Billy Nomates, the project of the Bristol-based songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Tor Maries releases her much anticipated second studio album, “Cacti” via Invada Records. Recorded at her flat and Invada Studios, “Cacti”is a huge step up for the artist, who received widespread critical acclaim for her eponymous 2020 debut album, with heavy airplay across BBC Radio 6 Music and support from luminaries such as Iggy Pop, Florence Welsh and Steve Albini.
Though every bit as unrepentant as Billy Nomates’ debut, “Cacti”comes from a much more exposed place and sees Tor further develop her instinctive, inventive song writing and production. Unafraid to wade into the traumas of the past two years and the eerie sense of apathy that lingers, alongside heartache and more political themes, the 12-track collection openly confronts uncomfortable truths, as Tor puts it, “70-80% of being bold is about being vulnerable as hell.”
Maries said: “Writing “Cacti “took just over a year. I wrote very intensely and then none at all. (This seems to be the way I work best). I picked up old drum machines, mapped out things in my kitchen with the same small micro keyboard I always use and then raided the cupboards and rooms at Invada Studios, to play and experiment with old synths, an upright piano, this weird organ thing. I hope everyone finds their own narrative in “Cacti”. I think it’s about surviving it all.”
Out now on Invada Records: Taken from the forthcoming album ‘CACTI’, out January 13th, 2023,
South Carolina postpunk outfit Candy Coffins are releasing their album ‘Once Do It With Feeling’ – a haunting and highly melodic gift ahead of Halloween. Invoking the spirit of Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure, Psychedelic Furs and Afghan Whigs, this loaded 10-track collection showcases solid song writing full of emotion and sonically saturated. Stereo Embers Magazine calls them “a rather stunning band”, noting that this album “might very well be one of the year’s best… a stirring song-cycle about the lifespan of romantic love, chronicling both its chemical and frenzied beginning and its inevitable messy demise. What goes on in between? The usual: hope, betrayal, depression, optimism, reconstruction, life-force depletion and endless nights alone in dark rooms”.
“Once Do It With Feeling” chronicles a relationship from the onset of the first crack to its complete crumbling dissolution. All the feelings and emotions of tumult are captured here, from both persons’ perspectives. The record showcases the mature strides the song writing has made and relates these themes via the vehicle of the band in its confident, cohesive current form.
Jame Lathren: vocals, guitars Tom Alewine: guitars Alex Mabrey: bass Jonathan Bradley: drums, percussion Justin Purdy: keys
Additional instrumentation by John Furr Additional vocals by Margaret Rose Champagne
DMA’S have announced their fourth album ‘How Many Dreams?’ and shared new single ‘Everybody’s Saying Thursday’s The Weekend’. DMA’S continue to branch out from the guitar-driven Britpop anthems of their first two records. “We were finding our feet with a more modern sound on [2019’s] ‘The Glow’,”
“With ‘How Many Dreams’, we really nailed that down and experiments with a lot of different sounds and different genres. It’s a great blend of the three things we love, which are rock’n’roll tunes, pop singalongs and electronic music.
“Our music will always have that nostalgic edge to it,
Elsewhere on ‘How Many Dreams?’ there’s ‘Fading Like A Picture’ which “opens with this rocking guitar riff” and “harks back to that old DMA’S sound,” according to Took. On the flipside, “there’s a song like ‘De Carle’ which is a full-blown, five-minute electronic song” save a tiny bit of electric bass. “We weren’t trying to split the difference. We really leant into the genre, which is so cool. There are surprises like that across the record.”
Lead single ‘I Don’t Need To Hide’ “sums up the album best. It’s got a bit of everything,” explained vocalist Tommy O’Dell. New single ‘Everybody’s Saying Thursday’s The Weekend’, on the other hand, is more of a curveball. It’s about “letting go of the things that weigh us down and embracing the future with a sense of optimism. Stepping in the ‘right light in the dark times’,” Took said in a statement.
“We did what we wanted,” added O’Dell. “We didn’t have any boundaries and that’s what is really exciting about the record. You can’t put it in a box, but it’s still DMA’S.” ‘How Many Dreams?’ was the longest record DMA’S took to make.
The Aussie trio (rounded out by Matt Mason) spent three weeks in a London studio with superproducers Stuart Price and Rich Costey “working on a lot of band in the room stuff”. The Omicron variant hit, DMA’S returned home to Australia and though most of the album was done, “when we got back to Sydney, we were listening to the desk mixes and it felt like we had a lot more work to do.” With Costey and Price on the other side of the world, though, they got Konstantin Kersting in to help them finish the record.
With DMA’S more confident in the studio, ‘How Many Dreams?’ is a “bloody feel-good record,” according to Took. “We couldn’t be more proud of it.”
We have been waiting so many months since Robert Smith declared that The Cure would release their long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s “4:13 Dream, Songs of a Lost World”, before October. Seeing as the temperature has dropped 20 degrees since then, pumpkins now adorn doorsteps, and the calendar currently says October that isn’t happening. “I’d rather it just came out. I can’t stand the anticipation,” Smith said.
That doesn’t mean all hope is lost for new songs from the gothic-rock trailblazers. Turns out, the band has been playing some new material on their current tour. They’ve played unreleased tracks known as “Alone” and “Endsong,” and last night in Stockholm they played another new track titled “And Nothing Is Forever.”
Simon giving a little hug to Robert’s back at the very beginning of the song clearly announces something deeply personal for Robert. The Cure debuted a third new song during the set, “And Nothing Is Forever,” during the show in Sweden, All this material is expected to appear on the band’s next album, “Songs of the Lost World”, although no further details have yet been announced.
“And Nothing Is Forever” is a mid-tempo ballad with an extended instrumental opening. It’s musically reminiscent of The Cure’s classic “Pictures of You,” with frontman Robert Smith lamenting tender moments and teardrops: “it doesn’t really matter if you’ll say we’ll be together.”
The Cure’s current European tour features the return of guitarist/keyboardist Perry Bamonte, who hadn’t played with the band since 2004. “Songs of the Lost World” will be the band’s first new studio album since 2008
The fourth full-length from Wild Pink, “ILYSM” unfolds with all the fractured beauty of a dreamscape. Over the course of 12 chameleonic tracks, the New York-bred rock band build another world inhabited by ghosts and angels and aliens, inciting a strange and lovely daze as the backdrop shifts from the mundane (subdivisions, highways, hotel parking lots) to the extraordinary (deserts, battlefields, the moon). But within its vast imagination lies a potent truth-telling on the part of singer / guitarist John Ross, whose lyrics closely examine his recent struggle with cancer. The follow-up to 2021’s “A Billion Little Lights” a critically acclaimed effort praised by the likes of Pitchfork, NPR, Vulture, and Stereogum, who named it “one of the prettiest rock records of the past decade”—“ILYSM” emerges as a truly revelatory body of work, transforming the most painful reflection into moments of transcendence.
When walking us through his new LP with his band Wild Pink, John Ross immediately notes that the goal for “ILYSM”was to go big without “getting too huge.” It’s the kind of vague talk musicians and technicians tend to share in the studio, with destined collaborators often capable of somehow knowing exactly what the other means when they utter non-technical directions like this, their mutual language leading to a level of creativity rarely tapped by some of the most tightly knit musical teams.
Such is the case with Ross and co-producers Justin Pizzoferrato and Antlers frontman (and amateur mycologist, evidently) Peter Silberman. As an extension of the impressive balance they create together, Wild Pink manage to walk that tightrope with additional contributions from a diverse list of artists including Julien Baker, Ryley Walker, Yasmin Williams, Ratboys’ Julia Steiner, and J Mascis—the latter’s ripping guitar solo, like the raging riff that tears through the title track, managing to greatly expand the scope of the otherwise-fairly-tranquil heartland rock tune without pushing it into excess.
The result is a patchwork of sounds centered in folk-rock ballads and baroque-indie revival informed by everything from the microfolk of Iron & Wine to the epic-scale shoegaze of Jesu. With the album out read through Ross’ track-by-track breakdown of “ILYSM’s” 12 flavorful songs.
1. “Cahooting the Multiverse”
“Cahooting the Multiverse” is a microcosm of the album lyrically and musically. It’s about death, the afterlife, and all the mundane things before you get there. It’s one of the bigger tunes on the album, and I knew I wanted to start the album with a fuller sound—but as a whole, I wanted this album to avoid getting too huge.
2. “Hold My Hand”
This is basically a love song told through the experience of someone having surgery. I knew pretty quickly that I wanted it to be a duet, and I’m super grateful to Julien for joining me on it. This was one of the first songs we rehearsed together as a band in the studio, and David’s piano part felt great almost immediately. There were a couple moments like that in the recording process where a song just immediately fell into place as soon as we started playing it.
3. “Hell Is Cold”
This song is about nostalgia and moving on, and I wrote it in the middle of winter. I like the way the groove came together at the end. Definitely inspired by Sam Beam and Sparklehorse.
4. “ILYSM”
This song, like a few others on this record, takes place where I live and the field next to it. It’s a metaphor for love and obsession about someone visited by a ghost and feeling confused about their feelings for them.
5. “St. Beater Camry”
This song takes place in Miami. It’s about a young person escaping a dangerous domestic situation in the Northeast and making her way down the coast to Florida. She named her car St. Beater Camry.
6. “Abducted at the Grief Retreat”
This is one of the first songs I wrote for the album and was inspired by Signs and the show SurvivingDeath. At its core, this song is a metaphor for obsession, and the protagonist is completely in love with their alien abductor.
7. “War on Terror”
This song is set on the beach at night. There’s also a vignette about someone briefly dying and coming back to life while fighting in the Bosnian War. True story! Jeremy’s clarinet playing along with Mike’s pedal steel at the end is one of my favourite parts on the record.
8. “Simple Glyphs”
This song is about dying and how the older you get the more life feels like it’s closing in on you. I love how the bass solo in this song turned out. Big Peter Hook vibes going on, and Ryley Walker’s guitar playing on this tune just rules.
9. “See You Better Now”
“See You Better Now” is the most straightforward love song on the album, and definitely inspired by Tom Petty and Traveling Wilburys. It was one of the last songs I wrote for this album, and a really fun song to record in the studio. It’s still wild to me that J Mascis did the guitar solo on it.
10. “Sucking on the Birdshot”
This song is about some sandhill cranes down in Florida who were mated for life. One of them died by the side of the road and left the other to mourn. One of the heaviest things I’ve ever seen. Big-time Jesu inspo going on here, but also Talk Talk in the middle part.
11. “The Grass Widow in the Glass Window”
On the surface this song is about a dead hardwood tree that has golden oyster mushrooms growing all over it (thanks to Peter Silberman for the mycology lesson). That felt like a good metaphor for how I was feeling at the time when I wrote it. It all takes a turn by the end toward acceptance, and Yasmin Williams’ beautiful guitar playing touches on that.
12. “ICLYM”
This was the last song I wrote for the album and is supposed to be a coda to “Cahooting the Multiverse.” It feels like a bookend to me with Peter joining in with vocals, which he also does on “Cahooting.” Like “Cahooting” it’s a stream of consciousness song. I enjoy writing that way because I’m able to say things without much context, which is fun because sometimes I don’t fully understand the lyrics until after I write them.
John Ross: Vocals, Guitars and Keys Dan Keegan: Drums and Percussion Arden Yonkers: Bass and Keys David Moore: Piano, Banjo and Farfisa Jeremy Viner: Saxophone and Clarinet Peter Silberman: Vocals, Guitars and Keys Mike ‘Slo Mo’ Brenner: Pedal Steel Julien Baker: Vocals on “Hold My Hand” Samantha Crain: Vocals on “St. Beater Camry” J Mascis: Guitar on “See You Better Now” Julia Steiner: Vocals on “ILYSM” and “See You Better Now” Ryley Walker: Guitar on “Simple Glyphs” Yasmin Williams: Guitar on “The Grass Widow In The Glass Window”
“Duster” is the third studio album by American rock band Duster. The album was released December 13, 2019 by Muddguts Records in the United States; the first Duster album to not be released under the Up Records label. This is also the first studio album released by the band in 19 years since the release of “Contemporary Movement” in 2000.
Like a lot of their cohorts on the slower side of the late-90s alternative spectrum, Duster didn’t seem like much in the moment. Founded in 1996, the band released two albums and a handful of singles and EPs before quietly dissolving at the turn of the millennium. With clean tones and slow-moving chord changes, the trio often echoed aspects of “slowcore” contemporaries like Low, Codine, and Red House Painters, welling up into noisy Spacemen 3 terrain at their most pronounced. Tim Sendra praised the band for its ability to deliver quality music after such an extended hiatus: “At a time when almost every band ever has reunited to make disappointing, derivative music, Duster have come back to make their most sonically challenging and emotionally invested record yet”.
The band released their first standalone single in almost 20 years “Interstellar Tunnel” (the track was not included on the album “Duster”),
Upon its release, “Duster” received positive reviews from music critics. Tim Sendra praised the band for its ability to deliver quality music after such an extended hiatus: “At a time when almost every band ever has reunited to make disappointing, derivative music, Duster have come back to make their most sonically challenging and emotionally invested record yet”.
The result of this radical, experimental creative process is one of the densest, most unpredictable statements from a band whose work always rockets in from unexpected angles accompanied by a wealth of subtext and theorems. But you don’t even need even a passing understanding of those Ancient Greek musical modes to appreciate this adventurous new music.
Having assembled full working instrumentals from these jams, Mackenzie and his bandmates began overdubbing flute, organ, percussion and extra guitar over the top. The lyrics, meanwhile, were a group effort. “We had an editable Google Sheet that we were all working on,” says Mackenzie. “Most of the guys in the band wrote a lot of the lyrics, and it was my job to arrange it all and piece it together.”
The result of this radical, experimental creative process is one of the densest, most unpredictable statements from a band whose work always rockets in from unexpected angles accompanied by a wealth of subtext and theorems. But you don’t even need even a passing understanding of those Ancient Greek musical modes to appreciate this adventurous new music. Highlights include ‘Lava’, a suite of pure fire music that swings between spiritual jazz and new age visions, powered by psychedelic saxophones, shimmering cymbals and McCoy Tyner-esque pianos, and the wormhole-riding prog-folk excursions of ‘Magma’, which leads unsuspecting listeners into unfamiliar realms via the siren call of Mackenzie’s flute, while ‘Ice V’ delivers apocalyptic funk with a cool hand at the controls, ‘Hell’s Itch’ hypnotises with its coiling guitar lines, hard honking harmonica and polymorphic basslines, and the ever-shifting ‘Iron Lung’ follows the choppy grooves of its happy/sad songcraft through unexpected twists and turns, a vision of pop refracted through a house of mirrors. Sinister closer Gliese 710, meanwhile, pushes ever onwards into the darkness, its lumbering-but-lithe heaviosity enough to get corpses to nod their heads.
I really like the improv nature of the record, which gives it a kind of jam-band feel (in the best way possible) as well as the production; it genuinely sounds like it was recorded in the 60s/70s, which makes it feel very authentic & faithful to that time period
If I had to pinpoint the exact sound of the record I’d say it’s a blend of Jazz-Rock & Alt Rock with strong Psychedelic 60s overtones, which is more or less exactly what I was hoping for.
It’s an excellent follow-up to “Omnium Gatherum” that I’m enjoying just as much if not even more, perhaps even surpassing that album in my ranking of their discography. Overall it’s a decidedly fun, trippy listening experience, at times verging on Space Rock & Prog
The mighty King Gizzard have unveiled a new nine minute single, “Iron Lung” from their new record, “Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs Mushrooms And Lava”. Check out the video for “Iron Lung” below.
SPOD, the animator for the “Iron Lung” video, states: “When I heard this track, I had just started delving into fully animated AI videos and thought what a good opportunity to use something I barely understand mixed with my love of effects from the dawn of digital video. So I poured myself into a cyber spiral for a couple of months and this is the result. I love how the song seems like endless ascending and descending cycles culminating in these dramatic explosions and lifts, so it felt like a perfect fit to dive into a 9 minute descent to hell and back. Unfortunately, I still dream that I’m spiralling into the eternal abyss, and I’m not sure I exist anymore.”
“Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs Mushrooms And Lava” is the first of three new records King Gizzard And TheLizard Wizard have in the pipeline.“Laminated Denim” drops October 12th, while the third and final record, “Changes“, is due out October 28th.
David Byrne’s Broadway show “American Utopia” returned last month at the St. James Theatre in New York, and, last night, Byrne and the cast returned to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. After Byrne discussed the show, showed off some of his pandemic drawings, and taught Stephen Colbert some dance moves, the cast performed Talking Heads’ “I Zimbra.”
Byrne and the “American Utopia” cast previously performed on the show in 2018 with an assist from Colbert. On this episode, Byrne said the previous Colbert appearance caught the attention of Broadway producers, which prompted the then-touring production’s long-term move to New York.
For the second time on The Late Show, David Byrne and the amazing cast of ‘American Utopia’ light up the Ed Sullivan Theater performance of a song from their smash hit Broadway show.
David Byrne’s first solo Top 10 album, “American Utopia” further explored the optimistic themes of the singer-songwriter’s “Reasons to Be Cheerful” multimedia project. The collection was supported by a world tour whose cutting-edge technology and inventive choreography lent itself well to the theatre, and the show was adapted as a stage musical in late 2019.
“I realized a Broadway setting would likely be a different audience than the concert crowds I was used to,” noted Byrne of the show – which also includes solo and Talking Heads songs. “I thought to myself that this new context might be good – it might actually help to bring out the narrative arc a little bit more.” The Tony-nominated “American Utopia” On Broadway spawned an Original Cast Recording that earned a Grammy nomination for Best Musical Theatre Album.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard unveil their new single/video, “Hate Dancin’,” taken from their forthcoming album “Changes“, due out October 28th on KGLW. Following last week’s “Laminated Denim” an album written specifically with their recent sold-out Marathon Shows at Red Rocks in mind – and “Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava“,
“Changes” marks King Gizzard’s third and final album of October. Originally imagined as the group’s fifth album of 2017, “Changes” has ended up the sixth album King Gizzard will release in 2022 (rounded out by April’s double album, “Omnium Gatherum“, January’s “Butterfly 3001″remix record, and March’s “Made in Timeland”,the latter of which was just surprised-released on DSPs for the first time). “Hate Dancin’” is a tight number, clocking in just above the 3-minute mark. “I started writing a song about how I hate dancing, but then I realized that I love dancing,”says Gizzard frontman Stu Mackenzie. The accompanying video puts the band’s exquisite moves front and centre.
King Gizzard and Lizard Wizards recent Marathon Shows at Red Rocks Amphitheater on October 10th, 11th, and November 2nd are currently being presented by Nugs.net as a delayed stream, with one final broadcast occurring on Sunday, November 6th at 8pm EST. For more information, visit nugs.net/kglwlive.
Currently in the middle of a largely sold-out U.S. tour, the band return to the U.K. and Europe for a run of shows in March 2023 which include two nights at the Brixton Academy in London.
The Fat Angel Sings 