Released as the B-side to fan-favourite “Vampire Empire,” Big Thief’s latest single offering is all unbridled elation bubbling underneath the surface of indie folk mastery. Adrianne Lenker sings “When the hard times come and the hard times stay, when they stick around and won’t go away, I was born for loving you. That’s just something I was made to do.” The arrangement is understated, twangy and laid-back—even Lenker’s delivery lands on the mellower side of her catalogue—but it’s the warmest the band has ever sounded. Though a new staple in the group’s live sets, this studio version of “Born for Loving You” is a stark reminder of what it means to be genuine and genuinely in love.
Ebony Lamb finalist for the 2023 Silver Scroll Award, continues to tease her self-titled debut album, out on 20th October via Nadia Reid’s Slow Time Records. The Pōneke-based songwriter today reveals her latest single and video for ‘Drive Me Around’, directed by Shyam Patel and Jacob Munro,made with the support of NZ On Air. It features the producing chops of Aotearoa icons Bic Runga and Kody Nielson (Opossum, Silicon, UMO), with additional collaboration from old Eb & Sparrow bandmate Gram Antler.
The soulful singer leans into vintage sounds from Mellotron flute, marching percussion and restrained guitar as she twirls through urban locales in the accompanying clip — including the Woodward Street pedestrian tunnel, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa (The National Library of New Zealand) and the overbridge of Aurora Terrace Motorway. Lamb will soon commence a tour with bandmates Phoebe Johnson and Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa.
“I’m thinking about one of my oldest best friends (in the song). We grew up together in Hawkes Bay, and he really looked out for me in my formative years, driving us all over the place, spending time together, experimenting, and experiencing life. We don’t see each other anymore, but I still think about him that way.”
Ebony Lamb’s self-titled debut solo album is out on Friday 20th October via Slow Time Records.
The third album and the Sub PopRecords debut by Chicago rock band Deeper brings touches of The Cars, Television, and Low-era David Bowie to the band’s brand of catchy, energetic, guitar-driven rock. Deeper is an integral part of the vibrant Chicago scene that includes bands like Dehd, Lala Lala, Horsegirl, and Lifeguard.
You can’t get Deeper if you’re standing still. That’s intentional, says the Chicago quartet’s Nic Gohl. “Does it feel good when you’re listening to this song? Does your body want to move with it?” These are the questions he asked himself as he and bandmates Shiraz Bhatti, Drew McBride, and Kevin Fairbairn were writing and recording “Careful!”, their third record and Sub Pop debut album release. “I wanted these to be interesting songs, but in a way where a two-year-old would vibe out to it,” Gohl adds. “It’s pop music, basically.” That “basically” qualifier is working pretty hard, as fans of 2020’s “Auto-Pain” might suppose. On “Careful!”, they’re not reimagining their sound so much as testing its limits. If you want to, you can hear echoes of David Bowie’s Lowin the snapping rhythm and gray-sky synths of “Tele,” but you can also hear a bit of “Auto-Pain” in the nailed-in, stippling lines being spit out by Bhatti’s drum programming and McBride’s synthesizer. “Fame” seems to stumble together and nearly fall apart, the dialed-up noise making the beat feel maniacal and a little invincible, the whole thing a series of short, snipped, autonomous gestures that are by now Deeper’s trademark.
“Build a Bridge” pushes in the opposite direction, using a prickly guitar line to launch into big, smeary art-pop, its emotional palette clear, well-defined, and easy to latch onto. On “Sub,” Gohl sings above and below the melody like Ian McCulloch, bellowing and wondering and ruminating and rounding into swaggering confidence that the band rises to meet. It’s festival headliner music that still feels like it was written in a garage. That fraternal interdependence is near the center of Deeper’s music. The musical and lyrical devotion to mutuality makes this restlessly curious, stylistically broad album feels like the most coherent portrait of who Deeper is. Or, as McBride ultimately frames it, “Careful! is about looking out for one another.”
And if “Careful!” is the result of such self-interrogation, then a Deeper song is a maze. These songs tangle and untangle. They smash together tightly-wound instrumentals with Nic Gohls’ amorphic shouting. Lines like “Playful words are meaningless / Cover them with gasoline and pray” gesture towards some kind of profoundness, even though they’re oblique enough to not mean anything at all. For all of its pulsing, four-on-the-floor rock music, “Careful!” still feels like a thinker. Even if Deeper wanted this album to be their “pop music” record, as Gohl has suggested, the album is coursing with too much dissonance and angularity to land that way. At the same time, it’s that puzzling and vibrative energy that keeps these songs interesting.
Deeper have always had a musical connectedness that makes them sound lean and confident, but they seem more comfortable incorporating new elements into that connective tissue now. The synth-work across “Careful!” adds electricity; a saxophone snarls in between the guitars on “Fame”; there’s a nearly-danceable beat on “Tele.” And yet, the distinction between “Careful!” and isn’t quite the leaps and bounds that the band might’ve promised. The colour palettes have changed slightly, but the architecture remains the same. They still sound sharp.
Cory Hanson and Ty Segall have decided to release the much anticipated single “She’s a Beam” along with “Milk Bird Flyer”. Both songs were recorded 5 years ago, and were recently rediscovered. They will be donating 100% of the first week’s sales of both songs to Black Lives Matter LA.
Frankie Cosmos’ “Abigail,” one of the pawsitively awesome standouts from 2022’s “Inner World Peace”, is being released today as a new remix by Kero Kero Bonito, along with a new arrangement of the song by Greta Kline, and the original demo version.
Kline says, “‘Abigail’ is named after, and is partly about, a dog I saw on Petfinder years ago and became obsessed with. The album art is my drawn version of a real text exchange about her.” “Kero Kero Bonito is one of our favorite bands (collectively) and after we covered ‘Fish Bowl’ for their ‘remix’ album in 2017, they always said they would remix something of ours someday. They went above and beyond crafting such a fun & original track from the ‘Abigail’ stems for the Kero Kero Bonito remix.
“I’m excited to also showcase my ability as a producer by releasing a new arrangement of ‘Abigail (Casio Version)’ recorded entirely by me at home.
“The original demo of ‘Abigail (Great Scraps Demo)’ is a full verse shorter and super bare – it shows how much the band expanded it and brought it to life for the album version. I think it’s fun to let the listener in on some of the different ways a song can exist, it’s infinite!”
Frankie Cosmos has scheduled a autumn US tour in support of “Inner World Peace” and its expanded, digital deluxe edition “Clean Weird Prone“, both available now from Sub Pop Records.
Chan Marshall aka Cat Power shares her takes on “Ballad of a Thin Man” and “She Belongs to Me” ahead of the November 10th release of “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert”.
Cat Power after announcing her new live album Recorded November 5th, 2022 at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Sings Dylan concert finds Chan Marshall delivering a song-for-song recreation of one of the most celebrated live sets of all time. Dylan’s 1966 concert was the culmination of one of the most consequential tours in the history of rock & roll – when he electrified his songs, and by doing so enraged his devoted audience.
In November 2022, Cat Power took the stage at London’s Royal Albert Hall and delivered a song-for-song recreation of one of the most fabled and transformative live sets of all time. Held at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in May 1966—but long known as the “Royal Albert Hall Concert” due to a mislabeled bootleg—the original performance saw Bob Dylan switching from acoustic to electric midway through the show, drawing ire from an audience of folk purists and forever altering the course of rock-and-roll. In her own rendition of that historic night, the artist otherwise known as Chan Marshall inhabited each song with equal parts conviction and grace and a palpable sense of protectiveness, ultimately transposing the anarchic tension of Dylan’s set with a warm and luminous joy. Now captured on the live album Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert, Marshall’s spellbinding performance both lovingly honours her hero’s imprint on history and brings a stunning new vitality to many of his most revered songs.
Cat Power bring’s those songs to the Hall , performing them in the same order as Dylan himself: the first half of the show being an acoustic set before being joined by her electric band for the second half.
Held at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in May 1966—but long known as the “Royal Albert Hall Concert” due to a mislabeled bootleg—the original performance saw Bob Dylan switching from acoustic to electric midway through the show, which quickly became one of the most infamous moments in the history of popular music .
Cat Power Sings Dylan both honours Dylan’s imprint on history and brings a new perspective to many of his most revered songs, including “She Belongs to Me” and “Ballad of a Thin Man,” both of which are out now.
The upcoming album ‘Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert’ out November 10th on Domino Record Co.
Peter Gabriel’s long-awaited “I/O” still doesn’t have an official release date, but the ex-Genesis leader has spent much of 2023 releasing new material to mark full moons. He began with “Panopticom” in early January, which he’s chased with monthly entries like the Brian Eno collaborations “Four Kinds of Horses” and “Road to Joy.” Whenever it arrives, “I/O” will be the first all-new studio LP from Gabriel since 2010’s “Scratch My Back”.
Peter Gabriel has shared “So Much” , another stunning track from his upcoming studio album, “i/o”. It’s the seventh song released, which he’s been doing once each month in 2023 upon a full moon.
He’s supporting the album with an extensive tour that began in Europe on May 18th. (The tour resumes with a North American edition beginning on September. 8th.)
The first track, “Panopticom,” was released at midnight on January 6,th nearly two months after he announced plans for the tour last until November. “i/o The Tour” sees Gabriel playing new material from the forthcoming album, as well as delving into his extensive catalogue of music, with hits, fan favorites and “the unexpected.”
Written and produced by Gabriel, “So Much” features a string arrangement from John Metcalfe and contributions from Tony Levin on bass, David Rhodes on guitar and backing vocals from Peter’s daughter Melanie Gabriel.
“I was trying purposefully not to be clever with this,” says Gabriel. “I wanted to get a very simple chorus but one which still had some substance to the harmony and melody. Something that was easy to digest but still had a bit of character to it.
“‘So Much’ is about mortality, getting old, all the bright, cheerful subjects, but I think when you get to my sort of age, you either run away from mortality or you jump into it and try and live life to the full and that always seems to make a lot more sense to me. The countries that seem most alive are those that have death as part of their culture.”
The previous track, “Road to Joy,” features the Soweto Gospel Choir, a string arrangement from John Metcalfe and contributions from a number of Gabriel’s current touring band. The song is one of the last tracks to emerge for the “i/o” record, but it has some DNA from an earlier project. “It was actually very late in the record that we got to this,” says Gabriel. There had been a song that musically I’d started, I think, around the OVO project called Pukka. It was very different to this, but it was actually the starting point for coming back to this song. I just felt there was a good groove there, and I wanted something else with rhythm and so we tried a few things when I was working with Brian Eno. The excitement and energy in the song was something that I was getting off on. I felt we didn’t have enough of that for this record.”
The fifth track released, “Four Kinds of Horses,” “actually began on Richard Russell’s project ‘Everything IsRecorded,’ said Gabriel in a May post. “He’s a friend (and founder of XL Records) and he asked me to pop in to his studio. I came up with some chords, melodies and words on top of a groove he was working on. We tried a few things that didn’t altogether work and so it laid dormant for quite a while. Then I started playing around with it again and changed the mood and the groove and something else began to emerge with a better chorus.
When he released the title track on April 6th, he noted, “This month the song is ‘i/o’ and ‘i/o’ means input/output. You see it on the back of a lot of electrical equipment and it just triggered some ideas about the stuff we put in and pull out of ourselves, in physical and non-physical ways,” says Gabriel. The song features Soweto Gospel Choir, who were recorded at High Seas Studios in South Africa.
Of the album, he says, “It’s been around for a long time as a title for this project. I always knew I was going to write a song called “i/o”,
“‘Playing For Time,’” says Gabriel of the stunning third track, “is a song that I have been working on for a long time and have performed live, without lyrics, so some people may be familiar with it. It’s been an important song for me. It’s about time, mortality and memories and the idea that each of us has a planet full of memories which get stashed inside the brain.
“It is more of a personal song about how you assemble memories and whether we are prisoners of time or whether that is something that can actually free us. I do think it’s good to push yourself towards more bold or interesting experiences because then you will have richer memories to feed you when you get to my age. You also get taught by every meaningful experience that you go through.
Of “The Court,” Gabriel says, he was inspired by the work of Namati, whose mission is to provide people around the world access to justice they may not otherwise be able to afford. “I had this idea for ‘the court will rise’ chorus, so it became a free-form, impressionistic lyric that connected to justice, but there’s a sense of urgency there. A lot of life is a struggle between order and chaos and in some senses the justice or legal system is something that we impose to try and bring some element of order to the chaos. That’s often abused, it’s often unfair and discriminatory but at the same time it’s probably an essential part of a civilized society.” Listen to the song as well as an extended feature on the track. “I’m an old drummer; I still love to find a groove,” he says.
The European dates marked his first shows outside of North America since 2014’s tour celebrating the era-defining album “So”. “It’s been a while and I am now surrounded by a whole lot of new songs and am excited to be taking them out on the road for a spin. Look forward to seeing you out there,” said Gabriel in the original November tour announcement.
Produced by Live Nation, the 22 shows in Europe kicked off on May 18th before wrapping on June 25th. The touring band includes Gabriel veterans Tony Levin (bass), Richard Evans (guitar, flute), Manu Katché (drums), and David Rhodes (guitar), plus newcomers Ayanna Witter-Johnson (cello, piano, vocals), MarinaMoore (violin, viola, vocals), Don McLean (keyboards), and Josh Shpak (trumpet, french horn, keys, vocals).
In December, Gabriel previewed the first release, “Panopticom,” and the tour for members of his fan club.
“Panopticom” references an idea that Gabriel has been working on to initiate the creation of an infinitely expandable accessible data globe. The aim is to “allow the world to see itself better and understand more of what’s really going on.”
“I’m lucky to have two of the world’s best mix engineers, Tchad Blake and Mark ‘Spike’ Stent, working with me on the music from “i/o,” Gabriel wrote . “Rather than choosing only one of their mixes to release I have decided that people should be able to hear all the great work that they are both doing.”
New York post-punkers Nation Of Language will follow up with a new album, their big breakout, the 2021 sophomore album “A Way Forward”, with their new LP “Strange Disciple” to be released this week. The band has already shared the early tracks “Sole Obsession,” “Weak In Your Light,” “Stumbling Still,” and “Too Much, Enough.” And a few days ago, they also covered Aldous Harding’s “Treasure” live-in-studio for SiriusXM. the band have dropped one last track before the LP arrives.
Nation Of Language’s new song “Sightseer” is a graceful, restrained piece of new wave. Ian Richard Devaney’s voice is swaddled in reverb, and he delivers most of his lyrics in a majestic sigh while a gentle bassline and a gleaming keyboard propel him along. It sounds like something that New Order might make if they were in an uncommonly chill mood.
Released on: 11th September 2023 through Play It Again Sam
When recording “Sucker”, her fourth LP as Ian Sweet, Jilian Medford broke out of her comfort zone, both as a musician and as a Los Angeles resident feeling stuck in isolation. That liberating feeling takes shape in a catchy, polished sound audible in lead single “Your Spit” (whose music video features cameos by Saturday Night Live cast members Sarah Sherman and Martin Herlihy). “Your Spit,” is a hooky and blown-out rock song with the chorus: “Kiss me like you mean it/ Kiss me like you’re leavin/ Your spit tastes different/ Kiss me like you mean it/ Make me believe it.”
“‘Your Spit’ is about the joy and fear that surrounds new relationships,” Medford said. “The excitement that’s also accompanied by doubt. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say the song is just mostly about making out.”
It was produced by Alex Craig and Strange Ranger’s Isaac Eiger,
“Sucker” also includes a new rendition of “Fight,” which originally appeared on Medford’s 2022 “StarStuff” EP, for a little dose of reimagining her past in the present.
Kristin Hersh’s new album is a cinematic road trip; a series of personal vignettes from a fiercely independent auteur, sitting plush with layers of all- consuming strings and mellotron.
It’s a watershed moment in a career overflowing with creative firsts and inspirational thinking; an elegant piece of personal reportage, a home movie caught in time. Previously, the juxtaposition of light and dark has been essential to the drama of Throwing Muses and 50FOOTWAVE, but this solo set is something of a departure; more inward looking, quieter but outspoken, underpinned by background noise for ambience and awkwardness. “Passion sounds less angry, more grateful, I think,” Kristin muses, “sweeter, sadder. And somehow, no less alive… over car engines and rain in New England and whistling ducks and wind chimes in New Orleans, it all sounds wistful to me.”
“Clear Pond Road” is a life-affirming statement, a further part of the jigsaw, a very personal memoir, from street signs to snapshots; a late blossoming and coming-of-age from a true icon of independence. The record is both intimate yet expansive, written largely within the confines of Hersh’s home, making the proceedings ever more personal.
“Deliciously dark and yet full of an elegant lightness, this is Hersh at the top of her considerable game” ★★★★ Uncut Magazine
“Stunning” The Wire: Adventures In Modern Music
“Personal, passionate and quietly intimate” MOJO
“Simple and propulsive” Stereogum
“Fierce but intimate, pretty but lacerating… it comes with 30 years of rock and roll life behind it.” Aquarium Drunkard
“A wonderful record … Hersh has parlayed subcultural innovations – and sometimes abyssal bleakness – into something with incredible longevity, depth and beauty.” ★★★★★ theartsdesk.com
“Her powers of observation and capacity to live within her art, which combined with her capacity for communicating sincere emotion with her audience, goes a long way to explain Hersh’s enduring appeal.” The Quietus
“A stripped down look into intimate moments of Hersh’s life. It pays homage to all the little pieces that make up the concept of living” Under the Radar
“Resisting convention, it refuses to be pinned down” ★★★★ Slant Magazine
“Beautiful” BrooklynVegan
“A rather quiet affair, a finely arranged album full of bittersweet love songs” Rolling Stone Germany
Kristin Hersh’s new album ‘Clear Pond Road’ is a cinematic road trip; a series of personal vignettes from a fiercely independent auteur, plush with layers of atonal, edgy-dreamy strings and mellotron. It’s a watershed moment in a career overflowing with creative firsts and inspirational thinking, an elegant piece of personal reportage: a home movie caught in time.
The Fat Angel Sings 