Hailing from Church Village in Wales and now based in Cardiff, we’re introducing you to the lush sounds of CVC. The group have just announced that their debut album ‘Get Real’ is set for release on 13th January via Secretly Distribution. There’s a few good bands that have come from Church Village, our good friends Wynt and Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons, to name a few. And the Cardiff scene is bursting at the seams with great bands. A few more good venues in Cardiff and it would have one of the best scenes in the country!
“The album was recorded with love in the living room of a student house in Cardiff around one microphone, as we searched for a new sound,” they note. “We used pots and pans for percussion, Welsh thunder for atmosphere and 40p Ramen Noodle soups for dinner.”
When we initially moved to Cardiff, we were blown away by the music scene there. It was motivating for us to see other bands like Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard and Boy Azooga playing in great venues across the city. This has faded a bit recently, for obvious reasons – so we’re hoping to play our part in doing what ever we can to bring back the good times!
CVC are David Bassey, Francesco Orsi, Elliot Bradfield, Nanial Jones, Tom Fry and Ben Thorne
Metronomy have announced “Small World” (Special Edition) due 29th November via Because Music. The first taste of the repackaged album is Katy J Pearson’s version of “Small World” standout track ‘Love Factory’.
Katy J Pearson’s reimagining of ‘Love Factory’ is a duet with Metronomy frontman Joe Mount that swaps the glorious groove of the original for her wistful Americana-tinged rock, while retaining all of its irresistible charm. The track is accompanied by a nostalgic video that stars Katy and Joe channelling iconic country performances of the ‘60s and ‘70s, framed against the distinct landscapes of Devon.
Katy shares: “I’ve been a huge fan of Metronomy for a long time. The records they made had a big influence on my music. I have fond memories of travelling up to Bristol to watch them play in when I was a teenager and the shows being so joyous. Brilliantly intelligent pop music. I met Joe after their show in Bristol and we got chatting. After this encounter I got asked to rework “Love Factory” for the special edition of their album “Small World”. I was so excited as “Love Factory” is my favourite song from the new record.
It’s so beautiful! So I was very flattered and honoured to have the chance to put my own spin on it. I wanted to strip it down to basics and make it a vulnerable duet. I’d been listening to a lot of Nancy Lee & Lee Hazelwood at the time so making it a pop duet felt really fun to do.”
“Surprise! Slaughter Beach, Dog’s “Live at The Cabin” is out now! Recorded at home in the poconos in March of 2021 – this set has been mixed and mastered and is ready for public consumption. Enjoy!”
Hello friends, hope you’re enjoying hibernation. Dropping in with a couple updates here…
-We’re starting a Substack newsletter called “Pause for Effect.” It’s a monthly dispatch in which I write a short essay about whatever I’m into lately (topics range from shoveling snow to Tom Waits worship), and you’ll also get an unreleased demo from the Slaughter Beach, Dog archive every month (some songs you’ll recognize, others are old secrets). This month I’m writing about meditation, skateboarding, and talking to strangers, and there’s a demo of our unreleased song “More.” It’s $5/month to subscribe, and you can sign up right now: https://slaughterbeachdog.substack.com/
Girlpuppy is 23 year old Atlanta based singer-songwriter Becca Harvey. Following her first track For You and it’s success, she enlisted the help of Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers) to make her debut ep, “Swan”.
Girlpuppy releases her new single “Teenage Dream” ahead of debut record “When I’m Alone”out October 28th. On the track, Girlpuppy says: “I wrote “Teenage Dream” after I cried at an Atlanta United soccer game at Mercedes Benz stadium. The song’s about a guy I lead on who looks like Keanu Reeves, and it’s the first one we made for the album. It was, in part, inspired by Caroline Polachek, who said in an interview that her lyrics for “Bunny Is A Rider” make no real sense, and that they just sounded good to sing. Similarly, the chorus lyrics to teenage dream don’t make much sense, but I do enjoy singing them. An important detail: I’m talking to my puppy Obi at the beginning, and you can hear him barking at the end.”
Catch girlpuppy on tour with Hovvdy this November!
Her debut album, produced by Samuel Acchione (Alex G) and engineered by Henry Stoehr (Slow Pulp) is out October 28th.
Becca Harvey – Vocals, Tambourine, Claps Samuel Acchione – Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Bass Guitar, Slide Guitar, Keys, 12 String Guitar, Loop Drums, Drums, Tambourine, Shaker, Claps, Harmonies, Background Vocals, Wurlitzer John Michael Young – Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, 12 String Guitar, Bass Guitar, Bells, Drums, Keys, Shaker, Mandolin, Glockenspiel Henry Stoehr – Engineering, Harmonies, Background Vocals, Keys, Claps Tom Sinclair – Bass Guitar, Piano, Wurlitzer, Shaker Blaise O’Brien – Piano Molly Germer – Violin, string arrangements Tom Kelly – Engineering, Drums
One of our most anticipated releases of the year, Wild Pink’s “ILYSM”is finally out! The album has seen praise from outlets like The New York Times, Pitchfork,The FADER, and was named Album of The Week by Stereogum who say “it doesn’t do this album justice to merely call it a ‘level up.’ Paste Magazine described it as “one of the most surprising and satisfying musical moments of the year, the kind of thing you have to hear to believe.”
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.
An intimate, coming-of-age memoir by legendary guitarist Kid Congo Powers, detailing his experiences as a young, queer Mexican-American in 1970s Los Angeles through his rise in the glam rock and punk rock scenes.
Kid Congo Powers has been described as a “legendary guitarist and paragon of cool” with “the greatest resume ever of anyone in rock music.” That unique imprint on rock history stems from being a member of not one but three beloved, groundbreaking, and influential groups–Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the Cramps, and last but not least, The Gun Club, the wildly inventive punk-blues band he co-founded.
Some New Kind of Kick begins as an intimate coming of age tale, of a young, queer, Chicano kid, growing up in a suburb east of East LA, in the mid-’70s, exploring his sexual identity through glam rock. When a devastating personal tragedy crushes his teenage dreams, he finds solace and community through fandom, as founder (‘The Prez’) of the Ramones West Coast fan club, and immerses himself in the delinquent chaos of the early LA punk scene.
A chance encounter with another superfan, in the line outside the Whiskey-A-Go-Go to get into a PereUbu concert, changes the course of his life entirely. Jeffrey Lee Pierce, a misfit Chicano punk who runs the Blondie fan club, proposes they form a band. The Gun Club is born. So begins an unlikely transition from adoring fan to lauded performer. In Pierce, he finds brotherhood, a creative voice, and a common cause, but also a shared appetite for self-destruction that threatens to overwhelm them both.
Quirky, droll, and heartfelt, with a pitch-perfect evocation of time and place, and a wealth of richly-drawn supporting characters, Some New Kind of Kick is a memoir of personal transformation, addiction and recovery, friendship and belonging, set against the relentless creativity and excess of the ’70s and ’80s underground music scenes.
Everybody compared us to King Crimson and Pink Floyd,” Slint bassist Todd Brashear told Prog magazine way back in 2014, when “Spiderland”, the band’s second album, was reissued. Originally released in 1991, “Spiderland” is as good an early example as any of the quiet/loud dynamic beloved of most post-rock bands. In a twisting maelstrom of time signatures, angular rhythms and the kind of space afforded music by latter-day Talk Talk, the influence of Sonic Youth is as evident as the proggier bands mentioned earlier.
“Spiderland” was the second and final studio album by the American rock band Slint. It contains six songs played over 40 minutes, and was released by Touch and Go Records on March 27th, 1991. Slint’s line-up at the time of recording comprised Brian McMahan on vocals and guitar, David Pajo on guitar, Todd Brashear on bass guitar and Britt Walford on drums. “Spiderland” was engineered by Brian Paulson and recorded over four days in August 1990. The music and vocal melodies were composed throughout the summer of 1990, while lyrics were written in-studio.
Forming in 1986 in Louisville, Kentucky, Slint had met as teenagers playing in the Midwestern punk scene but soon diverged sonically from their hardcore roots. By the time they recorded “Spiderland” in late 1990, the band had developed a complex, idiosyncratic sound characterized by atypical rhythmic meters, harmonic dissonance and irregular song structures. McMahan’s vocal delivery on the record alternates between spoken word, singing and shouting. The lyrics are presented in a narrative style and cover themes such as unease, social anxiety, loneliness, and despair.
The album’s guitar work is noted for its roomy sound, angular rhythms, dramatically alternating dynamic shifts, and irregular time signatures. McMahan’s singing style varies among mumbling, spoken word, strained shouting, and a written-narrative style. Influences on the record included Gang of Four, Black Sabbath and Sonic Youth.
Spin summarized the album’s sound as “mid-’70s King Crimson gone emo: screeching guitar chords and gorgeous note-spinning in odd-metered instrumentals speckled with words both spoken and sung”. Melody Maker described the music as “structurally and in tone”, saying that the band “recall[s] Television circa Marquee Moon and Crazy Horse, whose simplicity they echo and whose style they most certainly do not”.
Slint broke up shortly before the album’s release due to McMahan’s depression. In the US, “Spiderland” initially attracted little critical attention and sold poorly. However, a warm reception from UK music papers and gradually increasing sales in subsequent years helped it develop a significant cult following.
“Spiderland” is widely regarded as foundational to the 1990s post-rock and math rock movements, and is cited by critics as a milestone of indie and experimental rock, inspiring a myriad of subsequent artists. Slint reunited in 2005 to perform the album in its entirety across three international tours.
From the beautiful to the jarring, intrepid explorer Bill Callahan charts a passage through all kinds of territory, pitting dreams of dreams against dreams of reality. When he makes it back to us, his old friends ‘n acquaintances, we are reminded how much of a world it can be out there – and in here as well, where we live everyday. “And we’re coming out of dreams / And we’re coming back to dreams” is the first thing you hear Bill say as you remake your acquaintance on “YTI⅃AƎЯ“. Right out the gate, he’s standing in two places at once: meeting up with old friends behind the scenes and encountering them on the record, finding himself coming round the bend and then again as someone else on down the line. Like the character actor he played on “Gold Record“, writing stories about other people, telling jokes about everyone, and in singing them, becoming the songs.
Released October 14th, 2022 2022, Drag City Inc. The LP Version will be released on February 24th, 2023.
Following up their EP releases “Suburban Hell” and “We Might Not Make Tomorrow”, Girls In Synthesis once again join forces with London-based label Blank Editions to release the “Fan The Flames” EP. Building on the subtleties apparent on their previous releases, it can be said that “Fan The Flames” is the most varied and experimental of the trio of EP’s. Amongst the piercing guitars, pounding drums and harsh, spitting vocals, the EP finds time to include improvised, spoken word poetry and groove-based sparseness on “Howling” and “Internal Politics“, respectively. The title track lyrically looks at the dichotomy of moral and political beliefs while “You’re Doing Fine” deals with self-doubt and anxiety, backed by a rapid and edgy musical backing to match.
Released once again in their now familiar fold-out sleeve, the vinyl edition is typically a labour of love; 125 copies only, all hand-stamped and numbered which come in the aforementioned sleeve featuring lyrics and a reproduction of the forthcoming “Fan The Flames” tour poster. Also included is an exclusive 4 badge set and this limited release will no doubt follow suit and sell out on pre-orders like its predecessors.
The framework for “Quiet the Room” was laid two years ago, when Ballentine wrote and recorded a song of the same name. Unlike most other Skullcrusher songs, it was written on piano, her childhood instrument. While writing the rest of the album in the summer of 2021, visions of Ballentine’s youth flocked like bats from the attic as she wandered her Los Angeles apartment in the sticky, sweltering heat. The image of a house emerged as she merged the interior world of her songs with the exterior rooms that contained her. She was thinking of her childhood in Mount Vernon, NY, which she calls the biggest inspiration for the record.
“It’s like layers of tracing paper, like someone is trying to make a drawing and you’re seeing the entire process,” Ballentine says of the album’s construction. Looking back through home videos, she became struck by seemingly benign shots captured through the window—her at the piano or walking in the yard. There was a weight that extended beyond the edges of the frame, a darkness hovering just out of view: her parents were fighting, on the road to divorce. The house was failing to contain them all. What she set out to capture on “Quiet the Room” was not the innocence of childhood, as it is so often portrayed, but the intense complexity of it. The result is a stunning and quietly moving work that reflects the journeys we take through the physical and spiritual realms of ourselves in order to show up for the world.
“We wanted every song to have that little twinkle, but also a sense of crumbling,” she says. These songs thrum with moments of anxiety that boil over into moments of peace, as on lead single “Whatever Fits Together,” which chugs to a ragged start before the gears catch and ease. On “It’s Like a Secret,”Ballentine struggles to connect and let people in, recognizing that no one can ever fully know our inner worlds and that to understand each other is to cross a barrier and leave a part of ourselves behind. And yet, on closing track “You are my House,” she finds a way to reach out. “You are the walls and floors of my room,” she sings in perfect, hopeful harmony.
As the album cover invites, these are dollhouse songs to which we bend a giant eye, peering into the laminate, luminous world that Ballentine has created. Like a kid constructing a shelter in a patch of sharp brambles, she reminds us that beauty and terror can exist in the same place. The complexities of childhood are so often overlooked, but through these private yet generous songs, she gives new weight to our earliest memories, widening the frame for us—even opening a window.
On Skullcrusher’s (aka Helen Ballentine) debut album, she wastes no time teaching a master class on vulnerability. The songwriting is rooted in the confusion of childhood, examining Ballentine’s own through vaguely told memories and home-video voice memos. The guitar builds itself a home in the ambient, wide production. This is certainly not an album to be pigeonholed into one genre—the influences on this album range all over the board, and include a lot of electronic artists. It peels back the curtains from the culturally romanticized image of childhood, revealing it as a time with the same pain and confusion, as well as abstract joy as any other part of life.
Being young is anything but simple, and those dreams and experiences spin around in Ballentine’s mind years after moving away from her childhood home in New York state. In describing the songwriting process involved on the album, Ballentine says, “I viewed my younger self through a wash of emotions: anger, sadness, pity, confusion, all reaching for a kind of compassion. I tried to capture the contradictions that comprise my past and define who I am now. As I looked back, I saw my life in pieces: some moments blacked out, some extremely vivid, some leading nowhere.” The resulting LP is a shivering look inside yourself through the memories of another.
Exclusive Pink Glass Translucent Vinyl, Black LP, CD and Limited Edition ‘Quiet The Room’ Tote Bag and Tea Towel now available at the Secretly Store.
