Fresh off the heels of a new Lykke Li album, Sky Ferreira has released “Don’t Forget”, her first new single in three years: somewhere out there is a gay man with emotional regulation problems, a magic lamp, and one wish left.
Ferreira wrote the song with Jorge Elbrecht and Tamaryn Brown, who she worked with on her last single, “Downhill Lullaby”. The track is an angsty, at times spiteful, melodrama; the melody is strong; the eighties-inflected production, while not reinventing the wheel, is satisfyingly slick and bombastic.
Speaking Ferreira said “the song isn’t minimal whatsoever. I realised that about my music, I’m just not a minimal person.” The lyrics feature repeated allusions to fire and destruction, which Ferreira said is about feeling “stifled” and then “freeing herself.” “Don’t Forget” feels like a more than solid return-to-form and, hopefully, a teaser of more music to come.
Despite only having released one album – “Night Time, My Time” back in 2013 – Sky Ferreira has earned herself an enduring place in the ‘music for sad girls and gays’ canon. Not many artists can disappear for such a long time (her career was stalled due to record label drama) and still generate this level of hype upon their return, which is a testament to both her continuing relevance and the emotional investment people have in her music. But whether she can prove herself a true great in this pantheon remains to be seen; there’s a lot riding on her long-awaited second album, “Masochism“, the release date of which is still yet to be confirmed. The good news is that Ferreira described herself as “100 per cent confident” the album will appear sometime this year.
“90 in November”, the first full-length LP from Texas quintet Why Bonnie, crashes into existence with a squeal of feedback and a burst of distorted guitar. It’s a dynamic introduction to a more raw-edged indie sound from a band who have matured from bedroom dream pop into a sophisticated rock act, their evolving sound a reflection of the journey undertaken by songwriter Blair Howerton on this vividly rendered collection of songs.
As much a product of songwriter Howerton’s love for the intimate song writing of fellow Texans Townes Van Zandt and Blaze Foley as it is her affection for the alt-rock of the Lemonheads and the Replacements, the eccentric pop of Sparklehorse, and “definitely Sheryl Crow,” “90 in November” is a meditation on the pains and pleasures of nostalgia and a lesson in learning how to look back at the people, places, and experiences that have shaped us, with room for both unvarnished honesty and rose-tinted melancholy. “90 in November”is about “coming to terms with your past to accept all of the sweet and all of the bitter,” says Howerton.
The songs for “90 in November” were mostly written in Brooklyn, New York, where Howerton moved from Austin in 2019. Already in the midst of a major life change, Howerton’s feeling of being between worlds was compounded when quarantine hit and she found herself, like so many others, stuck in her apartment—about as far away from the wide-open spaces of Texas as one can possibly get. It was in this environment that she began to write songs parsing out the complicated, mixed emotions associated with building a new home while attempting to make sense of the one she had left behind.
As a result, “90 in November”is a trip through Howerton’s inner world, but it’s also a road trip through Texas. Often it is both at once. The songs are full of poetic, cinematic lyrics that flash like colourful scenes glimpsed from the window of a car as it barrels along an interstate highway cutting through the Lone Star State, each one a road stop revealing a different facet of Howerton’s experience.
The title track is a sunny guitar pop song about her hometown of Houston, packed full of sparkling snapshots—”a technicolour sun” and “a cardboard cut out cowboy waving me goodbye”—that matches the music’s shimmering optimism. The hazy “Hot Car” is the flipside, with a hypnotic synth line mimicking the way a mental loop of dormant thoughts that surface in the warm cocoon of a car speeding towards its destination in the dead of night. On “Nowhere LA”—that’s LA as in Louisiana, by the way—Howerton uses a broken down car on an isolated road as a metaphor for a stalled relationship: ”I know I walk fast, but my heart moves so slow,” she sings. Elsewhere, Howerton is more literal in her recountings. On the wistful and Sheryl Crow-like “Galveston,” built around a chiming guitar line, Howerton recalls childhood trips to the island city of Galveston, singing evocatively of “candyland beaches” and “the East Texas sunrise making a face.”
“90 in November’s” deep sense of place isn’t accidental. The band—Howerton, keyboardist Kendall Powell, guitarist Sam Houdek, bassist Chance Williams, and drummer Josh Malett—considered making the record in New York or California, but ultimately decided that it had to be done in Texas. In early 2020, Why Bonnie headed down to the town of Silsbee (population: 6,634) to spend two weeks recording with Tommy Read (Lomelda, alexalone) at Lazybones Audio. Howerton describes it as an idyllic period of time where days were spent walking around with cows and evenings drinking Lone Star beer and looking at the stars. The stillness begat an emotional catharsis that is symbolized mid-record with “Silsbee”, a song where Howerton finally allows herself to fully inhabit the present moment while acknowledging her past. She describes it as an ode to her brother, who passed away in 2016. “I wrote those lyrics while we were recording,” remembers Howerton. “I had a quiet moment out in this beautiful pasture where I was able to think about him and how our connection is still very present even though he’s not physically here.”
Even when handled with as much grace as it is on “90 in November”, nostalgia remains tricky to navigate, something Howerton addresses on the exuberant “Lot’s Wife.” The song is inspired by a story from the Old Testament of a woman who looked back at her city while fleeing and was turned to a pillar of salt. “I really liked that story and how it relates to the experience of nostalgia, how if you stare for too long, you’re gonna turn into something else and crumble,” says Howerton. With “90 in November“, Howerton has achieved the opposite. By looking back on her past with fearlessness and compassion, she propels her song writing forward into new realms of emotional sincerity and her band to new heights of sonic adventurousness. Yet no matter where the group goes from here, one thing will remain the same. “We’re a Texas band,” says Howerton. “We always will be.”
Little Feat are giving their iconic 1978 live album “Waiting For Columbus” the super deluxe reissue treatment ahead of its upcoming 45th anniversary. “Waiting For Columbus”: Super Deluxe Edition arrives via Rhino Records on July 29th.
It was 45 years ago today that Little Feat performed at The Rainbow Theatre in London – known as the Time Loves A Hero British Tour. The series of concerts were recorded for the “Waiting For Columbus” double LP which has just been released in a massively extended Super Deluxe 8 x cd edition Box Set.
There’s also a couple of DVDs of the 1977 Tour.
The performance on 3rd August became known within Little Feat circles as Black Wednesday. After the Tuesday night performance Lowell, Barrere and Richie Hayward partied a little too hard and there was some friction between them as they walked onto stage on the Wednesday.
The 8-CD box set features a remastered version of the original double album as well as three previously unreleased concerts. Little Feat’s performances from Manchester City Hall on July 29th, 1977; London’s The Rainbow on August 2nd, 1977 and Washington D.C.’s Lisner Auditorium on August 10th, 1977 will each be included. “Waiting For Columbus”: Super Deluxe Edition is also due out in vinyl editions and on digital and streaming services on July 29th.
“Waiting For Columbus” captures the band’s classic line-up at the peak of its powers. The double album contains tracks recorded during the group’s 1977 Summer Tour in both the UK and U.S. Included within are such memorable tracks as “Fat Man In The Bathtub,” “Willin’,” “Spanish Moon” and “Dixie Chicken.”
To make the album, Little Feat (backed by the Tower of Power horn section) recorded several shows in the U.K. and U.S. during the band’s 1977 summer tour. Rhino will include three of those performances, which have never been released, in a new boxed set for the album’s 45th anniversary.
The Platinum-certified double album cemented the band’s reputation as one of the premier live bands of the 1970s. When it was recorded, the group included: Lowell George (vocals, guitar), Paul Barrere (guitar, vocals), Bill Payne (keyboard, vocals), Richie Hayward (drums, vocals), Sam Clayton (percussion, vocals), and Kenny Gradney (bass). An ad for the album from Warner Bros. Records blared “A whole double album’s worth of raw goods! Performed on stage, in front of wild, screaming partisans!”
“Waiting For Columbus” touches on songs from all six studio albums Little Feat released between 1971 and 1977. The dynamic performances showcase the sextet’s inimitable fusion of blues, country, jazz, and New Orleans R&B on signature tracks like “Fat Man in the Bathtub,” “Oh Atlanta,” and “Sailin’ Shoes.”
Preview the set by streaming previously unreleased audio of “Fat Man In The Bathtub” recorded live at The Rainbow in London on August 2nd, 1977.
The band is on the road this summer celebrating the upcoming 45th anniversary of the original two-LP set, considered by many to be one of the greatest live albums ever made.
Suede will release their ninth studio album, “Autofiction”, in September. The album sees the band apparently ditching the grandeur and concepts of the last two records and going ‘back to basics’, with frontman Brett Anderson describing “Autofiction” as “our punk record. No whistles and bells. Just the five of us in a room with all the glitches and fuck-ups revealed; the band themselves exposed in all their primal mess.”
The first single ‘She Still Leads Me On’, The song is written from Brett to his late mother and lyrically“Autofiction” is described as “one of Anderson’s most personal records yet”. The album was recorded in Konk studios in North London. Ed Buller returns as producer after Suede worked with Alan Moulder for the “The Blue Hour“.
Standard formats for the album are CD, black gatefold vinyl and indies grey gatefold vinyl. The official artist shop (US fans have their own shop) offers a clear vinyl variant, signed bundles and a deluxe box set that gathers CD, clear vinyl along with “stencil, postcards, poster and signed setlist”. Not quite as impressive as 2018’s “The Blue Hour” box, it has to be said, which offered exclusive instrumentals on CD, a unique song on seven-inch and a DVD with band commentary.
An exclusive 12-inch EP of ‘She Still Leads Me On’, is available on all bundles in the Suede shop (although not in the US). This includes non-album bonus tracks ‘The Prey’, ‘Days Like Dead Months’, and ‘The Sadness In You, The Sadness In Me’. If you ordered the bundle yesterday after the 12-inch sold out you will still get the 12-inch EP for the sake of fairness, etc. So that’s very good news!
My request is fulfilled now with new piece “That Boy On The Stage”. Like the other 2 tracks, this one has a huge anthemic euphony. Bring on the album.
Suede are to play a couple of dates at London’s Electric Ballroom on 5th & 6th October and ordering from their shop does get you access to pre-sale tickets.
“Autofiction” will be released on 16th September via BMG.
“This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!” Talking Heads ‘Remain in Light.’ released on 10/8/80, The Talking Heads released their fourth studio album and arguably their strongest and most influential full length – “Remain in Light”. This time the band, along with producer Brian Eno, decided to experiment with African polyrhythms and recorded the instrumental tracks as a series of samples and loops. Additional musicians were frequently used throughout the studio sessions. The album spawned two singles – “Once in a Lifetime” and “Houses in Motion” but its other compositions such as as the 1-3 opening sequence of “Born Under Punches, “Crosseyed and Painless” and “The Great Curve” that really makes for “Remain in Light” as such a must hear album. Watch The Talking Heads perform “The Great Curve” live in Dortmund from 1980.
The seeds of Talking Heads‘ landmark “Remain in Light” album were planted on the band’s previous record, 1979’s “Fear of Music”. But the year away from the studio, plus a change of locale for basic recording, made a world of difference in the end. Talking Heads went into their fourth album with the intention of proving once and for all that they were a band; they emerged as a different entity, continuing on this same path for the rest of their too-brief career.
Following the release of “Fear of Music” in August 1979 – their most successful album yet in a two-year span that was continually yielding bigger sales figures and more fans – Talking Heads were, more and more as time went on, hearing that David Byrne was essentially a gifted but eccentric frontman taking charge of the three other musicians who happened to play on his records. The band, with producer Brian Eno on board, set out to prove that they were four singular minds driving toward one shared purpose.
So, they tightened up. They got funky. They set up shop in Nassau. They surrounded “Remain in Light‘s” eight songs with a worldly blend of global pop, post-punk, American R&B and artsy experimentalism augmented by a handful of session players on horns and percussion. And they played around with loops and samples, still mostly unheard of at the time, which gave the album the otherworldly feeling that the entire project was shipped in from another time and place, nowhere near the end-of-the-century New York City that the group had come to identify with so closely.
But it’s not such a dramatic leap that the dots can’t be connected between “Fear of Music” and “Remainin Light”. In fact, “I Zimbra,” from the former, was a launching point for the latter, with the band members jamming on the song, seeing where it would take them. Along with Byrne’s recent collaborations with Eno, which would be released in 1981 as “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts”, it served as both an expansion to the group’s previous work and an opening to a brave new world.
Inspired by Nigerian Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, the music on “Remain in Light” took on a more jam-based and fluid approach. Hip-hop, which began creeping into NYC culture at the time, also left its mark, as the eight tracks shifted, twisted and transformed into new shapes at every turn. As influential as it was revolutionary, the LP charted new musical territory for anyone interested in the sound of a dozen genres colliding and then coming together.
From the opening “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On),” featuring a particularly elastic bass line by Tina Weymouth, and the frenetic “Crosseyed and Painless” to “Once in a Lifetime,” which received tons of MTV airplay at the time, and the New-Wave-meets-world-music “Houses in Motion,” “Remain in Light” unfolds as a singular piece of pop music on an entirely different plain. No other record released in 1980 sounded like it; all these years later, artists are still trying to catch up.
Lyrically, the album drifted into original territory too, with Byrne combing a mix of his existential, stream-of-conscious and art-school playbooks to come up with a work that defied expectation and circumvented explanation. As he sings on “Once in a Lifetime,” “You may ask yourself, How did I get here?” There’s no easy answer, but the album changed Talking Heads forever.
The album set up the group for its breakthrough with its next LP, 1983’s “Speaking in Tongues”, which included Talking Heads’ only Top 10 hit “Burning Down the House.” That then spawned a popular tour that was later documented in the movie and album “Stop Making Sense”. The musical ideas laid out on “Remain in Light” provided the foundation for Talking Heads’ crisscrossing into other genres (including Americana and straightforward rock ‘n’ roll) before leadership issues which were never smoothed over — led to their breakup in 1991.
On their first three albums, Talking Heads made anxious, self-aware art-punk with enough pop appeal to offset the oddness. Led by yelping frontman David Byrne, whose exaggerated normal-guy persona signalled a profound discomfort with the modern world, the onetime CBGB regulars were weirdoes working within the confines of classic rock. Their music wasn’t for everyone, but by 1979, they’d notched a couple of minor hits and edged toward the mainstream.
With their landmark fourth album, “Remain In Light”Talking Heads changed everything and nothing all at once. Produced by Brian Eno, who’d helmed the group’s previous two LPs, it was something truly rare: a radical departure that nevertheless felt like a continuation of and improvement on everything that had come before.
“Remain In Light” was born at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, where Byrne and his bandmates — keyboardist Jerry Harrison and the husband-and-wife drum-and-bass team of Chris Frantz and TinaWeymouth — arrived song-less and ready to jam. This communal approach was a curious, given that Byrne had typically brought in nearly finished compositions and that he’d recently hinted he might be done with the group.
His most recent project had been the Eno collaboration “My Life In the Bush of Ghosts”, an experimental album heavily influenced by African sounds. That music found its way into the improvisational new TalkingHeads tracks, though the extent to which the group was consciously trying to make an African-inspired record remains a point of debate. Byrne went so far as to include a bibliography of books on African art and culture with press releases for the album; Frantz and Weymouth have since downplayed the overt influence of African music.
“Remain In Light” doesn’t sound much like the three Talking Heads records that came before and it doesn’t sound anything like other post-punk or New Wave albums released circa 1980. It’s heavy on single-chord polyrhythmic jams, light on traditional pop structures or hooks. Eno constructed the tracks by looping rhythmic sections and layering instrumentation — a method that initially left Byrne unsure of how or what to sing.
Inspired by Southern preachers, the Watergate tapes and some of those heady African texts he’d studied with Eno, Byrne wrote and recorded most of his lyrics after the group had returned from the Bahamas. His words have a freeform, impressionistic, cut-and-paste quality, but even so, “Remain In Light” is a record with very recognizable — and very Talking Heads — themes of alienation and the search for identity. Byrne’s every bit as perplexed, frightened and amused by the world as he was on the 1979 apocalyptic funk workout “Life During Wartime.” He’s taking his anxieties on holiday — not giving them the day off.
Byrne’s vocals weren’t the only overdubs. There were horns, extra percussion bits, female background vocals and stunning synth-treated solos from avant-garde guitar hero Adrian Belew, who’d played with the likes of Frank Zappa and King Crimson. When the band hit the road to promote the album, Belew joined the expanded line-up needed to recreate the crazy clatter in a concert setting.
Adrian Belew remembers on how not to join a Famous Band. – in 1980 I received a call asking me to come to New York City to rehearse for four days in order to learn the Talking Heads record “Remain In Light” only months before I had recorded the record all in one day with the Heads and Brian Eno. TalkingHeads had the idea to expand their normal quartet to a thumping funky 10-piece band with two bass players, two keyboard players, two guitar players, two female back-up singers, one drummer and one percussionist. and we were going to learn the very layered studio monster “Remain In Light” in four days and then play two shows! somehow we did it, we learned the record and several songs from other records. But just barely. and just in time to board a plane for our first show in Toronto. Only then did we see the whole enchilada, our first show was a festival of 70,000 people! they flew us to the vast backstage area in helicopters. looking down at the sea of tiny flesh baffles, I was nervous enough to jump out in mid-air. it seemed like all the hip bands of the moment were present. the B-52’s, the Pretenders, Elvis Costello, the Clash. it was called the heatwave festival, billed as the first “new wave” festival, and was actually in a place called Mosport park.
Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe played. the Pretenders played. the B 52’s played. minutes before we were set to play I opened the door to our backstage trailer to discover most of the band snorting lines of coke from the backs of guitars. they quickly shooed me away, knowing I didn’t partake.
The timing of our performance was fortuitous; just as the sun was setting. I joined the original four Heads to play “Psycho Killer”, then the full band was brought onstage. we launched right into the new material. no one in the audience even knew the “Remain In Light” record as yet but it didn’t matter, the band was smoking! halfway through our set we played a song from “Fear of Music” called “I Zimbra” on the recorded version David had played a fast running guitar line. as soon as we started that song I could tell the coke had kicked in. we played it twice as fast as it was on the record! my fingers had a hard time keeping up and I was worried our 45-minute set might be over in 20. but it all worked out. the band was an instant success.
For our second show we played in Central Park but only 125,000 people showed up! at the time you couldn’t go into a bookstore, bar, record shop, or restaurant without hearing Talking Heads music in the background. It was an exciting time to be in the band. David, Chris, Tina, and Jerry decided to keep the 10-piece funk machine rolling for a whole world tour including Japan and then Europe. it was a wacky cast of characters to live with and we had loads of fun.
The lead single, “Once In a Lifetime,” missed the Hot 100 chart memorable video that became an MTV staple the following year.
The track-by-track take of this, the most strangely brilliant album from a band that did strange and brilliant better than anyone.
“Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)”: Within seconds, the Heads establish the wonky world they’ll explore for much of the next 40 minutes. It’s vibrant and alive yet weirdly claustrophobic: a paradise for paranoids. Amid skittering beats, belching bass and guitars that caw like tropical birds and scamper like ants on discarded mangos, Byrne plays a spiritually suffocating “government man” who just wants to breathe easy. Good luck with that one.
“Crosseyed and Painless”: More alienation set to alien grooves, this time with rougher rock guitars and a broader sense of unease. “Lost my shape,” Byrne sings at the outset, before deciding that shapes — and really facts of any kind — are inherently meaningless. As Byrne unravels, Frantz and Weymouth unspool insistently frazzled funk, making madness seem rather fun.
“The Great Curve”: Probably the most African-inspired track, both in terms of music and lyrics, this pulsing six-minute polyrhythmic free-for-all shifts the focus from freaked-out Byrne to some divine female figure (maybe a stand-in for all women) who’s “gonna open our eyes up.” It’s breathless and hopeful, complete with Belew guitar solos that shriek like people dying to come out of the dark.
“Once In a Lifetime”: Props to Eno and Harrison: The keyboards really do evoke floating as Byrne thinks about all that water bubbling down below our cars and houses and meaningless little lives. Some hear the song as a rant against ‘80s materialism, but Byrne has said it’s more about switching off autopilot and taking stock of how we get to where we end up. It’s man beating a drum and looking for answers he won’t find — same as it ever was.
“Houses In Motion”: If “Once In a Lifetime” is ambivalent about whether life is worth living, this chilly, plodding track paints a darker picture. The creepy-crawly rhythm that lit such a fire on “Born UnderPunches” has slowed way down and Byrne is back to being a put-upon modern man forced to trudge sockless through a world where even that saviour lady from “The Great Curve” has “closed her eyes.” Those distorted horns laid down by frequent Eno collaborator Jon Hassell suggest not the grand trumpets of the apocalypse, but rather the sounds of elephants poised to stamp you dead without even realizing it.
“Seen and Not Seen”: Another slow jam, this sparse, wobbly, spoken-word gem finds Byrne ditching all the preacher-man affects and talking like a regular guy. Over a stomp-clap rhythm reminiscent of early hip-hop, Byrne calmly tells the story of a guy who wants to change his face — either to match his true personality or to better represent the personality he’s always wished he had. The guy’s not sure and Byrne’s not judging. We’ve all been there.
“Listening Wind”: Startlingly minimalist, this tale of a Third World terrorist prepping a mail bomb for one of the Americans who’ve muscled into his country marks a sharp turn from personal politics to global politics. The synths evoke both natural sounds and the digital blipping of Mojique’s device and Byrne again takes a non-judgmental, sympathetic tone. As a prescient commentary on the consequences of American foreign policy, “Listening Wind” suggests Talking Heads weren’t embarking naively on their quasi-African adventure.
“The Overload”: Talking Heads go goth with this bleak six-minute unhappy ending. The trudge of “Houses In Motion” is now a muddy, hopeless slog. Harrison’s keyboards sputter like machine guns or jeep motors and there’s a sense the band is performing in some burned-out future earth, using the last dregs of electricity to power its instruments.
The Wave Pictures, industrious and prolific as ever, return on Thursday 18th November with ‘This HeartOf Mine’. Following two albums in 2018, ‘Brushes With Happiness’ and ‘Look Inside Your Heart’, this is the first track to be made available from their new double album ‘When The Purple Emperor Spreads HisWings’, due for 2022 release.
Formed over twenty years ago by Franic Rozycki and David Tattersall in Wymeswold, Leicestershire, and joined by Jonny ‘Hudderfield’ Helm since 2005, The Wave Pictures have released over twenty albums of their own, along with exciting side projects such as garage rock supergroup The Surfing Magazines, several albums with Stanley Brinks, and Dave’s recent guitar contributions to Billy Childish albums, with whom they also collaborated on their 2014 album ‘Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon’. Across these varied releases, accommodating Dave’s free flowing fountain of song writing, The Wave Pictures have shown their deep affection for rock and roll, blues, jazz, classic rock, and of course Dave’s legendary love of good guitar solo.
Formed in 2019 as a ‘jam band’, Welsh six-piece Church Village Collective (or CVC for short) took their title from their hometown of the same name, a large village 10 miles out of Cardiff. At the time of writing they have just two singles released, but have already wooed early gig goers with their cheeky furour and big band energy, their set at 2022’s The Great Escape was by all accounts, a packed affair.
CVC ‘specialise in fat riffs, lush three part harmonies, and tight beats, all tied together with outfits you could expect to see at the launch party for Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.’ On debut EP “Real to Reel“, unity bleeds through songs that are awash with authenticity, fronted by a slick ‘band of brothers’ on a devout mission to have a good time and take us all along for the ride. Not just a love letter to rock music’s yesteryear, evident here is a clear collective passion for and devotion to making music with your best friends.
Though their village origins are humble, the band have set their sights well beyond the city limits: “We want to be on massive stages with massive crowds, big gigs, big albums, top of the stack, like. You definitely want to get to the top of Everest before you start coming back down” says guitarist David Bassey. With their united confidence and infectious fervour (and a full album in the works), Church Village Collective seem destined to preach their funk-fuelled psych-rock sermons to ever-growing congregations. Ready your parish.
We’re excited to announce CVC as part of the Rough Trade On The Rise, our dedicated curation putting a spotlight on the emerging music we are the most excited for you to hear, to follow and become a fan of. Read on to discover more about the band in their own words and make sure you check out forthcoming EP“Real to Reel”, released 16th September 2022.
For fans of: The Beatles, Beach Boys, Everly Brothers, Whitney, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
In the spring of 2020, Ben Cook — a.k.a. Young Governor, Young Guv, or just Guv — was holed up in the New Mexico high desert, his U.S. tour having been abruptly covid-cancelled during a southwest swing. He and his bandmates were living moment to moment in something called an Earthship, a solar-rigged adobe structure sustainably constructed with, among other things, recycled bottles and tires. And out there in the serene vastness, as a short ride-it-out stint turned into a nine-month sojourn, Ben was writing music, slowly, little by little, mostly at night while the others slept. By the New Year, almost in spite of himself, he had created a new album, two new albums actually, and through the ordeal he was forever changed.
In a place he never expected to be, under circumstances no one could have predicted, and in the face of physical isolation, emotional desolation, and existential dread, Ben created “GUV III & IV”, a collection of songs dedicated and testifying to the eternal healing power of love — how to find it in the the world, in others, and most importantly, in himself. Written in the New Mexico wilderness and produced in Los Angeles, the double album will be released on Run For Cover and Hand Drawn Dracula later next year.
In New Mexico, daily life was ad hoc, communal, idyllic, almost Utopian. Ben and his five mates shared everything, all their money, shelter, and meals (Ben did the cooking). “It was beautiful,” he says. “We were at the foot of the Taos Mountain, part of the Sangre de Cristo range, one of the seven sacred mountain ranges in the world. I swam in the Rio Grande every day. The memory is surreal.”
Work was different — much more daunting. Though the marooned sextet had built themselves a makeshift studio for their little clay casa, inspiration was slow and sporadic. “I was isolated, the world was in complete chaos,” Ben says. “I lost control of the routine that I thrive in. I worked on songs more randomly, only when I felt like it. I was hard on myself for not writing enough. Truthfully, I don’t even remember doing most of it. I was removed from the process, in a way, somehow alienated from my own creativity.”
Isolation amid chaos, a thrumming feeling of alienation from oneself and others — this wasn’t exactly new territory. Two years ago, when Ben released his last record, the double-album set called “GUV I & II!, he likened the songs to “people-watching in a foreign country in the morning.” He was talking about the loneliness of living in the modern world, a condition that, for most people, was intensifying even before 2020. And it went back further than the previous album cycle. Ben’s been at this a long time, making music and doing the thing that artists do: noticing what goes in the world, in all its discontents, while everyone else plays dumb. He formed his first serious band, No Warning, in 1998, and over the course of their initial eight-year run they became legends, the Toronto teenagers who perfected New York hardcore, channelling all the anger, resentment, and confusion of that awful War on Terror period, which everyone wanted to forget even as it was happening. Then he spent fifteen years as a guitarist in Fucked Up, who among their contemporaries were unequalled in their intellectual ambition, their capacity to sublimate all that anger and alienation into something profound, erudite, and redemptively strange.
“Guv” has been Ben’s personal song writing outlet since 2008. Under that name and its derivatives he’s issued a pile of singles and EPs and several full-lengths. Before 2020, Ben says, the songs tended to come, if not easily, then at least efficiently, regularly, reliably, owing to a work ethic he describes as “a bit maniacal.”
But out in the desert, where nothing was familiar (“The energy there was unlike anything I’d experienced”), it was if he was living outside himself. The old processes he had relied on, the patterns that had prevailed in his former life, no longer seemed to apply. And so they had to change. Given narrowing outer horizons — the shrinking of social life to just five fellow campesinos, the looming prospects of a ruined career and a collapsing society.
Ben was forced to broaden his inner horizons, to spend long days and nights under the giant sky figuring out what actually matters and what’s really been inside people’s heads, his and everyone else’s, during these past years of decadence and decline.
Accordingly, the new songs are marked by a sense of intense yearning to connect — with other people, other beings, other energies — and to achieve by those means a measure of inner peace. The very first verse of very first track, “Couldn’t Leave U if I Tried,” whose opening guitar lines are pure-cut Roger McGuinn-esque arpeggiated bliss a la Guv, sets the tone and establishes the stakes:
I treasure the feeling Forever like a sunbeam on my bed Your light so sweetly beamin’ Made rainbows on the pillow by my head
Again and agin, in song after song — which range widely in style and mood, from Laurel Canyon jangle to British Invasion blues-pop to AM-radio Americana to the mildly sleazy electro pop that is something of a signature — we hear variations on the theme of those opening lines: If, as seems likely, we’re moving from a “love is all you need” world to a “love is all you can have” world, then what’s to be done except “watch the fireflies like bubbles in champagne,” as Ben sings in “April of My Life.” Ben calls the new album “a document of my two years away from the world. My healing.”
“Through real work in therapy over a long period, as well as spending many months isolated and alone, I have started to finally access my true self little by little, and it’s reflected in this music.” Maybe that process would have happened anyway, without the world cataclysm, without the detour to the sacred mountains. But it happened in its peculiar way, and in a holy place, and so we have this poignant and beautiful two-album set, which couldn’t have been made in any other timeline or under any other conditions. It’s an open question where exactly the timeline that begins with “GUV III & IV” leads. After tracking the albums in L.A. in early 2021, Ben decamped to Mexico — old Mexico — where the healing process has taken yet another surprising turn.
“I’m taking a complete break from music,” Ben says. “I haven’t picked up a guitar since the record wrapped. I’m learning Spanish and boxing.”
Young Guv, from his release ‘GUV III’ out March 11th, 2022 via Run For Cover Records and via Hand Drawn Dracula (Canada)
With their forthcoming debut album, Salt Lake City quartet The Mellons have crafted a unique bent on dreamy baroque pop, one tinged with offbeat instrumental palettes, gently lulling nostalgia, and taut pop hooks. These come together in a colourful symphonic reverie on their upcoming debut, fittingly titled “Introducing…The Mellons”.
The full record is out on September 16th via Earth Libraries, but the band have been teasing the album since last year with their singles “Salad Made of Butterflies” and “So Much To Say.” Now they’re back with their third single and their first of this year, “What A Time To Be Alive” along with an accompanying video .
“What A Time To Be Alive” leans completely into the band’s love for ‘60s psych pop, recalling the symphonic beauty of records like “Pet Sounds” married with an irresistible pop sensibility. The track’s bouncing bassline, sharp rhythm, warm harmonies, and earworm hook will all have it revolving in your head for weeks to come.
Meanwhile, the accompanying video, directed by the band’s own Andrew Beck, plays like a combination of Sesame Street and The Beatles, with the band performing in a fantasy full of bubbles, psychedelic colours, and puppets.
Speaking about the song, Andrew Beck says, “It all started with that bass line. Also, I was drawn to the phrase “what a time to be alive” because it is a bipolar statement. Depending on how you say it, it could either be a sincere statement on how exciting life currently is, or a sardonic statement about how terrible things are. I was working on this song during the beginning of the pandemic and it was, as dickens put it “ it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” A global plague, the Trump administration, race riots, but also at the same time, new love, musical breakthroughs, and spiritual awakenings perhaps like nothing I had ever felt. Perhaps some of my lowest lows and highest highs. Life is absurd, and perhaps sometimes we need to remember that just because something is painful doesn’t mean it can’t be joyful.”
“The song is a true Mellons group effort. I wrote the bones of it and the hook, Rob wrote the verse melody and lyrics, Ian added that tasty, tasty beat, and Denney and I produced the rest of it ourselves. It has more musical layers than we are comfortable talking about: There’s piano, violin, guitar, euphonium, trumpet, and even a typewriter in the mix.”
“The mood is ‘floating down the lazy river towards the gates of the apocalypse.’ The song has a blend of whimsical naivete and sardonic commentary in that the lyrics can be taken two ways. (I am a gemini after all.) There’s also a hidden Sleeping Beauty reference in the song.
“Introducing…The Mellons” is out September 16th via Earth Libraries.
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The Fat Angel Sings 