Earlier this year, Free Range the project of Chicago singer/songwriter Sofia Jensen—released their debut album, “Practice”. It was a solemn, sublime and stirring LP with brilliant tracks like “Want To Know,” “Growing Away” and “All My Thoughts” that quickly established Jensen as one of the brightest up-and-coming lyricists working right now and a crucial fixture of Chicago’s DIY scene. The work is intimate and spiritual, as they muse on trying to find closure with a lost loved one, on trying to, finally, move on from heartache for good. “I’m watching your past collide with mine,” Jensen sings. “Ride home on the 96th, avoid the trading glances down the aisle. But I can’t stop fading out of your view.” Loft Sessions” arrives like the perfect bridge between “Practice” and whatever is destined to come next for Free Range.
Their new EP, “Loft Sessions”, finds them performing two stripped-down tracks from “Practice” along with three new tunes—”The Moon,” “Way Out” and “Nothing”—and a cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Tecumseh Valley.”
The record was recorded at Wilco’s storied studio and finds Jensen giving these songs a second life with even more nuance than before. It’s a real reward watching such emotionally dense compositions become even more touching months after hearing them for the first time. Lead single “The Moon” is sparse yet captivating, as it’s just Jensen, their guitar and a streamlined pedal steel undercurrent.
“Music that Humans Can Play” is a breezy collection of up-tempo songs and big melodic hooks. Opener “Born Losers” starts off with thrumming synths that burst into a prismatic spray of musical confetti fit for a roller-rink open skate. Synths carry the blocky arrangement on the angular “Why Do We Dance,” and a jumble of surging electronics powers the rambunctious “Westbound.” Elsewhere, guitars reign: the riff on “Love Is for Fools” is the heart of the track, while speedy fuzz-tone power chords and a bounding bassline form a firm foundation for synthesizers and, for some reason, honking car horns on “Plastic Punx.”
Though the songs on “Music that Humans Can Play” are unfailingly catchy, it’s sometimes tricky to get beneath the surface. It’s possible that’s because there isn’t actually much under the surface of these tunes. That’s not a knock against Autogramm—it actually feels like it’s the point.
The group gives every indication that they’re knocking out music for the sheer fun of it, on songs that are meant for right now. What happens later? Easy: just start “Music that Humans Can Play” again from the top.
Brinsley Schwarz didn’t invent pub rock, but they did define the genre that paved the way to punk in the mid-’70s. A seven-disc box set that effectively acts as the band’s complete recorded works — there are surviving live tapes circulating elsewhere, but this has all the studio material — “Thinking Back: The Anthology 1970-1975” charts their journey from tentative folk-rockers bearing an evident debt to CSNY to boisterous house rockers anchored by the pure pop smarts of Nick Lowe.
Although Lowe would later come to fame — his big hit “Cruel to Be Kind” was first attempted by the Brinsleys on “It’s All Over Now”, a scrapped 1975 album included here — the songwriter wasn’t quite the group’s leader: it was named after lead guitarist Brinsley Schwarz, and guitarist/vocalist Ian Gomm also contributed tunes and vocals.
That collective spirit is evident throughout “Thinking Back”, whether it’s on the goofy, earnest material styled after the Band or on the rollicking, funny rockers that kept them flying high through the 1970s. Once they met Dave Edmunds, he streamlined and hardened their sound, resulting in a radio-ready record that never found the radio. Instead, its opening track, Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” was turned into a standard by Elvis Costello, the band’s number one fan, which helped cement Brinsley Schwarz’s legacy as progenitors of punk. This set shows they’re more than a historical footnote: they made wonderful, openhearted rock & roll that still sounds robust and raucous years later.
Comprehensive 7CD clamshell box set that contains all of the original six albums as well as the ‘It’s All Over Now’ album that was recorded in 1975 but not released until 1988. Also included are unreleased tracks from the Warner vaults as well as live recordings and rarities from band member Ian Gomm who is also providing a mass of rare/unseen images from his archive as well as contributing to the sleeve notes.
CD1 features the band’s eponymous debut album as well as three previously unreleased tracks from the Warner vaults and rare studio recordings from Ian Gomm’s archive.
CD 2 features the band’s sophomore album ‘Despite It All’ that is accompanied by live tracks recorded at The Roundhouse in London in 1972.
CD 3 features the band’s third album ‘Silver Pistol’ and also has three rare tracks that were recorded for the album but didn’t make the final cut, there is also more live recordings from The Roundhouse in 1972.
CD 4 features the band’s fourth album ‘Nervous On The Road’ and also has live recordings from Amsterdam in 1972, Paris in 1973 and more from The Roundhouse in 1972.
CD 5 features the band’s fifth album ‘Please Don’t Ever Change’ as well as singles recorded as The Hitters and Limelight, along with live recordings from Newcastle in 1973 and Cardiff in 1974.
CD 6 features the band’s final official album ‘The New Favourites Of Brinsley Schwarz’ which includes one of Nick Lowe’s most famous songs ‘(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding’, with bonus live tracks from gigs in Sheffield, Tilburg and Cardiff, all in 1974.
CD 7 features the album ‘It’s All Over Now’, recorded in 1975 but not released until 1988. Bonus material includes the band’s last ever single, billed as The Brinsleys as well as live recordings from Groningen in 1975 as well as Koln in March 1975, recorded just nine days before the band broke up.
Remembered today mostly as the band that gave Nick Lowe his start, these British pub-rockers sizzled onstage. This 7-CD set tells their story.
Beloved, Portland pop / indie-rock trio Gossip returns with “Real Power”, their first album in 14 years. The album marks a reunion with acclaimed producer Rick Rubin, who helmed the band’s pivotal 2009 album “Music For Men”. Rubin coaxed the band started recording in 2019 after completing a tour for the ten-year anniversary of “Music For Men”. Recorded at Rubin’s home studio in Kauai, the process was temporarily halted by the pandemic and resumed when restrictions lifted. The result is an 11-track celebration of the galvanizing might of music, the joy of creative expression, and the power of chosen family in the aftermath of collective and personal trauma.
The timing is ripe for a Gossip reunion, and “Real Power” heralds a new maturity and renewed sense of purpose for the trio. “When we began, so much about Gossip was about running away—that was always in the music,” says Ditto. “We survived. We came from nothing, and we got the fuck out of there. And to be here 20 years later and still making music together is just incredible.”
PJ Harvey and collaborators John Parish (on electric guitar, drums, and vocals) and God Unknown Artist James Johnston (on keys, acoustic guitar, violin, and vocals) did a new NPR Tiny Desk concert to support new album “I Inside the Old Year Dying”. They delivered understated but haunting performances of four of the album’s tracks, “I Inside the Old I Dying,” “A Noiseless Noise,” “A Child’s Question, August” and “I Inside the Old Year Dying,” with Parish and Johnston providing minimal instrumentation and harmonies. After those, they also played the title track of 2007’s “White Chalk”.
Polly Harvey has inhabited many characters throughout her 30-year career and always dressed the part: catsuit-rocking glam queen, high-collared Victorian wraith, mini-skirted libertine, feather-adorned warrior. Bringing the story told in her latest album, “I Inside the Old Year Dying” to the Tiny Desk, she stands at the microphone in a draped dress the wintry colour of a grey alder tree, designed by her long time costumier Todd Lynn. Its torn elegance perfectly suits the dual role she plays in these gently ferocious songs, which originated in her novel-in-verse, Orlam. As she lets loose her inimitable razor-sharp alto, she becomes both Ira-Abel, the child who, in the aftermath of an assault, merges with the forest around her Dorset, England, home, and of the bard whose verses keep that shepherd girl alive after her vanishing.
Harvey keeps her gestures minimal as she sets her scenes and speaks through them. Matching her voice to those of her trusted collaborators John Parish and James Johnston as they invoke the forest’s ghosts — the “chalky children of evermore” — she lets the fecund imagery of her lyrics resonate. At times the crowd seems stunned into silence; after her lament for Ira-Abel, “A Noiseless Noise,” concludes with the notes from her acoustic and Parish’s electric guitar intertwining, she coolly waits out a gap before the applause and hoots of appreciation arrive.
This is where Harvey lives as a fully realized artist: on her own artistic plane, inviting listeners to take their time to fully join her. Ending with the heart-rending lonesome title track from 2007’s “White Chalk”, she connects Ira-Abel’s story to her lifelong project of expressing women’s solitude, pain and resistance. Exploring how human boundaries can shatter, reassert themselves or be rendered irrelevant, these songs create a contained space that echoes far beyond itself.
SET LIST “I Inside the Old I Dying” “A Noiseless Noise” “A Child’s Question, August” “I Inside the Old Year Dying” “White Chalk”
MUSICIANS PJ Harvey: vocals, acoustic guitar James Johnston: keys, acoustic guitar, violin, vocals JohnParish: electric guitar, drums, vocals
L.A.-based Julia Holter has crafted a dazzling audio artform in her latest otherworldly track ‘Sun Girl’, packed with discordant melodies and tranquil, hypnotic vocals.
Twinkling chimes grant us entrance into a surreal oasis of pulsating flora and fauna in the world of ‘Sun Girl.’ Quickly, we meet a purple character who dwells in the night and shadows of the desert blooms; craving the world of light that burns them at the touch. As the video unfolds, an instrumental collective signals a pivotal, and somewhat overwhelming evolution, for our violet friend. Petals of ice branch skyward, forming ever-growing canopies of floral hydra crystals that slowly engulf the entire horizon.
The sonic experience accompanied by the stunning animation for ‘Sun Girl’ makes this song not only an incredible musical feat for Holter but also stands as a bewitching testament to her immense skill at immersive storytelling. Highlighting the beauty that lies at the heart of terrifying changes, this video stumbles into the brave embrace of that shedding process.
Worth the wait and an excellent composition. We’re all so looking forward to the new album.
released November 7th, 2023 through Domino Recording Co, 2023
Goats “Levitation Session” film and live album was recorded in the heart of winter in early 2023, capturing the alchemy of the band’s creative process and a glimpse of their legendary live show, filmed in the band’s studio headquarters. We’re excited to have it finally see the light of day and unleashed to all of you!
“We chose to record the session in our old temple during a cold night under a huge midnight sun in the darkest winter time. We thought it would bring out the best magic in us and we think it did. As the hours went by it started to loosen up and we went into some free form experiments with our electronics. In the end, this film became a perfect representation of what we do when we hang out“ – Goat
Levitation Sessions are back – with a new film + live album from Swedish psych collective Goat!
It was in December 2022 that The Staves celebrated the 10th anniversary of their debut album “Dead & Born & Grown” – a strange and beautiful period in the lives of sisters and band members Jessica, Camilla and Emily Staveley-Taylor, making their fourth album “All Now” with the same organic vulnerability as that first record: except now everything was different, and they kind of were too.
“All Now” emerges, bold and bright, from a period of quiet, which followed a period of chaos, for the band. When “Good Woman” was released in 2021, to positive reviews, it felt like “an echoing silence” to share such a cathartic album with a world shut down. So The Staves had to retreat, again, and actually wrestle with everything they had been through.
The result? An album as rich and honest as all the most profound music by The Staves scattered across albums for the last decade, calcified here into something special.
But the most thrilling part of this album, is that the hardest pills to swallow, here, almost have a sweeter taste. Once you’ve survived the climb to the top, learned from the journey, you may as well enjoy the view. “When you sing about hesitation and fear, there’s a lot of power in not making it sound fearful and being quite steadfast instead,” says Camilla. “It feels like an act of taking control.” With “All Now”, there’s no letting go.
Wurld Series are back with a new LP of curly rock miniatures and overgrown roadside curios. “The Giant’s Lawn” stretches the band’s reach, embracing new forms and figures, living corridors and side-quests. Where past worx borrowed from the literate heart of American indie, here, Luke Towart & Co. investigate earthen psychedelia, off-grid community folk, and highly bookish, antipodean snock.
There’s always been a fantastical bent to Wurld Series’ unspooling jaunts – 2021’s “What’s Growing” threw a little Canterbury scene in with the Christchurch sound – but “The Giant’s Lawn” goes deeper down the rabbit warren; a boy named frog dreams of escape, established trees are recognised for their contributions to humanity… “Rearing Wesley” marries schoolboy imagery with golden flushes of Richard Thompson inspired fretwork. “A Private Life” plays like a field recording of the morning after the carnival – cats yeowl, empty tents billow, gaudy excess sours in the clear light.
British psych-folk lends gentle, omnipresent guidance throughout, but early influences still hit; “Resplendent Fortress”, “Lord of Shelves” and “Illustrious Plates” bounce and buckle like Flying Nun faves 3D’s; compact vehicles for Towart’s Renaissance-era flash broadcasts. So it’s not that Wurld Series have turfed the wooly tube-fuzz of the sonic South, they’ve simply dragged their amplifiers from the pavement to the creek bed, where the air’s lighter and there’s room to spread out.
releases November 17th, 2023
Wurld Series are Luke Towart, Brian Feary, Ben Woods and Ben Dodd.
In their decade-plus together, the four-piece Julia Shapiro (guitar, vocals), Lydia Lund (guitar, vocals), Gretchen Grimm (drums, vocals), and Annie Truscott (bass, vocals)—have created a resonant body of work. “Live Laugh Love” is a natural continuation. Against the bizarre backdrop of the past few years, Chastity Belt remained a supportive space for the members to grow and experiment, drawing on the ingredients most essential to their process since the beginning: authenticity and levity.
Recorded over three sessions in as many years (January 2020, November 2021 and 2022), the focus became more about enjoying their time together in the studio than making it feel like work. Their ease and familiarity with engineer Samur Khouja in LA, who also recorded their last album, made for a particularly enjoyable process. Once completed, they returned to renowned engineer Heba Kadry who mastered the album.
Album opener “Hollow” sets the tone with a gently driving rhythm while guitar layers stream like sun rays through an open car window. A warmth radiates through Shapiro’s voice, even while grappling with feeling lost and stuck. “The older I get,” Shapiro says of the lyrics, “the more I realize that I might just always feel this way, and it’s more about sitting with the feeling and accepting it, rather than trying to fight it.” That wisdom seems to anchor “Live Laugh Love”. Chastity Belt has never shied from navigating the spectrum of difficult emotions, and an existential thread weaves throughout the subject matter. And yet the songs feel more grounded than ever; there’s a sense of quiet confidence and self-assurance that comes with being less numb and more present. Facing discomfort takes more fortitude, after all.
“Live Laugh Love” finds the members in their prime as musicians. Their parts trace intricate patterns over one another, but there’s room to breathe between the layers. Everyone contributes to the writing, sometimes switching instruments, and for the first time, all four members sing a song. It’s never been more apparent that they are creative siblings, cut from the same belt. “We’ve been playing music with each other for over a decade,” says Shapiro, “so it really does feel like we’re all fluent in the same language, and a lot of it just happens naturally.”
“Laugh” seeks in the balm of friendship, aware of the anticipatory nostalgia that hits during a good time that you’re already missing before it’s gone; the heavier guitar tones on “Chemtrails” streak ominous chord progressions over Grimm’s precision timekeeping, lamenting memories that won’t fade easily. During a transitional time, Truscott came across a note in their phone that read, “it’s not hard all day, just sometimes,” which inspired a poignant line in the chorus of “Kool-Aid,” their first song as lead vocalist on a Chastity Belt recording. Another standout, “I-90 Bridge” shines with a silvery melody that soars as Lund belts one of the most resounding moments on the album: “Tell your girlfriend she’s got nothing to fear/I’m set in my head/My body’s a different story.” The track “Blue” saunters nonchalantly with a wink; you can almost hear Shapiro’s smile as she sings “Faking it big time/So I can hit my stride/Man, it feels good to be alive,” channeling early Chastity Belt channelling early ’90s before channelling the late Elliott Smith in a spiral of distortion and insight: “Don’t get upset about it/It’s gonna pass/Tell all your friends about it/They’re gonna laugh.” “We have such a strong sense of each other’s musical inclinations” says Lund. “I think this allows for a lot of playfulness…we can kinda surprise each other, like a good punchline would.”
“Chastity Belt is largely confessional; words are the focus here, and these simple, serene landscapes are a fitting backdrop to hear them loud and clear.” – PITCHFORK
“Seattle’s rock scene is experiencing an underground renaissance, and at the center of its close-knit collective of punk-inspired bands is Chastity Belt.” – NPR MUSIC
“a cathartic response to overwhelming anxiety, and provide a powerful soundtrack for slaying that dreaded mind killer” – THE NEW YORK TIMES
“If there’s one thing that Chastity Belt has figured out at this point in their young lives, it’s that honesty will get you far.” – NYLON
“if there is any way to be saved from disappearing completely in a lonely world, it’s through the healing energy of the group hug, or, in this case, the rock band.” – BANDCAMP DAILY
“Spend half an hour with every member of Chastity Belt, the four-piece garage rock band from Seattle, and you just may walk away with a new appreciation for friendship—or at least theirs.” – PASTE
The Fat Angel Sings 