Slothrust is principal songwriter, guitar player and unrepentant aesthete Leah Wellbaum, with drummer Will Gorin. On their fourth full-length album “The Pact” , Slothrust constructs a luscious, ethereal cosmos perforated with wormy portals and magic wardrobes, demonstrating more clearly than ever the band’s deft shaping of contrasting sonic elements to forge a muscular sound that’s uniquely their own.
Bizarre and mundane, tender and confident. The awkward duality of the forever outsider, rightly reclaimed as power. This is The Pact.
Produced and engineered by Billy Bush in Los Angeles (the band’s new home base), Slothrust’s new album is a confident journey across 12 songs that oscillate between a quietly reflective tenderness and a slick, sleek confidence; balancing playful innocence with ballsy swagger. “This is the most fun I’ve ever had making a record,” Wellbaum confirms. “We were able to take risks. I’m saying yes more than no these days.”
Lots of different styles of rock on display here but somehow it’s cohesive… A great album. From start to finish.
The Flaming Lips “Space Bubble” Film will be available for on-demand streaming at The Criterion Channel starting November 7th! Get more info on The Criterion Channel at criterion.com.
“This blissful concert documentary tells the story behind an ingenious spectacle devised by psych-rock legends the Flaming Lips in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: the “Space Bubble” Concerts, in which band and audience members alike were encased in individual, transparent orbs. Starting simply as an image that Wayne Coyne, the leader and visual artist of the band, drew as a funny reflection on life in 2020, the idea captured the imagination of fans and media alike and the band soon proceeded to make the COVID-safe space-bubble concerts a reality. The Flaming Lips “Space Bubble” Film chronicles the myriad logistical challenges of putting on the show at the height of the pandemic and the glory of music created by a band connecting to an audience in a joyous, safe, and socially distanced way never tried before.”
Self-described “goth pop” outfit White Devil Disco formed in the summer of 2021. Fronted by Scarlett Woolfe and Joe Pancucci, (formerly the bassist of Fat White Family) the band quickly became playbill regulars at the Windmill Brixton, and their first single, ‘Dog,’ was released earlier this year. White Devil Disco describe their sound as “sleazy,” fusing “grinding bass tones, infectious hooks, atmospheric synths and electronic noise textures whilst a vocal interplay of gravelly baritone and high keening female backing cuts deep through the mix…”
The band’s latest single, ‘Trouble,’ debuted on October 7th. It was released alongside a video, shot on location in Margate by South London’s rock n’ roll documentarian-in-chief Lou Smith and produced by Lev Parker. ‘Trouble,’ kicks off slowly, laced through with a heavy, steady bass throb and slick, elegant, guitar riffs. Scarlett’s vocals are at once breathy and intensely soulful, and her tense, fiery, stage presence plays wonderfully off of Joe’s gravelly deep voice and ominous Lone Ranger leer.
The opening shot of the video shows Joe leaving the police station, but hints that he’ll soon be back inside -ensuing scenes show him hassling Scarlett and shoplifting, while Scarlett plumbs the depths of the internet for tips on finding true love and flips through Consciousness and Choice. The lyrics pose a not-so-subtle warning that finding a soulmate can set more than just your heart on fire. The incendiary truth is that sometimes, it’s total self-immolation. (“I’ll show you trouble, baby,” the duo drawl to each other, and it’s easy to believe.)
Despite the undeniably English locale of Margate, there’s an undercurrent of Americana; Joe clad in head-to-toe denim, both Scarlett and Joe in cowboy hats, looking rebelliously misplaced, like they took a wrong turn on their way to a rodeo. Maybe it’s not so much a nod to Americana as to rebellious living in general. (The band stated that the “absurdist,” video was inspired by Paul Sykes, with various scenes throughout a homage to the British boxer-writer-convict’s notoriously tumultuous life.) Speaking of boxers, there’s a subtle nod to American boxing champ Joe Louis halfway through. It’s a detail that comes straight out of left field, but then Joe Louis was infamous for his lights-out left hook. White Devil Disco can be likened to that; the band’s sound is a hard left hook straight out of left field and into the ears of their listeners.
Meanwhile ‘Trouble’, churns on. After a fight with Joe, Scarlett storms out of the flat to wander the streets (taking a Nietzsche paperback with her.) There’s a deeper truth at the heart of ‘Trouble’, and it’s that a partner in crime can be just that – a partner in crime. Alas, and goddamn! But it gets you thinking, and that’s a happy ending in itself, if you look at in the right light, with the right frame of mind.
Hollywood Vampires are a four-piece supergroup featuring golden oldies Alice Cooper (1974), Joe Perry (72) from Aerosmith, Tommy Henriksen (58), guitarist/bassist/songwriter with Alice Cooper, and actor Johnny Depp (59).
They already canned/released 2 albums.”Hollywood Vampires” (2015) and “Rise” (2019).These celebs gonna attack the UK and Germany in 2023 More dates and countries will follow.
I think Charles Dickens said it best. And while the evocation of his name makes for a strange bedfellow to a drinking fraternity that caroused well over a century later, it could be said that he had the Hollywood Vampires firmly in the crosshairs of his immortal lines. For in an age of over indulgence on every level, it was indeed “The best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, (well, maybe not that bit) it was the age of foolishness.”
I’m not sure it’s important to name names; they were obviously men of varied talents and a collective oneness that came together under the umbrella of safety in numbers along with a fondness for channeling the ghosts of hedonists past. While it would be presumptuous to liken them to the literary classics of male crash and burn (I’m talking Rimbaud & Verlaine and Shelly & Byron here) they are in fact those reprobates of swinging London (Burton, O’ Toole, Ollie Reed & Richard Harris) who are the most likely to strike a pose as the quintessential theatrical mirror image of the Hollywood Vampires…
The Men are back with a fresh single “Hard Livin'”. Featured on their new LP – ‘New York City’ out in full via Fuzz Club on February 3rd.
“When everyone left NYC, the sewer opened and we crawled out.” Prolific Brooklyn institution The Men return with their ninth studio album, ‘New York City’. Arriving following 2020’s ‘Mercy’, the new LP is released February 3rd 2023 on the group’s new label home Fuzz Club Records and marks a return to the more scuzzy and abrasive rock ploughed over their decade and a half spent coursing through the grimy sewers of NYC. Here, nocturnal proto-punk meets a timeless, all-guns-blazing rock’n’roll gusto.
That the album leans into a more primitive, back-to-basics sound owes largely to the way in which was forged, an earlier version of the record scrapped in favour of four people playing in a room together. “The New York City album was revised, reorganized and shaped until it became clear that things fall into place like the hammer driving the nail or the scythe’s swipe through the tall grass.” The end result is a series of cuts played live and recorded to 2″ tape in Travis Harrison’s (Guided By Voices, Built To Spill) Brooklyn studio.
‘New York City’ is a record that doesn’t stop moving for a second, packed full of the kind of energy you can only really capture in a live setting. “These songs became the blood of the band as the band could only exist for and of these songs. There was no place else to hang their hats. Without making this record, the group would not exist, so there really wasn’t another option. NYC is fluid. It means a lot of different things to all kinds of people. We present the record in that spirit.”
‘New York City’, the ninth album from Brooklyn group The Men that’s due out February 3rd 2023 on Fuzz ClubRecords
The Aussie psych rockers made their long awaited Red Rocks debut this month, a “potent dose of live Gizzard“. It was a long time coming (to be precise, 29 months since the originally scheduled dates, which were postponed three times due to COVID), but King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard finally made their Red Rocks debut two weeks ago as part of a three-show run featuring “marathon three-hour sets” each night, with no repeated songs, the band seems to be performing at the peak of its on-stage power, even as it releases three distinct new albums in the month of October.
Read more from The New York Times bestselling author and certified member of the Gizzverse, as he takes us through the first two shows, and what’s to come with next week’s Red Rocks finale. If you missed the first two shows, they’re still available on-demand and discounted with the three-night pass with nugs.com.
Australian psych rockers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard played two consecutive marathon shows at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on Monday and Tuesday. The band delivered two 90-minute sets each night and premiered the two 15-minute tracks from its new album, “Laminated Denim”, during the intermissions.
After delaying the Red Rocks run three times due to COVID-19, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard arrived at the picturesque amphitheater raring to go, and so did the crowd. Long lines of fans waited for their turn to purchase vinyl and other merch as the sun started to descend and the band emerged on stage, As cloaked in mystique as Gizzard often is, the group defused any artifice between band and audience on opening night by nonchalantly walking onstage to tune and adjust its instruments 10 minutes before showtime. Frontman Stu Mackenzie was wearing a green alligator visor in a nod to the lovable Gizzard mascot, and once the concert began, there was no doubt of its significance for the musicians on stage. “I can’t feel my legs,” keyboardist Ambrose Kenny-Smith shouted. “Holy shit,” guitarist Joey Walker said. “Let’s get fucked up! Have a good time and love each other.
Kicking off the long-awaited run with “Mars for the Rich”, off 2019’s “Infest the Rats’ Nest”. The first set of the weekend included selections from the band’s recently released “Omnium Gatherum” and the even more recently released “Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava“.
During the intermission, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard premiered “The Land Before Timeland”, the first of two tracks from the band’s newest release, “Laminated Denim”, which was made for the occasion.
Set two started with a tease-heavy “Rattlesnake” with quotes from “O.N.E.”, “Automation”, “Honey”, “Sleep Drifter”, and “Minimum Brain Size”. The medley turned out to be a preview of what was to come, as the band proceeded to play “Automation” and “Honey” with additional teases of “Sleep Drifter” and “Billabong Valley” before segueing into “Sleep Drifter” and “Ataraxia”. Fellow Aussie artist LeahSenior, who opened the shows, joined the band for a sequence of “The Reticent Raconteur” > “The Lord of Lightning” > “The Balrog” > “Trapdoor” with an extended flute jam in the latter. The band concluded night one with “Hot Water”, “The Grim Reaper”, and “Planet B”.
Walker’s girlfriend later brought out shots for the whole band in honour of Walker’s impending birthday, while Kenny-Smith prowled the stage to sing “The Grim Reaper,” what he described as “some weird ass satanic rap for ya.” The 27-song evening concluded with a final dose of thrash-y rock’n’roll in “Planet B,” which Gizzard finished exactly one minute curfew.
Tuesday, the venue was likewise bustling with anticipation as the crowd filled the natural amphitheater. King Gizzard opened the show with a celebratory “The Dripping Tap” in honour of Joey Walker‘s birthday, followed by “Gaia”, which featured a mid-song drum solo by Mickey Cavs. The set included “Cut Throat Boogie” with snippets of “My Babe” and “Got My Mojo Workin’” and bassist Lucas Skinner‘s favourite song, “Sea of Trees”. “The Bitter Boogie” closed the set as the third “Boogie” song of the night, following “Boogieman Sam” and “Cut Throat Boogie”.
Just as they had on night one, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard used set break to premiere a new song from “LaminatedDenim, “Hypertension”. Known for their prolific output, KGLW’s debut of two new compositions is all the more impressive considering they had recorded a whole other album specifically for the occasion but ended up releasing it and writing another after the run was postponed (the first album was released as Made In Timeland, of which Laminated Denim is an anagram).
The final set of the run featured 19 songs including the six movements of “Altered Beast” suite with Leah Senior narrating as she does on the album. Following runs through “Muddy Water”, “Iron Lung”, and “Robot Stop”, the band closed out the run with “Gamma Knife”, “People-Vultures”, and “Mr. Beat” with a reprisal of “Iron Lung”.
Knowing that the Red Rocks shows will feature no repeat songs, we can identify some likely suspects for the third gig on November. 2nd. They include favourites such as “Venusian 2,” “Plastic Boogie,” “Self Immolate,” Am I in Heaven,” “Float Along — Fill Your Lungs,” the complete “Crumbling Castle” and “Intrasport,” plus several songs from “Murder of the Universe” that weren’t played this week, “Shanghai” (the lone song in live rotation from the 2021 album “Butterfly 3030”), newer material such as “Sadie Sorceress” and anything from the upcoming album “Changes,” which will be released a few days before Red Rocks night three. One thing’s for sure: King Gizzard always seizes big moments like this, making November. 2nd a show certainly not to be missed.
“I think this record is us finding home,” says Mahan, with Fisher adding: “it was a whole new positive experience— having a renewed relationship with the city we’re from and having a pride in that. i like the idea that this record has taken you on a voyage but it begins and ends in Atlanta.”
Algiers returns with “Shook”, their first new music since 2020’s there is no year, called “a heady concoction of post-punk, ‘60s soul and political insight.” (nme ****). shook features contributions from Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha, BoyHarsher’s Jake Matthews, Big Rube, Billy Woods, Backxwash, and many more.
September’s standalone release of “Shook” single “Bite Back” was greeted a glowing “song you need” review: “a sober state of the union rallying cry for the revolution.”The band gathered a posse of like-minded artists to create their fourth album, “Shook”, out February 24th on Matador. Stacked with guests spanning icons through to future stars, shook is a lightning rod for an elusive yet universal energy and feeling. a plurality of voices; a spiritual and geographical homecoming; a strategy of communion in a burning world; the story of an end of a relationship; an Atlanta front porch summer party.
Ultimately, it’s a 17-track set of the most mind-expanding and thrilling music that you are likely to hear anytime soon. Algiers have always been unflinching, but “Shook” is at the same time notably joyous and celebratory.
The band pay respect to a sprawling lineage of rap and punk iconoclasts from dj premier, dj screw and dead boys to lukah, griselda and dïat – chopping and screwing beats on a dusty sp-404 and a sequential circuits tempest, building imagined sample libraries from scratch. while community and collaboration has always been integral to Algiers’ ethos, “Shook” brings this to its fullest manifestation.“It very much deepens and broadens the world of Algiers”, says drummer Matt Tong. “We were working in an environment that we were used to”, says guitarist Lee Tesche. “it feels like the most Algiers record that we’ve ever made.” the accomplishment of this record is made all the more impressive by the fact it was made by a band who were falling apart and on the verge of breaking up.
Algiers shake you with tour-de-force new single ‘Irreversible Damage’ featuring Zack de la Rocha, in one of his rare guest appearances. “This a relapse / what it be god / No rehab for my jihad / A rapture in a grief storm / Time on my neck an’ it be gone” de la Rocha spits to a breakneck climax of clattering beats, snaking guitars and pulsing electronics. “The end of that song is the sound of joy,” says Algiers frontman Franklin James Fisher. “That’s what hope sounds like in 2022 when everything’s falling apart.” It follows the recent release of new single/video ‘Bite Back’ featuring billy woods and Backxwash.
Coming Feburary 24th Algiers returns with “Shook”, their first new music since 2020’s There Is No Year, called “a heady concoction of post-punk, ‘60s soul and political insight.” (NME ****) Shook features contributions from Rage Against The Machine’s Zack De La Rocha, Boy Harsher’s Jae Matthews, Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring, Big Rube, Billy Woods,Backxwash, and many more. September’s standalone release of Shook single “Bite Back” was greeted with a glowing “Song You Need” review: “A sober state of the union rallying cry for the revolution.”
“The world got shook”
So Algiers formed a crew. The band—who have built one of the most exciting catalogs and cult followings of recent years, with 2020’s “There Is No Year” described as “electrifying and unpredictable” (The Observer) and “precise, thoughtful and powerful” (NME) —gathered a posse of like-minded artists to create their fourth album, SHOOK, out February 24th on Matador. Stacked with guests spanning icons through to future stars, SHOOK is a lightning rod for an elusive yet universal energy and feeling. A plurality of voices; a spiritual and geographical homecoming; a strategy of communion in a burning world; the story of an end of a relationship; an Atlanta front porch summer party. Ultimately, it’s a 17-track set of the most mind-expanding and thrilling music that you are likely to hear anytime soon.
Algiers have always been unflinching, but “Shook is at the same time notably joyous and celebratory. It was born when Fisher and Mahan found themselves back in their native Atlanta for several months, reeling from growing pressures and burnout as touring musicians.
The accomplishment of this record is made all the more impressive by the fact it was made by a band who were falling apart and on the verge of breaking up. But instead they have produced an extraordinary, transformative record born from a shared sense of place and experience. “I think this record is us finding home,” says Mahan, with Fisher adding: “It was a whole new positive experience— having a renewed relationship with the city we’re from and having a pride in that. I like the idea that this record has taken you on a voyage but it begins and ends in Atlanta.”
‘Shook,’ the upcoming album from Algiers out February 24th.
Sydney indie rock three-piece Crystal Cities have made a triumphant return after almost a year-long hiatus. Although that’s not to say they haven’t been busy. Lead vocalist and guitarist/keyboardist Geoff Rana has been spending days on end in his self-made studio where he’s been writing, producing and engineering the band’s latest material. Today we get the first taste of said latest material in the form of new single, “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore”.
While the band’s previous effort – their sophomore album “Hold Me Close Hold Me Tight” – was an exercise in hard-hitting alternative rock that could rattle a live audience, “Love Don’t live Here Anymore” feels more explorative and colourful. Yes, the signature big anthemic chorus is still there, however this time it feels more personable, more relatable, and more emotive. Rana even tries his hand at a low croon for the song’s verses which will be a pleasant surprise for listeners familiar with their back catalogue.
It was through this song that I found myself reuniting with why I write songs and why I love it so much. ‘Love Don’t Live Here Anymore’ is about the experience of losing something or someone you once loved and then the joy you get from reconnecting with, or rediscovering that something or someone.” Geoff Rana (vocals/guitar/keys)
The song also features the band’s newest member, Neel Shukla. Shukla replaces previous drummer Daniel Conte who has performed on all the band’s previous work. Long-time Crystal Cities collaborator Paul Lani (David Bowie, Prince) was once again tapped to handle mixing and mastering duties for the recording.
SInce the band’s formation in 2016 they have released a highly praised EP – “Who’s Gonna Save Us Now” (2017) – and two critically acclaimed albums – “Under The Cold Light of the Moon” (2019) and “Hold Me Close Hold Me Tight” (2021).
The band consists of Geoff Rana (lead vocals, guitar, keys), Jared King (Bass, backing vocals), and newest member, Neel Shukla (Drums).
The legendary 1964 rehearsal collaboration receives its first official issue.
Jorma Kaukonen (later of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna) met a singer named Janis Joplin at a hootenanny in San Jose, California, in the fall of 1962. Over the following years, Janis would call on Jorma to accompany her at gigs. As they continued to play together, the Bay Area was changing musically and developing into the legendary San Francisco scene to which both Janis and Jorma would be integral. During a rehearsal for a show in North Beach, Jorma started his reel-to-reel machine to capture what they were working on. For decades, this recording was the stuff of legend, with inferior, multi-generational transfers making their way through select collector’s circles. Now, for the very first time, it is available officially, with the blessing and cooperation of both the Janis Joplin Estate and Jorma Kaukonen.
“The Legendary Typewriter Tape: 6/25/64 Jorma’s House” contains this legendary recording, featuring Restoration and Mastering from acclaimed, Grammy®-winner Michael Graves. The tracks include Joplin on vocals, Kaukonen on guitar, and Jorma’s wife Margareta typing away intermittently in the background. This may have just been a rehearsal, but it is so much more.
Featuring Joplin originals, as well as blues classics, “The Legendary Typewriter Tape” is an intimate glimpse into two major artists at the beginnings of what would become highly influential careers. As Jorma says in his liner notes: “This is indeed a window into a simpler time when the music truly was everything.”
Enjoy being a fly on the wall and revel in the magic of “The Legendary Typewriter Tape”.
The Fat Angel Sings 