Tigers Jaw is an from Scranton Pennsylvania, formed in 2005. In March 2013, Tigers Jaw announced that they will be going on hiatus. However, on August 6th, 2013, Run for Cover Records posted that the band never officially stated that they were going to break up. The band would still be making music. Since, they have recorded a new album with all of the original members entitled Charmer which was released in June 2014 with more subdued, mature Tigers Jaw, but the evolution shown by this record is welcome. the Tigers Jaw signature sound is still at work, with power chords and organ drones plus tight drumming formula makes for tracks which range from stellar to recycled. definitely a rewarding listen.
He may not be a mainstream mainstay, but mention the name Walter Schreifels to anyone even tangentially involved in the punk or hardcore scene and chances are you’ll be met with borderline reverence. From his tenure in legendary hardcore bands like Gorilla Biscuits and Youth Of Today to his work in the pioneering post-hardcore act Quicksand and cult favorites like Rival Schools, Schreifels has proved himself to be one of the most talented and diverse song- writers of his generation. Over two decades after Gorilla Biscuits released their landmark album Start Today, Schreifels transcended his hardcore roots and showed another side of his constantly shifting skin with his solo debut An Open Letter To The Scene.
From stripped-down acoustic meditations like the album’s title track to Schreifels’ psy- chedelic-tinged cover of Agnostic Front’s “Society’s Sucker” and an intricately arranged version of his CIV Classic “Don’t Gotta ProveIt,”An Open Letter To The Scene is arguably the first project Schreifels has ever recorded that manages to incorporate all of his diverse influences and mould them into a cohesive whole.
Few artists lived the blues with an intensity that equaled their performance drive as did Blind Willie Johnson. Born poor, supposedly blinded by his stepmother after having lye thrown in his face, and dead by age 48, Johnson led an existence that would cause even Southern sharecroppers who cultivated blues and gospel music over the past century to shudder. But he sang the music with rigid conviction, underscoring his ragged tenor (and occasional bass) singing with slide guitar that provided wiry counterpoint to his immovable faith.
In the extensive, Grammy-worthy liner notes to the new Johnson tribute album God Don’t Ever Change, producer Jeffrey Gaskill terms the lost blues giant’s music as “imperishable,” a quality brought often-eerily to life by an all-star roster that includes Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, the Blind Boys of Alabama and Tedeschi-Trucks, among others.
Not surprisingly, the Waits tunes alone — The Soul of a Man and John the Revelator — make the album a worthwhile purchase. The lean, earnest might of both songs is carried by the singer’s familiar doomsday chant and the thundering percussion of Waits’ son, drummer Casey Waits.
Williams, a versed blues stylist long before her sublime original music garnered attention, travels similar and seemingly murky paths during It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine and the title tune, the latter sporting a powerfully stark intro that Williams sings alone before her band’s groove oozes in like a bayou river.
Similarly, the husband-and-wife crew of Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi gives its orchestra-size band the day off and tackles Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning as a bare-bones gospel piece, with Trucks’ potent but unforced slide guitar colors leading the charge. The Blind Boys of Alabama’s Mother’s Children Have a Hard Time (a retitled Motherless Children) is a slice of sweet, churchy solace, while Luther Dickinson’s version of Bye and Bye I’m Going to See the King with the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band is a cheery requiem full of rustic, percussive Southern soul.
Now for the surprise. Cowboy Junkies awaken from Americana purgatory to pull a rabbit of the hat with Jesus Is Coming Soon. Singer Margo Timmons sounds positively possessed as she chants verses about lands desperate for faith amid the decimation of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, alongside a sample of Johnson singing the chorus. It’s a wild, fuzzed-out spiritual nightmare and the last thing you would expect from the usually sleepy-sounding Junkies.
Maria McKee’s Let Your Light Shine on Me goes in the opposite direction. Amid the darker corners of God Don’t Ever Change, the singer serves up gospel testimony that is effortlessly bright and soulful. It’s more than a call to wake the spirits. It’s a summons for Johnson to take his forgotten place in the pantheon of blues righteousness.
Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground by Blind Willie Johnson from the album Definitive Delta Blues
On their debut record, Pill’s ability to leap from issue to issue takes lyrical poise and musical understanding. The band’s collective ability to cover a wide range of instruments with comparatively few numbers portrays each member’s musical expertise. Frontwoman Veronica Torres takes on both vocals and bass, while the multi-purposing Jonathan Campolo and Benjamin Gaffe play three and four instruments, respectively. Gaffe’s spastic sax follows the free-jazz doctrine of improvisation, naturally implementing the genre’s experimental ad-lib techniques of Peter Brötzmann and Evan Parker into Pill’s freak punk procedure.
Pill’s formula follows the jagged aggression of self-described “weird punk,” . The NYC quartet’s debut buckles and twists through moments of post-punk fervor, scattered with keen sociopolitical commentary criticizing the emergence of a loathsome wave of marginalization in New York City. Acoustically driven “Speaking Up” is sung from the point-of-view of a particularly tormenting co-worker, whose prods are blatant criticisms of the misogynistic culture of certain workplaces. Torres’ lyrics mock gender-favoring office-space lechery, as she sings in bully-like fashion, “You’re gonna get fired/for speaking up.” Her words are hurriedly speak-sung, recorded with a notable sense of sonic and physical distance in comparison to Convenience’s other tracks, which simultaneously reflects the “distance” Torres creates while assuming the voice of a sexual perpetrator.
Exceptional moments are frequent, as highlight tracks deliver some of the most spirited progressive punk to come out of NYC in recent years. The acidic “100% Cute” sears through two fiery minutes of Torres’ shrills and yelps delivered over a manically descending bass and psychedelically warped effects. Riot grrrl ideals find Pill’s frontwoman at the forefront of feminism, as she proves herself to be Liz Phair’s rightful heir, becoming the latter’s sexualized successor on “Fetish Queen,” while closer “Medicine” ends Convenience on a more musically optimistic approach to Pill’s relatively unnerving and panicky formula. The latter track is the most accessible piece on Convenience, both musically and lyrically. “Medicine” is an excellent end to a wildly eccentric release, sure to have listeners hitting repeat after performing a double take at the album’s conclusion.
Convenience’s distinct eeriness establishes the album’s thematic ideas in a logical order, developing a specific sonic atmosphere across the sequence of the tracklisting. Torres’ frantic and vehement vocals cease during key instrumental numbers scattered throughout the album. Each song of pause not only contributes to the album’s underlying aura, but also become fully enjoyable, standalone tracks. The aforementioned “100% Cute” is followed by the palate-cleansing “Sex With Santa,” which provides a subdued transition through a menacing bass over rhythmically trickling drum lines.
Not only is Pill’s lyrical ability truly commendable, but their musical exploration with dissonance, experimentation, and improvisation through a post-punk lens finds their sound particularly difficult to pin down.
For their third studio album, “Goodness” the Massachusetts group Hotelier took the approach, turning their attention to the unknowns of the here-and-now and crafting a sprawling work of art that aims to capture life at its most mundane as well as its most thrilling. The result sounds like something that finally lives up to emo’s name because genuine emotion doesn’t always express itself at volumes dialed up to 11. Tracks like the gut-punching “Opening Mail for My Grandmother” take on the theme of death, and vocalist-bassist Christian Holden finds himself reflecting on what comes next with the same lyrical skill he once employed to look backwards in time. It may not be the band’s most rousing work to date, but it’s certainly their best and most engaging.
“Listen more, speak less,” Christian Holden recently commented on social media in anticipation of his band’s forthcoming new album. These seemed like strange words coming from Hoteliers notorious frontman.
Goodness, the Worcester, Massachusetts indie-punk outfit’s bracingly human, paradigm-shifting third album opens with a recitation of a spoken-word poem. “I see the moon, the moon sees me,” Holden reads calmly. “I would smile but it would be meaningless. I wouldn’t want it to be.” You can almost hear the eyeballs begin to roll as the band cited off the first track that kicks off their new album with a poem.
Granted, it’s hard to fault anyone for shrugging off the so-called rebirth of a scene that quickly became both fairly and unfairly synonymous with entitled navel-gazing, arrested development and, uh, crying. Sure, it was a surprise that the Hotelier’s 2014 sophomore effort, Home Like No Place Is There was embraced by rock fans of all stripes, that passionate, melodically inclined guitar music seemed worthy of people’s attention again.
The ramshackle charm of Milk Teeth’s debut full-length ‘Vile Child’ made it one of the year’s most loveable albums. Mixing dirty garage grunge with squalling hardcore and languid slacker rock, the Bristol four-piece sound like a blend of Pavement, Dinosaur Jr and Glassjaw, while earlier this year they struck gold with single ‘Swear Jar’: a perfect slice of 90s nostalgia
“You don’t let someone you love feel afraid,” Jilian Medford sings on the opening track of IAN SWEET’s debut full-length,” Shapeshifter”. Falling in love is terrifying in and of itself; realizing you’ve lost too much of your individuality in the process is even worse. Shapeshifter is built around a singular flaw — the compulsion to make others feel at ease, often to the detriment of your own well-being — and examines it from all angles, pushing and prodding at that trait through expansive rock songs that grow and contract to meet Medford’s many different moods.
“I always give up parts of myself to other people,” Medford explains. “When you love someone, you want them to be comfortable. While I was writing the album, I was in a really unhealthy relationship, and I suppressed it so much that I became someone else. I was taking on these different personalities because I couldn’t focus on what was going on in my life. I wasn’t feeling secure or ready to sit down and process things in a healthy way, so I molded myself into all of these things that were not me.”
IAN SWEET got its start as a solo project, and that deeply analytical singer-songwriter intimacy still drives many of their songs. Medford began the project as simply IAN — a childhood nickname given to her because she was a tomboy — while studying at the Berklee College Of Music in Boston, recording demos straight from her guitar into her laptop, hunched over the computer because the cord connecting the two wasn’t long enough. That constraint is reflected in the construction of her earlier songs tight, nervous, uncomfortable in its own skin.
The rest of the band came together serendipitously. Drummer Tim Cheney was brought into the fold after a last-minute dropout sent Medford scrambling to find someone to play with her on a two-week tour; Damien Scalise approached the band after a show and expressed interest in playing with them, and when they found themselves needing a bassist, he was first in line. They toured vigorously after solidifying as a trio, playing over 100 shows in their first year together. Their first output featuring all three members was their 2014 debut ep most of the tracks were rearranged and reimagined solo songs save for one (“Great Big Dog”), whose wild swells hint at the pivots they’d make on Shapeshifter.
Recording with a full band — especially one that has such an instinctual chemistry — opened up the band’s songs and allowed Medford’s writing to breathe. Cheney and Scalise’s approaches to music sometimes feel diametrically opposed — Scalise is classically trained like Medford; Cheney sounds more naturalistic, having grown up around music through his father, who builds drums for a living — but they ricochet off each other in tightly-controlled microbursts. Along with Medford, they create noisy, clamoring soundscapes that are intricately designed and occasionally imposing, but always know when to step back and let the narrative take hold.
That dynamic is essential because Medford is a gripping and vivid lyricist. Lead single “ Slime Time Live” uses the Nickelodeon game show as a metaphor for how depression can unexpectedly knock you on your ass; “2soft2chew” turns a stereotypical nightmare scenario into a meditation on anxiety and the inability to connect at the right times: “I get so nervous that I grit my teeth/ They get so loose and fall out/ Now I don’t have any/ When you finally want me, my mouth is too bloody.” On “Cactus Couch,” she sees the danger that’s right in front of her and opts for the pain anyway: “I keep having dreams about a cactus couch/ I sit right down.”
All of Medford’s words tie back to Shapeshifter’s central conceit. In fact, the album’s centerpiece and title track is a haunting whirlwind that Medford recorded alone after the rest of the album was already done. While mastering it in California, she realized there was a missing piece, and returned to the project’s solitary beginnings to record “Shapeshifter” in a single take. It’s arranged around a pointed thesis statement — “I have a way of loving too many things to take on just one shape” — that both ties the album together and serves as an unsettling mantra to her Achilles’ heel.
Shapeshifter is a deeply lonely album, crafted around the self-isolating tendency of appeasing someone who doesn’t even realize that they’re being catered to. “You never pay attention to the smaller things/ Like the marks on my body,” Medford sings. “The freckles on my skin don’t exist if no one’s looking.” Medford repeatedly writes off the imbalanced relationship that resulted in Shapeshifter as empty calories, all while still bearing the scars: “I’m always hungry but I never eat anything but candy,” she sings on one track. Another builds to a wailing conclusion: “You said there’s hardly any good food, but I still get real full/ I get too heavy, too full.”
That last one’s called “#23″, and it’s named after Medford’s favorite basketball player, Michael Jordan. It alludes to Space Jam and that film’s opening track; Medford fantasizes about what it would be like to be in her idol’s shoes — “I feel like Jordan in my Jordan’s” — but twists that into a barbed-wire self-examination: “I stand in place and ignore him/ I’ll stand right here for another year.” The song’s about trying to quell the constant buzzing in your head with coping mechanisms — in this case, a “History Channel VHS about the mummies” that “keeps [her] company” — but it manages to sound fun, inviting, and comforting despite the depressing subject matter. That’s another essential component to the IAN SWEET puzzle: their ability to keep a sense of levity and humor in the face of overwhelming personal distress. They take carefully-orchestrated madness and turn it into music that acts as an abatement to self-destruction. Medford morphs her own anxieties — being someone else’s rock without that same reciprocated support — into something powerful and self-reliant.
1. Second Class Sex
Musically we wanted a heavy opener that set the tone for the attitude of the album, in the back of my mind I had ‘Holidays In The Sun’ by Sex Pistols, ‘Feel Good Hit Of The Summer’ by Queens Of The Stone Age, ‘Search & Destroy’ by Iggy & The Stoogies and ‘Line Up’ by Elastica as vague references. We wanted a track that exploded into life. Lyrically its in a different place altogether, dealing with gender, sex and prejudice. I was thinking of Barbra Kruger’s big bold beautiful statements inspired by advertising slogans.
2. I’ve Seen Your Face In A Music Magazine
During our fourth ever gig we were heckled by a frontman from a band that had been popular a few years ago. To be fair to him we were still finding our feet but as the night progressed he got progressively more aggressive and drunk and we all found it quite sad and disturbing. In the morning I went up to my loft and fired up the 8 track and this song just came out. I was thinking about the aftermath of fame, the weight of expectancy an artist can feel and the strange personas that emerge as coping mechanisms. To me this song set us on the path to ‘Killer Brain Waves’
3. Joy In A Small Wage
This was the first song I demoed for Asylums and its still one of my favorites. It started on piano, and it took months for the lyrics to formulate and solidify. When I transferred all the music over to guitars, bass and drums it just came to life….it had a real vibe, Elvis Costello, Mudhoney, Blur maybe even Orange Juice. The line that best summarises the themes in that song is “there is a purity you see in the absence of wealth”. It was the first Asylums track to be playlisted on Radio 1 thanks to BBC Introducing.
4. Bad Influence
I’ve been a musician and artist my whole life in various projects and set ups but just prior to starting Asylums everything I had been doing musically came to a natural end, I got the classic guilt and self doubt that most artists get but this time in a big way. One Sunday I was visiting my Granddad and I think he could sense I was in need of some advice. He took me into the back bedroom and quietly gave me £1000 pounds in cash and said “don’t stop, I’m proud of you”. I was flawed by this unexpected generosity and I decided to use the money wisely, we all started CoolThing Records with it and made the first Asylums recordings. This song is my homage to him and his belief that there is always something better around the corner.
5. Wet Dream Fanzine
A full on psychedelic trip comprised of disposable erotica, soft drink advertising, phallic ice cream cones and social anxiety. It was written very quickly after I’ve Seen Your Face In A Music Magazine, no time to think, it sent us further down the rabbit hole of surf guitars and weird sounds. Its so fun to play live and when we toured with The Vaseline’s it was Francis favourite song of ours.
6. The Death Of Television
During the first 6 months of working on Asylums I took a much needed break from Social Networking, no checking in sporadically, absolutely nothing, I think I was hiding from the world a bit. It was extremely calming and after a while it got me thinking about how much arbitrary information I was absorbing a day, a week, a year. What a distraction it had become from my true passions, writing, making art, reading and listening to music. When I was a child everyone told me TV would rot my brain, so what was Social Networking doing? Microwaving it? Around that time Jazz our guitarist was around my flat and he picked out a Dischord Records box set I had, we started revisiting Nation Of Ulysses, Rites Of Spring and Minor Threat as musical inspirations. I had the title written on my wall and it just happened.
7. Monosyllabic Saliva
This song was one that Jazz really helped shape and bring into focus, I had the riff and chorus but he got hold of it and added all these cool atmospherics and lead lines. I remember sitting my bedroom surrounded by records, lyrics, mess and dirty clothes and just watching him cook up the vibe like a madman. Lyrically its a little darker than some of the other tracks, its just about ignorant people really, about hearing opinions around you that are hateful on a daily basis and not agreeing with them in the slightest.
8. Born To Not Belong
This was the last song we worked on for the album, I finished it the day before we went on a long tour with Ash in December 2015. We worked it up on the road in soundchecks and recorded it on the 2nd January 2016. Its one of two songs one the album that reveal a bit more personal and emotional side, its about our community at Cool ThingRecords all the people including myself that dont fit in anywhere apart from with each other.
9. Necessary Appliances
This was mostly written during the general election of 2015 and developed in the months that followed. We are probably at our most angular on this track, thinking of bands like Clor, Strangers, Walkmen, Gang Of Four and Weezer musically. Mike delivers some of his best bass playing on this one. Lyrically themes of consumerism, austerity and community are obvious but there is also a strange link made between contemporary political party leaders and disposable household appliances that aren’t built to last.
10. Sunday Commuters
We all still work day jobs and the music that we make happens outside of the 9 to 5, touring can be hard but we make it work. The recording for our album was made in Watford and many times we found ourselves commuting on weekends, evenings and bank holiday to get it finished. Sunday Commuters is partly about swimming against the current, getting up at 6.30 on a Sunday to make a recording session at 9.00 miles from your home…..its about walking through the deserted financial district at the weekend and feeling like an alien. Musically it owes a lot to Blur and Smashing Pumpkins and features some of the coolest harmonies on the record thanks to our drummer Henry.
11. Missing Persons
This is another one of our more emotional tracks, it was written on piano as a ballad and is about new beginnings. I had it for a while before I worked it up for Asylums but it only snapped into focus after a night in with my dog. In late 2014 my wife brought a dog back from a rescue home, never having had a pet before I was stressing. The first night we spent in alone bonding we played games, hugged and listened to two albums: Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque and Nirvana’s In Utero. The next day I took this ballad and gave it a bit of a college rock makeover then showed it to Jazz. It was his favourite demo I had played him, we took it from there. Dogs are inspirational and wonderful friends.
12. Slacker Shopper
This is probably our most extreme sounding track on the record, its about buying products online and not supporting the shops in your home town, there is also some observations about the music industry in there. I had the music for 6 months before I knew what to do with it lyrically, in that time SOUTH RECORDS opened in our home town and totally changed the listening habits of the young people in the area, they had access to great vinyl, community spirit, advice and a sense of preserving something special: the record shop. Slacker Shopper is very much influenced by that and how wonderful it is to see young people enjoying music and artwork in the physical format.
Butterfly (Secret Track)
Artistically we didn’t want to do a slow song in the main body of the record, it wasn’t about that for us. We wanted it to be full on, like life is in 2016. Go go go.
But the idea of a secret track was appealing and it seemed like a cool way to bring the pace down after we had said our bit. Butterfly is about virility, I sang it with a stinking cold at some point in 2015. It probably hints of things to come for Asylums musically. To me it has a Syd Barratt quality and after 35 minutes of full on energy we wanted to give people something to soothe their minds.
Limited Copies come with a bonus 4 track CDEP the ‘Japan’ EP. Public Access TV finally unleash their debut album and it’s wall to wall hits central. It’s a modern new wave album that’s not afraid to take bits of the Strokes, Costello, Joe Jackson and Tom Petty and come up with something that is instant and joyous. The band had a buzz going ever since their first-ever Soundcloud upload and that din is only going to get bigger with the release of album ‘Never Enough’. Public Access TV are the kings of the chorus and this album will get stuck on your turntable.
Public Access T.V. are a band firmly planted in downtown New York City. Before they released their first song, played their first show, or even had a name, Public Access T.V. were a band. Best friends out every night together, sharing clothes, cigarettes, pocket change, and most importantly living together in a dilapidated East Village loft where they could stay up all night playing music… loudly.
“It wasn’t like ‘let’s start a band,'” 24-year-old singer and main songwriter John Eatherly says of the formation. “We already were playing music and hanging out together all the time. We were all doing different things, playing as hired guns for anybody just to pay the rent, and then one day I came in with these songs I wrote and we all just knew this was something we wanted to do for real.”
What followed was a whirlwind of activity; singles “Monaco” and “In the Mirror” along with last years PublicAccess EP, lead to critical acclaim, and tours in the US and UK supporting acts like Weezer and Gang of Four. Everything was moving on the correct trajectory when in April 2015, while PATV were on tour in California, they flicked on the TV to see live pictures of their Manhattan loft on every single news channel. It was on fire from a gas explosion and then collapsed into rubble.
“We wrote there, rehearsed, recorded, lived, everything,” says John. “It was home…and then it was completely gone.”
Demoralised and thousands of miles from NYC, PATV did the only thing they could think of. As John says: “We told our agent to book as many gigs as possible – because we didn’t want to deal with the reality of the situation. We actually had nowhere to go.”
But, as things happened, that chain of events was to set PATV on an entirely new and fruitful path. Among those frantic gig bookings were a bunch of festivals in Europe, as well as dates with The Strokes, Fidlar and Palma Violets.
The group released their double A-side single “In Love and Alone” / “Patti Peru” last autumn to critical acclaim. “In Love and Alone” was debuted by Zane Lowe on Apple’s Beats 1 with him exclaiming, “We Love Public AccessT.V.” and giving the track his signature stamp of approval by playing it twice in a row. This single as well as their follow up track “On Location” led to Public Access TV being one of the buzziest bands at SXSW this year… with both Entertainment Weekly and NME listing the group as one of the “Top 10 Best Artists” at the festival.
Also check out there Live in NYC session for Spotify
The sophomore release from London-based band Ultimate Painting. Initially formed as a loose collaboration by Jack Cooper (Mazes) and James Hoare (Veronica Falls) the project quickly turned into a full-fledged band in 2014 with the release of their self-titled debut album. Continuing with the warm 60s influenced pastoral gems that characterized their impressive debut, ‘Green Lanes’ sees the duo conjure up another collection of super cool dreamy pop. “Green Lanes” is the second album from London-based band Ultimate Painting.
With the release of their s/t debut album on Trouble In Mind. That album received praise worldwide from NME, Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound & more & with “Green Lanes” the band is poised for more accolades. The album is focused & cohesive, the result of two voices becoming one and each member’s songs complimenting the other, carving out a distinct & unified voice as Ultimate Painting.
Slinking out of the gate, the first song “Kodiak” is an hummable future-classic with Cooper & Hoare’s guitars dancing around each other with ease. The licks & lyrics conjuring up images of Sixties California & Seventies New York; a picture of dark clouds on a sunny day. The rest of the album follows suit with the airy, lush harmonies of “Sweet Chris” & “Two From The Vault ” and even kicks up some dust with the chooglin’ “(I’ve Got The) Sanctioned Blues” and the manic ”Woken By Noises”. While their self titled debut was all Cooper & Hoare, this time out, they are augmented by the addition of their live drummer Neil Robinson who provides propulsion on all but one of “Green Lanes”s tracks.
The album artwork was once again provided by Portland artist Bradley Kerl, who portrayed Hoare’s London flat and recording space chock full of the equipment used to record both the band’s albums casually tumbling toward the viewer.
2015 sees the band hitting the road again, with appearances at UK & European Festivals as well as a full US Tour in the fall in support of “Green Lanes”
TRACK LISTING
1. Kodiak
2. Sweet Chris
3. (I’ve Got The) Sanctioned Blues
4. The Ocean
5. Two From The Vault
6. The Ocean (reprise)
7. Break The Chain
8. I Was Lost
9. Tee Zee Em
10. Paying The Price
11. Woken By Noises
12. Out In The Cold
