Although he never retired, soulman supreme William Bell’s first album on a major label in decades should be on anyone’s shortlist for comeback of the year. Not only did producer/multi-instrumentalist John Leventhal frame the 77-year-old Bell’s still vibrant voice in stylish, beautifully arranged instrumentation, but the songs — all but two co-penned by the singer — feel both old school and contemporary, a tricky balance that Bell sinks into naturally. The album also returned him to the road, headlining large clubs with an expansive band delivering searing, emotional and classy performances, arguably the equal of any in his 50-plus year career.
Some people write their memoirs; a good songwriter can sing his life in song. The title track from Bell’s impossibly wonderful new album recounts his days as a teenage songwriter in the Stax stable, when he penned both “BornUnder a Bad Sign” for Albert King and “You Don’t Miss Your Water” for everybody in the world. He puts an eloquent twist on that title phrase: Bell lives in the song, and it’s a privilege to be invited into his home.
The new studio album from William Bell, This Is Where I Live, is available now
This Los Angeles. outfit’s first four albums faithfully recreated the folksy, confessional vibe of Seventies Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters like Jackson Browne, but with the band’s former guitarist Blake Mills producing, the studio now becomes Dawes‘ playground. “As If By Design” is overrun with wild bar room piano and mariachi horns, while on several tracks Taylor Goldsmith’s vocals are filtered with heavy electronics and the drums and guitars are processed to a digital crunch that recalls the more adventurous side of the Black Keys. Goldsmith’s lyrics are still thoughtful and earnest (“I’m asking you for help/How do you fall in love with anything?” he sings on the title track), but he’s also looser and more playful on cuts like the lead single, “When the Tequila Runs Out” (“We’ll be drinkin’ champagne”). With this bold left turn into sonic experimentation, Dawes proves that you can be faithful to your roots and sound and still branch out.
We’re All Gonna Die certainly comes out swinging with big guitars, chunky grooves and what seems to be a concerted effort to mix things up from their usual wistful balladry and thoughtful mid-tempo.
But what’s most surprising about the album is just how well Taylor Goldsmith’s intricate lyrics fit into the aggressive music, especially on the circus-like “No Reason At All” and the crunching “One Of Us.” And on “RollTide,” the band slips back into balladry like it’s a velvet glove, just in case the new direction doesn’t take off.
Brian Fallon specialized in anthemic heartache with his band the Gaslight Anthem, and his new song “AWonderful Life” suggests he’s staying the course on an upcoming solo album. For the second straight year, one of the best of the Springsteen bandleaders stepped out for a great solo album. In 2015, it was Craig Finn of The Hold Steady; this year Brian Fallon ex of Gaslight Anthem reaches for his moment and makes an honest stand with Painkillers. And like Finn, it turns out that Fallon’s earnest narratives thrive with less instrumentation around them.
Featuring a rock-solid beat topped with growling electric guitars, Fallon’s hoarse, expressive voice is the centerpiece as he sings with a yearning edge about wanting a meaningful existence. “‘A Wonderful Life’ was my expression of how I feel, and how some people I know feel,” the singer and guitarist says by email. “We want our lives to matter to those around us. We want our time here to have positive impact and not simply to pass by. Even if that costs us.”
The song comes from “Painkillers,” which is Fallon’s first solo effort after five studio albums with the GaslightAnthem since the band formed in 2006. The New Jersey group announced a hiatus earlier this year. Fallon is also half of the rock duo the Horrible Crowes, and a member of the Americana group Molly and the Zombies with bassist Catherine Popper (Jack White, Ryan Adams) and Scissor Sisters drummer Randy Schrager.
Popper plays bass on “Painkillers,” which also includes drummer Mark Stepro (Ben Kweller, Jackson Browne) and guitarist Butch Walker, who produced the album. “Painkillers” released on Island Records, and Fallon will start a North American tour.
Courtney Marie Andrews is possibiy the best songwriter you’ve never heard of. If you have heard of her, you’ve likely heard her name mentioned in the same breath as another, more iconic songwriter: Joni Mitchell. Andrews’ breakout album Honest Life, which, despite the assumption that it’s her debut (after all, what a shame that an artist of this level of talent has flown under the radar since 2008), is her sixth solo album. The Joni Mitchell comparisons are apt, both for Andrews’ nimble, expressive vocals and her way with a turn of phrase. What makes Andrews so special, however, is that her influences never verge on the derivative. Single “Irene,” with its percussive piano and pointed, progressive lyrics
(“The heart is funny, Irene/ You can’t control who it wants to love/ So let it love, Irene/ Man or woman or anyone it wants”), is unlike any other song released this year; Andrews herself is unlike any other artist.
Since “Honest Life” was released. This record has changed my life in so many ways. A lot of these songs were written while I was living in Belgium and processing a very painful breakup. I’d eat half a croissant a day, drink wine in the cafe across from my apartment, and write every crazy line or thought that popped into my head. I felt young and old, wise and dumb, all at once. Songs were pouring out of me, and when I was dry I’d wander aimlessly down the cobble stone streets until another song came crawling out. It was a dark time, but writing those songs saved me.
Before living in Belgium, I sent my demos to many producers whom all felt that I either needed lots of production or a co-writer to make a good record. One producer pissed me off so much when he brought in a co-writer without telling me. I was so insulted that I wrote “Rookie Dreaming” “Honest Life” and “Put The Fire Out” in one night just to prove to him I didn’t need help writing songs. It was after that, I knew I needed to have my friends on the record. I needed to make something real, the exact way I wanted it. So I went back to Seattle, got my friends together and produced a record that I was proud of, on my own terms. Intuition is magic, and I’ll continue to try and follow my instincts whenever it comes to matters of art and the heart.
I truly don’t know where I’d be without songs, music, and the brilliant people who help and hold me and my work up every day. I’m eternally grateful to be writing, and living a life I’ve always felt I was made for. Thank you.
Amanda Shires – My Pieces Of Land CD/LP+MP3 (BMG Rights Management) My Piece Of Land is Amanda’s third record and follows up 2013′s Down Fell The Doves and was primarily written while pregnant with her and husband Jason Isbell’s first child. “Shires is a virtuoso, and anyone who’s seen her front her own band or play in Isbell’s knows she can cultivate musical drama.
One of Amanda Shires’ best assets as a songwriter is the vivid way she has with off-kilter imagery. It’s a lure into her songs that has worked to excellent effect on “When You Need a Train It Never Comes,” from her 2010 album Carrying Lightning, or “Bulletproof” on the 2013 follow-up, Down Fell the Doves.
A few tracks on My Piece OfLand (which was produced by Dave Cobb, who loves nuance and rocking out in equal measure) build to big climaxes: ‘My Love – The Storm’ is the classic Garth Brooks-style stomper its title implies, while ‘You Are MyHome’ builds to a grand finale that recalls the mid-1970s sound of Warren Zevon. ” Many of these tunes contain an undercurrent of disquiet, though it’s never less than artfully expressed. Her unease is especially conspicuous on “Slippin,” as she imagines a lover out on the town giving in to temptations that spell their end: “Tonight could be the night you go slippin’ away,” she sings, her voice subdued over a mix of acoustic guitars. There’s a subtler regret on opener “The Way It Dimmed,” a lean country number with jaunty electric guitar licks snaking around her vocals as she uses the past-tense to describe passion she (or her narrator) wants and can’t help but pull away from. A road trip goes wrong on the cinematic “Pale Fire,” which features a beautifully mournful fiddle line after the refrain (and harmony vocals from Jason Isbell, Shires’ husband, who also plays guitar on the album); and she blurs boundaries on the spare “Harmless”—“It might have been cheating/ Where exactly is the line?” she murmurs—just to see how far she can go.
Amanda Shires can command a spotlight. But My Piece Of Land really shines in subtle gradations, in the natural environment where the voice warbles and catches, and the mind adjusts, opens up and leans toward love.”
With its primal acoustic instrumentation and rugged mountain-man harmonies, the Felice Brothers’ latest album harkens back to the band’s late-Aughties classics like Yonder is the Clock and The Felice Brothers. But this time around, the band’s quirky Americana mythologizing has turned much darker, populated by corporate headaches and consumerist nightmares on songs like “Aerosol Ball,” “Jack At The Asylum,” and “Plunder.”Ian Felice, who sings leads on every track (a first for the group), sets the pace with his dejected stories of american blue collar working-class desperation (“Triumph ’73”) and middle-aged defeat (“Sell the House”). The band’s latest album might be their bleakest, but it’s also their most potent and interesting to date.
These Windy City bros aren’t just a great power pop band, they’re one of the best rock bands going, period. They work in a bit more layered jangle and production ambition than most on this list, but not so much that it strangles the pals-on-a-summer-road trip vibe that takes them from Beach Boys vistas to dive bar bathrooms.
Our last run was an awesome tour of Europe where we returned to Madrid and stopped in Barcelona for the first time in Spain played a truly joyous sold out show in Paris, where we also performed live on the French TV show Album De La Semaine, had a blast running around the UK, Almost collapsed in Bristol and played a massive London show at Scala, hit a beautifully intimate gig in Brussels for the first time and finally wrapped up with a great run around the Netherlands.
Last but certainly not least, maybe number one, The last leg of 2016 “DOWN IN HEAVEN” tour. We’re looking at going to, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto, Burlington, Portland (ME), Cambridge, Philly, New York, Richmond, Atlanta, Nashville!. We’re adding a couple treats into the set. And we wrap up in Chicago with all our wonderful brothers and sisters of the windy city.
A limited-edition peach vinyl re-pressing of Down In Heaven will be available in record shops early next year. But, if you come party with us now you won’t have to wait cause we’ll have them on the road! This is what they look like. But you know they’ll look even better on your record player. When it comes to the catchiest songs of this year, Twin Peaks “Walk To The One You Love” is easily high on the list. The opening track to their third album Down InHeaven is effortlessly buoyant and made to stick around. Vibrantly-textured production and bold arrangements bolster other album highlights including “Holding Roses” and “You Don’t,” two not quite-carefree odes to love that isn’t all that romantic.
If Glam Rock is supposedly back with a vengence then in truth it’s back as a slightly weird simulacrum in keeping with the Strangest Year of Our Lord Twenty Sixteen. Roman gladiators Guida have tapped into obscure 70s bovver rock, French glitter Moodoïd are more experimental psychedelia than anything else, while if the UK has revivalists then they’re only tenuously so Welsh singer Meilyr Jones crediting him with a glam rock “state of mind” .
The American strain is yet more attenuated still, along with Long Island’s the Lemon Twigs looking the part, but the brothers D’Addario are far more beholden to Gram than Glam . The original American glam rockers of the late 60’s and early 70’s were always different from their UK counterparts anyway, with acts like the New York Dolls and the Stooges more like a kind of proto-punk .
That all said, Nashville’s Savoy Motel do share more DNA with the early 70s glam rock stylists of the UK – such as Roxy Music than most of their contemporaries. They look terrific in a mannered, retro-futuristic kind of way, their schtick is conceptual and erring towards pretentiousness (the bio on their website runs with the idea that they’re a hotel rather than a band), their music has a lurid and sometimes kaleidoscopic quality that’s as strong as their visual aesthetic, and they’re unabashedly ambitious.
Official video for “Souvenir Shop Rock” by Savoy Motel Directed by Dylan Carver
The opening staccato strokes of ‘Souvenir Shop Rock’ are delightfully out of time, and they start as they mean to go on. Interestingly, and probably coincidentally, the track listing appears to nod to Roxy’s masterpiece “For Your Pleasure” . There are five punchy tracks on the a-side, and three elongated and experimental numbers on the flip, with the nine-minute ‘International Language’ reminding one of ‘The Bogus Man’, even if it’s not quite as good.
The aforementioned ‘Souvenir Shop Rock’ is actually reminiscent of Roxy’s debut, with its wild horns, wig outs and plastic funk. Mastermind and songwriter Jeffrey Novak’s distinctive falsetto takes it to someplace else though, and while there are comparisons to be had with Portland’s Unknown Mortal Orchestra, that too is surely coincidence only. ‘Western Version Boogie’ and ‘Sorry People’ are both assured on the whole, but both also feature strumming of a laissez faire nature. ‘Everyone Wants To Win’ includes analogue computer noises that are pleasing, but breaks now and again into conventional rock ‘n’ roll. And ‘Doctor Cook’ meanders around like a funked up stoner, feeling the groove while threatening to fall over any minute. While the timing issues occasionally jolt if you’re sensitive to those types of things, the overall impression is charming. The fact they’re accompanying a drum machine no doubt adds to the overall DIY aesthetic.
‘Mindless Blues’ on the second side is a highlight with its funk chords and driving soul groove and its mix of vocals from within the group (there are three vocalists on Savoy Motel); even the slide solo – slipped into the middle of the track – comes off. The final songs are the most experimental, with ‘Hot One’ a kind of computer funk track inspired by the European interpretation of disco in the latter part of the 70s, and the gigantic ‘International Language’, at 9.18, is not without its virtues, but it could be a bit of a slog if you weren’t in the right mood. If one applauds the ambition then it would be remiss to criticise the lack of focus.
Savoy Motel’s eponymously titled debut has a lot going for it, full of interesting ideas, some of which come to fruition and some that could do with some development still. The next one might just be great.
Savoy Motel are not a post-punk band or a retro glam revival group. We arent trying to revive anything. SavoyMotel play southern rock in a modern tradition.
The Julie Ruin return with the album Hit Reset which expands on the band’s established sound: its dancier in spots and moodier in others, with girl group backing vocals and even a touching ballad closer. Hit Reset is the sound of a band who have found their sweet spot. Kathleen Hanna’s vocals are empowered and her lyrics are as pointed and poignant as ever. From the chilling first lines of Hit Reset (“Deer hooves hanging on the wall, shell casings in the closet hall”) to the touching lines of Calverton “(“Without you I might be numb, hiding in my apartment from everyone / Without you I’d take the fifth, or be on my death bed still full of wishes”), Hanna takes a leap into the personal not seen completely on the first album or possibly even in the rest of her work.
from the debut album THE JULIE RUN have issued some great videos,
Eponymous debut album from Minor Victories, a brand new musical collaboration formed by Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai), Rachel Goswell (Slowdive), Justin Lockey of Editors, and his brother James. The freedom, the immediacy, the swapping of ideas and incredibly, the fact that all four members have barely spent any time together recording or writing only adds to the heart of the project. Minor Victories unveils the real essence of what a group of talented individuals unshackled by convention can attain. Contributions feature a spectrum of musical tastes that converge from various parts of the UK and US unveiling something beyond the original vision of any of the contributors that pushes new boundaries and new sounds into hitherto uncharted waters that are merely the first steps into the musical world of Minor Victories.
