Canadian group The Besnard Lakes have shared new song “Our Heads, Our Hearts on Fire Again” as the second single from their first album in nearly five years, The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings.
“Our Heads, Our Hearts on Fire Again” follows October’s lead single “Raindrops”. Discussing the new release, the band says, “This song has been floating around since the Roaring Night era. We could never figure out how to finish it. Well, we figured out how to finish it. It has that 3/4 waltz we love so much, the same 3/4 waltz that “Disaster” rested upon. It’s also a bit of a lament about how sad we were when we parted ways with Jagjaguwar.”
They add, “This is the second time Oggy’s lyric “On the other side of the world” is used; here it is to detail the comparison between geography and forensics, and that human beings are detectives of time.”
When asked for some insider knowledge about the production of the video, Dr Cool had this to say:
“So the video is basically a combination of things I assumed the band is into. I noticed they once had a horse on one of their covers so I quickly learnt to draw horses. I also heard from someone that they like bright flashing neon lights so I added some of that. And then I just sorta assumed they must be into goofy looking buildings that dance around the screen so I threw some of those in and it turns out they like that quite a bit.
“I can’t explain what the video is about but I think it’s pretty obvious what’s going on.”
The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings will be their first LP since 2016’s A Coliseum Complex Museum. The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings album will arrive 29th January 2021 via Full Time Hobby.
Half Truths is out today! I’m excited to see the singles I’ve released have a little family around them, they feel like they are at home now. They were all written in a similar time and I see them as me throwing off expectations I had of who I am as a person, woman, what my music is meant to be, what life is meant to be. I hope they can bring something new and cathartic to your worlds.
Newcastle-singer songwriter based Grace Turner’s ‘Half Truths’ is a poetic six-song collection that cuts through the noise, making sense of her thoughts by simply singing them aloud.
Powerful and poetic is Grace Turner’s “Half Truths”, her first EP released August 7th, 2020. Written and recorded over the past three years in collaboration with good friends, this six-song collection sets Turner apart, cutting through the noise and making sense of her thoughts by simply singing them aloud. “I wrote ‘Disdain’ while driving and singing and crying – a terrible combination. I wasn’t driving anywhere in particular, just to feel like I was physically able to leave what I was going through in my life. The original opening line was ‘I want to watch the blood drain from my body’. I sung it live once and my Dad was in the crowd and I just couldn’t do it, so I found a new line which I think is better anyways.
Though based in Newcastle, Australia, Turner wrote and recorded Half Truths in a variety of locations, from bedrooms to studios. And even still, the EP is remarkably cohesive, with key embellishments from her friends Mat Taylor and Shanna Watson, among others; glueing it all together is Turner’s trademark lyricism and self-introspection. “I write music because of the continual untangling of mind, emotions, experience and trying to understand the world at all its micro, meso and macro levels. Sometimes I feel with this collection of songs I am earnestly screaming something at the world and at the same time trying to take it all back again,” Turner says.
Intensely personal, Half Truths echoes Turner’s sentiments and intent. The EP begins poetically and drum-driven with “Disdain,” sparking the vision of a late night drive, and the feeling of darkness dissipating, replaced by some sense of gratitude for the ordinary. ‘Disdain’ is such an intense word and meaning and I’m glad to have gotten it into a song. To think of oneself as unworthy. Eventually I took it to a jam with my drummer and he encouraged me a lot that it was a keeper. My guitarist wrote the killer riff for this one. We think it’s so good that when we were in the post production phase of making the record we decided to repeat it after every vocal chorus making it a kind of instrumental chorus. I think it really makes the song.
The chords don’t ever change in this one and melodically it’s pretty subtle in its movement. In post production we also decided to cut the band out in the bridge. I like bringing more intensity to the line ‘what a time to be alive, steadily walking towards our demise’. It feels pretty apt for 2020. I like having a heavy song lyrically that is up beat, it’s really cathartic to play this one with the band. It’s one of my favourite tracks off the record and I’m glad that it’s become a favourite for people too.”
Standout track “Half Light” is instrumentally steady, while Turner belts a brilliant kind of diary entry about the way life is often made up of parts that don’t always fit together. And triple-j featured “Dead or Alive” brings the EP to its most upbeat point; though the lyrics are relative dark, the danceable chorus acts as a push out of that darkness and into warmer, brighter days.
“I chose the title Half Truths as I was going through such a turbulent time and the songs were written whether I stood by what they meant or not, they were spat out of me. I was shedding off expectations of who I thought I was as a musician, woman, friend, lover; questioning it all,” Turner says of the EP. While the six songs on Half Truths do question the world extensively, they also powerfully declare hope for the future. Ending with these words on “Get Your Head Straight,” “try to be good try to be kind, do your best to find peace of mind,” Grace Turner leaves us, and herself, in the sunlight.
Experience Half Truths wherever you listen to music, and take a peek into the full EP
Grace Turner “Half Truths” Released on: 2020-08-07
“It was a sort of dark time in my life when I was struggling to find my way. I was in a relationship when it occurred to me that a lot of times you find yourself apologizing to someone after you’ve let them down. So, the idea came to me to apologize in advance. Instead of waiting to apologize until I mess up, let me apologize before, ha ha!
The song went through a lot of changes. From point A to point B there was a bunch of things I put in and took out but what I ended up with was weirdly similar to what I started out with… In spite of that, all the things that I did were necessary. There were times when I took out the main electrical piano that I started with and tried to fill the space with something different, but it never sounded right to me, so I put it back in.
This comes up a lot, I think. You’re always looking for this vibe or tone, you want it to be as pristine and well-recorded as possible, but sometimes there’s really no substitute for the feeling you that had in the beginning. At this point I don’t even remember where I played that electric piano sound or where it came from, but after trying to duplicate it in the studio with all the grand equipment I just couldn’t seem to get the right sound. Sometimes you have to try things that are wrong to figure out what you don’t want, just to confirm that your original idea was right.”– Aaron Earl Livingston,
“Demon To The Dark” by Son Little from the album ‘New Magic,’ available September 15th
Every December, Christchurch, NZ enjoys the start of summer as Saskatoon, SK begins to freeze over. For as far apart as these places may seem, you would never know it from the sound ofPlastic Bouquet, the debut collaborative album between Saskatoon duo Kacy and Clayton and Christchurch singer and songwriter Marlon Williams. While on tour across Europe in 2017, Kacy and Clayton quite literally stopped Marlon in his tracks. As if playing by divine design through the radio, the pair’s Springtime of the Year immediately enchanted him. Soon thereafter, Marlon hopped a flight to Saskatoon and they wrote and recorded the bulk of what would become Plastic Bouquet. They unlocked undeniable chemistry. With Plastic Bouquet, these three musicians find common ground in dusty country spun through a kaleidoscope of psychedelic soul and dreamy fifties delivery. They created an ethnosphere that is more than the sum of its parts. It’s also the beginning of something very exciting.
Kacy: ”For the album, this was the first song I wrote that I sent to Marlon. So it was written before I knew him, but there are some parts that maybe would make you think otherwise. He wrote a line or two on it. It was written before he arrived into Canada with this winter scene in mind. I added some lines like the one including the Southern Hemisphere, to make it more kitchy, ha ha!
We postponed the song because I was worried about it. I thought all the other songs were way better and I was embarrassed to present it. So I had to finish it up. The song is very short because I cut a lot of verses from it. The story changed and I just felt they were unnecessary information. The first verse is just half as long as the second. I felt the verse melody was too boring to keep going for too long, so hit the chorus and trick everyone into listening to the last minute of the song.
Clayton played the organ at the start of the song, he played most of the fancy stuff on the album which was a nice asset to have hanging around. Marlon and I are more for the singing but Marlon definitely changed that one up. He played the electric guitar which I think is a nice part. It was just a little acoustic fingerpicking song before. I think he actually provided the most guidance on that song out of all of them, arrangement wise and adding a line and such. I’m glad we got it out.”
Marlon: ”That’s a song that Kacy wrote early on in the process and one of the first songs we had good to go. She writes such beautiful melodies for her voice. You’re compelled to fall in love with her songs because of how she puts melodies to such a beautiful voice. For me there was a very rare moment to be able to play a guitar solo, I have never done one!
We produced the album together instead of having someone else. Because of our shared love for the same music and having that same bedrock of foundational, traditional country music, all of this happened very organically so there wasn’t really much of a need for an extra party to make it all gel. The way we had started sending the songs back and forth to each other, there was no point at which we couldn’t work things out on our own.”
Clem Snide was a character created by William S Burroughs and adopted by Eef Barzelay as the name of the band that he created in 1991. Burroughs’s writing was often informed by personal tragedy. These included a lifelong heroin addiction and a conviction for the manslaughter of his second wife, who died in a gun accident. Like his inspiration, Barzelay has suffered more than his fair share of misfortune. Beginning with the collapse of his band and subsequently his marriage, Barzelay then lost his house and was declared bankrupt. Now, five years on from the last Clem Snide record, Barzelay is back with quite possibly the best album that he’s ever made, and there have been some very good ones along the way.
Whilst at his lowest ebb, a fan sent Barzelay a video of the Avett Brothers peforming one of his songs and an interview with Scott Avett in which he states that he is a big fan of Clem Snide. From this Barzelay contacted Avett, with the result that he agreed to produce the new Clem Snide album. Avett actually ended up co-writing some of the songs and also plays and adds harmony vocals on it. He brought in AvettBrothers drummer Mike Marsh and Band of Horses bassist Bill Reynolds. This quartet then put down the majority of the album at Avett’s North Carolina farm. The album was then concluded in Nashville with finishing touches from Old Crow Medicine Show fiddler Ketch Secor and Avett Brothers cellist Joe Kwon.
Scott Avett’s simple arrangements and minimal instrumentation allow Barzelay’s songs to live, breathe and flourish as their words are expressed by the compelling idiosyncrasies of his voice. This back-to-basics approach is the perfect platform for Barzelay. Shaped by his difficult experiences, the songs deal with issues of depression, identity, mortality, God and the afterlife. However, this is not an album of hopeless self-pity. The songs also raise the prospect of hope, discovery, reinvention and regeneration. The very personal nature of the songs underline that although it carries the Clem Snide name, to all intents and purposes this is an Eef Bazerlay solo record.
The album’s opening track ‘Roger Ebert’ serves as a prologue to the whole album. Based around the celebrated film critic’s last words “It’s all an elaborate hoax” Barzelay contemplates the nature and meaning of life, spirituality and God. Boy meets girl it isn’t. Subsequent songs investigate, contemplate and reflect upon similarly weighty themes. In ‘Don’t Bring No Ladder’ Barzelay recalls that “I thought to ask the voice inside my head/if it would still be there once I was dead” and in ‘The Stuff of Us’ he notes that “to be blessed is always to be cursed as well” Yet, despite all the darkness, at the end of ‘The Ballad of Eef Barzelay’ he concludes that “ As I kept falling/I came to realise/I finally realised/that there was no ground” thus raising the possibility of a turnaround and new beginnings.
The intensity is punctuated by three co-writes. ‘Sorry Charlie’ is a song about reaching middle age (Barzelay recently turned 50) in which he offers reflections on leaving the wildness of younger days behind “Sorry Charlie/We can’t party anymore” and the acceptance of responsibilities and a steadier existence “I’ve got a good job now”. The album concludes with‘Some Ghost’ another co-write which offers some hope “after we stumble/we’ll find a path”. We can only hope that the path that Eef Barzelay is now on is a straight and steady one. Plans to tour the album have, in the present circumstances, been shelved. For a man who has been in such a perilous financial state, this will come as a major blow. We could all help out by buying this album. I suggest that not as an act of charity, but because you will be getting one of the best albums you’re likely to hear this year.
“I think we always feel like we’re falling through life? Desperately grabbing at whatever little snappy branch we can but if there is no ground then there is no fear and then we’re flying or least floating… And in the end, a leap of faith is inevitable. Like the song says ‘to live is to fly’.
Also, it satisfies the rhyme of job and kebob and advocates for ‘the secret’. I named it after myself to be cheeky but it is an accurate expression of what I believe.” Eef Barzelay
Forever Just Beyond / Ramseur Records marketed and distributed by Thirty Tigers Released on: 2020-03-27
Hazy scenes from Asbury Park abound in the stylish new video, one directed with a VHS-inspired and retro cool by Taylor McFadden. “Domino” is the Hammond-drenched and funk-fueled new single from Nicole Atkins, and it’s taken from her forthcoming Italian Ice LP. Out from May 29th,
“One summer while touring, my band and I got really into listening to French electro music. It’s the perfect kind of music to drive to for long hours at night. Back at home in Nashville, I turned my friend Dex Green onto some of it while we were recording for my other project with Jim Sclavunos of the Bad Seeds. Dex caught the bug and got into it too and we talked about how we could write something together that felt like French electro but would still fit into my style. A few days later he sent over a drum and keys track and we finished the song from there fairly quickly.”
– Nicole Atkins
“Domino” – from the new album ‘Italian Ice out May 29th.
Shopping are propulsive bass lines, primitive disco-not-disco drums and guitar lines sharp as broken glass. The band wasformed in 2012 by members Rachel Aggs (guitar), Billy Easter (bass) and Andrew Milk (drums), who’ve all done time in a plethora of notable UK DIY bands
This is the fourth long player from Rachel, Andrew and Billy, with their adept lo-fi take on that mutant disco/no wave dance-punk sound. Shopping pull the neat trick of getting better with every album, leaving you restless to hear what they do next. Album centerpiece “For Your Pleasure” is a treatise on hedonism set to retrofuturist synthesizers and artificial handclaps; perhaps too frantic for the ’70s discotechques Shopping has conjured in the past, it would sound right at home in the cocaine ’80s. It resembles no other Shopping song before it, raising the ceiling for a promising band with plenty left to say.
Post-punk trio Shopping have long been heralded as queer icons of the London DIY scene—but things change. For one, Shopping no longer consider London as their home base: Guitarist Rachel Aggs and drummer Andrew Milk have relocated to Glasgow, while bassist Billy Easter is currently living in L.A. The trio is also shaking off their pared-down sound, instead choosing to embrace the possibilities of synths, beats and a polished studio feel.
The band is, obviously, still emblematic of queer artistic expression, but just maybe not in the way you were so sure that they were. On All or Nothing, Shopping’s fourth album since their inception in 2012, they deliver some of their most articulate, exciting songs as a group, while also eschewing some of the formulaic components of their music that made them so interesting in the first place. They teased the electronic-leaning sound of the album with singles “Initiative” and “For Your Pleasure,” but while many bands lose their edge when they adopt a smoother, synthier aesthetic, Shopping still remain punk in a restless and frenetic way—even when the guitars are put down.
I’ve always thought that Shopping are all about bringing a dance ideal to the punk aesthetic. Or maybe they’re all about adding a punk ideal to a dance aesthetic? I’m not really sure which it is, but I’m still really impressed with the result, an effortless blend that speaks to a perfect understanding of both forms, along with being a great collection of songs that make you wanna dance.
Relatively few artists have produced as many albums in as much time of equally high quality and interest, and the latest really showcases them at their most punchy and impactful yet. They really peak when they are all singing together.
With their 2018 debut Parts, Ohmme introduced a combustive art-rock style based on tightly intertwined dual vocals and improvisatory guitars, wringing sing-song catchiness from baroque complexity. On “Fantasize Your Ghost”, the Chicago band further explores this craggy terrain, with detours into noisenik squalls, Krautrock grooves, and chamber-pop delicacy. Core duo Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham (who has worked for the company that produces Pitchfork Music Festival) are most impressive in their sharp-tongued songcraft, whether confronting a distant partner or conjuring up a childhood reverie that juxtaposes hot lava and hot dogs—unsettlingly delectable.
OHMME presents: “Fantasize Your Ghost” is a special concert film recorded live at Constellation in their hometown, Chicago. Bridging the gap between their frenetic live shows and their carefully crafted studio albums, the film presents their latest full length album in its entirety with the addition of their newest songs “Mine” and “Miasma” The show captures Ohmme with an expanded line-up featuring Nnamdï Ogbonnaya on drums, Ruby Parker and Quinn Tsan on backing vox and V.V. Lightbody on backing vox and flute.
Co-directed by Jake Saner and Lauren Pratt with set design by Delaney Stewart, sound by Dorian Gehring, movement by Ashley Robicheaux, and co-produced with Constellation, the film pulls you in close with the band, enveloping you in their music and their dreams.
Chicago duo Ohmme was started by Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham in the summer of 2014, combining their love for lushvocals and song writing with their love of experimentation and sound.
Released June 5th, 2020
OHMME is Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart All songs written and performed by OHMME All drums and percussion performed by Matt Carroll
Melkbelly sculpts their signature balance between subtle melody and frantic noise on new album “Pith”, their second for Carpark Records/Wax Nine. The Chicago-based foursome has made spatial dynamics central to its arrangements, reaching for weirder highs and more startling atmospherics, negative space giving way to enveloping walls of chaos. This sense of form is reflected not only in the purposeful production, but in the ceramic cover art created by Chicago artist Deborah Handler. Since their 2017 debut Nothing Valley, the members of Melkbelly have an even better understanding of their sonic motivations. “We’re always going to sort through the past to make better sense of the present,” Miranda says, and in doing so Melkbelly continually finds ways to mutate its sound. On Pith, Melkbelly sought space, and succeeded in crafting it. What a pleasure to be let in.
Recording in two short sessions six months apart, the band worked with long time collaborator Dave Vettraino, this time at Bloomington, Indiana’s Russian Recording. Alongside an arsenal of rock gear and airy synth layers coaxed from a Moog Prodigy, “Pith’s multidimensionality was refined by the studio’s collection of rare Russian tube mics, which were placed in every corner to capture Melkbelly’s unabashed loudness. Frontperson Miranda Winters’ charmingly bright vocals are newly effected, delayed to a menacing, mysterious thickness. Guitars, handled by Miranda and Bart Winters, interlock and separate with dizzying ease, riffs dissolving into floating trails and reappearing with metallic edges. Bassist Liam Winters’ low grooves bounce and kick along with drummer James Wetzel’s rhythmically unsettling performance, which stretches time yet never falters.
On “Pith”, Melkbelly’s second full-length, the Chicago foursome refine their knotty but melodic noise rock. Singer-guitarist Miranda Winters calls out from murky depths, conjuring memories of loss, anxiety, frustration, and occasional bliss. On standout track “THC,” the band slowly cranks up the tension until it erupts into an onslaught of guitar fuzz. Melkbelly rarely stays in one place for long, whiplashing from one fractured groove to the next, always finding new ways to shift from quiet to explosive.
Recorded at Russian Recording in Bloomington, Indiana, Released April 3rd, 2020
Miranda Winters – Guitar, Vocals James Wetzel – Drums, Moog, STS Bart Winters – Guitar Liam Winters – Bass Guitar All songs written by Melkbelly Lyrics by Miranda Winters
Magik Markers distinguished themselves in the early 2000s with unfettered noise jams and a merch table so teeming with CD-Rs, tapes, and LPs as to render the idea of a coherent discography faintly obsolete. The New England trio led by singer/guitarist Elisa Ambrogio has slowed down and tightened up considerably as of late. Their first album in seven years is their most finely honed, though it is still rumpled in all the right places. With creaking Crazy Horse guitar solos, basement-Sabbath sludge, and A Thousand Leaves-rustling mysticism, “2020” finds clarity in controlled chaos, an eye in the year’s hurricane.
All of the complexities of a world’s collapse in a blissed out, horribly gentle, rugged, ragged rock n’ roll album. Rock back and forth as you hum these songs through a muddled shaken voice.
