The cult indie/shoegaze duo Sweet Trip issued a massive, three-disc, 50-song collection of unreleased material titled “Seen/Unseen“. It’s a thrilling drop from a band whose most recent studio albums were issued 12 years apart. The label Darla Records (whose frankly spectacular catalogue is itself overdue for a renaissance) cited an unofficial Youtube compilation of Sweet Trip’s Soundcloud uploads as the basis of the sprawling box, and added more material from the duo’s personal archives.
Sweet Trip were an experimental rock act formed in 1993 in the Bay Area of California, United States, by musicians Valerie Cooper and Roberto Burgos. They are known for their dreamy soundscapes and dense production techniques, often blending alternative rock subgenres with intelligent dance music; they are also known for their cult following online, specifically around their second album, “Velocity : Design : Comfort”
Songs like “Route of Escape” track the duo’s indier leanings, recalling such noisy, lo-fi, ‘90s college-radio staples as Superchunk, the Poster Children, or Pastels, while others, such as “To Live on Valium,” blend shoegaze guitars and hazy, emo-inspired vocals, landing somewhere between Slowdive and vintage Red House Painters.
All told, Seen/Unseen feels like an appropriate send-off, marking the end of an era for this iteration of Sweet Trip with a collection that makes for an excellent point of entry for new or curious listeners.
Written in the months before and after the release of their critically acclaimed fifth album “Plum”, “TheJacket” feels like a full-circle moment for the duo of singer-songwriter Molly Hamilton and guitarist Robert Earl Thomas. Thematically, it considers “Plum’s” broader questions about the values ascribed to one’s time and labour through the more refined lens of performance and music-making. This is due in part to the band’s recent return to New York City, the site of their own origin story, where they recorded “The Jacket” at the Diamond Mine with co- producer and noted Daptone Records affiliate Homer Steinweiss.
Reunions always breed reflection, and Hamilton admits that much of the album’s themes are tied to formative experiences in the band’s own early years. Some songs speak to the process of moving on (“Unwind”, “Salt”), while others muse about regret (“True Blue”, “Forget It”). The album’s namesake track considers the literal and figurative costumes we dress our personalities in: imbued with meaning and sense of time and place, becoming so representative of who we think we are before they’re ultimately left behind. The symbolic spaces of work, music, nightlife are seen through the haze of recalling one’s own unknown legends.
Given the understated quality of their fairly straightforward folk-rock/dream-pop compositions, it can be easy to miss how consistently Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas are able to articulate profound universal truths.
On the new Widowspeak single “Everything Is Simple,” Hamilton surveys the limitations of foresight we often experience when exploring new relationships and opportunities. Soon, she turns the lens on herself as the unreliable narrator of her own hardships. “Singers tend to hide the truth,” she admits. “It serves them well to edit anything that’s fit to tell.”
Sonically, “The Jacket” finds the band at their usual and best: dynamics shift seamlessly between gentle, drifting ballads and twangy jams, built up from layered guitars, dusty percussion and ambling bass lines. Elsewhere: whimsical flutes, choral textures, and basement organs. Thomas’s guitar playing is as lyrical and emotive as it’s ever been, and Hamilton’s voice: comfortable and effortless. This seamless dynamic is amplified perfectly in the mix by Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House) . Widowspeak expertly pepper in slow-core, dream-pop, pacific northwest indie, and outlaw country, resulting in a 60s-meets-90s aesthetic. This sense of sonic nostalgia adds another layer to lyrics that reflect on old selves, invented and true. “The Jacket” is a wizened meditation on performance and past lives from a band who’ve seen their fair share, hitting their stride now over a decade in.
The Murder Capital have released “Only Good Things”, the first taste of their forthcoming second album. The song represents a significant departure from the dark sound of their debut When I Have Fears focusing on celebrating those that are still with us rather than those we have lost.
“Jewels in your eyes like Vega at night it’s a retrospect
All the magpies, they’d rob you blind if I’d written it, have you written back?”
The Murder Capital are an Irish post-punk band based in Dublin. The band consists of James McGovern (vocals), Damien Tuit (guitar), Cathal Roper (guitar), Gabriel Pascal Blake (bass) and Diarmuid Brennan (drums). The band are from different parts of Ireland but were formed in Dublin in 2018.
Breakup songs are bound to be a popular theme for this year , so “Quitters”, Christian Lee Hutson’s follow-up to his 2020 breakout album, “Beginners“, couldn’t come at a better time. One of the sharpest lyricists out, Hutson’s writing reflects the best aspects of Father John Misty’s early work with none of the narcissism, throwing daggers with bullseye accuracy.
“Rubberneckers” is especially poignant. It opens with a darling marriage proposal and cohabitation, then leaps straight to the aftermath (“We’ve got rubberneckers, broken records, why-don’t-you-get-back-togethers”) and resulting ego death (“I’m a self-esteem vending machine, a doctor’s office magazine”). Produced again by Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst, the song could do with a bit less polish, but Hutson’s incisiveness and wonderfully wry delivery would shine in any setting.
In this follow up to his Anti Records debut, “Beginners”, Hutson moves away from a focus on growing up to the dread and complications of growing older. Written under lock down, the laugh that announces “Quitters” is the kind you’ll find at the end of John Huston films, one of resignation and release, and somehow a cosmic laugh that says “California,” a place where lonely people gather together like birds.
The song “Rubberneckers” follows the story a romance from beginning to breakup, with backing vocals by Phoebe Bridges, who returns as producer along with Conor Oberst. “Quitters” is a departure from the digital recording of his debut. Hutson shares, “With this record, Phoebe and Conor had an idea that it would be fun to make it to tape. Phoebe is my best friend and making “Beginners” with her was so comfortable and easy. So I wanted to work with her again and Conor is someone who I really respect as a lyricist.”
If every great record is a world, then this is Christian Lee Hutson’s world. It’s one filled with the fuzzy haze of a dream, and the half- remembered moments of a forgotten life. It’s a record brave enough to say, In the good old days, when times were bad. But beyond the songs, it is this voice. The voice of someone who was alive in 2021 and recorded a group of songs with his friends for us to hear.
“Rubberneckers” by Christian Lee Hutson from the album ‘Quitters’,
The brooding, building pop of Ethel Cain. Potentially “pop music’s next great obsession” according to many, Cain is a 24-year-old woman building a mysterious persona alongside layered synth-pop — with shades of The Weeknd, Caroline Polacheck, and Perfume Genius. Shimmering anthem “AmericanTeenager” is the standout jam from her debut album, while “A House In Nebraska” is more representative of her overall slow-burn style.
Surely you haven’t heard a more ambitious album concept in 2022 than this: a 105-minute concept album – the first installment of a trilogy – that traces the journey of a character escaping a fundamentalist home only to meet a gruesome end at the hands of a cannibalistic psychopath. All of this is done while combining the sounds of slowcore, traditional Americana, and Lana Del Rey-style dark pop. Such a weighty and ambitious attempt could easily be a disaster, especially when made by someone in their early 20’s making their very first album. Instead, the fascinating Hayde Silas Anhedonia, or Ethel Cain, turns ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ into one of the most surprising thrills of 2022; an instant cult classic of epic proportions. Find out our full thoughts on ‘Preacher’s Daughter’.
As a fictitious alter-ego named Ethel Cain, singer/songwriter/producer Hayden Silas Anhedönia makes music so eerily personal that the line between character creation and lived experience becomes utterly blurred. She is, on one hand, as real and relatable as any post-teenage mid-American retaliating against her conservative Christian upbringing, and on the other, an unsettling creature inhabiting that soul— an uncannily perfect approximation of personage adopting her surroundings via chameleonic metachrosis. Entirely self-produced, “Preacher’s Daughter” is to be the first entry in a trilogy spanning film, books, and albums, and even by itself, feels poised to define an era of resolutely unique and unreplicable superstars.
Hayden Anhedönia aka Ethel Cain Recalled the concept behind “Preacher’s Daughter” a cautionary tale of what happens if you don’t break a cycle and you let it continue to almost a ruinous point. “GibsonGirl” arrives about three-quarters into the record, and finds the character Ethel being exploited for sex in a strip club. Whether intentional or not, the song doubles as a bleak gender-inversion of the Weeknd’s “Wicked Games,” whose melody it seems to draw on, causing us to consider the perspective of the subject to whom that song was directed— even while positioning it as an atmospheric backdrop to scenes like these.
Whilst going through the band’s archive to put together an anniversary version of “Know Your Enemy“, Nicky Wire found the original tapes of“Solidarity” and “Door To The River” that he’d made up in the studio during recording. When he put forward the idea of recreating those records, James Dean Bradfield agreed on the condition that he could remix the entire record with the band’s long time studio partner Dave Eringa. The new mixes would bring a clarity to each record, losing extraneous studio effects and digital noise from the “Solidarity” songs and stripping away unnecessary orchestration and embellishment from the tracks that made up “Door To The River“.
“Know Your Enemy” has been remixed, reconstructed and reissued as two separate albums, as originally intended: ‘solidarity’ and ‘door to the river’.
The Manic Street Preachers release a radically reimagined version of their 6th album “Know Your Enemy”. this deluxe release includes two previously unheard ‘forgotten’ tracks: ‘Studies In Paralysis’ and ‘Rosebud. beginning all wiry and cracked, ‘Rosebud’ soon opens out into a stuttering hammond organ riff, a pensive rhythm track and a lyric that regrets “most things i never finished”.
The vinyl edition “Know Your Enemy” presents ‘solidarity’ and ‘door to the river’ in the same order as originally planned in 2000. each of the cd packages features those records in full plus outtakes, unused mixes by Tom Lord-Alge and tracks featured on the original “Know Your Enemy” that aren’t on the two restructured albums. All formats feature previously unseen photos from the recording sessions taken by regular collaborator Mitch Ikeda. following the success of 1998’s’ This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’, Manic Street Preachers planned an ambitious follow-up to be released as two distinct albums: an aggressive, rapid fire return to their roots called ‘Solidarity’ and ‘Door To The River’, a more conciliatory, reflective collection. during the recording sessions, the trio got cold feet and settled on a single album that forced often conflicting ideas to sit side by side on the same record. “Know Your Enemy” was launched in February 2001 with a show at Teatro karl marx in Havana in front of the Cuban leader and charted at no.2 in the UK the following week, going on to see over half a million copies worldwide. the singles taken from the album: ‘So Why So Sad’, ‘Found That Soul’, ‘Ocean Spray’ and ‘Let Robeson Sing’ all reached the top 20. whilst going through the band’s archive to put together an anniversary version of “Know Your Enemy”,
Author and long-term band collaborator Robin Turner explains in his expansive sleeve notes that this release is “the director’s cut of ‘Know Your Enemy’. the picture has been painstakingly restored, cleaned up, brightened. although it doesn’t aim to replace the original, it most certainly enhances it.”
Although it doesn’t aim to replace the original, it most certainly enhances it.”
Announcing an expanded and remastered version of ‘Know Your Enemy’, will be released on September 9th 2022.
Divided into two distinct albums across two discs, as the band had originally intended; ‘Solidarity’ and ‘Door To The River’ alternately showcase ‘Know Your Enemy’s” jagged post-rock and spiritual acoustic sides.
Available on double vinyl, double digipack CD and deluxe 3CD book set, which includes an extra disc of previously unreleased demos, plus liner notes by Robin Turner and photography by long-term collaborator Mitch Ikeda. A limited number of signed bundles and t-shirts are available from the official store.
Led by Will Turner and Georgie Fuller, the Brighton, UK-based band warps time and place through an unfettered collision of rock n roll, psychedelic blues, acid rock and sunshine pop.
Across their debut “Life And Life Only” ep, the group breathes incandescent new energy into sounds from decades ago, transcending eras with euphoric ease as they tap into musical touchstones that range from folk-blues duo Delaney & Bonnie, Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac and british invasion acts like the Hollies, to a sonic alchemy all their own. full of effusive harmonies and fuzzed-out guitar, tracks like the whirlwind road trip of “Miles and Miles,” the near-operatic epic of “Sleeping On Grassy Ground,” the rapturous opening of “All My Dreams,” and “Go Down River,” the first song they ever recorded together, life and life only pulls listeners into a sublime fugue state, leaving one newly awakened to infinite possibilities.
Band: William Turner – guitar, vocals Georgie Fuller – keys, vocals Frank Fogden – guitar, vocals TomHolder – bass, vocals Jono Helsby – drums
Thousand Yard Stare continue their most unlikely of comebacks with a new single “Isadora”, the third in a series of four releases this year that will both remind longer-term fans of their infinitely catchy hooks yet still sound like a band exploring new elements of their sound.
The single comes hot on the heels of previous releases this year Adverse Cambers and Measures as part of a four-song set that they announced earlier this year. After reforming in 2015 the band have released a double EP, an album “The Panglossian Momentum” and one-off singles, almost matching the output of their first period in the early nineties.
Thousand Yard Stare frontman Stephen Barnes described the tune – “When Giles sent me the bones of this track, I think initially it was destined to be an instrumental, but it’s kooky ear worm nature got inside my head. It’s a track about looking for the essence of who you are. It’s a fever-search for identity and a place in your world…. Yeh, Isadora is definitely a child of those pandemic times and surreal mind-sets brought about by so much uncertainty at the time. Ultimately though, Isadora is anyone or anything you want them to be. They could be you, they could be me, they could be who you want to be. Or, it’s just rollicking lung bursting carnival of chaos to lose yourself in for two minutes.… that’s fine too!”
Thousand Yard Stare were formed in 1988 in Slough, Berkshire, releasing several EPs that reached the top of the indie charts in 1991-2, and 2 LPs for Polydor. The band have recently reformed to sell out gigs throughout the UK described by critics as “a band who are as good – if not better – than when they were the next big thing back in the early 90’s”.
Released July 22nd, 2022
Written by Barnes / Duffy Performed by Thousand Yard Stare
With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the state of Kansas, where we live, has become a really important haven for bordering states in the fight for access to reproductive healthcare. There’s an amendment to the state constitution in the upcoming election that would put abortion rights at risk. We’re asking Kansas folks to vote no on this amendment in the August 2nd election and we’re supporting Vote No Kansas, an amazing local organization raising awareness about this issue.
We record covers on a 4-track at home from time to time, so we’re releasing 2 of those today on Bandcamp. It’s a sliding scale starting at $5 and the amount of funds raised will be donated to Vote No Kansas.
Gum has released reissues of his first two studio albums “Delorean Highway” and “Glamorous Damage”, newly remastered by Kevin Parker. The digital version of “Delorean Highway” includes a bonus demo cover of Ron Davies’ “It Ain’t Easy“, and new album artwork – a plasticine remake by animator, videographer and photographer Alex McLaren of the original by Jason Galea. “Glamorous Damage” features a never-before-released demo of “The Plot” on the digital adaption.
“Ancients”, taken from the remastered / repressed album “Glamorous Damage” out on 8th July.
Stoked to announce that my first two records as GUM from 2014/15 are now remastered, repressed on 180gram vinyl and available for pre-order on Spinning Top Music!
“Delorean Highway” features a plasticine remake of the original artwork of Jason Galea by Alex McLaren Long out of print, Jay Watson’s second album as Gum ‘Glamorous Damage’ has been lovingly remastered by Kevin Parker – “Glamorous Damage” comes on gold vinyl and DH on silver.
These records are a snapshot of a particular time in my life for me – while parts of them make me uncomfortable and embarrassed, other parts I’m really proud of, and I’m glad that people can get them again easily if they want.
The Fat Angel Sings 