Christopher Paul Stelling is one of those performers you could easily envy, with a superbly salient voice and ultra-skilled fingerstyle-cum-claw-hammer playing technique, all on one instrument. A real talent as well as an engaging character.
As any musician knows, the time that passes between conceiving the idea of an album and hearing it in its entirety can be very long; the songs on there need to have some staying power for the player as well as the audience. Christopher comments ‘Well, yeah, I finished the record back in September last year, and I started writing it in February, so I’m over this one,’ he laughs. ‘I’m ready to start looking at another project. I’m totally glad people can hear it now and I’m happy with how it’s being received, but I haven’t really listened to it for a while now.’
As well as being an effective, exciting 10-tracker, Labor Against Waste was in itself a labour of love for Christopher. ‘The record is out on a label, but my friends and I did the whole thing; I went into the studio initially with The Low Anthem to record a bunch of songs I had, and then I went off to Europe, came back with some more songs and went into the studio with a band and some good gear. It was recorded in segments because studio time is fucking expensive and it was mastered and mixed by us, so in that way it’s a very important one.’
I had a lot of difficulties to decide where to put this one should it be in my top albums of the year, having see the guy perform earlier this year . “Labor Against Waste” by Christopher Paul Stelling is an album that is very dear to me. A great album despite some minor flaws. And those aren’t really flaws.
Mistki has shared the music video for the final track from her 2016 album,Puberty 2, following the releases of videos for “Happy” and “Your Best American Girl.”“A Burning Hill” is a resolvedly drowsy track that begins by quickly declaring “I’m tired of wanting more/I think I’m finally worn” but then closes the album out on the small resolution of “And I’ll love the littler things/I’ll love some littler things”; it’s an ending that’s not happy, per se, but that finds a melancholy peace in the decision to continue to, as one gets older, accept joys that are smaller and smaller.
The song itself is not much longer than 2 minutes, and the video that’s just been released follows suit in being wholly unadorned — focusing most of its brief time on close ups of Mitski’s face or her hand, as it floats through the water or past a landscape in a car, basking in a seeming “love of [those] littler things.”
Mitski said of the filming of the video (which is directed by Bradley Gray):
The director and I spent a weekend just driving around New York and Pennsylvania while the camera kept running, and most of the time I’d forget I was being filmed. It felt like a vacation, but it was also quite emotional, as I was thinking about the song and what it means to me now while jumping in rivers and driving down dirt lanes.
Mitski, A Burning Hill from the record, ‘Puberty 2’ released June 17th on Dead Oceans.
For over 20 years, Chicago Americana troupe Wilco has been a band of depth and intricacy. Singer-songwriter JeffTweedy has served up his personal insights on the mic as a revolving backing band of ace multi-instrumentalists dressed them in the Alt-country repose of A.M. and Being There, the ‘70s pop sheen of Summerteeth, and the minor symphonies of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. By 2007’s Sky Blue Sky, the band settled on what would be its first stable lineup: JeffTweedy and his former Uncle Tupelo bassist buddy John Stirratt, experimental drummer and percussionist Glenn Kotche, guitar god Nels Cline, knob twiddler Mikael Jorgensen, and alt-country session hand Pat Sansone. The lineup honored Wilco’s commitment both to country and to pushing the envelope of this genre, but 2009’s Wilco (The Album) and 2011’s The Whole Love, the pair of full lengths that followed Sky Blue Sky, maybe fizzed when they ought to have popped.
Last summer’s surprise free release Star Wars was an attempt to redirect the band’s energy. At just over 33 minutes long, it’s the shortest Wilco studio album.
The songs were two- and three-minute pop-rock confections that pulled off the difficult feat of sounding both thoughtfully arranged and off the cuff. This month’s Schmilco seeks to extend the streak, revisiting the wiry energy of Star Wars over a dozen quiet acoustic tunes. Most of the new album’s songs were conceived around the same time as Star Wars, but Tweedy made the peculiar decision to split the fertile sessions in two: “The alternative to making two records would have been to spend another year really honing everything, all of it, getting it all right for that kind of release.”
The irony of the Star Wars/Schmilco project is that the decision not to whittle everything down to a single body of work is its saving grace.
If the major strength of Star Wars was getting Wilco, a band whose finest albums are also their busiest, to strip down, Schmilco’s is figuring out how to stash six players into the quiet of a backyard jam. “Normal American Kids,” introduced at a live show earlier this year as a solo Jeff Tweedy cut, gets a studio version that sneaks sweet, meandering electric guitar from Nels into the background. A few songs later “Nope” crams stuttering bits of riffs into the margins, the lead guitar coughing and spitting over the tune like Blur ax-man Graham Coxon did on “Coffee & TV.” “Nope” slowly unravels as it trips along, its personnel expanding to no less than three guitarists and two drummers. (Tweedy’s son Spencer lends Kotche a hand on Schmilco’s drums.) Between these extremes is a tapestry of shaggy guitar shuffles like the laconic “Happiness,” the demented, atonal “Common Sense,” and the muted punk blast of “Locator.”
Schmilco’s subtle intricacies provide cover for a series of vignettes of dreamers in various degrees of resignation. From the song titles — “Nope,” “Cry All Day,” “Someone to Lose,” “Shrug and Destroy” — down to the lyrics, Schmilco bleeds sadness. The deceptively titled “Happiness” opens on a devastating observation: “My mother always says I’m great, and it always makes me sad / I don’t think she’s being nice, I really think she believes that.” Album closer “We Aren’t the World (Safety Girl)” devilishly subverts the chorus of the star-studded ‘80s charity single “We Are the World” into a dart about settling: “We aren’t the world / We aren’t the children / But you’re my safety girl.” As a lyricist, Tweedy loves his abstractions. (“I am an American aquarium drinker / I assassin down the avenue”?) So Schmilco’s snap focus on dejected character studies, like the hopeless barfly of “Quarters,” who sweeps the place for quarters to play music on the jukebox, is jarring, but like the elegant arrangements that swirl and sputter underfoot, it feels like the work of a tightly wound unit taking chances. Wilco’s willingness to embrace risk and change at a point in its career where peers often retreat into comfort and self-parody suggests there could be another couple of decades of life left in this 22-year-old enterprise.
Despite playing the game for over two decades, the 49-year-old singer-songwriter has hardly ever sounded so intimate as he does on Schmilco, grappling with the never-ending angst of knowing that you never really can escape yourself. On album standout “If I Ever Was a Child”, he vividly paints this feeling, singing: “I slump behind my brain/ A haunted stain never fades/ I hunt for the kind of pain I can take.” The Chicago rockers add some color to each of the album’s 12 tracks by stripping things down to its core essentials.
Texan four-piece Explosions in the Sky have developed an international cult following as their post-rock instrumentals have appeared everywhere from film soundtracks to TV trailers. However, drummer Chris Hrasky recently quipped that the last fate the band want for their sixth album is for it to accompany “rousing sports montages”. It’s unlikely, as the band have taken a detour from trademark glacial beauty into more pensive, sinister terrain. Thus, among The Wilderness’s gentle pianos and Eno-like ambience are percussive depth charges, industrial machine-like sounds and frantic math-rock.
Explosions In The Sky finally returned this year with their long-awaited followup to 2011’s Take Care, Take Care, Take Care. How they still find ways to make their brand of post-rock feel as fresh and angelic as it first did 16 years ago is one of the many alluring facets of the new album “The Wilderness” . It’s another sprawling epic, yawning with fresh air and stretching impressive muscles previously unused by the Lone Star post-rockers. Digitized bleeps and bloops punctuate their amber swells (“Tangle Formations”) while Chris Hrasky’s rousing percussion (“Logic of a Dream”) turns self-respecting atheists into believers.
The lovely Colors in Space suddenly erupts into jarring noise reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Psycho. It works, though, because the melodies are as strong as ever, and among the darker shades, the lighter moments wallop home. Tangle Formations and Infinite Orbit are terrific tunes, and the elementally softly rocking Landing Cliffs makes a spectacularly pretty climax to another beautifully understated epic.
Described as “chiming vocal-led post-rock”, Midas Fall have carved a unique sound, combining elements of electronica, post-rock and alt-goth to create “powerful yet fragile, devastatingly beautiful and beautifully devastating” music .
2015 saw Midas Fall release their third album ‘the Menagerie Inside’ on Monotreme Records followed by their biggest European tour to date. In 2016 sees Midas Fall return to Scotland to continue writing new material .
Combining elements of electronica, post-rock and alternative rock with progressive and gothic undertones, UK band Midas Fall have carved a distinctive and captivating sound, creating taut, shimmering soundscapes led by the hauntingly melancholic vocals of Elizabeth Heaton – a sound described as “powerful yet fragile, devastatingly beautiful and beautifully devastating”.
Midas Fall’s third album ‘the Menagerie Inside’ , The record, mastered by legendary engineer Ed Brooks (Pearl Jam, Death Cab for Cutie, Caspian) will feature nine new tracks and will be released in digital, CD and limited edition vinyl formats.
“Wilderness” flows by seamlessly, impressive and skin-tingling, the album track by track, play by play catapults the band well over the looming fear of that- one-album-band and sends them soaring to new heights.
“Midas Fall are excellent providers of chiming vocal led post-rock and deserve extra credit for steering clear of many of the genre’s most notorious clichés. Never do they stray into the overlong territory that even legends such as Explosions in the Sky have failed to avoid in recent years, which, for a band still touring their debut album is even more impressive. The vocals are gorgeous and the propulsive rhythms and shimmering guitars make the band a genuinely wonderful way to start off the evening.
“Haunting and tender, melodious and powerful, As Our Blood Separates is an aqueous compilation that showcases Midas Fall’s ability to completely infiltrate the listener…so artfully put together you can tell no note or sound was left unexamined…fluid and moving, it will stay with you long after the echo of its final piano chord has faded.
“Amidst the atmosphere and drones, there is a poetry, with a sad voice juxtaposed. The album closes the album with a bang, with a note that resonates even after the music has stopped.
“Listening to the album is an intentionally dark experience but there’s no sense of contrivance or insincerity and there’s a lot to admire in the complexity of song structure and harmony. ‘My Radio Star’ and ‘Nautical Song’ in particular, are stunningly accomplished and demonstrate hallmarks of the band’s sound. Eleven…is an overwhelmingly enjoyable and notably competent debut and shows a band with an intricate understanding of their own style. The challenge will be to go even better than this in future.
We have a lot of love for Savages. As forerunners in the recent renaissance in alternative music, they put themselves out on a limb while others lacked the courage to risk the fall. Their amazing live outings were mirrored by an inventiveness in their sound that lifted them head and shoulders above their contemporaries. Before they had recorded their first album, we had marked them as the best show in town and the release of the excellent SilenceYourself in 2013 only served to confirm this.
Thankfully, their pioneering approach became infectious and over the past few years a large number of fine new bands have emerged, leaving their erstwhile mentors in the strange position for young musicians of being veterans in a rapidly expanding field.
It has taken Savages a fair while to follow up on their debut; long gone are the days when artists would release a quality album every year and the four-piece appear not to have had much downtime in a hectic schedule. Perhaps this left them playing catch-up, for Adore Life bears the hallmark of a group keen to get new recordings out without perhaps taking the time to thoroughly explore the distant boundaries of the realm of possibility. The ten-track, thirty-nine minute collection is a punchy one, more capturing the live essence of Savages than embracing the spirit of exploration that helped infuse Silence Yourself with such delightful subtleties and daring. It’s almost brutal in its attack and, despite dropping in a couple of slower moments, the pressure is unlifting. Soundwise, there is no escaping the fact that Jehnny Beth sounds like Siouxsie Sioux and much of Adore Life could have come from mid-period Banshees, though Savages always wear fewer disguises and perhaps lack some guile. GemmaThompson’s guitars crash and occasionally wail, but never take charge, leaving the voice dominant, and drummer Fay Milton probably added a few muscles in the record’s making but she is immersed in the assault rather than revelling in the opportunity to dance around it. On the other hand, bassist Ayse Hassan thrives in the record’s rumbustiousness and lays down some marvellous patterns that only underline her position as one of the great bassists of the modern era.
By no stretch of the imagination is this a bad record, but there is no escaping the faint feeling of disappointment that Savages haven’t taken things further; they haven’t pushed enough and always want to punch instead of cajole and allure. When they hit the spot on the shining ‘Slowing Down The World’, they sound untouchable and there are highlights throughout, but there is a little too much journeying going on without enough effort to take in the views.
What started as a solo musical endeavor of Athens, Georgia native Kristine Leschper has turned into a promising band that we now know as Mothers. Earlier this year they released their rather lovely debut offering, “When You Walk a Long Distance You Are Tired”, via Grand Jury Music.
The group first caught my attention last year during CMJ, where their powerful and emotive live show caught my attention. They returned to New York in February for a performance giving us a taste of what was to come on the released album. the album is a sprawling multi-instrumental landscape, shaped out of exhaustively experimental song structures. Each song follows its own erratic path, and even the most serene moments teeter on the edge of dissolution, about to give away to chaotic instrumental interludes. The album is therefore easy to disappear into, and lengthy, winding songs like “Nesting Behavior” and “Hold Your Own Hand” are the entryway. The submersing atmosphere is the work of the instrumentation, from the simple, frail sound of the plucked mandolin to the bigger orchestral arrangements.
The group sounded every bit as strong as I recalled, powerfully going through the shape-shifting stop-start sounds off the album, offering emotional insight that connected at all angles. As great as their record is, there’s just something special about this band live that is sort of missing on recordings. Mothers are a band that will continue to grow and evolve over the years, with every show providing as unique opportunity as the next. I’m already waiting to catch them again the next time they return to us hopefully early next year with a new album.
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Dear Listeners,
Teaser videos for our forthcoming 2xCD+DVD / 2xLP+DVD release of Live At Brixton have emerged online in recent days. You can now watch fully remixed versions of both Gagarin and Spitfire to appreciate the marvellous job our engineer James Campbell has done mixing this album. If that’s whetted your appetite further for the release of the main event (complete with music videos for all The Race For Space-era singles
You might’ve noticed we’ve been a bit quieter on the gig front in recent months – we’re working on demos for the next album and slowly making progress. All being well we’ll be recording in the new year and releasing in late spring. Until then, enjoy the show on Wednesday those of you who are coming, and do please enjoy the Brixton album when it arrives. Yours secludedly, J. Willgoose, Esq.
Black Love is a classic master piece . The second disc mainly consists of jam sessions captured during the recording .
One gift, there is a demo version of Fade , It would be greater to release the b sides of the ep’s that were released at this good time. Remember how the “Honky’s Ladder” Ep was incredibly brillant
The Band’s Classic Album Has Been Remastered And Expanded with Nine Previously Unreleased Demos, Outtakes And Studio Jam Sessions. The Afghan Whigs’ Black Love 20th anniversary edition 2CD and 3LP formats are available today, featuring a newly remastered version of the original 11-track album
Now Available On Record Store Day Today Black Friday
The Afghan Whigs seminal album Black Love turns 20 this year, and Rhino Records is celebrating with a special edition that is now available today for Record Store Day Black Friday. BLACK LOVE (20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION) has been released today as a double-CD and a triple-LP exclusively at indie record stores, and digitally on the same day.
Upon release, “Black Love” didn’t break into the top 50 on the Billboard 200, and reviews were mixed, with some calling it too dark. However, its cinematic approach to storytelling, inspired by film noir, is now seen as groundbreaking.
Songs like “Crime Scene Part One” and “Faded” are dripping with emotion and grit. In 2024, The Guardian praised the album’s “timeless drama,” and it’s often cited as a precursor to the soulful rock sound popular today.
The Afghan Whigs’ blend of R&B and rock was ahead of its time, making “Black Love” a must-spin for those who missed its brilliance. Its influence can be heard in new acts like The Black Keys and Hozier.
