Hotline TNT’s debut album, “Nineteen in Love”, arrived in 2021, initially as one long YouTube video whose description read: “Cancel your Spotify subscription.” Will Anderson carries that DIY ethos onto its its follow-up, “Cartwheel” he plays and sings almost every note on the LP, which was recorded in two sessions – one with Ian Teeple, and one with Aron Kobayashi Ritch. In combining his knack for pop hooks with surging guitars and subtle production tricks, Hotline TNT feels akin to the recent wave of bands putting a modern twist on shoegaze, but rather than drowning in a wash of noise, “Cartwheel” sounds as relentlessly dizzying as it is warm, blurry yet cathartic, stacking up distorted riffs and emotion in the hope – or even just the possibility – that love will triumph in the end. “There’s a lot in this song/ That’s not in my diary,” Anderson sings on ‘History Channel’, and one way or another, it makes itself known.
When I say that Slaughter Beach, Dog’s new album “Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling” is their best album yet, just trust me. However, if you aren’t fully convinced, please direct your attention to new single “Engine”—a nine-minute, “On the Beach”-reminiscent epic folk track that punctuates the country swing of “Strange Weather,” “Float Away” and “Summer Windows.” It’s, by all means, Jake Ewald’s strongest lyrical work of his career thus far—which says something, given that he has long been one of our best storytellers.
It’s hard enough singing when the hotel chokes on your memories,” he sings. “Maybe let’s watch The Sopranos, maybe let’s order Chinese. The laundry isn’t breathing, I write about Julie in a little white chair. There’s nothing for music, there’s styrofoam crushed in the garbage.” “Engine” is a poem carved into the space of a song, as Ewald surveys his surroundings and plugs them in like a stream-of-conscious journal. With Erin Rae providing backing vocals and a triumphant, visceral guitar solo guiding the song’s breakdown, this is the epitome of generational, gob-smacking folk rock.
Around the making of “Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling”, Jake Ewald was particularly fascinated by artists who have managed to whittle down a life’s worth of memory and experience into an emotionally resonant piece of work, one of whose simplicity often belies just how enormous of a task that is. Ewald’s own writing feels instinctual, generous, and nuanced, and though it’s delivered with growing awareness, he admits he didn’t immediately realize when his attempts with Slaughter Beach, Dog tended towards something similarly wide-encompassing, if still ambiguous, like on the 9-minute single ‘Engine’. The album floats beautifully from one song to the next, giving each character and story the space to exist and reasons to hold onto them. They’re never the same for everyone, but no matter where it hits you, it’s a kind of featherlight marvel.
The Clientele were once the discerning indie critics’ discerning indie band. The songs collected on the UK group’s debut album, 2000’s “Suburban Light”, were first delivered in the collectible, cult-building format of 7″ singles. This daydreamy music made sense to ears attuned to not only the post-Beatles pop of Love, the Zombies, and the Left Banke, but also the impressionistic ache of Felt and the reverb-coated reveries of Galaxie 500. The Clientele were so sensitive to their critical impulses, their singer and guitarist, Alasdair MacLean, publicly rubbished Belle and Sebastian, whose fan base they would’ve been most likely to share. After releasing a spate of broadly similar-sounding albums with various subtle refinements, and even quitting their day jobs, they eventually took a break. On their most recent outing, 2017’s “Music for the Age of Miracles“, they sounded cozy and familiar, but also slightly diminished, like twilight passing into dark.
“I Am Not There Anymore”, just the Clientele’s second full-length album since 2009, draws much of its inspiration from what MacLean remembers about the early summer of 1997, and the lyrics allude frequently to the death of his mother during that period. On paper, the incorporation of spoken-word, field recordings, and piano instrumentals, along with horns and a string quartet, is in keeping with the lush expansiveness that has carried throughout the Clientele’s discography, from the steel and Spanish guitar of 2000’s “The Violet Hour” up to the last album’s Iranian instruments. The further addition of programmed drum and bass samples, similarly, is of a piece with MacLean’s longtime affinity for Boards of Canada. And yet the 19-track double LP feels like a step away from their characteristic sounds, embarking on a quest into the vast unknown. No wonder publicity stills for the album show the trio of MacLean, drummer Mark Keen, and bassist James Hornsey dressed up as knights in shining armour.
If the key difference for “I Am Not There Anymore”, as MacLean has observed, is the Clientele’s purchase of a computer, then, with all due respect: What took ’em so long? Album opener “Fables of the Silverlink” brings fractured electronic beats and haunting Spanish-language guest vocals to a bustling eight-and-a-half minutes’ worth of chamber pop, but that really undersells the album’s sonic adventurousness. “Garden Eye Mantra” glides like a dubwise Moon Safari with luxe strings and flickering “Dear Prudence” guitar lines. “Dying in May” ditches guitar altogether for a dizzying drone where French horn, cello, and Mellotron undulate amid clattering polyrhythms, equal parts flamenco and On the Corner.
Minimalist piano-and-celeste instrumentals with titles like “Radial B” offer a meditative reprieve, keeping all this eventfulness from growing too overwhelming. More remarkable still is “My Childhood,” where Jessica Griffin of veteran indie-poppers Would-Be Goods recites eerie bricolage poetry over Psycho-worthy strings digitally transposed from field recordings of the wind; an abstracted reprise, “The Village Is Always on Fire,” swaps in backwards-sounding beats. From a band that once seemed destined to repeat themselves, it’s all enough to suggest a glimmer of Low-like reinvention.
“All the beautiful things are opaque,” Alasdair MacLean sings on ‘Lady Grey’, a shimmering highlight from the Clientele’s astonishing new double LP “I Am Not There Anymore”. The stories on the album don’t cohere in any clear or narratively revelatory way, but the beauty that pervades it – haunting, surreal, inexplicable – reveals itself through recurring images, signs, and symbols that feel persistent and strangely resonant. “What happened with this record was that we bought a computer,” MacLean has said, and beyond electronic instrumentation, they also fold in spoken-word passages, minimalist piano instrumentals, and string and horn arrangements across its 63-minute runtime. For all its dazzling scope, the Clientele immerse us in the sonic, emotional, and geographic landscape of “I Am Not There Anymore” so fervently that it immediately feels both out of time and close to home, like an echo of a memory that only gets bigger and more elaborate the further away you get from it.
Alasdair MacLean – vocals, guitars, tapes, beats, bouzouki, Mellotron, organ James Hornsey – bass, piano Mark Keen – drums, percussion, piano, celesta
released July 28th, 2023
“I Am Not There Anymore” is out now on Merge Records
The sophomore album from Pittsburgh quartet Feeble Little Horse is nothing short of a majestic, chaotic cluster of noise and pop. They make gravitational tunes that will swallow you up quick, making music in a caps. Their industrial, avant leanings glint synths that flirt with techno, while vocalist Lydia Slocum is a mythical presence shapeshifting across so many astral planes. A song like “Pocket” will endure forever; “Girl With Fish” is a revelation from a band that’s only just getting started.
The four of them—bassist/vocalist Lydia Slocum, guitarist/processing wizard Sebastian Kinsler, guitarist Ryan Walchonski and drummer Jake Kelley from Oakland, the neighbourhood where the band was first dreamed up. The night prior,
The now Pittsburgh quartet has had a whirlwind two years since bandleaders Walchonski and Kinsler got the idea to embark on their own creative passion project. They had a fun enough time playing together in a friend’s garage rock band, but the two experimentalists had a nagging desire to try their hands at something messier, grittier. “We weren’t concerned with being a serious band yet, but we were having so much fun making these recordings,” Kinsler says of the early feeble little horse demos. As the two got more serious, they brought in Kelley to contribute the drum lines that took their recordings to the next level. When they finally finished a demo, Walchonski spent hours listening to it: “I kept thinking to myself, ‘this is crazy,’” he says.
The dizzying blend of post-punk and art rock that Walchonski found so mesmerizing came to fruition on feeble little horse’s first EP, “modern tourism”, which the band self-released in the spring of 2021. Walchonski and Kinsler borrowed many of their early stylistic choices from trudging alt-rock bands like Hotline TNT and A Country Western. But, with the addition of Kelley’s Sonic Youth-inspired drumming, “modern tourism” displayed the band’s tendency towards propulsion.
Early feedback for “modern tourism” was quite positive, with praise from Pittsburgh-to-DC label Crafted Sounds. Together, they collaborated to release the EP on tape. When Walchonski visited Crafted Sounds’ HQ in Pittsburgh, he was petrified: This was the home of Pittsburgh’s finest DIY output. Was feeble little horse really equipped for this? As it turned out, label manager Connor Murray thought the band was destined for more, encouraging them to look into labels in Philadelphia and New York with the capacity to sustain their weirdness. Walchonski recalls: “We agreed to send the album to Doug [Dulgarian from Julia’s War Recordings] and he texted back right away that he wanted to put out our full-length. We respected what he was doing so much that, once we had his buy-in, we were set.”
That album, “Hayday”, arrived via noise-rock tape archivists Julia’s War in fall 2021. The band leveled up tremendously; the three-piece became a quartet with the addition of Lydia Slocum, the multi-disciplinary artist whose nonchalant vocal delivery and level, witty lyrics have become endemic to feeble little horse’s sound. Kinzler’s bold processing of harsh, synthesized electronics, samples and pop hooks help form the sound that the band works from today: “We’re sneaking pop music into pretentious people’s ears through layers and processing,” he explains. “Chores” was an early breakout hit, but tracks like “Termites,”“Picture” and “Kennedy” are just as memorable. “Hayday’s” screeching earworms made the band unforgettable, and the band became a go-to Pittsburgh opener for touring bands who traffic in noise, like Wednesday.
While feeble little horse can often be found sharing playlist inclusions with Philadelphia’s growing list of shoegaze and slowcore bands—many of whom the band considers to be friends and inspirations—their music is openly energetic and confrontational.
While each bandmember brings their own influences and experiences to the project, they’re unified in their mission to create pop music so otherworldly and intense that it connects with everybody. For the indieheads who think they’re above pop music, feeble little horse’s layers upon layers of processing mask the traditional genre approaches the band starts from. For pop fiends, the hooks and melodies are strong enough to cut through the noise. They’re inspired by other modern indie rock bands who challenge their listeners with abrasive noise while keeping the lyrics fresh and catchy, like Momma or Horsegirl. Lydia says: “I remember watching a video of Grimes saying that pop music is smart. That always stuck with me. It takes more effort to write a melody with a pop hook. It’s not that easy to come up with one. Pop is a commitment to making something catchy and fun where you’re not afraid to look dumb.”
The band dropped their first new LP with Saddle Creek, “Girl With Fish”, . While working with Julia’s War was its own dream come true, working with Saddle Creek is the pie-in-the-sky prize the band never thought they’d reach. “When we were shopping “Hayday” around to labels, Saddle Creek was on the list and definitely number one, but we wondered if it was even worth it to try,” Kinsler says. “Girl With Fish” is an exercise in writing with distance. Since the early days of feeble little horse, Walchonski has graduated from college and moved to Washington, D.C., and Slocum has always split her time between her Pittsburgh home and art school in Mechanicsburg three hours away.
At one of these meet-ups, the band descended upon Walchonski’s basement apartment after playing a raucous show. Between performing, writing and celebrating, the band was exhausted but still tossing melodies and potential lyrics around. Take the bubbly track “Paces,” which evolved slowly over time. Walchonski drafted an embryonic idea, Kinsler “fucked it up” and Kelley found the ideal percussion line to support it. Obscure movements from bands like Ing and Swimming Hour helped inspire distinct sonic choices. Slocum listened to the demo while humming melodies and singing to herself in her dorm room over and over. By the time the band arrived in D.C., “Paces” just needed a chorus, which they recorded in Walchonski’s apartment –though not without difficulty: “Whenever someone walked across the floor upstairs, we had to stop and do another take. But these lyrics are the strongest on the album. I have my own interpretation, as do Lydia and the rest,” says Walchonski. That trip is full of memories: “You were singing that [“Paces”] melody while laying on the floor drunk under a blanket,” Kinsler points out laughingly to Slocum.
While only half of the band is there full-time now, the Pittsburgh scene is still a major source of vitality for the quartet. “Everyone’s been very supportive of us since we started,” Kelley notes. It helps that when the band first started, the DIY scene in town was emerging from the throes of the pandemic and attempting to stage COVID-safe shows with the new and veteran bands who were desperate to emerge from hibernation. The inclusive Pittsburgh scene venerated feeble little horse, with their genuine and unique sound, immediately and earnestly. “People don’t move to Pittsburgh for the scene,” says Kinsler, who appreciates that local musicians are in it for the love of the game and for the love of the local community.
For “Girl With Fish”, the band brought in a litany of folksy influences to add a hypnotic charm that levels the band up from their “Hayday” era. Borrowing from the vocal stylings of Diane Cluck and the whimsical arrangements feeble little horse have a new approach to their own world-building that showcases how the quartet continues to grow and push their heavily processed sound into fresh corners of excitement. Forays like “Healing” emphasize fingerpicked guitar riffs and cosmic electronics, while earworms like “Pocket” start gentle and grow more abrasive with time—throwing listeners into a conflagration of “Do you want to be in my pocket?” by the track’s end. Slocum approaches her singing unconventionally throughout “Girl With Fish”, darting between her chest voice and her head voice with a controlled crack that sharply commands attention. Whenever Slocum wants to grab her listeners’ ears, she thinks to herself: “How would Karly Hartzman [of Wednesday] sing this?”
“Girl With Fish” is something that feeble little horse are rightfully proud of, but the band are even more excited to take the album on the road with their friends in tow. “We’re super psyched for tour,” Walchonski says, “and we just bought an old van for it.
Each band member offers their own contribution, with Slocum a gifted lyricist, Kelley a creative percussionist and Kinsler masterful at, in the band’s own words, “fucking it up.” Trading files back and forth and sharing iPhone notes kept everyone motivated to write tracks for “Girl With Fish”, along with occasional meet-ups to play shows.
Vocals: Lydia Slocum and Sebastian Kinsler Guitar: Ryan Walchonski and Sebastian Kinsler Bass: Sebastian Kinsler Drums: Jacob Kelley Keyboards:
On her fourth record and first for Double Double Whammy, “I Keep My Feet On the Fragile Plane”, Allegra Krieger hones in her sharp-eyed song writing to observe the rushing, paradoxical nature of day-to-day life with a mix of groundedness and mysticism. The New York singer-songwriter’s music has always been attuned to the constant cycle of beginnings and endings, but here, working again with producer Luke Temple, she finds comfort and levity in the idea of a “fragile plane,” which she describes as “a middle ground in the universe,” gracefully elevating small moments with subtle, evocative orchestration. “Everything’s leaving just as it’s coming in/ Nothing in this world ever stays still,” she sings, inviting us not to linger, but take stock of what does as we move along with the tides.
This is an album that is at once post-theistic and devoted to a relationship with the divine, each song blinking in and out of “the fragile plane,” a place Krieger describes as “a middle ground in the universe,” both abstract and peaceful, where time, bodies, and names don’t exist.
Krieger’s peripateticism has clearly informed her song writing. She spent her childhood on the blistering beaches and cold Catholic pews of northern Florida. Before settling in Chinatown, she drifted through suburban Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland cleaning motel rooms, planting trees, tending bars, and picking olives. In “Terribly Free”, she walks with the rats in Manhattan; in “I Wanted to Be” she bites into a ripe orange somewhere in the south; in “Nothing in This World Ever Stays Still” she stands outside of a sports bar in LA watching coastal smoke rise from the hills; later, she describes being “moved by whatever’s moving us.”
“I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane” is a daring collection of songs by an artist who scries with both the cold glass eye of truth and the beating heart of empathy; who portrays life in all its twisted complexities and in turn makes the felt and invisible, visible.
On “Yard”, Wisconsin-bred, Chicago-based four-piece Slow Pulp nestles comfortably into pockets of nuance, impressions, contradictions – sonics and lyrics finessed together to bottle the specific tension of a feeling you’ve never quite been able to find the right words for.
In that regard, listening to Slow Pulp can feel like being in a room with someone who’s known you so long that they can read your every micro-expression and pinpoint exactly how you’re feeling before you can. Perhaps this spawns from the band’s own shared history and chemistry; in various ways, the four of them grew up – are still growing up – together.
The dreamy songs of the Midwest (United States) indie rock outfit draw on moody shoegaze, hooky grunge, and intimate lo-fi fare. The band made their full- length debut with “Moveys” in 2020. After the downcast 2021 7″ “Deleted Scenes“, they put the focus on hooky grunge pop for singles like 2021’s “In Too Deep” and 2023’s “Cramps”. After their label debut single the band toured throughout Europe and the UK earlier this year as main support for Death Cab For Cutie. The new album “Yard” is their second full-length album and first for ANTI-Records.
After recording their 2019 debut “Moveys” remotely during the pandemic, Slow Pulp opted to do the same on “Yard”, their gauzy, confident, and endlessly comforting sophomore full-length. The album showcases a band capable of switching between loud, intoxicating indie rock songs and soft, quietly affecting ones – what’s remarkable is that they so clearly share the same heart. Grappling with anxious isolation as much as it benefits from collaboration, it finds Emily Massey pushing her vocal limits while continuing to express self-doubt around different facets of her life. “Am I wrong?/ Or is it okay to stay inside and out of love?/ Tell me I’m wrong/ I’m just gonna give it a try and hope that it’s enough,” she sings on ‘Broadview’. All over “Yard”, you can feel the sun burning, and you can feel the love slipping through. Those questions don’t go away, but the feeling is infectious.
Teddy Mathews – Drums, auxiliary percussion, bass, guitar Alex Leeds – Bass, guitar, vocals Emily Massey – Vocals, guitar, bass Henry Stoehr – Guitar, piano, keyboards, bass, auxiliary percussion Sachi DiSerafino – Additional production on ‘Slugs’
“Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You” might seem like an ominous title for an album of such simple, homespun beauty. The quiet domesticity that permeated Will Oldham’s last solo album as Bonnie ‘Prince’Billy, 2019’s “I Made a Place”, can be heard at the root of the new songs, but they wear their lessons with proud and penetrating ease, less prone to guard and puzzle. They’re bare-bones, soft, and raw even when embellished by strings, horns, and backing vocals, taking their time to unwind slowly, as if to exist this way is our only salvation against destructive forces both beyond and very much in our control.
The songs on “Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You” have no choice but to live in an apocalypse, but in the you there also lives an us: if I share these and you pass them around, we might make something of our doomed time.
Part of what makes Snõõper’s approach as a punk band so unique is the way they combine some of the members’ hardcore background with a wild playfulness that not only extends to, but is largely cantered around, their live show, which incorporates mediums such as 8-bit animation and puppetry for a meticulously structured yet constantly evolving set. It’s that experience they set out to mirror on their debut full-length, “Super Snõõper”, released via Jack White’s Third Man Records.
From Nashville, Tennessee… Snooper definitely not the sound you would normally associate with the city, rather the opposite. 50 minutes of madness, songs ranging from 30 – 90 seconds (although indulged themselves with a 3 min prog number, non-stop dancing, crowd surfing and stage diving…and that was the band.
It’s impressive just how many ideas they pack in under 23 minutes, boasting an assemblage of styles that comes across as gleeful yet frantic, mangled yet precise, intense and extremely danceable at the same time. The whole time, it’s clear the thing Snõõper capitalize on isn’t chaos or aggression, but pure fun – even if it only funnels out as such at the very last second.
At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on November 3rd, 2023, The former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page performs 2023 Inductee Link Wray’s rock instrumental cover of “Rumble”. The live performances were held at the Barclays Center in New York. Billboard: Jimmy Page – one of the best and most influential guitarists of all time – made an unannounced appearance at the Rock Hall to induct the late Link Wray. Page appeared in a video montage about the power chord pioneer, calling Wray his “hero” and saying, “If ever there was a guitarist who deserved this, it was Link Wray.” But when the lights came up and the Led Zeppelin legend was on stage in the flesh, the crowd went crazy. Busting into “Rumble,” Wray’s iconic instrumental, Page looked happy as hell playing a song he’s loved his whole life on a double-necked guitar. And the crowd ate up every moment, with Elton John blowing him a kiss as he took the stage to induct Bernie Taupin.
One of a couple tribute performances from this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, Jimmy Page appeared as an unannounced surprise guest to chug through Link Wray’s instrumental distortion-fest. He even brought the double-necked guitar, just to make it extra epic (given he only uses the one neck).
Tulsa singer Casii Stephan took to the city’s recently renovated Church Studio, founded by local hero Leon Russell, to cover the man himself. She said she first learned the love song to play at a friend’s wedding, but now it’s part of the repertoire. It’s a simple one-take recording, just her and a piano, but she has the pipes and the chops to deliver it beautifully.
The moment that was captured in The Church Studio is due to these people right here. Mike and Gary made it possible for me to keep playing and get the right take. Bobby Ross and Keith Daniel’s aka SneakthePoet captured the moment on film so beautifully. And then Bobby Ross captured it in photos so that I could look like the serious musician I’ve always dreamed to be. Being an artist is always about the people you have around you.
The Fat Angel Sings 