As much as I enjoy La Luz’s albums — their 2021 self-titled fourth album is wonderful — the spectral folk bandleader ShanaCleveland makes on her solo albums is even better. Her debut, “Night of the Worm Moon”, was one of 2019’s more underrated albums and she’s now followed it up with the equally bewitching “Manzanita”. Named for the evergreen shrub that grows in California and is known for its medicinal properties, the record was made while embracing motherhood and beating breast cancer. “This is a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness,” Cleveland says. The 14 songs on the album are alive with mellotron strings, otherworldly pedal steel, desert wildlife and insects, big skies and bigger hearts. Cleveland’s breathy voice is the perfect delivery device for it all.
Check out this KEXP presents Shana Cleveland and the Sandcastles performing live in the KEXP studio. Recorded June 26th, 2015.
Power-pop Musician and the great dB’s member Chris Stamey will release a new solo album “The Great Escape” , Dur for release July 7th via Car Records / Redeye. The album puts country rock spin on hs classic sound, and was born out of a tour with Alejandro Escovedo where he was taken by pedal steel player Eric Heywood. “I marvelled every night at how Eric magically shaped the songs; his instincts were just spot-on,” Chris says. “After the tour, I ended up writing a number of tunes with steel in mind, and was fortunate enough to have him add some of his alchemy to these.” The album also features another pedal steel player, Allyn Love, who “really nailed the energy of the title track, then switched gears for the sensitive dobro textures on “Dear Friend”.
The album also features the talents of his dB’s bandmates Peter Holsapple & Will Rigby, Don Dixon, Mipso’s Libby Rodenbough, Chatham County Line’s John Teer and Dave Wilson, Don Dixon, and Stamey’s old friend and Sneakers bandmate Mitch Easter, who plays drums on a few tracks, including first single “She Might Look My Way.” That is an Alex Chilton song (cowritten with Tommy Hoehn) that Chris tells us is “one I used to play with him at CBGB back in 1977...Alex and I recorded it for Elektra Records but they never released that version.” The version on .“The Great Escape“ is a collaboration with Terry Manning, who was an engineer at Ardent Studios, where Big Star recorded.
We’re premiering the video for “She Might Look My Way,” which Chris tells us about as well: “The video itself is an homage to the lip-sync video TV appearances Alex and the other Box Tops did in the 60s. Here, it’s Alejandro Escovedo who is playing the host of an imaginary late-70s NYC late-night cable-TV show called Rock On. Mitch Easter, who plays drums on the actual recording, is the drummer in the video here. Robert Sledge (bass, Ben Folds Five) and Matt McMichaels (2nd guitar, Mayflies USA) are also in the band here.”
From the new album The Great Escape (out July 7th, 2023, on Car Records/Schoolkids). A tip of the hat to 60s/70s shows such as Upbeat, Shindig, Hullabaloo, and Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party. The song is by Alex Chilton and Tommy Hoehn (Sludge Music BMI). Video shot by Julia Stamey, w/ lighting by Mark Hanley, at Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC.
Detroit indie-rockers Bonny Doon have a new album on the way. Let There Be Music will drop on June 16th on Anti- Records, and the first single, “Naturally,” is already available. The first release since the band’s pair of albums in 2017 and 2018 comes after guitar/vocalists Bill Lennox and Bobby Colombo joined Waxahatchee to play on her album Saint Cloud and join her on tour.
Then the band was sidelined because of health—drummer Jake Kmiecik suffered complications from his Crohn’s disease and Colombo dealt with a brain injury and Lyme disease. It’s great to have the trio back making music again, and lead single “Naturally” shows that they’ve only improved as they’ve taken time for healing. The chill vibe is elevated by tasty understated guitar and keys. “There’s a lot to talk about,” Lennox sings, “and we’ll let it happen naturally.”
Throughout the ten tracks in their new album “Let There Be Music”, you can hear the spaciousness Bonny Doon allowed themselves since their 2018 sleeper cult-classic “Longwave”.
Their latest musical journey is one that has big payoffs for devoted followers and undeniable rewards for anyone just stumbling across the band for the frst time. After extensively touring “Longwave” by supporting Band of Horses, Snail Mail and Waxahatchee,
Soon after, Colombo and Kmiecik, whose steady percussion and devotion to the songs creates a container for the indelible guitar lines, both entered a time of serious healing, These obstacles and commitments drew out the making of “Let There Be Music” for several additional years, and in the process, redefined the record as an achievement in perseverance for the band.
On their long-awaited third album, we get a glimpse into the pure joy of Bonny Doon. The album serves as less of one conceptual story, and each song as their own individual offerings of putting words to the ordinary experience of being alive. The band is at their most dynamic and the song writing deftly explores new terrain. “Let There Be Music” is brimming with small truths – both profound and mundane, comforting and difficult – and we are invited to revel in them all.
Philly duo Crooks & Nannies have “Real Life”, their proper label debut on the way. Lead single “Temper” is a brilliant display of technique, as Max Rafter’s perfect twang pairs with a searing guitar, some twinkling digital bloops and a hook that’ll sink into you deep. “I don’t even know what I’m angry for / Some bullshit about not feeling powerful,” they sing. No album has kicked off quite like this, and, like every Crooks & Nannies song I hear, it’s the best song ever made! Seeing “Real Life“ unfold across the summer is set to be a delight.
Starring: Max Rafter, Sam Huntington, Ryan Ficano, Addy Watkins
releases August 25th, 2023
All songs written and performed by Crooks and Nannies (Sam Huntington and Max Rafter) Also featuring: Ryan Ficano – Additional synth on tracks 2, 3, 5, 8 and 10. Additional vocals on tracks 1 and 3. Bass on tracks 5, 8 and 10. Fiddle on track 8. Additional spooky noises on track 8. Pauli Mia – Additional vocals on track 5. Jacob Blizard – Additional guitar on track 4. Lap steel on track 6. Mark Watter – Additional screaming on track 2. All screaming on track 9.
Cory Hanson’s forthcoming LP “Western Cum” is one of our most-anticipated projects of the summer, and the final teaser single “Ghost Ship” only solidifies that it’s going to be one of the best rock ‘n’ roll records of the summer—maybe even the year altogether. Continuing to build on Hanson’s vivid, gonzo journalist approach to beatnik storytelling, “Ghost Ship” is a mystifying quasi-ballad oozing epic, mid-century shredding. The guitars Hanson and his band employ here are sexy, heavy and waft through the air like a controlled burn. “In a travelog written by seven dwarves / I’m gonna tell you all I’d forgotten at the bottom of the world,” Hanson harmonizes in the chorus.
The western themes of Cory’s previous “Pale Horse Rider”, made flesh in the form of an electric band, lashed with gleaming guitar strings to tracks whose gnarled, proggy path only climes to the top of the listener’s Compulsion Index. From steel to synth, from old-school ballad to nu hardcore and ambient, Hanson and band run the table of modern rocks.
Whereas his first two solo efforts felt like estranged Wand cousins, there is a big old bold step into country psych pastures on this new solo set.
If you do nothing else today, you have to check out the nightmare-inducing “Housefly” claymation music video from Sean McAnulty!
There is a real Jim O’Rourke-esque sparkle to the guitar riffs (a label mate on Drag City of course), and dynamically the songs are as engaging when they are whispered and cooed as when they are rocked and wailed.
The way he leans on the country tones is just fantastic, a sort of loose frame to jump off into some gorgeously melodic balladeering and trippy walls of guitar cruisers. A great set of songs that all sit together impeccably and highlight what a fantastic vocalist he is. Subtle but arresting, this one will get you hooked, it certainly has us!
“Western Cum” is the third solo LP from Hanson, the inimitable vocalist and leader of the excellent LA psychedelic rock band Wand. Whereas his first two solo efforts felt like estranged Wand cousins, there is a big old bold step into country psych pastures on this new solo set.
The Venus Fly Trap are a British alternative rock band founded in Northampton in the late 1980’s. Their eclectic style of alternative music blended post-punk with goth to form a dark psychedelic hybrid.
The band was formed by Alex Novak (vocals, formerly of Religious Overdose, Attrition, and The Tempest) and John Novak (guitar, vocals, formerly Where’s Lisse?), plus Tony Booker on bass guitar prior to their debut twelve-inch single ‘Morphine’ in March 1988.
The band decided to release a very interesting compilation, ‘Time Lapse’. It’s a selection of tracks collected from the albums “Dark Amour” “Zenith” and “Nemesis”, placed together as a possible alternative album in this alternate reality. “Time Lapse” used to refer to a method of filming, by taking a series of single pictures over a period of time and then putting them together to show the action happening quickly. Plot – Urban decay, on the concourse, escapism via drugs, machines choking the arteries. A Moscow apartment, economic refugees, the human menagerie. Zen and the art of vehicles, crucified by the highway, on the road to…Fallen statues in public parks, the prince of narcosis, to the sea of tranquility. T minus and counting, dedicated to all astronomers … keep watching the skies.
Second part (the first part 1989-1994 came out in 2021) is a selection of tracks collected from the albums “Dark Amour”, “Zenith” and “Nemesis”, placed together as a possible alternative album in this alternate reality.
Texas-bred singer/songwriter and Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek announces his new album, “Haunted Mountain”, out 25th August. His first release for 4AD, Meek also shares the lead single and title track, ‘Haunted Mountain’, a song co-written alongside his friend and long-time hero Jolie Holland.
Following his beloved 2021 album, “Two Saviors”, “Haunted Mountain” marks Meek’s third solo album. “Haunted Mountain” is about love and… something other. Something bigger than love, something that doesn’t challenge love exactly but stands in contrast to it. A soulfulness, or a soul-seeking fullness. Meek says that loves songs are the hardest write. “Not break-up songs, but an actual love song written in earnest? That is taboo now,” he says. “Sometimes it can feel like all the great love songs have already been written.”
Lead single ‘Haunted Mountain’ is anchored by sweet lyrics penned by Meek and Holland, who is also from Texas and shares co-writing credits on five of “Haunted Mountain’s” 11 songs. The first two verses and chorus of ‘Haunted Mountain’ were written by Holland as a love song to Mount Shasta in northern California, with the final verse written by Meek, together seeking reciprocity with nature. “It’s about being humbled by the thing you’re drawing power from only at which point an actual, fair relationship begins,” he says. Propelled by the pristine chemistry of his band, ‘Haunted Mountain’ is presented alongside a Riley Engemoen-directed video that captures the group’s in-studio magic.
560 miles from Meek’s hometown of Wimberly, TX, the Franklin Mountains – or more reverently named, Sierras de los Mansos – rise over the tops of the endless acres of pecan trees that surround Sonic Round in the border of Tornillo, where “Haunted Mountain” was recorded. The songs were written in mountains: by sold springs in the Serra de Estela of Portugal, on the submerged volcano of Milos in the Cyclades, Valle Onsernone in the Swiss Alps (where Haunted Mountain’s cover photo was taken), and the Santa Monica range where Meek now calls home – all where his new love was born.
On “Haunted Mountain”, love often assumes a natural form – crystal ball dew-drops, green rivers and grasses, tears bottled. Sometimes it becomes artificial – mood rings, earrings, a pair of jeans, motorcycles and spacecraft. Sometimes cosmic – “I fell into a black hole with the hot flux of hazel” (from ‘Paradise’). Love is a consciousness here, interacting with the lovers, greeting them, watching them sometimes, becoming them sometimes. It extends beyond romance, examining the inexhaustible bond between mother and sun, and asks – is love a form of magic? “When you are in love, it inhabits your environment, animates the inanimate, charging everything around you with a sense of meaning,” he says. “and not just new love; also love of many years.”
Since Buck’s self-titled full-length album, his band has remained consistent – Adam Brisbin (guitar), Austin Vaughn (drums), and Mat Davidson (pedal steel, bass on Buck Meek and “Two Saviors”). In the year or so leading up to recording “Haunted Mountain“, they were joined by Ken Woodward (bass) as well as Meek’s brother, Dylan, who joined them for the session on piano and synths. Produced by the band’s own Davidson, “Haunted Mountain” was recorded and mixed in two weeks by AdrianOlsen, who also performed the sound manipulation via modular synthesizer that can be heard throughout the album.
One intention was to make a hi-fi album that contrasted with the intentionally lo-fi approach of “Two Saviors”, while preserving the intimacy. Recorded live to two-inch tape, the group played together in one big room, with no headphones. In Davidson’s words, “the music here is an expression of a group. I asked for the job because I felt strongly that we shouldn’t bring in someone from outside the band. Otherwise, the only personal desire I had was that we be able to explore space, that we let the music open up and slow down in contrast to previous records – not in terms of tempo but rather overall movement, information between the beats.”
Meek believes that all of the great love songs have not been written yet. In between the lines of “Haunted Mountain”, we hear that love, in every form, is the creation of home, from within – forever leaving one to find another.
“You don’t want your stuff to vanish,” says Joe Pernice about the twenty-fifth anniversary reissue of “Overcome By Happiness”. “Not that I’m looking to get famous, but you need to connect with the world. There’s something that reaffirms your own life in that echo that comes back to you—even if it’s your own voice coming back.”
The story of “Overcome By Happiness” is one of great risk and greater payoff. It’s the story of a disgruntled country singer struggling to define himself against prevailing musical trends. It’s the story of a songwriter just finding his voice, an artist so desperate to express himself that he scrapped one band to form another, risking his record contract and arguably his career to put the sounds he heard in his head onto tape. It’s the story of a musician embracing the sounds of his childhood: AM easy listening, sophisticated chamber pop, baroque lounge music, Bread, the Carpenters, Bacharach, Manilow. It’s the story of a poet driving through Massachusetts in a rusted-out Bonneville with a wooden bumper.
This time has come for this story to be told on vinyl. Released 25 years later to the day, New West Records is proud to present the remastered 25th Anniversary Edition of “Overcome By Happiness” on vinyl.
The Players: Joe Pernice – Vocals, Guitars Thom Monahan – Bass, Vocals Michael Deming – Acoustic & Electric Pianos, Vocals Peyton Pinkerton – Guitars, Vocals Bob Pernice – Guitars, Vocals Aaron Sperske – Drum Kit, Tympanum, Percussion
The Orchestra: Anhared Stowe – Violin Christine Kolberger – Violin Katrina J. Smith – Viola Kathleen Shiano – Cello Susan Cavender Knapp – Harp Tim Atherton – First Trombone David Sporny – Second Trombone Peter McEachearn – Third Trombone Mike Jones – Flugelhorn
Nils Lofgren has provided musical backing for Neil Young at various times over the last half-century, and now Young is now returning the favour, singing on Lofgren’s new single, the tender love song “Nothin’s Easy (for Amy).”
Amy is Lofgren’s wife, Amy Aiello Lofgren, who co-produced the album that contains this song, the album “Mountains”. It’s due to be released July 21st, and Nils Lofgren has already released one single from it, “Ain’t the Truth Enough,” featuring Ringo Starr on drums.
In a press release, Nils described “Nothin’s Easy (for Amy)” this way: “An apocalyptic landscape, the lone tulip, left in the road. Walking hand in hand with my true love as compassion and common sense careen toward extinction. This ultimate gift and blessing demands hope. ‘We’re all drowning in the answers, best get movin’, God don’t row … as I walk the hurt in this world, nothin’s easy, ‘cept you.’ After 54 years singing with musical giant Neil Young, his haunted, weathered soul, completes this song. Of course, inspired by and written for Amy.”
Other guests on “Mountains” include the late David Crosby, jazz bassist Ron Carter, singer Cindy Mizelle and the Howard Gospel Choir.
Nils Lofgren is currently touring with Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, whose next show takes place May 25th at the Johan Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam.
The Fat Angel Sings 