If you want to, you can pull Currents apart to its component influences – a pinch ofSupertramp, some sinister late period Beatles, a heavy helping of 80s Michael Jackson. But the experience of listening to the album, both intensely emotional and the best dance record in years, is such a forceful and clear expression of Kevin Parker’s point of view that it feels totally unique and original.
The idea that album with this kind of intricate instrumental interplay and impeccable disco groove could be created by one affable soft-spoken dude in his house in Fremantle is an achievement in and of itself. It all adds up to as good a substitute for caffeine – or most other drugs – you could wish for. Start your day with ‘Let It Happen’, start your nights with ‘Reality In Motion’ and walk home to ‘New Person Same Old Mistakes’.
Currents succeeds as the greatest example of the high exemplar of 2015’s dominant musical idea – purity is bullshit, and authenticity is a myth. Deeply personal and wonderfully lyrically direct, this album proves that singing about heavy feels doesn’t have to be wrapped up in mopey acoustic guitar strumming, and that tracks which kill in a 3am DJ set can break your heart as savagely as any maudlin piano ballad.
Holy Holy started out as a song writing side-project, Timothy Carroll and Oscar Dawson had separate and varied musical careers, the duo started writing together when their paths crossed in Europe. The demo’s they created became “When the Storms Would Come”, a hugely successful debut release, and one of the more popular Australian albums in 2015.
Recorded largely to tape, the album is 10 tracks of elegant song writing, with warm tones, beautiful harmonies and some epic guitar solo’s that give a nod the bands’ love of Neil Young and Pink Floyd. The sound is modern, yet heavily influenced by the artists and sounds from an earlier time. Joined by a regular backing band, the duo has barely been off the road since the album was released, including tours of the UK and Europe. A fantastic live act, they will no doubt gain even more fans when they join Vance Joy on the road early in 2016
Sore, is the debut record from Toronto’s Dilly Dally is a dark and fragile post-punk album that deeply concerns itself with gender dynamics and sexual expression. Despite clear feminist underpinnings, all these girls had in mind at the time was making rock music that reflected their experience. “We were really just trying to make a rock album,” lead singer Katie Monks told me in an interview earlier this year. Then her fellow founding member Liz Ball quickly followed that up: “[Sore] is obviously resonating really deeply for both sexes. Which is the goal, and which is quite feminist I guess.” Whatever the intention, the result is clear: Sore is a combustible, seething collection of honey-sweet, venomous rock songs that achieved all the goals Monks and Ball might have had and more. Dilly Dally burned their way to the top, pegging themselves as one of this year’s most exciting bands to watch, and establishing Toronto’s burgeoning rock scene in the process
PWR BTTM smoothed the rough edges of their debut EP and turned out a polished and powerful debut album, Ugly Cherries, that’s as heavy on the riffs as it is on the message. Ben Hopkins and Liv Bruce switch off instruments and vocals on practically every song, and the whole project has a similarly communal, anything-goes feel.
PWR BTTM is a queer punk band consisting of Ben Hopkins and Liv Bruce. The band was formed at Bard College where Bruce and Hopkins bonded over a mutual interest in bringing elements of performance and drag artistry into DIY culture. While at Bard the duo recorded a demo, Cinderella Beauty Shop, and the Republican National Convention split EP with Jawbreaker Reunion. On these releases, Hopkins plays guitar and sings, and Bruce plays drums. Since then, the two have begun to share vocal/songwriting duties and have also started to trade off instruments.
This development is very much apparent on their forthcoming LP, Ugly Cherries, an album documenting the duo’s experiences with queerness, gender, and adulthood over the course of a year of living in upstate New York. UglyCherries was recorded by Christopher Daly at Salvation Recording Company in New Paltz, NY and mastered by Jamal Ruhe at West West Side Music. The full-length record is slated for a dual release on Miscreant Records and Father/Daughter Records released September 18, 2015.
TRAAMS have created post-punk, krautrock inspired perfection. “Modern Dancing’s” 11 tracks move along at a brisk and urgent pace. Each track has something to offer the listener; zero filler. It is a rare thing for me to hear an album where I refuse to skip a track, but Modern Dancing fills that bill with gusto. I almost missed out on this album. Luckily, I skimmed through my favorite tracks of the year while I assembled my Best Albums of 2015 list. I had listed the raucous and fevered “Succulent Thunder Anthem” as a top track for August. I knew this was something special. Any songwriter that lists Mclusky, Pavement, and Television as influences has my attention. On top of those influences, They flawlessly blend a math rock meets krautrock meets post-punk style that never forgets to reel you in with catchy power pop hooks. It is perfection.
Torres, the stage name of Maicon born song-writer Mackenzie Scott, first came to the world’s attention back in 2012 when, whilst still a student, she wrote and independently released her self-titled debut album. As impressive as that record was, surely even Partisan Records, who snapped her up on the back of it, must have been quietly delighted with their decision when they first heard her latest record, Sprinter.
It wasn’t so much a step up in Mackenzie’s song-craft, as a giant leap. A stunningly produced record, it was made in Portishead’s Adrian Utley’s studio in Bristol and featured PJ Harvey collaborators Robert Ellis and Ian Oliver, but there was no doubt who the star was, this record was all about Mackenzie. The voice: capable of producing the raw power of Anna Calvi, or the emotive depth of Sharon Van Etten. The songs; from the experimental pop of Cowboy Guilt, to the squalling dark-electronics of Son You Are No Island, and the blast of noise that was Strange Hellos. This was a spectacularly good record, that questioned topics from religion, to unrequited love, and adoption, all delivered with an ambitious musical pallet and a lyrical light-touch. Put simply, it was just a fantastic record.
Not that she is striving for it, but Torres (aka Mackenzie Scott) could be the female incarnation of Kurt Cobain. Sure, she has the lanky physique of the grunge god and her stringy blond hair doesn’t hurt either. And don’t forget about her love for Fender’s other guitars. But the real similarities lie in the Brooklyn-based singer-guitarist’s ability to create the most dramatic and polar-opposite of dynamics. One second she’s whispering into the mic and the next she’s yowling loud enough to carry across county lines. In her dynamically rich second album Torres, you can hear influences ranging from Funkadelic to the aforementioned Nirvana, and you can even hear the Queen of Pop in Scott’s more subdued, airy singing. I usually play with a more elaborate rig, but for SXSW I only brought a few pedals and carried them around in my backpack all week. I wanted to keep setup time to a minimum and reduce the weight of my gear as much as possible, as I’m usually carrying it all on my back from venue to venue during SXSW.”
Independent Record Label based in Brooklyn New York City formed in 2007, included on its Roster are ZOLA JESUS, DAVID LYNCH, MOON DUO, THE MEN, PSYCHIC ILLS, and CRYSTAL STILTS one of the best american record label in the last 5 years,
It’s a prolific time for Brooklyn’s Sacred Bones label; with some of the finest records of the year released under their belts, plus last year they curated a stage at Liverpool Psych Fest (co-curated a stage with Chile’s BYM label), general manager Taylor Brode explains,
“I can’t imagine that I would ever be interested in doing something else as a career,” Taylor Brode tells us. It’s a familiar expression in the music industry, as common from the mouths of pouting indie rock hopefuls as from doe-eyed X Factor auditionees. Though intended to convey a mixture of romanticism, determination and focus, it almost always betrays the pie-in-the-sky hopelessness upon which dreams of fame and fortune are built – a lack of experience clouded, sometimes wilfully, by blind hope that the reality of ambition is neither intangible as clouds nor delicate as bubbles.
And yet when Brode utters those words, they sound perfectly straightforward; completely reasonable. Then again, her role as general manager of Brooklyn’s Sacred Bones Records is one where dreams and ideals have to be wedded to pragmatism – where romance has to be tempered by practicality without losing its sheen. “This is what I love to do,” she continues. “I love working with bands and finding out about new music, and just helping bands realise their goals.” That balance, it would appear, is in good health, which is presumably just one of the factors behind the renowned and increasingly respected indie label’s meteoric rise over the past eight years… but back up a minute. Let’s start earlier.
Sacred Bones was founded in 2007 by Caleb Braaten, an employee of Williamsburg’s Academy Records, who simply wanted to release an EP by his friends and reissue some curate’s eggs from the 80s heyday of British post-punk. Even as a youngster, he had always been surrounded by records. “His friends’ parents owned a store – they still do – called Twist and Shout, in Denver,” explains Brode cheerfully, with the knowledgeable air of someone well-versed in their own history. “He got into music from working there when he was younger, and he’s been a lifelong record collector. His taste is really wide, he likes a lot of post-punk and darker music, but also a lot of jazz and soul music and rap music… pretty broad.”
This open approach served Braaten well when he moved to New York over a decade ago, and began to immerse himself in Brooklyn’s notoriously hip music scene. “The first record that he ever put out was a seven-inch by this band called The Hunt, who were just good friends of his. He started a label to do that and also to do some reissues. It was mostly a New York-based label, and the bands were from here – people he’d met in the shop. Blank Dogs was the first 12-inch he ever put out, and that was [Captured Tracks boss] Mike Sniper’s band. They worked at Academy together, so that’s kind of how that came up.”
Food for thought is offered to anyone who imagines that starting a label – even in such a cultural metropolis – might be a glamorous pursuit. “He started the label in the basement of Academy, and he did two, three years there. I moved here in 2010 [having worked previously for Chicago’s legendary Touch and Go stable, the effortlessly professional Brode is no stranger to the industry] so we both worked in their basement for about two years. We moved into our office in 2012; we didn’t have internet and there were rats in the basement, no windows… it was truly a basement for a long time. But we have a proper office now with phones and stuff…!”
Since those humble beginnings, the label has relocated (along with Academy) to Green Point, slightly further to the north of Brooklyn than their Billyburg origins. It’s also become one of the most widely respected indie labels in North America – a tastemaker label in the mould of Sub Pop, Homestead or even Touch and Go, covering a wide base of genres from the glistening electronic pitter-patter of Blanck Mass to Jenny Hval’s deconstructivist, gender-freeing pop to Destruction Unit’s sandstorm-buffeted hardcore to… well, you get the picture. Did the label always have designs on such eclecticism, we wonder? Brode pauses to consider. “I think it was more just what was going on in Brooklyn; I don’t think [Braaten] started the label with the intention of it just being one genre. We’ve done folk records and a lot of psych records, and experimental, and noise… we try to keep it open.”
And yet it feels like there has been a consistent strand of darkness in the label’s output. “We don’t like to box ourselves in as being goth or dark or anything. People sort of attach that to us. I think a lot of it is because of ZolaJesus; we did all of her early records, and a lot of her coverage at the time was comparing her to Siouxsie, so I think we kind of got lumped in with that genre. It’s not really what we consider ourselves.
“You know The Men? Leave Home, the first record we did with them, sounds really different than the stuff they put out after; they got a lot more into country and folk and blues. They were sort of like a hardcore band at the beginning, but they really evolved over the four records we’ve done with them. We’ve had opportunities to work on stuff like that before but we’ve passed; we veer more towards the avant-garde, or edgy, weirder stuff.”
For all this wilful diversity, however, Sacred Bones have always been drawn towards the concept of visual uniformity: the vast majority of their sleeves bear a simple design concept created specifically to draw regular listeners to new projects. The significance of this straightforward notion is not lost on Brode. “It’s really important!” she exclaims. “Basically all of our full-length LPs carry a template, so they have the record label logo on the front, and then the album title, and all the tracks listed on the front of the record. Caleb designed that format with our graphic designer David Correll – he really wanted to have our records be instantly recognisable, so you could look at something and know it was a Sacred Bones record. It was inspired by the Factory Records stuff, and Impulse Jazz. We really tried to make it coherent, so our listeners could trust our taste and take a chance on a band they don’t know because they recognise it from being on the label.”
This format is a little more flexible for bands who’ve stayed with the label for more than two records, but it begs the question of whether anyone has been reluctant to go along with the theme. Brode laughs. “There’s been a couple of bands that don’t love it, but you know, it’s sort of part of our deal. So I think bands know when they sign with us. We’re pretty upfront about it and if bands don’t want to do it, we don’t do their records. But that’s really only happened one or two times at the most.”
In terms of the US labels we mentioned earlier, are Sacred Bones conscious of being part of that lineage? “I think we are now. We’re in our eighth year and things are pretty different from when we started. We’re getting to work with a lot of artists and filmmakers who really influenced us, David Lynch being the forerunner there [SacredBones reissued the soundtrack to Lynch’s uber-surreal debut, Eraserhead]. We really count that as a blessing and not something we try to take that for granted.”
Are indie labels of that ilk important, then, in terms of defining eras or places? “Yeah, absolutely! It’s a document of what’s happening at the time – I mean, that’s literally what the word ‘record’ means. But I don’t think Caleb ever intended for it to just be that, you know? We have bands now from all over the globe, which is amazing.”
Indeed, it seems the process of bringing acts into the Sacred Bones fold is a shared task: “When we’re looking for new bands, we’ll ask our bands who they like, and we pay a lot of attention to who they’re touring with. We really try to have a community and a lot of our artists work together on releases or just become friends and hang out and do shows together. That’s really special to us.”
That community has since extended to BYM Records, an independent label based in Santiago, Chile, who share elements of their roster with Sacred Bones – specifically trance-tinged krautrockers Föllakzoid and the motorik dreampop of The Holydrug Couple. “It’s their friends’ label,” Brode tells us enthusiastically. “I think two of them are in this band called La Hell Gang, who are amazing – they were touring with Föllakzoid and Holydrug Couple in the United States a couple of years ago, so we hung out with them. They’re really sweet guys and we’re mutual fans of each other.”
This shared love has even extended to one of the highlights of late September, as the two labels jointly curate a stage at the hotly anticipatedLiverpool International Festival of Psychedelia. Placing the likes of Blanck Mass and Destruction Unit alongside South American wonders such as The Ganjas’ stoned fuzz brilliance and the epic Chicos de Nazca, it’s sure to be one of Psych Fest’s greatest spectacles.
This may be one of the biggest “no duh” labels on our list . Though they’ve made a name for themselves as a home for initially smaller artists with big visions, often with stunning visual art components, to grow into true forces, SacredBones aren’t content to rest on their cred, to settle into a comfortable groove. Their output this year took a lot of risks and showed a lot of ambition, and also showed the true care they put as a label into every detail in order to let their artists grow.
Please Seek Out:Jenny Hval: Apocalypse, girl; Institute, Catharsis; Destruction Unit, Negative Feedback Resistor; Rose McDowall, Cut With the Cake Knife; The Holydrug Couple, Moonlust
Painted Palms’ second full-length album, Horizons, exudes a sense of confidence and purpose that is only present when two creators share a singular focus and absolute trust in each other’s talents.
On Horizons, emotional states are suspended between light and dark, driven by the tension of efficient song structures. From the first ominous harmonies of lead single “Refractor,” it’s clear that Painted Palms’ panoramic pop sound has never been more fully realized.
Though vocalist Chris Prudhomme and producer Reese Donohue chose to collaborate on their second full-length by sending song ideas back and forth over e-mail, just as they did when crafting their 2014 debut Forever, Horizons marks the first time the duo has expanded their sound beyond the bedroom by stepping into the studio.
Mixed by former DFA house engineer Eric Broucek (LCD Soundsystem, Classixx), Horizons engages with a diverse sonic palette on each track: ‘60s psych-pop, ‘80s synths, hypnotic vibes of the kind induced by Bjork and early ‘90s Creation Records bands, and the trunk-rattling minimalism of Southern hip-hop.
Horizons is a meditation on balance, on searching for a way to survive in a place where things are always changing, and there are no real ends. And as a result, it’s a record that showcases Painted Palms refining and executing their best work to date.
Horizons is a meditation on achieving balance in a place where things are always changing, and there are no real ends. As a result, Painted Palms refines and executes their best work to date.
Edinburgh quartet the Spook School take their name from another group of four, a late 19th Century sect of the Glasgow School of Art who were given the nickname afterthe critically unpopular ghostly figures in their work. Later, their style helped inspire Art Nouveau, and thus the underdogs became the influencers. It is an appropriate title for a theatrical indie pop band that embraces life’s misinterpretations and messiness, and their message has never been more apparent than on their sophomore record Try to Be Hopeful the tracks are killers but lyrically August 17th & Everybody Needs To Be In Love feel like they were written for me! Speak When You’re Spoken To is an awesome song; really powerful! I bought the album only for Burn Masculinity and Binary. Because those are the only ones open to free streaming I expected the other songs to be average or sub-par. That was not the case. Speak When Spoken is easily my favourite song in the album, and it’s currently my favourite song that I listen to. It’s really powerful. track .Buy this album!
Although it was still a defining theme on their 2013 debut, Dress Up, Try to Be Hopeful finds the group writing much more explicitly about queerness and identity. As singer and guitarist Nye Todd explained in an interview, “A lot of the lyrics I wrote on our first record were about coming to terms with being trans, whereas on this one the songs are more about a feeling of ‘Yeah, this is an identity! This is GOOD!”
Edinburgh quartet The Spook School’s second album, Try To Be Hopeful, was probably one of the most triumphant albums of 2015. The album was recorded whilst guitarist Nye Todd was going through testosterone therapy, a crucial step in him embracing his trans-identity. It was a huge event in his life, and as such it in many ways shaped the formation of the albums own identity. It was an album of noisy, triumphant and tuneful pop-songs, that explored the topics of sexuality, identity, and most of all embracing the spirit of being yourself, no matter who that is.
Burn Masculinity was about still having to challenge the casually sexist world of “lads” even though you were now, gender-speaking, one of them and Binary questioned why the world try’s to place us into their hexadecimal, black and white world of gender. Although it wasn’t all serious gender politics, I Want To Kiss You was about wanting to kiss people (obviously). It managed to tred the difficult line of tackling important issues, but with enough humour, attitude and hooks to make it just as enjoyable as it was important.
St. Petersburg rabble Pinkshinyultrablast don’t hang about. Following up their 2015 debut ‘Everything ElseMatters’ in quick succession, they release their second full-length album – ‘Grandfeathered’ – in February next year. The first real taste of what to expect comes in the shape of ‘The Cherry Pit,’ which we’re premiering here on DIY.
Shimmering, lush, and more looming than a neck-craning look up to the top of the Shard, ‘The Cherry Pit’ shares the same lofty ambition as the band’s previous efforts, and typically, their shoegazing sensibilities are carefully balanced with a knack for occasional minimalism; knowing just when to rein it back. Lyubov’s vocals skate atop uneasy, angular chimes, before colliding into a fish-slappingly sudden wall of reverb, getting lost and indistinguishable among the glittery sonic mud.
Pinkshinyultrablast are putting out 500 copies of their second album ‘Grandfeathered’ on what they’re calling ‘Ride The Sky’ vinyl LP, and another 500 copies on ‘Pinkle’. There’s also a regular digital download, if that’s your jam.
