Twenty choice cuts culled from the awe-inspiring Fruit Bats 2022–2023 live shows.
Eric D. Johnson says: In early 2022, when we embarked on a national tour in support of the “Sometimes a Cloud…” compilation, our long time sound guy / best bud / spiritual advisor Nathan Vanderpool thought it might be a cool idea to run some proverbial “tape” at any venue that could provide such a thing. In the scattered opportunities when we could, we did…and that directive then ran over into the “A River Running to Your Heart” tour last year, too.
These songs are from a random assortment of shows in a wide spectrum of cities. A different vibe with each song and each night—very much how tour kinda feels… It’s a nice little memento of a couple of crazy and often magical years of live shows.
Fruit Bats is: Josh Adams – drums and percussion David Dawda – bass and backing vocal Eric D. Johnson – lead vocals and rhythm guitar Frank LoCrasto – pianos and synths Josh Mease – lead guitar and backing vocal
All songs written by Eric D. Johnson (
“Starry-eyed, in Stereo” is out May 10th on Merge Records
On June 28th, the initial day of Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival the band will release their newly announced EP, “Hot Sun Cool Shroud”. An echo of their previous collection, “Cousin”, the new set was forged out of sessions that produced the 2023 full-length album. Consisting of six never-before-heard tracks, the set leans into a certain “summertime after-day” feel, according to the band leader.
“It’s fun to have something new to release at Solid Sound,” Jeff Tweedy said via press release. “This year we’re putting out an EP with a summertime-after-dark kind of feeling. It starts off pretty hot, like heat during the day, has some instrumentals on it that are a little agitated and uncomfortable and ends with a cooling breeze.”
As a descriptor of the sonic capture, Tweedy added, “There are tracks on “Hot Sun Cool Shroud” that are more aggressive and angular than anything we’ve put out in a while, and a song about love melting you like ice cream into a puddle of sugary soup. All the pieces of summer, including the broody cicadas.” “Hot Sun Cool Shroud” with a unique white vinyl pressing available only at Solid Sound Festival on June 28th.
Kathleen Ryan designed the EP cover artwork, which incorporates her “Fruit Bat” collection–decaying produce, cherries, peaches, and the like. For those attending Solid Sound, fans will be able to design individualized EP covers using stamps and stickers that reproduce Ryan’s various fruit sculptures. Those interested can submit their cover design to dBpm Records to have their work featured as actualized art, which will be available for sale in physical formats later this year.
In conjunction with the forthcoming EP, Wilco will host their annual Solid Sound Festival, with sets from Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit, Dry Cleaning, Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets, Wednesday, Horsegirl, Ratboys, Water From Your Eyes, and many more. The event also features bonus activities from podcasts and interviews to the Musicians on Musician series, which showcases selections from a private collection of music photography curated by members of Wilco.
“Hot Sun Cool Shroud” EP Tracklist 1. Hot Sun 2. Livid 3. Ice Cream 4. Annihilation 5. Inside The Bell Bones 6. Say You Love Me
No Depression says, “No one, and I mean no one, is doing what Sierra Ferrell is doing, be it in her song writing, arrangements, or delivery,” with her spellbinding voice and time-bending sensibilities, Ferrell makes music that’s as fantastically vagabond as the artist herself. On “Trail Of Flowers”, her highly-anticipated follow up to, “Long Time Coming”, Ferrell shares a dozen songs beautifully unbound by genre or era, instantly transporting her audience to an infinitely more enchanted world.
Produced by Gary Paczosa (Alison Krauss, Dwight Yoakam, Gillian Welch) and Eddie Spear (Zach Bryan, Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton) Other musicians featured on the album include Aksel Coe, Geoff Saunders, Billy Contreras, Joshua Rilko, Oliver Craven, and Mike Rojas, plus Nikki Lane and Lucas Nelson on background vocals for two tracks.
The heavens open up and God’s hairy forearm shoots forth from the clouds, slapping the word Songwriter across your body’s fragile avatar. And now the question: is it a calling or is it a curse? Will you draw the sword from the lake, victorious and gleaming? Or will your skin crawl with boils, your crops alight in conflagration? Is the habit of song writing something rewarding and nutritive, like gardening? Or is it more of a dirty tic, like bumming a cigarette every time you drink two beers? Is writing songs a job? A holy duty? Or is it just an occasionally rewarding hobby? And if I do heed my destiny, just how the fuck am I supposed to pay for healthcare?
Such are the celestial backyard wrestling matches that make up Sinai Vessel’s fourth LP. “I SING“, what a phrase – chief songwriter Caleb Cordes wields a DIY lifer’s gallows humour as he tries to carve out a niche in stone with a grapefruit spoon, speaking truth to streaming royalties and trust fund powers. Crucially, though, Sinai Vessel never says “fuck you” to the listener – instead Cordes shakes his head, laughing, and says instead “fuck me.”
How preposterous it is to be yoked to song, how silly to squeeze considered noise into plastic, how absolutely goofy is it that any of us listen, that any of us are moved. And in some unlikely screwball miracle, within the vanishing middle class vocation of singing for your supper, Sinai Vessel achieves the improbable: grace, resonance, a truly great collection of tunes.
Sinai Vessel from the new album ‘I SING’ out July 26th, 2024 via Keeled Scales.
On “Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind”, the kaleidoscopic full-length debut from Kate Bollinger, entire worlds lie in the small details. “When I’m recording a song,” the Charlottesville-born, now LosAngeles-based songwriter observes, “my indication of whether it’s worth pursuing is if I’m seeing a movie in my head to go along with it.” Blending classic pop songcraft with scrappy punk instincts, Bollinger casts a collage-like vision that’s instantly memorable and uniquely mystifying. Ranging from homespun folk songs to warmly rendered psychedelic rock—like early Rolling Stones as fronted by Hope Sandoval—the resulting album can feel like flipping through your coolest friend’s record collection.
In order to summon this majestic blend of styles, Bollinger spent years cultivating material, challenging herself to work with new collaborators while moving across the country from her native Virginia to California. Evolving the hermetic approach of her early EPs and solo performances, she arrived at a fuller sound based on intuitive responses and in-the-moment energy. “I came to this realization that most of my favourite music is the result of friends, or players who have known each other a long time, coming together and playing live in the room,” she observes. Armed with endless hooks and wildly shifting textures, Bollinger can seem as much like a songwriter as an art-house auteur, crafting the soundtrack and scenery for a non-existent movie. (Fittingly, Bollinger studied film in college, and she also directed the striking music video for Jessica Pratt’s recent single “World on a String.”)
Several highlights from the record were co-written with Spacebomb Records mastermind Matthew E. White, such as the jangle-pop gem “Any Day Now” and the theatrical “I See It Now.” After months of writing in Richmond and Los Angeles, Bollinger travelled to upstate New York to record with producer Sam Evian (Big Thief, Blonde Redhead, Cass McCombs), with whom she developed a similar kinship. Alongside her longtime friend and drummer Jacob Grissom, she formed a group of tight-knit collaborators able to match her wide-ranging inspiration, spanning from ’60s icons like Françoise Hardy and the Velvet Underground to ’90s touchpoints like No Doubt and Pavement. “In some way, this album feels like my musical debut. I feel that I’ve finally been able to express all sides of myself in one record.”
For Bollinger, the connective tissue between this disparate material is often unspoken but always deeply felt. “Songwriting is kind of like dreaming,” she explains. “They both tend to reveal to me what I don’t yet consciously know. I thought of the album title before most of the songs were written, but it became a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way that tends to happen in a lot of my music.” As a lyricist, Bollinger expresses herself through subtle imagery and surrealist stream-of-conscious narratives, allowing listeners to arrive at their own interpretation.
In the lilting, empathetic “To Your Own Devices,” she follows a sunswept melody to deliver a series of hushed, second-person observations: “Now you’re in a pinch/The mirror makes you flinch,” she sings. “And all this time, were you not making sense?”
In the baroque swirl of opener “What’s This About (La La La La),” Bollinger and her band conjure a sense of cartoonish whimsy that places her in league with the mystical pop greats of the Elephant 6 Collective, a scene whose idiosyncratic spin on the classic rock era helped inform the patchwork sprawl of her record. The haunting “Sweet Devil” smoulders like a jazz standard as interpreted by Feist at her smokiest and most intimate; the dramatic outro of “I See It Now” has a romping energy that feels suited for a climactic showdown at a saloon; the breezily psychedelic “Postcard From A Cloud” plays like a dreamworld collaboration between Teenage Fanclub and Broadcast,
Written during a period of transience and change, “Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind” was made to resemble a mixtape—something carefully crafted and delivered from just one person to another. In sharing this music with listeners, Bollinger took inspiration from her own formative encounters with art: quietly worshiping the early musical projects of her older brothers, attending local shows in Charlottesville and feeling empowered to write songs of her own, inheriting burned CDs from older classmates and finding a portal to another world.
“Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind” captures a rare sense of purpose and ambition for a debut record, managing to feel cozily familiar while still packed full of surprises. And in her gently playful and emotionally resonant performances, Bollinger sounds as enraptured by the mystery as anyone.
“To Your Own Devices” by Kate Bollinger from her album ‘Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind’, out September 27th on Ghostly International.
Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder has unveiled a previously unreleased rendition of The English Beat’s 1982 hit “Save It for Later,” it is featured in the second episode of FX’s The Bear, season 3. This version, teased in the show’s trailer, marks Vedder’s contribution to the series, which has previously used Pearl Jam tracks like “Animal” and a live rendition of “Come Back” in earlier seasons.
Details about this new recording of “Save It for Later,” including the saxophone soloist, has not been fully disclosed yet. Eddie Vedder shared an image on Instagram of what appears to be a 7-inch vinyl single of “Save It for Later,” credited to his Seattle Surf Co. label.
Pearl Jam has incorporated elements of the song into their performances of “Better Man” since 1996, and the new rendition concludes with Vedder briefly singing “can’t find a better man.”
“I think this might be my favourite song I have ever written, and it took a while to reveal itself,” Montreal singer-songwriter Leif Vollebekk of “Southern Star” from his upcoming album “Revelation”. “I spent about two years waiting for the last verse to come. It was recorded in one live take with me on piano, Oliver on drums, Shahzad on bass and Angie, who happened to be in town, singing harmony. We added Rob Moose on strings and Cindy Cashdollar on steel guitar. I asked her to stretch out at the end, and, when she did, I just sat there in the control room, completely blown away.”
After I played this song solo on the final night of our last tour, my friend and sound engineer Harris Shper came up to me and said,”New song?” I said, “Yeah.” “Strings?” he asked. I said, “Yep.” He said, “Cindy on steel?” said, “Exactly.” He was hearing exactly what I was hearing in my head. I decided at that moment that he would record “Southern Star”.
The night before that show, I ran into Shazhad Ismaily (@ectoderm88) in NYC who added so much to my album “Twin Solitude”. I asked him to come back and play bass. He, myself and Olivier Fairfield, along with Anfie McMahon (who was serendipitously in NY) recorded the whole thing in one take at Dreamland Recording Studios The brilliant Rob Moose added strings. I saved the last few bars of the song for Cindy Cashdollar to play what I think is the most beautiful steel guitar solo l’ve eve heard.
Cindy Cashdollar will be joining us at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal this Friday.
directed/filmed by wondrous Kaveh Nabatian, with Michael Felber, Michael Feuerstack and OlivierFairfield graciously helping breathe life into this music video. Ok I think that’s it.
I hope you enjoy this song as much as I did writing it and recording it. It might be my favourite song far. Happy summer X
Paul Weller rarely does the same thing twice. Twice in a row, at least. For his 17th album, which arrives one day shy of his 66th birthday, he’s created a lush and soulful world draped in swooning orchestration and featuring a wide range of cool friends and collaborators, not to mention a bunch of great new songs. That he manages to always find new places to go that fit within his amazing body of work — that includes The Jam and The Style Council — is arguably Weller’s biggest talent. Like 2021’s terrific “Fat Pop (Vol 1)”, “66” isn’t entirely beholden to a single style. There are rock songs “Jumble Queen,” written with Noel Gallagher), disco numbers “Flying Fish”, and Jaques Brel-style baroque “My Best Friend’s Coat,” a co-write with Le Superhomard) but the strings and horns and woodwinds — and Weller’s impeccable taste — tie it all together.
That said it’s the wistful, soulful numbers that really soar. “Nothing,” one of a few songs written with Madness frontman Suggs McPherson, is an instant classic, sounding a bit like a modern update on what Weller did in The Style Council, with jazzy chords, brass and psychedelic synth solos, set against ruminations of a long-lasting relationship
“Nothing forged our love / Out of nothing / Because it was only by / Having nothing / We were able to realise / We needed nothing else / But each other.” Mellow maybe, but Paul continues to throw heater after heater. May all of your heroes age this gracefully.
Beak, the trio of drummer Geoff Barrow (Portishead), bassist Billy Fuller (Robert Plant’s Sensational SpaceShifters) and keyboardist/guitarist Will Young (Moon Gangs), surprise-released what is easily the group’s best record yet which A) plays great as a seamless album experience, yet B) has plenty of standout cuts, and C) sports what will surely be my Album Cover of the Year when December comes. (That’s Barrow’s dog and band mascot Alfie, who passed on during the making of the album. RIP, Alf.) This trio have had a very distinctive style since day one — a murky, rhythmic mix from a wide variety of ’70s head music — but they have never sounded more in the zone than here.
While the group wouldn’t be Beak> without Barrow’s drumming and vocals, and Young’s woozy synths and arpeggiated guitar-work, it’s Fuller’s amazing bass lines that lift this one to the top of the heap. There’s a fungal, peat moss vibe to what they do (Fuller says Beak> sound like “we were coming out of the ground”) that carries across the variety of sounds found on >>>>, be it folk (“Hungry Are We”), Can-style grooves (“The Seal,” “Ah Yeh”), doomy prog (“Windmill Hill”) or claustrophobic synthwave (“Secrets”). Then there’s awesome closer “Cellophane” that starts off as a bad trip and ends in near-metal acid rock freakout. What they do is not for everyone, but if your brain is wired this way, put on some good headphones and get ready for Beak> to crack your egg.
Taken from the album 〉〉〉〉out now on Invada Records / Temporary Residence:
The Fat Angel Sings 