Swedish post-punk band Viagra Boys released a new album, “Welfare Jazz”, this week via YEAR0001 Records. Now that it’s out you can stream the whole thing here. It includes “Girls & Boys,” a new song they shared earlier this week. Since their founding in 2015, Swedish post-punk band Viagra Boys have made a name for themselves burning up stages around the world. There’s a little Iggy Pop spit and seethe, a David Yow drunken stumble, and a bite of Nick Cave’s haunted bark. Add a dash of motorik groove, a pinch of post-punk grime, and a dose of no wave howl.
For every gruff and gritty croak in the outfit’s catalogue, they come back with a pair of bongos, squared-off synths, and a squonky saxophone, with songs that deftly lay waste to society’s normalization of toxic masculinity, racism, misogyny, classism, and self-obsession.
Viagra Boys’ Sebastian Murphy dreams about everyone hating his guts. A lot. “I kept having this recurring nightmare where my mom was crying and my friends were all pissed off at me,” he recalls, almost reverently.
Viagra Boys previously released a video for Welfare Jazz’s “Creatures” . They also shared the album’s cover of the 1999 John Prine song “In Spite of Ourselves” featuring Amy Taylor of Australian rock band Amyl and the Sniffers. The band’s most recent release was their Common Sense EP, which came out back in March 2020 again on YEAR0001.
The band’s new album, Welfare Jazz, doesn’t bargain with the anxiety in that defeated feeling, but rather a boiling certainty that nothing and no one is absolute. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and things are just a lot more interesting when you admit that you’re not always going to be nice, you’re not always going to pick the right words in a fist-fight. So why not keep moving forward, swaying and strutting into the night.
Shame are releasing a new album, “Drunk Tank Pink”, next Friday (January 15) via Dead Oceans Records. This week they shared another song from it, “Nigel Hitter,” via a video for it. Maxim Kelly directed the video, reworking archival footage to make it seem like babies are singing along to the song.
Frontman Charlie Steen had this to say about the song in a press release: “The song is at the heart of what Drunk Tank Pink is about. After we finished touring I was left with a lot of silence as I stumbled around trying to figure out the daily routine. On top of that, I was confronting my subconscious at night through a series of intense dreams which left me in a daze during the day. ‘Nigel Hitter’ feels like a cathartic expression of that period.”
Frontman Charlie Steen had this to say about the song and upcoming album in a press release: “A lot of this album focuses on the subconscious and dreams, this song being the pivotal moment of these themes. A song about love that is lost and the comfort and displeasure that comes after you close your eyes, fall into sleep, and are forced to confront yourself.”
Drunk Tank Pink includes “Water in the Well,” and “Snow Day,”Shame’s previous album, Songs of Praise, was released in January 2018 on Dead Oceans.
It’s tempting to think that you have all the answers, screaming your gospel every day with certainty and anger. Life isn’t quite like that though, and the debut album from London four-piece TV Priest instead embraces the beautiful and terrifying unknowns that exist personally, politically and culturally.
Posing as many questions as it answers, “Uppers” is a thunderous opening statement that continues the UK’s recent resurgence of grubby, furious post-punk music. It says something very different though – something completely its own. Four childhood friends who made music together as teenagers before drifting apart and then, somewhat inevitably, back together late in 2019, TV Priest was born out of a need to create together once again, and brings with it a wealth of experience and exhaustion picked up in the band’s years of pursuing “real life” and “real jobs,” something those teenagers never had.
In November 2019, the band – vocalist Charlie Drinkwater, guitarist Alex Sprogis, bass and keys player Nic Bueth, and drummer Ed Kelland – played their first show, to a smattering of friends in what they describe as an “industrial freezer” in the warehouse district of Hackney Wick. “It was like the pub in Peep Show with a washing machine just in the middle…” Charlie laughs, Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a precedent for introducing an album during a global pandemic, but among the general sense of anxiety and unease pervading everything at the moment, TV Priest’s entrance in April with the release of debut single “House of York” – a searing examination of the Monarchy – served as a breath of fresh air among the chaos, its anger and confusion making some kind of twisted sense to the nation’s fried brains.
It’s the same continued global sense of anxiety that will greet the release of Uppers, and it’s an album that has a lot to say right now. Taking musical cues from The Fall and Protomartyr as well as the mechanical, pulsating grooves of Kosmische Musik, it’s a record that moves with an untamed energy. Over the top of this rumbling musical machine is vocalist Charlie, a cuttingly funny, angry, confused, real frontman.
“Decoration,” Uppers’ center-piece, has a streamlined groove soundtracking Charlie’s lyrical vignettes that captures the absurdity and mundanity of life. Its opening and closing line (“I’ve never seen a dog do what that dog does”) is a misremembered quote by Simon Cowell about a performing dog on Britain’s Got Talent. Charlie says, “We often said it in the studio as a kind of in-joke when someone did something good or unexpected. Having already toyed around with the ‘Through to the next round’ line,’ this seemed too good to leave out.” And the chorus “It’s all just decoration” is credited to 2-year old niece of Alex’s fiancé, who reassured him after he pretended to be scared by Halloween decorations.
“Press Gang” is inspired by Charlie’s grandfather’s life’s work as a photojournalist and war correspondent on the UK’s Fleet Street from the 1950s to the early 1980s. The song is about the shifting role in the dissemination of information and ideas, and how the prevailing narrative that the “Death of Print Media” has contributed to a “post truth” world.
Album closer “Saintless” is the most personal and raw moment on Uppers. Charlie wrote a note to his son after his birth, following a difficult period his wife had faced during and after the pregnancy. The song is about how as parents we’re fallible and human, and while the world can be a difficult place at times the one thing that gets you through is giving your love to those that need and appreciate it. “Saintless” rides a motorik beat, with guitars, bass and synths building layers of intensity and emotion that replicate and swell with the message of the track.
Uppers sees TV Priest explicitly and outwardly trying to avoid narrowmindedness. Uppers sees TV Priest taking musical and personal risks, reaching outside of themselves and trying to make sense of this increasingly messy world. It’s a band and a record that couldn’t arrive at a more perfect time.
“Press Gang” is Out now – our new one from our album ‘Uppers’, out on Sub Pop Records next month. “Uppers” It’s about Charlie’s grandad, news cycles, truth, chip paper, and information. It’s also pretty loud. Lots of love to Joe Wheatly for another wild ride making the video & big love to all the crew who helped us out over a very cold weekend.
“Press Gang” by TV Priest from their album “Uppers” (Release Date: 02/05/2021)
Latest video from the new album. Probably the most progressive (by their standards) and challenging track on the new album. I think it works in the context of the album but is a poor choice of single. I think enough has been released already.
The Black Crowes have announced a 30th-anniversary reissue of their breakthrough debut album, “Shake Your Money Maker”. The Super Deluxe version – available on either four LPs or three CDs – will include a newly remastered version of the original 1990 album, as well as three previously unheard studio recordings. One track, “Charming Mess,” is a song that was originally earmarked to be the Black Crowes’ first single but eventually was left off Shake Your Money Maker.
The Black Crowes’ debut album, “Shake Your Money Maker”, may borrow heavily from the bluesy hard rock grooves of the Rolling Stones and Faces (plus a bit of classic soul), but the band gets away with it due to sharp song writing and an ear for strong riffs and chorus melodies, not to mention the gritty, muscular rhythm guitar of Rich Robinson and brother Chris’ appropriate vocal swagger. Unlike their later records, the Crowes don’t really stretch out and jam that much on Money Maker, but that helps distill their virtues into a handful of memorable singles (“Jealous Again,” “She Talks to Angels,” a cover of Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle”), and most of the album tracks maintain an equally high standard.
Shake Your Money Maker may not be stunningly original, but it doesn’t need to be; it’s the most concise demonstration of the fact that the Black Crowes are a great, classic rock & roll band. Other material on the Super Deluxe edition includes two demos from the band’s early years (when they were known as Mr. Crowe’s Garden), a collection of B-sides and a previously unreleased 14-song concert recording from a 1990 performance in their hometown of Atlanta. Reproductions of early band flyers, a tour laminate, a Black Crowes patch and a 20-page booklet highlight the collectibles included in the set.
Originally released in February 1990, the Black Crowes‘ debut album defied rock sensibilities at the time. While spandex and hair metal were dominating the airwaves, the Crowes offered a back-to-basics approach, full of Southern-rock influences and Rolling Stones-style swagger.
The album would go on to sell more than 5 million copies, spawning radio favourites like “Jealous Again,” “Twice as Hard,” “She Talks to Angels” and a hit cover of Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle.”
The group had intended to celebrate Shake Your Money Maker’s 30th anniversary with a nationwide tour in 2020, but those plans were put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. A 2021 trek is tentatively scheduled to kick off next June. The Black Crowes ‘Shake Your Money Maker’ 30th Anniversary Edition Box Set!! Featuring the original studio album remastered by George Drakoulias, 3 never before heard studio recordings, 2 unreleased demos from Mr. Crowe’s Garden, a 14 song unreleased live album from Atlanta GA 1990, vintage The Black Crowes artwork, archived photos, liner notes from David Fricke, plus a 4” Patch.
Available February 26th,
The Black Crowes, ‘Shake Your Money Maker’ 30th Anniversary
Punk legend Alice Bag has announced a new album and shared the lead single, which features Allison Wolfe (of Bratmobile and much more). Alicia Armendariz (aka Alice Bag) is a Los Angeles punk legend, not just for her ground breaking first band the Bags (featured in Penelope Spheeris’s Decline of Western Civilization), but for her outspokenness, activism, writings, and embodying the D.I.Y. ethic instilled in her by her mother.
When L.A. punk legend Alice Bag and I recently talked on the phone, she began the conversation by telling me her dog, Cinnamon, had died three weeks earlier. She said thinking about the Rainbow Bridge—a poem that has been adopted by the pet-loss grief community—has really helped her. Her voice is light and calm, and sounds like many flowers opening, undulating. It is melodic and sweet, like an extract of something very powerful, and philosophical. But when she sings, that extract explodes.
Since the mid-1970s, her voice has exploded on stage and on record with the Bags, which she co-founded as part of the first wave of L.A.’s punk bands. She described her tough childhood in East Los Angeles and her coming of age into the punk music scene in her powerful 2011 memoir .
Alice told me that “Punk rock is my therapy,” and singing has always just come naturally to her. The first money she ever earned was from singing. Miss Yonkers, her fifth-grade teacher in Los Angeles, asked her to sing on an educational bilingual cartoon, and Bag earned $100—more than the monthly rent her parents paid. Said Bag, “I thought, ‘maybe I could be a singer when I grow up’”. She is still singing at 62, having released a solo album, Alice Bag in 2016, Blueprint in 2018, and Sister Dynamite in 2020.
But she didn’t tell her dad about her dream of becoming a singer because he would tell her she should strive to own the record company instead. “I think he treated me the way some men of his generation would’ve treated their firstborn son,” she said. “That’s why he filled my head with dreams.”
In The Red, Bob Baker Marionette Theater and Pancake Mountain present: Breadcrumbs! The first single from the forthcoming record SISTER DYNAMITE out April 24th 2020 on In The Red Records.
Musicians: Alice Bag, David Jones, Rikki Watson, Sharif Dumani Special guest vocalists: Allison Wolfe and Lysa Flores
The Telescopes have been described by the British music press as ‘more a revolution of the psyche than a revolution of the sidewalk’; a thread consistent throughout a body of work spanning over 30 years. The Telescopes have constantly pushed at their own boundaries to unravel new pathways of existence, colouring outside the lines of all expectation to reach beyond the realm of natural vision.
With a legacy full of eureka moments, intravenously fed through a crack in the cosmic egg, The Telescopes invoke the kind of altered perceptions that time has shown not only withstand repeated listening, but reveal something new whenever one ventures into the depths of their highly influential artistry.
At the core of their being, The Telescopes are an all embracing concern, in every sense, a constant revolution of the psyche exploding endless spores of sound, carriers of warm transmissions seeped in aural innovation that spiral around ones inner receptors to induce a series of auditory illusions that completely immerse the listener in the grip of their own imagination.
The most revolutionary act we can all perform is to stand by our calling, to keep doing what we do, for the reasons we are conceived to do so, no matter what. Some call it ‘The New Weird’ but call it what you will, it is born of love. The Telescopes are one of the very few artists that are living proof that this revolutionary act is possible to evolve and sustain free from artistic corruption.
“Songs Of Love And Revolution” is a solar burst of trance inducing rhythms gripped at the helm by a wall of throbbing bass held in place by a swarm of encircling guitars. Lashed to the mast of this whirling dervish, incantations abound to dispel what is bound. This is the 12th album by The Telescopes, music for a four-piece ensemble that will never sound the same twice in any given environment or to any set of ears.
The Telescopes Album: Songs Of Love And Revolution
For Another Michael, it all boils down to trust. In mid-2017, the critically acclaimed indie three-piece packed their bags and collectively relocated from Albany, NY to a shared house in West Philadelphia. This move signalled not only the start of a new chapter for the trio, but also a deepening of the bonds that would come to define their captivating debut LP, ‘New Music and Big Pop.’
“It’s hard for a group of people to get closer than living together,” says bassist and producer Nick Sebastiano. “The stronger our connection grew, the more it shaped the music we found ourselves making.”
It should come as little surprise, then, that ‘New Music and Big Pop’ is Another Michael’s most collaborative work yet. Recorded in a small A-frame house-turned-makeshift studio outside Ferndale, NY, the record finds the trio pushing their sound in a dreamier, more folk-influenced direction, building songs around vulnerable, intimate performances using an ethereal palette of breezy guitars, subtle keyboards, and layered harmonies. As on the band’s early EPs, singer and songwriter Michael Doherty’s mesmerizing voice is front and centre here, calling to mind Robin Pecknold or Ben Bridwell in its reedy, crystalline timbre, but it feels more at home than ever before amidst the album’s lush, Technicolor landscape, which the band partnered with producer and fellow housemate Scoops Dardaris to create. The result is a masterfully understated record that belies its status as a full-length debut, a thoughtful, poetic, collection all about growth and change, hope and faith, endings and beginnings, delivered by a band that’s only just begun to scratch the surface of their story.
Serving as a precursor to the bands forthcoming debut LP, the New Music 7″ offers the title track, backed with a truly great non album b-side “Boring for the Times”.
We are happy to announce New Music and Big Pop, the beautiful forthcoming debut LP from Another Michael. The first single “I Know You’re Wrong” is streaming now on Spotify, Apple Music, and on Youtube with an accompanying Runescape visual.
“New Music” by Another Michael from the 7″ / 2 song digital single ‘New Music’ out now via Run For Cover Records
Sometimes a band arrives out of nowhere, with a fully formed sound ready to fill a stadium. King Hannah are one of those bands. The Liverpool band led by the creative force of Hannah Merrick and Craig Whittle have arrived with ‘Tell Me Your Mind And I’ll Tell You Mine’, an EP that is both soothing in its moods and intoxicating in its rushing soundscapes, containing a sound that is both brand new and completely mature. Their neon guitar lines and intimate torchlight vocals put the everyday on a pedestal, lifted by melodic licks that swell into dense and swirling atmospheric textures.
‘Tell Me Your Mind And I’ll Tell You Mine’ sounds like late nights and early mornings, from the beauty and closeness of acoustic guitar in opener “And Then Out Of Nowhere, It Rained”, to the final immersive thicket of distorted guitars in “Reprise (Moving Day)”. In between, “Meal Deal” is smoky backroom Americana transposed onto the precarity of finding somewhere to live; “Bill Tench” feels like melancholic euphoria of travelling in fast cars at night – drums flash past like lines on the asphalt with angular guitars. “Crème Brûlée” is a moody fugged-out ballad for the everyday, and “The Sea Has Stretch Marks” conjures a whirling post-rock exploration of cinematic memories. King Hannah lean in to immersive moments in their music. “We want people to get lost in the music,” says Craig.
Craig formed King Hannah before Hannah knew anything about it. He had seen her performing years before, but they didn’t meet until she was assigned to show him the ropes at the bar job they’d both taken on to get by while still making music. He immediately pestered her to play some music with him, and they started a routine, spending the hours before work at Craig’s house, where for a long time Hannah could not pluck up the courage to play him her own music. “That went on for a year,” said Hannah, while Craig just waited patiently for her to play. When they finally got to writing their own songs together, everything clicked into place.
Both had played in bands before, but until they started King Hannah, neither had found what they were looking for. Hannah grew up in Tan Lan, the world’s smallest village in North Wales, and can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be a singer. Craig started playing guitar age 13, and was taught Jackson Browne songs by his older brother. Within a year he was playing in bands. All this changed as soon as they formed King Hannah. “It’s just about finding the right people. When I go to Craig with some chords and lyrics, he just gets it,” says Hannah. “If we hadn’t found each other, I don’t know where we would be,” says Craig.
Led by Hannah and Craig, the density of their sound comes from the combination of their guitar and vocals with support from Ted White, Jake Lipiec and Olly Gorman. Inspired by the vocals of Mazzy Star and guitars of Kurt Vile, Hannah writes lyrics first thing in the morning and lets her mind spill onto the page, and they contain all the raw vulnerability and mundane reflections of that mental space. This vulnerability is something Hannah feels acutely on stage, but is also what makes their music so magnetic. “There’s nothing pretend about us,” she says – the grit in their sound and her voice speaks volumes. “We don’t want to sound clean or polished,” says Craig, “we want to sound real, and dynamic and authentic.”
Who are King Hannah? the Liverpool duo of Hannah Merrick and Craig Whittle whose shimmering, atmospheric alt-pop is the perfect soundtrack to midnight journeys through neon-lit skylines. The Breathtaking debut single “Creme Brûlée” is a captivating melange of The XX, Mazzy Star and Pink Floyd, as Merrick understated vocals remain dazzlingly powerful. The Follow-up single, the lo-fi acoustic Meal Deal, sees them channel their Kurt Vile influences for a vulnerable cut of modern Americana.
Merrick and Whittle met at a bar they were working at, with the latter urging her to make music together. This went on for a whole year before Merrick plucked up the courage to agree to write together. The rest is history. Thank god!
Their EP “Tell Me Your Mind And I’ll Tell You Mine” is out now via City Slang Records Releases November 20th, 2020
As possibly foretold in some lost gospel of Christianity, the children shall lead Death Valley Girls, as a choir of dirty-faced urchins chanting “Under The Spell of Joy” , under the spell of love” ushers in the galvanizing title track to their latest supernatural garage-rock revelation.
In what feels like an ecstatic and exuberant spiritual awakening, their mesmerizing march erupts into a wild, psychedelic fury of slashing guitars, violent skronk, crazed keyboards and incessant drums blowing in from parts unknown. For all of its breath taking might and crashing energy, it’s also incredibly uplifting and empowering, espousing everything that’s good and inspiring about communal, fire-and-brimstone punk rock experiences.
Volunteers should sign up in droves to follow the life-affirming Under the Spell of Joy, its jubilant cup of smoggy enlightenment and ghostly illumination overflowing in the aftermath of their last LP, the thrilling Darkness Rains, and its stormy seances. Opening with the rapturous “Hypnagogia,” Under The Spell of Joy is an album full of captivating siren songs, with the repetitive groove of “It All Washes Away,” an upbeat, hooky “Little Things” and the whirling, motoring “Dream Cleaver” all saved by the Velvet Underground’s more accessible rock and roll art. Tripping through the lysergic wonder of “The Universe,” Death Valley Girls return to earth with the ‘60s swing of “Bliss Out” and the primitive pounding and scratching of “10 Day Miracle Challenge.” Dirty organ clouds mushroom everywhere, with cool saxophone either lazily drifting through the air or erupting in frenzied chaos. This will give Iggy Pop goose bumps.
