and thoughts together and make a 2000s style American home video – Bart Price
This is a track that never seems to stand-still, always shape-shifting across its five minutes, whether its mellowing into the Fanfarlo-like chorus, or embracing their more idiosyncratic side in the almost jazzy flourishes of the slowly unwinding outro. Sometimes brilliant, always intriguing and destined for huge success in the year ahead, one thing is for certain; this isn’t the last you’ll hear of Black Country, New Road.
Taken from the album ‘For the first time’, is out February 5th via Ninja Tune Records.
Adeline Hotel is the New York-based psych-folk project led by Dan Knishkowy. Sharing his music with the world since back in 2014, Dan has this week announced his latest album, “Good Timing”, as well as sharing the first two pieces from it, Photographic Memory and I Have Found It. In many ways Good Timing is like an origin story for Adeline Hotel’s music, returning to the roots of Dan’s songwriting by recording, “ostensibly aimless music”. This is a world of improvisation and layering, just Dan at his guitar producing work that seems to tap into the middle ground of instrumental ambience and the American Primitive influence we’ve come to expect on his music.
Nodding to artists like Jim O’Rourke or William Tyler, on these first two tracks, without even uttering a word, Dan seems to have hit on something deeply personal, this music feels like an extension of himself, songs woven from the strings, delicate and beautiful spiders-webs of guitar. While beautiful, these are also deceptively simple, unadorned, never knowingly over-thought, the records are free from studio-trickery or any danger of overworking, tracks that are at once raw and fragile, a reminder that the roots of punk, folk and neo-classical composition all lie with a human at their core. Dan has suggested his process for Good Timing is, “the closest I’ve ever gotten to the source”, and as a result this feels like the most open, honest and quite possibly exciting he has ever sounded.
One of the few bands on this list who’ve actually already released their case for being one of 2021’s most intriguing bands, Cheekface released their brand-new album, “Emphatically No”, through New Professor Music. The record finds the Los Angeles-based trio contrasting the mundane nature of everyday living to the background of a world in chaos, it takes a dark-side to find comedy in the face of the void, yet somehow Cheekface seem to manage it, on Best Life they note, “everything is normal”, with the conviction only someone who knows that to be a complete lie can manage.
Cheekface is a catchy band from Los Angeles with clever lyrics like “life is long like a CVS receipt.” Think Parquet Courts meets They Might Be Giants, maybe.
Musically, Cheekface seem to exist in the lineage of American talk-singers, from Jonathan Richman through to Stephen Malkmums, and more contemporary artists like Car Seat Headrest and Savage Mansion. This a record of strutting bass-lines, guitars with the angularity of post-punk, only without all the po-faced seriousness normally associated with the genre. At the centre throughout are the dual vocals of Greg and Amanda, trading comical lyrical barbs as they discuss geopolitics, mental health crises and narcissistic fascists, mentioning no names of course. If that’s all sounding a little self-congratulatory, worry not, like Jeffrey Lewis or Scott Walker, Cheekface aren’t looking down on the world, they’re very much part of the joke, as Greg notes, “no one else is the punchline of these lyrics…if me and Mandy are poking fun at anyone, it’s us”. If the current state of the world needed a soundtrack to poke a little fun at the darkness, then on “Emphatically No”, Cheekface might just have written a perfect contender.
Greg Katz: This is obviously a song about the negative messages your brain sends to you when you are suffering with a mental illness. It was the last song we wrote before we started recording stuff for this album. We recorded almost the whole album at New Monkey in LA with Greg Cortez recording and mixing, including this one.
I remember when me and Mandy were writing this one, getting the hook was pretty easy, but I was having a really hard time coming up with a melody for the verse. I must have improvised, like, 25 different ideas that didn’t work. Then Mandy was like, “Well, I think it should be this!” And she sang the first four notes of the song. I was like, “Why did you let me torture myself trying to come up with something when you knew what it was supposed to be the whole time?” I’m incredibly grateful to have Mandy as a writing partner, even though she sometimes likes to watch me suffer.
Amanda Tannen: I’m so thankful to have found Greg in Los Angeles after moving from NYC. From when we started the band up until March, almost every weekend we would get together to write songs. Whatever song came out that day normally would reflect how we were feeling that week. I remember while writing this one I was getting more comfortable with saying “no” in general. But also feeling judged by so-called “self help” fads. You can say “no” to anything supposedly good for you, or bad, reminding myself that only I can make that decision for myself.
2. “Best Life”
GK: This is one of three on the album that we recorded in Brooklyn with Jeff Berner at Studio G. The opening line, “Everything is normal,” had been in my notes for quite a while, and I’d written several songs trying to use that line. But that lyric finally found a home in this one. The guitar lick that plays eight bars in, that was what started the song idea. I think I was trying to channel the slippery lick from “Satan Is My Motor” by Cake.
AT: We were in Brooklyn in mid-February at the end of traveling to three cities to play. To top it off we recorded with Jeff at Studio G, at the end of the trip. I’m so happy we fit it in! It was so much fun for me to be back recording in Brooklyn. It had been over a decade since I had recorded anything in the city. We even started the day off with some good bagels. Perfect day.
3. “Call Your Mom”
AT: At the time of writing this one I think we had a handful of mid-tempo songs. For personal reasons, we needed a fast one. Punk songs are good for my mental health.
GK: The title lyric, “They want your attention 24/7? Resistance is easy, call your mom,” is about how the federal government tries to insert itself into our lives constantly and consume all our attention to consolidate power. Ignoring it is an act of rebellion, in my opinion. This song has a ripping guitar solo from Devin McKnight of Maneka (and ex-Speedy Ortiz) fame, and the laser gun sounds are him on guitar too.
4. “Crying Back”
AT: I consider this one a chill walking-while-wandering song, which I can always use more of in life. I remember my one mixing note was more shaker. Love the shaker in this one, it takes center stage. Echo’s got talent.
GK: My favorite part of this song is that the pre-chorus is the same chords as “Cruel to Be Kind” by Nick Lowe. That was not intentional. But we had learned the song at band practice once for fun, and Mandy pointed out that we ripped off the changes for this. The lyric “No pockets for your phone in your surgical gown” was written on my phone in a hospital emergency room after I got in a car wreck.
5. “Wedding Guests”
GK: We wrote this one with our friend Brijesh Pandya, who’s an amazing drummer and songwriter in LA. He was like, “I have this monster riff saved in my phone that I don’t know what to do with,” and it became this song. He also kicked in the lyric about “a man, a plan, a plain bagel, and an omelette” and a couple more of the good punchlines in the verses. I remember when we were recording this song we were listening to “99 Problems” and “Crazy in Love” to see how to give the song some more lift in the chorus, hence the bell loop that you hear there. That’s the Mellotron Hammond sound beaming through at the end. The other keys were a toy Casio.
6. “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Calabasas”
GK: One influence we came back to a lot while writing this album was Minutemen. They don’t get the credit they deserve as both an influential LA band and a thoughtful political band. This one is a pretty direct reference to them, down to the lyric “What makes a man want to be a referee” that references their What Makes a Man Start Fires? album title. This didn’t make it into the final version, but we also recorded some mariachi trumpet overdubs and Greg Cortez on nylon guitar as a nod to Calexico’s version of Minutemen’s “Corona.” Cooler heads prevailed and those ended up on the cutting room floor, i.e. a muted Pro Tools channel.
AT: While writing this, Greg had to explain to me where Calabasas was. The LA area is still new to me after nine years. I remember starting the lyrics by riffing off of bottled water brands.
GK: Calabasas is a place, but it’s also, you know, a metaphor.
7. “Original Composition”
GK: This one nods to Minutemen’s “History Lesson Part 2.” I thought the guitar solo should be one note, but Mandy said it should be two notes, and she was right. Echo really knocked the drum groove out of the park on this one, in my humble opinion. I improvised the whistling hook at the beginning and end of the song when I was waiting for the mic to come on to record vocals, but it ended up sticking, even though I don’t like songs with whistling in them.
AT: Another walking song. Whistle while you walk. I love guitar solos, this one needed two notes. Simple.
8. “No Connection”
GK: Another song where the Mellotron gets a look. That’s the Mello plucked strings at the top and the Mello harp glissando. Echo played the toy piano on that nine chord that opens the song. Before writing this one, we’d covered “Bad Liar” by Selena Gomez at a few shows, and it has a sample of “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads that plays through it. I think that really called our attention to the super simple disco kick drum pattern in “Psycho Killer” that gives it so much power. We used that kick drum pattern in the chorus of this song and in a few other places on the album, including the next song on the album, “Emotional Rent Control.” Also, I want to go on the record saying sorry that the guitar solo in this one is so long.
AT: When asked if the guitar solo was too long, I said no, should it be longer? And yes, up the fuzz pedal. If you can’t tell, I’m a huge Dinosaur Jr. fan. While recording this batch of songs we would take dinner breaks and eat vegan taco salads. Mmm, Cheekface taco night. We try to keep dinner light, combatting the dreaded food coma.
GK: In my old band, we lost a half day to burrito comas in one session. Never again! In my meandering experience, you forget to eat in the studio, then you overeat when you realize you’re starving. Terrible for the blood sugar flow, and it means you play worse as the day goes on. So now I always pull up to the studio with a fresh baguette, a couple bags of baby carrots, roasted almonds and a couple tubs of hummus. I spread them all out in the control room to start the day. Keeping a low-level semi-healthy nosh going throughout the session means that no one is ever tracking during a calorie crash. That’s our tip for the other productivity-conscious bands out there.
9. “Emotional Rent Control”
GK: This one we started writing a few weeks after Ric Ocasek died. We definitely wanted to give a direct nod to The Cars. There’s a lot of Cars-inspired moves in our songs, like the Moog solo in “Dry Heat/Nice Town.” So with this one we wanted to go straight for a “Just What I Needed” vibe to pay respects to the legend. Also I’d been listening to “Highway to Hell” a lot by AC/DC around the time we wrote this, so this one has the tom-tom thumping pre-chorus like that song, and also the bass dropout after the chorus that lets the air in. Last thought: every single one of Mandy’s bass lines is pretty great, but this one is especially nasty.
AT: Sometimes we write songs by looping a riff over and over—bass or guitar. After playing that riff a while, I end up picking what I think beat one is, but a lot of the time it’s not the same one Greg is thinking, it can make the interplay between guitar and bass have a push and pull in places, which I love.
10. “Big Big Friend”
GK: This was the last one written that went on the album, it was written at the top of 2020, and it was recorded last, in February 2020, and it kept evolving pretty much until we recorded it at Studio G in Brooklyn. The quiet guitar solo with the harmonics was in the original demo, but the loud guitar solo right after was added in the last band practice before we recorded it. It’s a song about how hard it is to thrive in a big bureaucracy like a university.
11. “Loyal Like Me”
GK: This one is the oldest song on this album—we wrote it before we recorded our first album, Therapy Island, but it didn’t make the cut for whatever reason. It was one of several efforts to do something like “Anything Could Happen” by The Clean, which is one of the greatest indie rock songs ever, but it didn’t come out very similar. The song is about how I take other people’s generosity for granted. It’s a sad song to me because I feel guilty about doing that, but I guess everyone else does it too. Echo does some pretty nifty drumming under the second verse.
12. “Do You Work Here?”
AT: We wanted to write a darker-sounding song, with some big distortion. I remember I was listening to a bunch of psych rock at the time—B.R.M.C., The Warlocks, Black Angels, and Autolux, who are one of my favorite LA bands. The effects to Greg’s voice were added at the end and fit so well.
GK: Oh yeah, Greg Cortez killed it with the reverb and delay throws in the mix. I think we were like, “Why don’t you try some delay throws?” And he was like “OK, where?” And we were like, “We don’t know, everywhere?” The stuff you hear was all his first pass.
13. “Don’t Get Hit by a Car”
GK: One day we came into our practice space to write, and I think Mandy had just watched a documentary about A Tribe Called Quest, and she was like, “All their songs have that same groove, can we try something with that feel?” So we started that new-jack drum groove and draped the chords from “Sweet Jane” on it. To me it sounds more like “Jack & Diane” than it sounds like either of the actual inspirations. Not gonna lie, I feel really exposed by the lyrics on this one, hence we buried it at the end of the album. But shouts to Lena Dunham, hope she doesn’t take us on The People’s Court for name-dropping her. It’s all love, Lena!
Originally Released August 12th, 2020 Music and lyrics by Cheekface
Amanda Tannen on bass guitar and backing vocals Greg Katz on vocals and guitar Mark Echo Edwards on drums and percussion
Tucson, Arizona interdisciplinary artist Karima Walker walks a line between two worlds. Aside from her long resume of collaborative work with artists in the diverse fields of dance, sculpture, film, photography and creative non-fiction, Walker has long nurtured a duality within her work as a musician, developing her own sonic language as a sound designer in tandem with her craft as a singer/songwriter. The polarity within Walker’s music has never been so articulately explored, or graced with as much intention, as on her new album, “Waking the Dreaming Body”.
Waking the Dreaming Body was written, performed and engineered entirely by Walker, with the exception of some subtle upright bass from C.J. Boyd on the song “Window I.” Producing the album on her own wasn’t Walker’s original intention, though; after flying to New York in November 2019 to develop some home-recorded tracks with The Blow’s Melissa Dyne, a sudden illness forced Walker to cancel the sessions and return home to Tucson to recover, and soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic ruled out the possibility of a return trip to New York. Instead, Walker decided to finish the album herself in her makeshift home studio. She spent the following months recording, processing and arranging her self-described “messy Ableton sessions” into densely harmonic arrangements of synthesizer, guitar, piano, percussion, field recordings, tape loops and her own dulcet singing voice, allowing trial, error and intuition to guide her way. The final result is a 40-minute dream-narrative of her conscious and subconscious minds that oscillates between the rich textures of her ambient compositions (as in the instrumentals “Horizon, Harbor Resonance” and “For Heddi”) and the melody and poetry of her melancholic, Americana-tinged song writing (as in the lyrics-focused tracks “Reconstellated” and “Waking the Dreaming Body”), their ebb and flow recalling liminal states of half-sleep where images and emotions are recalled and forecasted from the previous night’s dreams. Night falls in regular intervals throughout the album, forming a natural dialogue between waking and dreaming.
Walker explains:
“I wanted these songs to stand alone as complete worlds, and this required a shift in my usual way of writing. I found myself trying to escape from an excess of interiority by exploring outward, by thinking about the mirroring that happens when you seek connection to others and to the natural world—when you try to bring the outside in. I sought to make arrangements that swell at certain moments and barely hold together at others, moving with my breath and other rhythms connecting my body to the natural world. Ultimately, I was seeking to draw myself out, to reconstruct my personal narrative.”
“I see myself as an in between person I guess,” Walker continues. “Though I haven’t very explicitly brought my own personal history into my music, I think it’s there, and it continues to show up in its own ways and time. I am Arab, half North African/Tunisian on my mother’s side, but was raised in a very white context, with a lot of white passing privilege, especially as I’ve gotten older. But my journey into making music was so different. I kept falling in love with musicians and artists for a while before I realized that maybe I wanted to be so close to these people because they were doing something that resonated deeply in me. So there’s a way in which making music has been a way for me to overcome divides that I couldn’t quite articulate in other ways.
“Waking the Dreaming Body” is out February 26th, 2021 on Keeled Scales / Orindal Records.
All songs written, performed, mixed & produced by Karima Walker
The veteran San Francisco songwriter (of The Fresh & Onlys fame) is putting out a record called “You Are Still Here” this March, and on it features “Give Me Yours”, a single that came together while Cohen waited six hours for a plane out to Denver. He’d already had the chords and arrangements mapped out, but the lyrics came pouring out after Cohen had ordered a tequila soda and chicken sandwich at the airport to pass the time. Oh, and did I mention that he’d also popped “an edible” before leaving his house?
Penned while “on the verge of hallucinations,” as Cohen described it, the track reads like a paranoid fever dream. “They’re gonna drink our drinks/ They’re gonna eat our bones,” Cohen sings in the opening verse, referencing his own airport meal but in exaggerated terms.
“This ‘they are coming to get us’ attitude is a by product of the despair and hopelessness I felt being at the mercy of corporate airlines in what I deemed an irreversible front to my artistic freedom,” he explained and in my half-delusional state I adopted the ‘us against them’ desperation that permeates the album.”
Although fuelled by agony and anxiety, musically “Give Me Yours” actually sounds like a bouncy ball of sunshine. Cohen trades in his Fresh & Onlys garage rock for guitar-led folk-pop that’s much softer yet has an irresistible charm. The percussion snaps and the rhythm sways like something out of the ’60s, and it’s all smiles by the time you reach the extra peppy guitar that pops around all over the chorus. If only my breakdowns at JFK and Newark sounded this good.
Fresh & Onlys frontman Tim Cohen wrote “Give Me Yours” during an airport layover and then fleshed it out in the studio. He’s always had a way with a hook and this one’s no different.
His new album, You Are Still Here, arrives March 26th via Bobo Integral.
The Fat Angel Sings 