People, let’s us talk about an album. Bonnie Prince Billy has made a number of them, and heard a bunch more in his time of knowing. He’s found them hewn from moments, admired them as small and accountable – the communication of music in emotion, release and catharsis, to edify, to entertain, in two sides and less than an hour.
“Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You” presents simply – an album made as it was meant to be heard, in a room. The sound of people together – a sound we’d so recently feared that we’d lost – playing, communing, strings and wood and keys and voices singing. “Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You” presents simply, and is sung along easily and happily with in time But –is it family portrait or fairy tale? How does it think the world was made, and will end?
“Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You” was recorded in Louisville by Nick Roeder, featuring Sara Louise Callaway on violin, Kendall Carter on keys, Elisabeth Fuchsia on viola and violin, Dave Howard on Mandolin, Drew Miller on saxophone and Dane Waters’ voice. The presence of so many local players and music educators in the band lends not only to a flow of moments so fluidly encompassing of a wide range of music’s from classical to Japanese acid folk and elsewhere, but perhaps even more importantly, to the sense of community, heredity and the triumph of inheritance that is the marrow and life blood of this music.
“Bananas” is from “Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You,” available on LP/CS/CD/Digital from Drag City on August 11th, 2023.
Squid’s latest taste of “O Monolith” is over six minutes long and it finds the UK art rock band exploring some new ground. “The end of the song is really soft and tender and I don’t think we’ve done something like that before,” singer Ollie Judge says.
Teeming with melodic epiphanies and layered sounds, Squid’s second album “O Monolith” is a musical evocation of environment, domesticity and self-made folklore. Like its predecessor, 2021’s critically acclaimed, UK number 4 album “Bright Green Field”, it is dense and tricksy – but also more warm and characterful, with a meandering, questioning nature.
Expansive, evocative and hugely varied, “O Monolith” retains Squid’s restless, enigmatic spirit, but it still holds surprises for those familiar with “Bright Green Field”. It’s a reflection of the outsized progression of a band always looking to the future. Like its namesake, “O Monolith” is vast and strange; alive with endless possible interpretations of its inner mysteries.
Formed in Brighton, Squid is the brainchild of Louis Borlase (Guitars & Vocals), Ollie Judge (Drums & Lead Vocals), Arthur Leadbetter (Keyboards, Strings), Laurie Nankivell (Bass & Brass) and Anton Pearson (Guitars & Vocals)
From the forthcoming album ‘O Monolith’ out 9th June via Warp Records.
In classic punk and pop punk fashion, Heart Attack Man are irreverent but that doesn’t mean they don’t take themselves seriously. On their new album “Freak of Nature”, there’s one song where the narrator compares themselves to an assassinated Kennedy and another from the perspective of a stalker threatening to kill Heart Attack Man vocalist Eric Egan in his sleep. Many of the songs are informed by, in Eric’s words, “feelings of isolation, loneliness, and freakiness,” but for all the dark shit on “Freak of Nature”, it’s consistently a fun, lighthearted album. It mixes the influence of the most radio-friendly of pop punk bands (blink-182, Sum 41) with beloved underground gems (Sugar, Piebald), and there’s also some weirder stuff like the Butthole Surfers/Beck-influenced “Late to the Orgy.” H.A.M. embrace a handful of familiar, by-the-book pop punk tricks, yet they do it in a way that’s entirely artistic, and they retain a level of grit that was often lost during the genre’s Y2K-era boom that Heart Attack Man pull from. They’re a rare band who feel catchy enough for arenas and punk enough for basements all at once.
It’s a great record that splits the difference between radio-friendly hooks and underground grit, and it’s got some dark themes but never in a way that takes itself too seriously. You can read my review of it in Notable Releases, and for a deeper dive into the album, vocalist Eric Egan has also given us a track-by-track breakdown of the whole thing.
“Practiced In The Mirror” My mentality going into this song was to make a proper introduction song that isn’t just a short audio clip or 15 seconds of pointless ambience—I wanted to write a song where the lyrics literally welcome you to the record. The last lyrics of the last song (Leap Year) on our release before this one (Thoughtz & Prayer) are “I’m happy to be here” and the opening lyrics of this song and this record are “I’m so happy that you’re here.” It’s a warm welcome to our freaky little world.
“Freak Of Nature” After a nice, inviting welcome to the album; we kick it into high gear with the most Heart Attack Man sounding song we could conjure up. This song really just started with wanting to write a super hype pop punk anthem based around a truly epic and fun shreddy riff.
“Like A Kennedy” I’ve been wanting to write a song invoking the Kennedy assassination for a long time, but it had to be done right. A relative of mine was involved in the plot, and this song really is really near and dear to my heart in a very strange way.
“Late To The Orgy” Going into this song, I really wanted to incorporate some influences that haven’t been tapped into in the Heart Attack Man Hammyverse yet—namely, The Butthole Surfers and Beck. There’s something so cool to me about those bands and I think they get overlooked a lot. They have an extremely weird swagger that’s hard to nail down.
“Stick Up” My biggest musical inspirations for this song were Paper Planes by MIA and Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz. I wanted to make the most conventionally pop-sounding Heart Attack Man song yet, but with lyrics that deliberately disqualify it from being a conventional pop song.
“God Called Off Today” The idea with this song was to channel some influence from the more nerdy, emo, story-telling lyrics into a song that we haven’t tried yet. Musically I was really inspired by Piebald and Modern Baseball, but with lyrics that read and resolve like a country song.
“C4” Ripping right into this one, the starting point was to have a super upbeat and impossibly catchy pop punk banger with an immediately recognizable drum intro…and of course, lyrics that you can’t sing in a bank or a government building.
“9 On Your Bedside” This song is the most intensely personal song on the record to me. Very long and traumatic story short, for awhile, I was being harassed by someone who called me late at night threatening to kill me (among many other things) and because of this, I was sleeping with my handgun on my bedside for some time. Rather than hash out trauma from my perspective, I decided to write the lyrics from the other perspective in the situation. That situation sucked, but we all got a banger of a song out of it.
“Clown School” To lighten the mood after a real doozy, Clown School reflects on the process of deprogramming from taking oneself entirely way too seriously. I used to be a completely insufferable and miserable person, and now I’m just insufferable! Musically, the idea was to take influence from one of my all time favorite bands, Sugar.
“See You On The Other Side” This song is dedicated to my dog Smoke that passed away. I never got to say goodbye to him and I miss him so much. He was the goodest chocolate lab in the whole wide world that ever lived. He deserved all of the treats, as well as a song dedicated to him. RIP my buddy.
If you are a fan of UK trio The Orielles, like me, you may already know what “The Goyt Method”is. Named for Goyt Studio where they made last year’s excellent “Tableau”, it’s a term they came up with to describe a deconstructive method of making music. “To Goyt it,” drummer Sidonie B Hand-Halford said, “that’s getting all these pieces and rearranging them. We had vocal melodies and ideas that we’d then run through and sample, and play them on sample pads. We were being editors, really.” They take that to the nth degree on this new EP which explores their “interest in cybernetics, improvisation and experimental electronic music.” The EP takes those Tableau pieces and entirely rearranges them, using an online roulette wheel to choose the loops and stems randomly. “The Goyt Method” is almost entirely devoid of anything resembling pop structure, but these five songs are nonetheless compelling, and hang together with intent and purpose.
“The Goyt Method” EP. Released is released on 12″ on black vinyl with artwork by Ben Thompson. The 5 track EP features brand new songs constructed from randomly chosen parts of tracks from their recently released, critically acclaimed fourth album, ‘Tableau,’ which was released last Autumn. It’s the perfect companion piece to their stunning 2022 record.
Windows open into The Coral’s vivid cinematic and broadcast dreamworlds as they announce two albums, both to be released on September 8th… Following the widely-acclaimed 2021 double album, “Coral Island”, the band announce ‘surreal Italian spaghetti western soundtrack’, “Sea Of Mirrors” which will be available on multiple vinyl formats alongside regular black… Numbered Dinked exclusive splattered vinyl with bonus 7”, plus signed print Band store exclusive metallic gold vinyl Independent retail Tricolour marbled vinyl Rough Trade includes bonus flexi disc …plus an HMV exclusive sleeve CD and exclusive bundles on the band’s store
Bridging “Coral Island” and “Sea Of Mirrors”, a second album titled “Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show”, will also be released on the same day, bringing James and Ian Skelly’s grandad a.k.a The Great Muriarty back into the fold for the narrated post-script to one of The Coral’s most successful albums to date. “Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show” will have a never to be repeated, one off pressing on black vinyl, CD and cassette.
Production and Direction by James Slater Taken from the band’s forthcoming album ‘Sea Of Mirrors’ to be released on 8th September 2023.
We love it when the Australian psych bands mix and mingle. GUM, the project of Tame Impala/Pond member Jay Watson, has teamed up with Ambrose Kenny-Smith of King Gizzard/Murlocs fame on a new 7″ single. It was released physically for Record Store Day over the weekend, and now both songs are online.
These tracks make great use of Kenny-Smith’s fiery, soulful delivery by lacing him with a funky synthetic backbeat. A-side “Minor Setback,” which arrives with a video by Jacob Armstrong, also has a spicy keyboard solo, while B-side “Old Transistor Radio” matches Bonham-esque drum thwacks with an almost country-blues approach.
A quote from Watson: I make a lot of music, but often don’t have the voice or the steez to put a vocal on certain pieces of music. I’ve known Ambrose for 10 years or so now and I’ve always loved his voice, a mix of garage rock and soulfulness. We’ve talked about putting something out together for a long time. I reached out to him and the songs were done in less than a week. Might have to make a whole record!
And here’s one from Kenny-Smith: When GUM hit me up to sing on a few tracks of his I was super excited! These songs are way funkier than anything I’ve ever worked on before. After he sent me “Magic Mountain” by Eric Burdon and War as a reference for the vocals he was wanting from me I was instantly 110% in.
GUM/Ambrose Kenny-Smith new track “Minor Setback” released 24th April.
Kevin Morby’s “This Is A Photograph”, was released last year, was a defining moment for the 34-year-old songwriter. The New York Times described it as “a confident 45-minute sashay through vulnerable devotionals and existential reflections, tuneful folk and handclap soul,” and it currently stands as his most complete artistic statement. He announces “More Photographs (AContinuum)“, a companion piece to “This Is A Photograph”, and will be released May 26th on Dead Oceans.
He also shares two new songs, “This Is A Photograph II” b/w “Five Easy Pieces Revisited.” “This Is A Photograph” features Morby’s richest songwriting to date” (Vulture), and studies life, time and mortality through myriad lenses, so it only makes sense that he found he wasn’t quite done with it on its completion. “More Photographs (A Continuum)” finds new nooks, corners and vantage points. “If This Is A Photograph” is a house that you have been living inside of,” says Morby, “then “More Photographs” is, perhaps, the same home just experienced differently. As if you, its inhabitant, have taken a tab of something psychedelic and now, suddenly, you’ve replaced your eyeglasses with kaleidoscopes.”
Here, Morby returns to his landmark album’s bottomless themes with new wisdom, new imagination, and the winking, looping callbacks that tie his full body of work together in uniquely special ways. “Everything you once thought was familiar,” he continues, “suddenly appears differently, shifting shapes, color and sonic landscapes.” “Five Easy Pieces Revisited” captures the same moment from Bobby’s point of view; “This Is A Photograph II” takes a similar tack, revisiting its predecessor from a different angle.
“With every collection of songs,” says Morby, “I feel I have to cast them out of me before moving onto the next project, and here I knew that what I had begun with“This Is A Photograph” was not finished. Releasing this collection is me tying a bow on that time and place in my creative life.”
“Triumph” by Kevin Morby from the project ‘More Photographs (A Continuum)’, out now on Dead Oceans Records.
At first, Gia Margaret called her new album ‘Romantic Piano’ to be a bit cheeky. Its spare, gentle piano works share more spirit with Erik Satie, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou and the ‘Marginalia’ releases of Masakatsu Takagi than they do with, say, a cozy and candlelit date night. But in that cheekiness lies hidden intention: across the gorgeous set, “Romantic” is suggested in a more classic sense, what the Germans call waldeinsamkeit. Its compositions conjure the sublime themes of the Romantic poets: solitude in nature; nature’s ability to heal and to teach; a sense of contented melancholy.
“I wanted to make music that was useful,” says Margaret, vastly understating the power of the record. ‘Romantic Piano’ is curious, calming, patient and incredibly moving — but it doesn’t overstay its welcome for more than a second.
Margaret’s debut, ‘There’s Always Glimmer,’ was a lyrical wonder, but when an illness on tour left her unable to sing, she made her ambient album ‘Mia Gargaret’ (another cheeky title!) which revealed a keen intuition for arrangement and composition not fully shown on ‘There’s Always Glimmer’s” lyrical songs. ‘Romantic Piano’, too, is almost totally without words. “Writing instrumental music, in general, is a much more joyful process than I find in lyrical songwriting,” she says. “The process ultimately effects my songwriting.” And while Margaret has more songwriterly material on the way, ‘Romantic Piano’ solidifies her as a compositional force.
Originally pursuing a degree in composition, Margaret dropped out of music school halfway through. “I really didn’t want to play in an orchestra,” she said of her decision, “I really just wanted to write movie scores. Then, I started to focus more and more on being a songwriter. ‘Romantic Piano’ scratched an old itch.” ‘Romantic Piano’ does indeed touch on a rare feeling in art often only reserved for the cinema — a simultaneous wide-lens awe of existence and the post-language intimate inner monologue of being marooned in these skulls of ours. How very Romantic!
“City Song” by Gia Margaret from the album ‘Romantic Piano’, out now on Jagjaguwar Recordings.
King Hannah have released a cover of Madonna’s classic ‘Like a Prayer’.
“We wanted to take this Madonna song and really let it breathe with lots of space and sparse instrumentation that slowly and subtly builds,” the duo explained. “The delicate arrangement of pulsing synths and scratchy guitars allows Hannah’s voice to take centre stage until the track eventually (in the extended version) breaks out into a noisy instrumental section fuelled by thrashing drums and distorted guitars. We wanted to take a song by such an iconic artist and drag it into the world of King Hannah.”
King Hannah’s cover opens austerely, as the original does, but at a slower pace. There’s a pulsating organ under lead singer Hannah Merrick’s voice. They rearrange the verses so they are at the front of the song and so Merrick doesn’t get to the chorus until 90 seconds into the song. It’s only at this point that muted guitar and percussion begins to creep into the mix. At about 2:20, a full band takes shape around her and the organ, and the song opens up. The song and the mix build and then nearly everything cuts out with about 30 seconds left, with Merrick’s voice and organ cutting out entirely at the end, resulting in a much shorter song than the original. It’s almost funereal and an entirely different vibe from the celebratory original.
But that’s not what happens in the extended version. In the full version, it takes a little longer for the band to come in and the band doesn’t drop out until about the 4 and a half minute mark. Then it’s just Merrick’s voice and the organ again until they both drop out about half a minute later. And then, after a beat of silence, the jam kicks in, complete with guitar solo. It’s particularly fun listening to the extended version after the short version, as the jam is extra unexpected.
Both versions are fairly radical re-thinkings of the song, though the extended version is all the more so.
Next month, King Hannah will be touring the UK with Kurt Vile. Their debut album, “I’m Not Sorry, I Was Just Being Me”, was released last year.
“ELO songs were always coming on the radio when I was growing up. They were a reliable source of pleasure and fascination (except for “Fire On High” which scared the heck out of me). With this album of covers I wanted to get my hands deep into some of the massive ‘70’s hits but I am also shining a light on some of the later work (“Ordinary Dream” from 2001’s “Zoom” album, “Secret Messages” and “’From The End Of The World”, both from the ‘80’s).
Thematically, I identify with the loneliness and alienation and the outerspace-iness in the songs I chose. (I have always felt like I am part alien, not fully belonging to or in this Earth world.) Sonically, ELO recordings are like an amusement park packed with fun musical games with layers and layers of varied, meticulous parts for your ears to explore; production curiosities; huge, gorgeous stacks of awe-inspiring vocal harmony puzzles. My task was to try and break all the things down and reconstruct them subtly until they felt like mine.
Overall, I stuck pretty close to the originals’ structures while figuring out new ways to express or reference the unique and beloved ELO string arrangements. An orchestra would have been difficult or impossible for me to manage to record, nor did I think there was any point in trying to copy those parts as they originally were. Why not try to reimagine them within my zone of limitations? In some cases, I transposed string parts onto guitars, or keyboards, and I even sung some of them (as in “Showdown” and “Bluebird Is Dead”).
Recording the album was a kind of complicated and drawn-out process since I was doing all of my tracks at home in my bedroom (drums and bass were done by Chris Anzalone and Ed Valauskas, respectively [in their own recording spaces]), and I kept running into technology problems that would frustrate me and slow me up. But eventually I got it all done. A labour of love.” -Juliana
“4 Stars” –AllMusic
“A triumph” –Classic Rock Magazine
“An album full of the sort of strange magic that only Hatfield can conjure.” –Yahoo!
“Hatfield eschews radical reinventions, but her peeling away of the more finessed layers surrounding Lynne’s indestructible melodies/chord sequences work a treat on Can’t Get It Out Of My Head, StrangeMagic and Telephone Line.” –MOJO
“… raw, enthusiastic, and probably the best effort yet in Hatfield’s ongoing series of hat tips to classic pop and rock musicians.” –Flood Magazine
“Hatfield has gone all in with a mindset of making it her own and infusing the songs with her particular style of wistfulness, simplicity and also outright benevolence.” –Q Magazine
“The one-woman production preserves Lynne’s style yet dials down the theatrics to not quite garage band levels, making it one of the most successful outings in her ongoing covers project series.” –American Songwriter
