Sisters Jennifer and Jessie Clavin grew up deep in the San Fernando Valley, and they became teenaged underground staples at all-ages Downtown DIY venue The Smell after years of sneaking into punk shows over the hill in Hollywood. Bleached originally formed when the Clavin sisters resolved to continue working with each other upon the break up of their all-girl punk band Mika Miko.
released October 13th, 2022 Written by Jennifer and Jessica Clavin Vocals by Jennifer Clavin Guitars, bass, vocal harmonies by Jessica Clavin Organ by Dean Reid Drums by Spencer Lere
The Frowning Clouds are an important Australian band that were under-appreciated while active, but over time ignited a garage-rock scene in Djilang/Geelong and beyond, influencing countless creatives. Clouds’ members went on to evolve their craft, innovate and continue to inspire in bands Bananagun, Orb, Traffik island, Ausmuteants, Alien Nosejob and more. Frowning Clouds’ guitarist-vocalist Nick Van Bakel tried to get an insight into the band and release what you could view as the Clouds’ sophomore album that never came out… until now. Over a decade after it was recorded it still feels fresh and rousing.
Zak [Olsen] playing a couple of originals, some Velvets & 13th Floor Elevator songs in my bedroom and our friend Danny recording it on his video camera. We took the audio off it for our first recordings we’d heard some more obvious stuff like The Kinks and The Stones etc., but the deep garage comps were like even more outlaw than that. The attitude and spirit of it all. We were real young and those comps are mostly all teen bands, so it was what we wanted to do. Also they’re just amazing songs played with high energy.
Second LP from The Frowning Clouds. Originally released December 12th, 2013 on Anti Fade Records & Saturno Records (EU).
British power pop hype Wet Leg from the Isle of Wight (UK) proved that the press was right with their self-titled debut LP released last April. A colourful collection of sickly addictive tunes with witty, absurd, and hilarious stories. Since then the utterly cool duo is everywhere. At big festivals making me smile from start to finish), on TV, in the charts, in magazines, on the Net.
And this week they inflamed the Jimmy Kimmel Live Show (US) with their by now signature earworm “Chaise Longue”.
Wet Leg performs the song “Chaise Longue” on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
Florence and the Machine appeared on The Late Late Show With James Corden last night (October 12th) to perform ‘King’. Florence Welch also sat down for an interview to talk about a fan offering her a severed hand during her ongoing tour, the band’s obsession with perfumes, and horror films, while fellow guest and Big Mouth star Nick Kroll performed the choreography to ‘King’.
‘King’ appears on Florence and the Machine’s latest album “Dance Fever”, which came out earlier this year. The LP also includes the early singles ‘Free’, ‘Heaven is Here’, and ‘My Love’, which Florence brought to The Tonight Show back in May.
Drugdealer, the project led by singer-songwriter Michael Collins, has teamed up with Kate Bollinger for the new single ‘Pictures of You’. Bollinger takes on lead vocals on the track, which follow previous offerings ‘Madison’ and ‘Someone to Love’.
“I was on the East Coast visiting my parents when my publisher suggested a possible writing session with Kate,” Collins explained in a statement. “I had been itching to ride a freight train since the beginning of the pandemic so I used the opportunity to do so from Baltimore down to Richmond. When I got there, we became friends really quickly and ended up writing this song at Spacebomb Studios. The whole experience was really spur of the moment and organic.”
Kate Bollinger added: Michael and I wrote this song last summer on a day when he was stopping through Virginia. I picked him up near the train station and we went and hung out in a park by my house. We stayed up late drinking with my roommate and went to my friend’s studio the next day to make some music together. I went upstairs and took a nap and in the meantime, while I was sleeping, he had written the music and melody to “Pictures of You”.
When I woke up we wrote the lyrics and finished the song together. I’ve always approached lyrics in isolation and writing this song showed me a whole other way of making music with someone else. A month after becoming friends with Michael, I visited him in Los Angeles for the first time and decided I wanted to live there, so it feels special having this song come out a month after my move to Los Angeles, a year after we wrote it.
Drugdealer’s new album, “Hiding in Plain Sight”, will be released on October 28th via Mexican Summer.
Queen commissioned Self Esteem to record this cover, giving her the nerve-making task of playing her cover for the Roger Taylor himself. She says she wasn’t anxious about it though: “I was just excited. I’m a show-off, aren’t I?” You can see his reaction in this video. Spoiler (though not entirely given that this is sort of a Queen promo piece): He approves!
Self Esteem performs her own unique version of Queen’s iconic track “Radio Ga Ga” for MTV Originals.
Matthew Houck, for he is Phosphorescent, likes to work. The Alabama native, now resident in Brooklyn has delivered five albums as Phosphorescent since his 2003 debut. Houck has a highly distinctive artistic voice, but also a refreshing, rolled-sleeves approach to his expression, and if he had his way, he’d have twice as many albums under his belt by now.
Matthew Houck continues his monthly largely-but-not-entirely covers series going with this wonderful “Storms.” Reminds us of the equally wonderful Bonnie “Prince” Billy take on the tune.
Voice, Guitar, Bass, Percussion: Matthew Houck, Organ, Keys: Jo Schornikow, Guitar: Ricky Ray Jackson
In the fall of 1975, towards the tail end of a typically productive and prolific year that included finishing production on the “One Size Fits All” album, a spring tour with Captain Beefheart (immortalized on the live album, “Bongo Fury”, released in October of that year), and a performance of orchestral works, Frank Zappa and his band The Mothers played their first and only shows in Yugoslavia while in the midst of their fall tour. The Mothers of Invention Yugoslavian Extravaganza, as Zappa called it, took place in Zagreb and Ljubljana (now the capital cities of Croatia and Slovenia respectively) on November 21st and 22nd, 1975 with the short-lived and slightly stripped-down lineup of Andre Lewis (keyboards), Napoleon Murphy Brock (tenor sax and lead vocals), Norma Bell (alto sax, vocals), Roy Estrada (bass) and Terry Bozzio (drums). In characteristically Zappa fashion, The Maestro made sure to record these historical shows behind the Iron Curtain. “Zappa ’75: Zagreb/Ljubljana”, features the best performances of the Yugoslavian concerts sequenced in the exact order of the show’s setlist to present the crème da la crème from each night for the first time ever.
Produced by Ahmet Zappa and Zappa Vaultmeister Joe Travers, the 27-track live album boasts nearly two and half hours of completely unreleased music and will be available digitally (26 tracks without disc breaks) or on 2CD complete with a 32-page booklet filled with photos of the era and line-up by Gail Zappa and John Rudiak, with insightful liner notes from Travers, an interview between him and recording engineer Davy Moire who recorded the show and worked with Zappa from 1975-78, plus a firsthand account and illustration from Bozzio.”
“The Black Lips’ 10th studio effort Apocalypse Love is scorched with their trademark menace. It cryogenically mutates all recognised musical bases; it spins yarns about vintage Soviet synths, Benzedrine stupors, coup de’ tats, stolen valour and certified destruction, all set against a black setting sun. Since the turn of the decade the band have transformed from austere country pioneers, into a set of Lynchian surrealists, hellbent on recalibrating the history of rock ’n’ roll.
Singer and saxophonist Zumi Rosow muses, “It’s a weird dance record, one that reflects the moment that the world’s in right now.” “Apocalypse Love” is an album that emanates from a dive bar jukebox in the back of your mind; with a playlist that bends between tub thumping doom-glam, Plastic Ono singalongs, cocktail-shaken space age pop, Morricone reverberations and lo-fi outsider acoustic-punk, with mariachi horns, theremins, drum machines and harmonies filtering through the infectious melodies.”
Stand-out number ‘Among The Dunes’ is an amorphous platform-heeled anthem, a signature sax-fuelled stomper filled with trippy swagger. While opener ‘No Rave’ proffers a hypnotic locked groove, with ColeAlexander’s trademark snarl delivered over a sulphurous wall of distorted hedonism, a dystopian anthem for an apocalyptic manifesto. Meanwhile, the twisted exotica of ‘Whips Of Holly’ with its silver screen façade is like the soundtrack to a classic Theda Bara vamp-fest.
As the band venture into their third decade, ‘Apocalypse Love’ is proof that The Black Lips show no sign of slowing down…
From the new album “Apocalypse Love” (Out 14th October 2022 via Fire Records)
The four members of Frankie Cosmos in a Brooklyn studio to begin making their album. Greta Kline spent a few years living with her family and writing a mere 100 songs, turning her empathy anywhere from the navel to the moon, rendering it all warm, close and reflexively humorous. In music, everyone loves a teen sensation, but Kline has never been more fascinating than now, a decade into being one of the most prolific songwriters of her generation. She’s lodged in my mind amongst authors, other observational alchemists like Rachel Cusk or Sheila Heti, but she’s funnier, which is a charm endemic to musicians.
Meanwhile Frankie Cosmos, a rare, dwindling democratic entity called a band, had been on pandemic hiatus with no idea if they’d continue. In the openness of that uncertainty they met up, planning to hang out and play music together for the first time in nearly 500 days. There, whittling down the multitude of music to work with, they created “Inner World Peace”, a collection of Greta’s songs changed and sculpted by their time together. While Kline’s musical taste at the time was leaning toward aughts indie rock she’d loved as a teenager, keyboardist Lauren Martin and drummer Luke Pyenson cite “droning, meditation, repetition, clarity and intentionality,” as well as “‘70s folk and pop” as a reference for how they approached their parts. Bassist/guitarist Alex Bailey says that at the time he referred to it as their “ambient” or “psych” album.
Somewhere between those textural elements and Kline’s penchant for concise pop, “Inner World Peace” finds its balance. Instant centerpiece “One Year Stand” is a small snowglobe of intimacy recalling the softest moments of Yo La Tengo’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. Lifted by Martin’s drones on Hammond organ and synthesizer, it could be played on repeat in a loop. I like to think it’s obvious how Greta’s vocals were recorded: late at night as we all sat by in low light, transfixed as she sings “I’m not worried about the / rest of my life / because you are here today / I go back in time / I’m a cast iron.” The voices of Kline and Martin, who have sung together since middle school, blend seamlessly.
The first order of business upon setting up camp in Brooklyn’s Figure 8 studios was to project giant colorful slides the band had made for each track. Co-producing with Nate Mendelsohn, my Shitty Hits Recording partner, we aimed for Frankie Cosmos aesthetic idiosyncrasies to shine.
The mood board for “Magnetic Personality” has a neon green and black checkerboard, a screen capture of the game Street Fighter with “K.O.” in fat red letters, and a cover of Mad Magazine that says “Spy Vs. Spy! The Top Secret Files.” On tracks like “F.O.O.F.” (Freak Out On Friday), “Fragments” and “Aftershook,” the group are at their most psychedelic and playful, interjecting fuzz solos, bits of percussion, and other sonically adventurous ear candy. An internal logic strengthens everything, and in their proggiest moments, Frankie Cosmos are simply a one-take band who don’t miss. When on “Inner World Peace” they sound wildly, freshly different, it may just be that they’re coming deeper into their own.
Throughout the album there are plays on the notion of feeling seen or invisible, as in “Magnetic Personality” when Kline sings “ask me how I am and I won’t really say,” or in “One Year Stand” when she says “maybe I’m asking myself.” Kline emphasizes that this was her first group of songs in years that weren’t written while on tour, but rather with ample time on her hands. She reflects on past selves in “Abigail” (“that version of myself I don’t want back”) and “Wayne” (“Like in first grade / How I went by Wayne / I always had / another name”). If we’re alone, what becomes of the things we see? As in “Fruit Stand,” Kline asks “If it’s raining and I can’t feel it, is it raining?”
“Inner World Peace” excels in passing on the emotions it holds. When in the towering “Empty Head”Kline sings of wanting to let thoughts slide away, her voice is buoyed on a bed of synths and harmonium as tranquility abounds. When her thoughts become hurried and full of desire, so does the band, and she leaps from word to word as if unable to contain them all. As a group, they carry it all deftly, and with constant regard for Kline’s point of view.
Says Greta, “To me, the album is about perception. It’s about the question of “who am I?” and whether or not the answer matters. It’s about quantum time, the possibilities of invisible worlds. The album is about finding myself floating in a new context. A teenager again, living with my parents. An adult, choosing to live with my family in an act of love. Time propelled us forward, aged us, and also froze. If you don’t leave the house, who are you to the world? Can you take the person you discover there out with you?”
The Fat Angel Sings 