The juxtaposition of light and dark is a strong theme in the music of Tallies and certainly apparent once more with this new single, “Special” – another fine example of their gliding, shoegaze-adjacent jangle-pop reminiscent of The Sundays, Galaxie 500, Ride, etc. While many of their songs are upbeat, with Frankland’s breezy guitar lines drenched in reverb, soaring over Cian O’Neill’s propulsive drumbeats, Sarah’s lyrics can add a hint of shadow to even their most jangly tunes.
“Special’ is about longing to be seen and heard by those who matter to you most. Sometimes feeling invisible is particularly painful when the indifference comes from someone whose opinion means a lot to you.” – Saraha Cogan (Tallies)
Tallies share “Special“, the latest single from their forthcoming album “Patina“. Out July 29th, 2022 via Kanine, Bella Union and Hand Drawn Dracula Records. “Special” arrives following a string of recent singles which have found support at Clash, Under the Radar, Exclaim, CBC Radio, Stereogum, BBC 6 Music and more.
Toronto’s Fake Palms will release new album “Lemons” on September 16th via Hand Drawn Dracula. “Satellite” is powered by an infectious, spiky riff. great stereo mix and such a cool song.
“Lemons” is slippery, spiky, not a little psych-y and more than a little lyrically sour, not to mention frequently, subtly tricked-out from a minimalist, nerdo-instrumental perspective that doesn’t demand that you dork out over the arrangements but will always leave the option open if and when you decide to do so.
More than anything, though, Lemons is the record where Le Riche – who also plays in the steamy synth-pop outfit Sauna and formerly of art-rock troupe the Darcys – fully exposes his talents as a bona fide popsmith. This thing’s got sticky tunes to burn. The arch jangle of “Visions” evokes Lee Ranaldo linking up with the bubblegum-savvy early Wire, for instance, while “Satellite” surfs spectacularly along sometime Dilly Dally drummer Benjamin Reinhartz’s pummelling rhythm track to a tingly, soaring chorus that’s impossible to shake after first exposure and the similarly haunting “Civil Liberties” manages the trick of sounding wistful and dystopian at the same time.
You’ll be hooked soon enough, in any case. “Lemons” – conjured with help throughout from Reinhartz and producer/mixer/engineer Josh Korody throughout and also featuring Ducks Ltd.’s Evan Lewis on guitars and such guests as Twist’s Laura Hermiston, Burning Love’s Patrick Marshall – is destined to take over discerning turntables and playlists for months to come. Fake Palms have arrived.
“This record is the most direct thing I’ve ever done,” says Le Riche. “All the distorted guitars playing 16th-note riffs in different time signatures, washes of noise and buried vocals are basically gone. In their place we made a record that’s lean and a punch to the gut. There are still some moments where the guitars get a little tricky but, in general, we tried to be as immediate as possible. The songs are all fairly short and there are almost no extra production tricks. I was inspired by records like the Dead Boys’ Young, Loud and Snotty and the Buzzcocks’ Another Music in a Different Kitchen. Maybe because of what was going on in the world at the time, or maybe just as a reaction to the last Fake Palms record – which was flush with production flourishes – it just felt necessary to kick the door down instead of knocking.”
Fake Palms “Lemons” is out September 16th, 2022 worldwide via Hand Drawn Dracula Records.
This project is funded in part by FACTOR, the Government of Canada and Canada’s private radio broadcasters.
Gently Tender, the band that features ex-Palma Violets members Samuel Thomas Fryer, Pete Mayhew and Will Doyle and The Big Moon’s Celia Archer, will release new album “Take Hold Of Your Promise!” on August 26th. An otherwise folk-rock track, “Love All the Population” takes a gothy turn with Fryer’s melodramatic vocals.
Gently Tender will release their debut album “Take Hold Of Your Promise!”via So Young Records. The album was produced by Matthew E. White, who flew over from Richmond, Virginia to work with the band during lockdown in Wales’ Rockfield Studios.
Rising from the ashes of Palma Violets, Gently Tender first begun as a reminder for Sam Fryer – once, the vocalist in one of South London’s most-hyped bands – to treat himself more softly. Joined by his former Palmas bandmates Will Doyle and Pete Mayhew, along with The Big Moon’s Celia Archer and guitarist Adam Brown, the band’s long-awaited debut album “Take Hold Of Your Promise!” has been five years in the making, and marks a return to something slow and careful, rooted, and soulful. Produced by Matthew E. White, it glimmers with gospel choirs and warm bursts of horn, unearthing a spiritual kind of acceptance in the process. The world may be a burning trash-pit, and the work of striving to be a better person will never end. But in Gently Tender’s universe, at least, there’s a precious sliver of hope to be found; even in the dark shadows, you’re never watching the flames rage alone.
First single is ‘Love All The Population’ which shows off the band’s Spiritualized-inspired widescreen ambition, the track holds happiness and sadness with one hand. Featuring the arresting, irresistible tones of vocalist Sam Fryers, squalling brass and whirling percussion, ‘Love All The Population’ is an emotionally bruising, life-affirming unifier.
The San Francisco indiepop band stays strong with this terrifically fuzzy new single, The Umbrellas follow up last years’ great debut album with what might be their most immediate jangle pop earworm yet. Drenched in layers of fuzz, “Write it in the Sky” is like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart covering The Pastels, or maybe the other way around.
Bursting out of the SF Bay Area’s fertile indie scene, The Umbrellas come correct with a sound that fits snugly into a long line of classic pop, from Orange Juice and The Pastels to Comet Gain, Veronica Falls and Belle & Sebastian. Following up their *super* well-received 2021 debut album The Umbrellas are back with “Write It In The Sky,” an instant-classic that simply demanded to be pressed onto a 7″ single. Clocking in at just under 3 minutes, “Write It In The Sky” is a thrilling pop rush full of fuzz, melody and excitement that will sit easily next to singles by the likes of Talulah Gosh, Shop Assistants and the Field Mice It’s really that good – a sure thing to enter the cannon of perennial indie pop floor-fillers.
This one sports a giant chorus, and the verses are no less catchy. This is the A-side to a new 7″ that’s out June 24th on Slumberland Records and the video is a classic bit of 8mm sunshine.
Brooklyn-based quartet Florist are releasing a new self-titled album on July 29th via Double Double Whammy. The band shared its delicate third single, “Sci-Fi Silence,” via a video. Vanessa Haddad directed the video.
“Sci-fi Silence” is a love song about the mystical forces that attract us to one another and the spaces in-between words that can hold profound communications,” says singer Emily Sprague in a press release. “It is also a reflection on our impermanence and the acceptance that it is worth it to invite love and connection into our lives even for just a moment.”
Florist is Sprague, Jonnie Baker, Rick Spataro, and Felix Walworth. “Florist” is the follow-up to 2019’s “Emily Alone“, which was essentially a solo album from Sprague.
“The trauma response to losing my best friend, my mom, was to feel really afraid to get close to anybody ever again,” she said in a previous press release. “It’s sort of cheesy, but I realized that life is better when you share it. The answer isn’t to isolate yourself and be alone.”
So Sprague reconvened with the rest of the band to record the new album in Hudson, NY in 2019.
Of the album title, Sprague explains: “We called it “Florist” because this is not just my songs with a backing band. It’s a practice. It’s a collaboration. It’s our one life. These are my best friends and the music is the way that it is because of that.”
Florist previously shared the album’s first single, “Red Bird Pt. 2 (Morning),” via a video for the song Then they shared its second single, “Spring in Hours,” via a fan-sourced video made up of footage from over 125 collaborators from around the world.
Hovvdy never really seem in a hurry to go anywhere fast. Since 2014, the Austin duo of Will Taylor and Charlie Martin has made frill-free rock music on a shoestring budget—they’ve shouted out both the convenience and happily strange compression that comes from recording songs in their iPhone voice memos—that centered on repetition and spacey simplicity. They make quiet compositions that plumb the cavernous depths of romantic and existential disillusionment with little more than some fuzzy guitar strums as accompaniment, but to hear them tell it, that started out of necessity rather than design.
There’s an unnamable edge to memory, an agitating pleasure in reviving the thorniest parts of our past. To remember what’s painful, or banal, is to protect against the slog of the mundanity of growing up. It’s within this blurry psychological terrain that indie-pop duo Hovvdy thrive. Austin Texas duo Will Taylor and Charlie Martin sing longingly of what’s lost and what remains, of the small moments that can epitomize a life: driving alongside your significant other in silence, watching YouTube videos in bed, playing catch with your friends in the front yard. This may sound like typical indie-rock adolescent fetishizing, but the candid reflexivity in Hovvdy’s songwriting and instrumentation guards against oversentimentality. They’re not stuck in the past; they’re moving forward, craning their necks back to see what’s been left behind.
Taylor relayed a brief anecdote about his friendship with Martin. “One time we got lost in the woods and had to stick together to make it out,” he said. “It ended up being really fun. That’s pretty close to how things are with us always.” That kind of relationship, where a potentially terrifying mishap turns into a fond memory thanks to mutual support and a shared sense of playfulness, drives Hovvdy’s songwriting ethos. They don’t panic when they lose sight of the path; they just keep going, sure that whatever happens, they’ll remember it well.
True Love
On their fourth album, “True Love”, Taylor and Martin tame the tremors of youth by embracing their adult commitments. “Even though it’s hard to/I will surely move along,” goes a line on the album’s opener, “Sometimes,” summoning a mantra I’ve likely employed a dozen times over the last year. On “One Bottle,” Taylor laments the distance he feels from his partner while he’s on the road: “If it rings you know it’s me/Talking, words can’t tell you how I miss you.” Even when Hovvdy root into the present, the memory of easier times infects their experience, staining the songs with sanguine ambience. “True Love” doesn’t so much shirk nostalgia as re-contextualize it, transfiguring well-worn memories from longings into lessons.
In a departure from the lo-fi minimalism of 2016’s “Taster” and 2018’s “Cranberry”, “True Love” flaunts a more dappled and spirited production, an enthusiastic verve also heard sporadically on 2019’s “Heavy Lifter”. Co-produced and engineered by Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Bon Iver), “True Love” is full of joyful piano and bright acoustic guitars, a soundscape as crisp and lush as a beer on a late summer’s night.
Hovvdy use these warm backdrops as canvases to explore personal growth. “Hue,” an ode to Taylor’s new-born daughter, revels in the insecurity of parenthood: “Am I strong enough for two?/Can I love me like I love you?” On “I Never Wanna Make You Sad,” Martin tries to “lift up” his partner from the depths of his own low. In Hovvdy’s world, vulnerability is cherished and honesty is paramount, though a refrain of “we’ll be alright” or “I love you so much” usually resolves any lingering tension.
On “True Love“, generalization occasionally replaces emotional acuity; sing-along hooks substitute for more daring forays into sound or subject. And while Taylor and Martin’s earworm melodies and vocal charisma are satisfying, the record’s resolutory definitiveness sacrifices the delightful ambiguity found throughout their catalogue.
released October 1st, 2021
Heavy Lifter
Heavy Lifter, the third album by Austin “pillow core” project Hovvdy, suspended in the moment between first discovery of love and first brush with heartbreak. Will Taylor and Charlie Martin dig through the detritus of youth with frank empathy for the people they used to be. They sing of leaving a small town and “moving to the coast” as though it’s the solution to their problems, and not another problem waiting to happen. They sing to a “friend” they’d clearly like to be more than a friend.
“Cathedral,” the record’s lead single and best song, finds emancipating joy in the realization that it is “brighter than before, outside” of a repressive church. The song begins in a pew, bent into a posture of prayer; it ends with the cathedral’s doors flung open. Vowing on the chorus to “never come back here” and instead “stay with our friends,” Taylor and Martin repeat the words in a kind of ecstatic chant. “Feel Tall” makes literal the personal growth that first love can inspire: “Any little thing you want, any little thing at all/Want to make you feel tall.” On “Watergun,” expressions of devotion tilt from the naive proclamations of a little kid toward a newfound, grown-up understanding of love as an act of service. A promise to “gladly dry the dishes” lands with exceptional poignancy.
What distinguishes this record is the sparkling optimism Hovvdy carry with them. They don’t long to escape, but to accept the good with the bad. Hopeful energy thrums through cuts like “Keep It Up” and “Mr. Lee,” which mine mundanity for joy. The album is not without grey moments of post-adolescent malaise—particularly the devastating “Pixie”—but Hovvdy veer away from self-destruction, instead homing in on connection and intimacy.
These songs are grand, inviting backdrops. This is the record’s greatest strength, and also where it stumbles. Hovvdy remind me of many artists I’ve loved, But with the exception of a few skittering, programmed drums, they don’t innovate on the sound of last decade’s indie pop as much as imitate it. The lack of specificity in their song writing means that they never quite eclipse their influences.
But the real gut punch arrives at the record’s end, in the final verse of “Sudbury.” As the singer dreams of graduating from “front yard catch” to the Texas Rangers, he recites the street address of a childhood home. That house, and the patch of yellow-green grass that made sports stardom feel possible, couldn’t belong to anyone else. Taylor and Martin are at their finest here, trading the ubiquitous for the unique, declaring who they were and who they wished to be.
released October 18th, 2019
Cranberry
If there’s anything you’re nostalgic for, Hovvdy’s second album, “Cranberry”, is likely to dredge it up. It’s not that the Austin duo invokes a particular time or place—Will Taylor and Charlie Martin aren’t revivalists, and they don’t seem to hold any sentiment for a mythical teenhood. It’s more that their music simulates the mysterious function of memory itself. Foggy, warm, and wistful, it sounds like faded time. With two drummers who now take up the guitar and synthesizer as needed, Hovvdy share an instinctual melodic sensibility, While their debut, 2016’s “Taster“, itched a little with a distortion-shrouded anxiety, sounding occasionally like Weezer , “Cranberry” focuses the act’s emotional palette to a steady, gentle longing. Hovvdy sound surer of themselves than before, and that confidence gives them more room to be vulnerable.
“Yesterday I woke up outside/Saw you for the very first time,” goes the album’s opening couplet on “Brave,” conjuring up the delightfully surreal image of someone coming to in a clearing and falling for the first stranger they see. On “Truck,” Hovvdy build a swaying chorus out of a little self-effacement: “If there’s trouble, I will run from it/All the time.” It’s a little strange: Here’s a song about shirking responsibility, and maybe feeling guilty about your failure to be there for someone else, and yet the vocals fall over the guitars as gently as ash from a distant forest fire. Hovvdy pull this trick a lot. They write lyrics that hint at some kind of danger or urgency, then sing them as languidly as possible. That dissonance gives their songs a magnetic pull: You’ll want to go back to them to see what you’ve missed, to try to read more deeply between the lines.
A similar ambiguity hovers around the album’s instrumentation. “Truck” weaves slide guitars into the mix so subtly they barely register on the first few listens, and the relatively upbeat “In the Sun” boasts a flute sound that definitely came from a keyboard but at points could almost pass for the real thing. On “Float,” the repeating sound of a cymbal bleeds into the song’s grain; “Thru” confuses guitars and synthesizers so readily it’s difficult to tell where the strum of an electric six-string ends and the wash of a digital instrument begins. All the details another band might tease out, Hovvdy subsume into their music’s overall texture.
released February 9th, 2018
Taster
Both Taylor and Martin were drummers before Hovvdy, and neither has been playing guitar all that long, which they’ve said has made their instrumentals naturally “minimal.” But after an EP and a split with the similarly minded Austin band Loafer, they’ve figured out how to make those limitations work to their advantage. Their debut album “Taster” reissued in remastered form by beloved Brooklyn indie rock label Double Double Whammy—rarely accelerates past a snail’s pace, but the interlocking pieces are deceptively complex. they stack simple riffs in idiosyncratic ways, and in the process put together 11 songs that are far more compelling than the sum of their parts.
That’s perhaps most evident on “Can’t Wait,” one of the record’s more straightforwardly catchy moments, which weaves together at least three loosely interlocking guitar riffs over the course of its three minutes. Played by a different band, it’d feel like a rip of Weezer’s across-the-sea balladry, but Hovvdy’s take is a little more austere. A lazily drawled acoustic guitar and a barely on-beat lead make the scuzzy main riff feel a little dizzier than it would otherwise. Piling uncomplicated parts on one another until it resembles something like a pop song is a surprisingly sophisticated trick—and one they’re able to keenly repeat throughout “Taster“. Each song seems like it should topple over under its own weight, but it never does.
Lyrically, the record revels in the overwhelming confusion and regret bound up in interpersonal relations. “In My Head” tells a surreal tale of romantic pining, describing scenes in small jagged snippets, like a conversation that takes place “on the gulf in that screened-in room.” On “Try Hard,” they perform a clever autopsy of the failures of a past relationship (“You could not call your dad back then/Forgot his name again/I never did try hard”). It’s relatively standard stuff for this sort of downcast rock music, but the beauty is in its lack of resolution. All conflicts remain unsolved there are only events, no answers.
Taylor and Martin have jokingly referred to their music as “pillow core” over the years, which is fitting for “Taster” both in its downy sonics and fragmented lyricism. As they flit through various half memories and upsetting realizations, it feels like the thoughts that spin through your head as you lie in bed late at night, waiting for sleep to overtake you.
Hovvdy’s music has a mysterious depth. On the surface, the Texas duo makes cheery folk-pop with acoustic guitars, grand piano, crackling drums, and vocal melodies as soothing as a weighted blanket. Charlie Martin and Will Taylor’s early work veered toward remnant of Duster or a lo-fi Weezer, with lyrics that latched onto love and longing and letting go of the past because they were, regrettably, growing up. On last year’s “True Love“, they embraced their emergence into adulthood by reflecting on parenting, marriage, and memory. As immaculate as the music sounded, and as earnest as the lyrics were, their “Life Is Good” ethos wore thin.
Their new four-song EP, “Billboard for My Feelings” adds new dimensions to their work, building upon the template of “True Love” and homing in on their deceptively sophisticated sound. It’s not that they’re taking bigger risks or straying from their preferred themes. Instead, they’ve refined their approach by leaning into their most playful inclinations, prioritizing texture and melody over narrative stability, broadening their simple yet spacious arrangements with small, striking details: a guitar pluck here, a string stab there, a wide-bodied backing vocal that bleeds into a bit-crushed tom. Their music is filled with unexpected moments that encourage you to stop moving, sit back, and take it all in.
Reunited with renowed producer Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Bon Iver) and multi-instrumentalist Bennett Littlejohn, Hovvdy expand their compositions with strings and keys and the occasional banjo, the tension rising and falling with the subtle addition or subtraction of an instrument. “Everything” opens with a reversed string loop before paring back to chugging acoustic guitar and Taylor’s gentle crooning. Amid the twinkling arrangement, he senses that certain doors have closed in his life: “Before the sun leaves/Go outside and dream/About the places that I’ve heard of/I won’t live to see.” There’s an optimism to his words, a realization that the world in this moment may be as expansive as it ever will be.
Emotional incongruities weave throughout the EP, imbuing each song with an unresolvable tension. “Hide,” a mesmerizing highlight whose syrupy cadence and tempo sound like little else in Hovvdy’s discography, describes sleepless nights and self-doubt, little devastations that arise despite our best efforts to guard against them. And even though Hovvdy still aim for good times and deep connection, they now acknowledge that sorrow and uncertainty can creep into even the most joyful experiences. On “True Love“, the duo seemed intent on shutting out these thoughts, holding greater space for gratitude, empathy, and forgiveness. But the emotional ambiguity of “Billboard for My Feelings” gives way to a richer, more complicated set of perspectives, communicating through melody what’s too elusive to say otherwise.
Slack Times are a trio of musicians from Birmingham, Alabama, who cite shared influence from the likes of Yo La Tengo, R.E.M., and The Feelies jangle pop band featuring Chris McCauley (guitar, vocals), WillStewart (guitar, vocals), and Stuart Norman (guitar). They craft melodic, guitar-driven songs that draw from a range of shared influences including early Athens, Georgia pop. . After releasing two EPs in 2021, “Up Here” and “At The Blue Melon Rendezvous”, the band are teaming up with Meritorio Records to combine both those releases with six new songs in a vinyl compilation, “Carried Away”.
Ahead of the record’s end of June release date, this week the band shared the title track “Carried Away’s”
The new compilation includes six brand new songs plus the eight songs included on their previous EPs, The album will be available digitally and on vinyl via Meritorio Records.
Opening with a beautiful country-licked guitar line, “Carried Away” is a track that seems to teeter between genres, Clocking in just seconds over two minutes, Carried Away is also delightfully simple, the guitar line runs almost throughout, the drums hit an easy rhythm and barely stray from it, and atop it all Chris McCauley bemoans his own inaction, wistfully noting, “I didn’t put up a fight”. This is musical simplicity at its finest, effortlessly excellent song writing.
“Carried Away” is out June 24th viaMeritorio Records.
Molly Payton is a New Zealander living in London. ‘Slack’ is her debut mini-LP. Payton takes her influences from classic rock of the 1960s and 1970s to make her epic indie rock. Despite only being 20 years old when she recorded this, her voice has the sound of someone who’s been making records for some time.
Debut mini-album from 20 year old London-based singer songwriter New Zealander Molly Payton. Produced by Oli Barton-Wood (Nilüfer Yanya, Porridge Radio, Sorry) and Jimmy Hogarth (Sia, Amy Winehouse). Lead cut “You Cut Me So Much Slack” is a real 90’s style gem that is part grunge and part Lush.
The original riders on the psychedelic storm get their own minds blown by the leaders of the new psych rock movement on this stellar tribute to The Doors!.
Features performances by The Black Angels, The Raveonettes, Clinic, Psychic Ills, Sons Of Hippies,Elephant Stone, Dead Skeletons and more!, Incredibly innovative and unique versions of The Doors’ classic tracks including “L.A. Woman,” “Riders On The Storm,” “Light My Fire,” “Love Me Two Times” and others
Purple Pyramid Records, focusing on progressive rock as well as psychedelic music, has been long-time home to releases by Yes, Rick Wakeman, Steve Howe, Santana, Amon Düül II, Nektar, Brainticket, Tangerine Dream, and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
The Fat Angel Sings 