One of the year’s great sleepers: Pictoria Vark, a.k.a. Victoria Park, is already a master of heart-tugging indie-rock vignettes on her excellent breakthrough album, “The Parts That I Dread”. She’s got a clever touch for self-lacerating wit in ballads like “Wyoming,” asking, “Can’t I blame you for everything? Market crashes, mood swings?” “I Can’t Bike” is a long-overdue pedestrian anthem that takes a surprise detour in the final minute for a gloriously out-of-nowhere noise-guitar solo, evoking kindred spirits like Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy, and Hop Along. But she excels at quiet triumphs like “Friend Song,” where she looks up at the Iowa stars and dreams of someone left behind in Brooklyn.
An incredible release from one of the most prolific and talented musicians and songwriters of our time! The sonic range and narrative of this album brings ‘The Parts I Dread‘ on repeat on my listening rotations and leaves openness to the possibilities on what is next for this artist!
Victoria Park – Bass and Vocals Gavin Caine – Drums, Percussion, Keys, and Guitar Jason Ross – Guitar Lauren Black – Vocals and vocal arrangement on 7 Michael Eliran – Guitar on 1
Ribbon Stage are a trio from NYC with no small amount of love for the noise pop days of Dolly Mixture and the Shop Assistants. The group does perfectly what only punks playing pop music can do- create chaotic noise in tandem with the sweetest hooks and most sophisticated nihilism. Ribbon Stage makes noise pop so catchy you swear you’ve heard before then can’t get out of your head.
The dream of Olympia, Washington is alive in the form of the wonderful Ribbon Stage. The New York trio harken back to Nineties cuddle-core gods like Tiger Trap and the Shop Assistants. “Hit Me With the Most” is 11 songs in 19 thrilling minutes, quick little shots of blurry noise, pretty, careworn singing, and tumbling drums. Titles like “It’s Apathy,” “Nowhere Fast,” and “No Alternative” set the emotional tone. But even when their songs sound like they might collapse before the band hits the finish line, Ribbon Stage always power through their angst and boredom to hit the twee-punk sweet spot.
Featuring Mari Softie (Ratas del Vaticano, Tercer Mundo, Exotica, and Pobreza Mental) as well as scene stalwart Jolie M-A (Juicy II, Boys Online) and vocalist Anni Hilator.
In almost direct comparison to Heirloom’s darkness, Los Bitchos are instrumental surf that makes you feel like you’re on a permanent holiday. They’re the kind of band you’d want following you around during an LA car-chase movie. It’s just so good… positively charismatic. It’s a first date with instant chemistry. It’s a high school party where nothing too stupid happens. It’s the moment on the dance floor when you forget you’re in a crowd. Good vibes become compulsory when you put this on.
A uniquely inventive instrumental dance-rock band with a international background and a truly worldly sound, Los Bitchos have an absolute riot on their debut, mixing up everything from Eighties teeth-metal to Colombian cumbia, to surf-rock and psychedelia, to disco and funk.
Their music is playfully exotic but also invitingly lived-in, the sound of finding your voice in the flow of the world, and unlike a lot of instrumental music, they keep the listener’s enjoyment front and center by orchestrating each of their two-to-three-minute ditties for maximum pop impact, so songs like “The Link is About to Die” or “Pista (Fresh Start)” have just as many memorable hooks as thick grooves or hot solos.
On the eminently relatable-to-me “Boat Songs“, Ashville, North Carolina’s MJ Lenderman sings about Jackass, various sports legends (Jordan, Brady, and Marino all get shouts here), and the fucking log ride and the spinning swings at Six Flags Over Texas, all the while managing to make things feel warm, alternately poignant and funny, and deeply affecting. Like our other current guitar heroes Enumclaw, Lenderman has a gift for making easy, seemingly tossed-off jams feel like heart-on-sleeve anthems that you’ve known forever.
MJ Lenderman plays guitar in the great Asheville, North Carolina band Wednesday (see their must-hear covers EP from this year, “Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘Em Up”. On “Boat Songs” he’s a self-described “beat-down rodeo clown” whose neo-miserablist everybro mien brings to mind the Neil Young of Zumaif he was a Southern fisher-dude who had a few too many strong, drunk opinions about college football coaching hires. The mosquito-bitten “You Have Bought Yourself a Boat” sounds like the Band if they recorded for Drag City, while “Tastes Just Like It Costs” is a zen mountain of stanky lo-fi guitar slop.
The best song is “Hangover Game,” which uses Game Five of the 1997 NBA finals as a lens to explore the way our lives can merge with our most cherished myths in ways that are kind of fucked up.
Following their recent “First Five” EP The Natural Lines have announced the release of their self-titled debut album, “The Natural Lines”, out 24th March via Bella Union Records. To accompany the announcement the band have shared an entertaining video for first single and album opener “Monotony” featuring celebrated American comedian, actress and TV host Nikki Glaser playing a somewhat unconventional therapist. Commenting on the song and video frontman Matt Pond says: “Over the last few years, I’ve tried to focus on my breathing—to try to and be a better singer, to try and be a better person. But it’s hard to sit still and slow down when the world seems so unruly.
“Monotony” is an anthem about the daily tightrope—searching for the right path between passion and apathy. All the while, I’ve been working with Nikki Glaser. Her fearlessness is contagious. Since she never hesitates to tell me what she really thinks, I thought it made perfect sense for Nikki to portray my therapist in the video.”
Sometimes, a change of view can transform a person’s world. On ‘Don’t Come Down’, the artist formerly known as Matt PondPA can be found with his “shoulder on the concrete” of a pavement, scoping out the world anew. This granular realignment of perspective serves as an open door to the debut album from The Natural Lines. At once clearly Pond’s work yet a huge leap forward in its measured songcraft, melodic immediacy, collaborative detail and wryly questioning lyrics, the result is a gorgeous album of intimate reflections from a relocated, renamed, revivified talent.
Car troubles inspire ‘No More Tragedies’, the album’s standout second track, where he wryly details his desire to dampen his twinned impulses to take pictures of license plates blocking his parking space or take bricks to said car windshields. Warming melodies and harmonies soothe his rage, a balance maintained elsewhere on the album.
A need for connection underpins the lilting ‘Alex Bell’, where Matt’s lyrics playfully reference the inventor of the telephone over a plaintive cello and bubbling keyboards – evidence of the album’s carefully nurtured arrangements. With nimble sequencing, ‘My Answer’ follows with a question: do artists really need to get messed-up to create? Matt may not have the answer, he admits, but he articulates the question beautifully, channelling the influence of Blue Öyster Cult’s ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ into a song of fleet, melodic electric-folk drive.
Featuring 17-year-old MJ Murphy on misty backing vocals, the softly insistent ‘Don’t Come Down’ is an album centrepiece, detailing a need to see things anew. Like The Flaming Lips writing a classicist piano ballad, the twinkling ‘Artificial Moonlight’ finds Matt writing late at night, illuminated by the lights from streetlamps. Finally, ‘Mahwah’ closes the album on a note of arrival.
Recorded with close collaborators and friends over a period that saw Pond make vital adjustments to his life, its stealth emergence reflects his desire to set a fresh pace for himself and come from somewhere new, somewhere more open.
the self titled debut album by The Natural Lines, released 24th March 2023 via Bella Union:
Oregon singer-songwriter Margo Cilker’s debut album “Pohorylle” is a real gem of a record! Every one of the nine songs on the release sparkles with wit, emotional depth, and a winsome sense of humor. Cilker can be blunt or coy. Even when dealing with serious topics, she understands the cosmic absurdity of living in a dangerous world where the hazards lie inherent in the beauty of nature, and love can leave one (literally) with a broken arm as well as a broken heart.
Consider the opening line to the first track of “Pohoryille”, “That River”. Without explaining who’s telling the story, the protagonist immediately observes, “That river in the winter / It could fuck me up.” This isn’t Joni Mitchell‘s stream one could skate away on as her love affair dissolves. If she’s not careful, this river could do the runaway protagonist serious bodily harm. The song concerns a woman absconding from a relationship. She’s heard that “fortune favors the bold and the far from home”. The character is willing to take risks. The dangers are real. Cilker’s forebodings do not predict a positive or negative result as much as they portray a cliffhanger world where either one may happen.
While it is unclear whether Cilker deliberately alludes to Mitchell’s frozen river, it seems likely as the Oregonian slyly references other classic songs on different tracks, especially “Tehachapi” with clear winks and nods to Little Feat’s “Willin’” and “Flood Plain” whose plaintive acoustic guitar lines suggests Bob Dylan and the Band‘s version of “I Shall Be Released”. On other cuts, such as “Kevin Johnson”, Cilker purposely keeps the details generic as the song consciously evokes traditional Appalachian folk music to skewer its championing of the common person. Although she hails from the Sunset state, Cilker sounds like a Southerner with an affected twang in her voice.
The song’s simple martial melody and non-specific particulars reveal how biases are passed on and its depressing consequences for all, including the title character. He ends up crying like everybody else without ever understanding why.
Seattle’s Sera Cahoone produced the record. She recruited a first-rate Northwestern indie rock/freak folk band to accompany Cilker that includes Jenny Conlee (The Decemberists) on keyboards, Jason Kardong (Son Volt) on pedal steel, Rebecca Young (Jesse Sykes) on bass, Mirabai Peart (Joanna Newsom) on strings, Kelly Pratt (Beirut) on horns, and the album’s engineer John Morgan Askew (Neko Case, Laura Gibson) on various other instruments. Cilker’s sister Sarah also provides vocal harmonies, which adds to the record’s country vibe, especially on such songs as “Chester’s” and Barbed Wire (Belly Crawl)”.
It’s unclear to what the album’s title,“Pohorylle”, refers. The mystery is further enhanced by the cover art of a woman alone at the beach on a cloudy and foggy day. The lone female struggling to find her place in a murky world is a common theme that runs through many of the songs, most specifically on “Brother, Taxman, Preacher”, which highlights the sexism in contemporary society. If the singer were only male, she would have many more options in life. Cilker humorously addresses the topic, but her criticisms are pointed and right on the mark. She croons, “And I wish I was a preacher / I could tell you who to love / I could tell you who to vote for / Who to pity, who to fuck / I wish I was a preacher / I’d know what it means to know everything.”
Cilker may be just a woman, she sings, but she knows enough to understand that limits her role in the larger world. Several other songs offer specific examples of women who have been held back or worse because of their gender.
From the forthcoming LP, “Pohorylle”, on Fluff and Gravy Records (US) and Loose Music (EU)
Jensen McRae offers possibly among the most exciting indie debut’s of the year with “Are You Happy Now?” Her story is effortlessly 2022, a viral Phoebe Bridgers parody spurring widespread interest in her original music. Her songwriting is the same, striking a chord with younger crowds through relatable, straight-shooting lyricism and gorgeous vocals.
The 24-year-old’s stark folk songs centre on lone guitars, with bluesy grooves and linear narratives delivered in second person. Yet the most striking similarity is the way McRae enunciates, mumbling through verses with a shy aloofness, embellishing odd vowels and images before belting choruses with glaring urgency.
McRae’s soulful voice stands tall and center throughout the album, acting as the perfect vehicle to deliver her moving songwriting to the forefront. Frequent comparisons to Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell are warranted. There’s a fair share of fine musicality on display, bridging gaps between folk-pop and R&B with McRae’s striking delivery.
Aoife O’Donovan brings her trademark knack for eloquent arrangements into “Age of Apathy”. The album is delivered with subtlety and sophistication rarely begotten by mainstream folk releases. It is guided liberally by jazz structure as its songs often wander off the beaten path from its primary melody. Yet, it’s with a knowing that it’s meandering with one long loop—a singular grounding intention that makes these open-ended tunes more comforting than not.
A savvy and generous collaborator, Aoife is one third of the group I’m With Her with bandmates Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz. The trio’s debut album “See You Around” was hailed as “willfully open-hearted” by NPR Music.
The album haunts where it may or may not be intended, such as in the uncertain confidence of O’Donovan’s soaring vocals on “Phoenix”, where the narrator proclaims themselves above a failed relationship. The gorgeous composition of “B61” is interlaced with the dim truth of growing older, if not more uneasy. All in all, it’s another beautiful thought piece from the revered singer-songwriter.
Aoife O’Donovan operates in a thrilling musical world beyond genre. Deemed “a vocalist of unerring instinct” by The New York Times, she has released two critically-acclaimed and boundary-blurring solo albums including “In the Magic Hour,”which Rolling Stone hailed for its “Impressionistic, atmospheric songs [that] relay their narratives against gorgeous pastoral backdrops.
Aoife O’Donovan’s third full-length studio album ‘Age of Apathy’
Gaz Coombes has released new single ‘Long Live The Strange’ The latest single from the Supergrass frontman is a celebration of the “weird and wonderful” as a “reminder to embrace that at all times”, written after he took his daughter Tiger to see Cavetown in Oxford in 2020.
“The show had a big impact on me,” he said in a press statement. “It was what live performance is all about, connecting with an audience that consists of anybody and everybody who wants to be part of it, it’s fully inclusive and I found that quite powerful.” He described that sense of connectivity as “obviously strange in the nicest sense of the word”.
Speaking about the inspiration behind the music video, “When I was brought onto the project, Gaz had already been living amongst the community of mannequins for several months. His knowledge of them allowed me to have no issues directing them nor overcome the language barrier.
“The whole process was fascinating and certainly a culture shock; coming from South London, I found the silence and stillness almost deafening. It’s certainly one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had as a filmmaker.”
Coombes’ fourth solo album ‘Turn The Car Around’ is out January 13th via Hot Fruit Recordings/ Virgin Music,
Taken from Gaz’s forthcoming album ‘Turn The Car Around’, released on 13th January 2023
