S Carey is the moniker of Eau Claire, Wisconsin-based multi- instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer Sean Carey. Over the past decade, Carey has fostered his flourishing solo career via themes of nature and sustainability, song writing built from jazz beginnings, and heartfelt, emotive lyricism. His latest and fourth album, “Break Me Open“, is best described in his own words:
In “Break Me Open“, I confronted darkness, I wrote about fear, I looked at love from different angles, I left it all out on the field. These past couple years have been the hardest of my life: full of grief, loss, and change. I feel like I had two choices. I could run from life, turn away, grow cold, resort to drugs, run and keep running. Or, I could give myself a deep look within. I could dig deep where the pain lives, where fear is festering, to try shed a new skin and come back a better person.
Everyone is so far from perfect. This is not a “divorce” album. And while going through that has shook me to my core, leaving me at times, wondering who I am, and where to go, this record is bigger. It’s about love – past, present, and future. It’s about fatherhood – the overwhelming feeling of deep love for my kids and the melancholy of watching them grow up right before my eyes. It’s about accepting my faults and wrongdoings, exposing myself, and trying to know myself better than I did the day before. But above the darkness, it’s a message of hope, honesty, and growth. It’s a call to be vulnerable: “Break Me Open“.
“Break Me Open” is the new LP from Wisconsin-based multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and Bon Iver collaborator S. Carey. Lots of lavish sounds in the mix, but all beautifully so, it’s a masterclass in subtlety.
The forthcoming album ‘Break Me Open’, out April 22nd on Jagjaguwar Records.
On “demos”, Tucson, AZ singer, songwriter & sound designer Karima Walker shares early, home-recorded versions of songs from her critically acclaimed 2021 folk/ambient album “Waking the DreamingBody“, alongside illuminating sketches and ambient pieces. The demo versions of “Softer,” “Window I” and “Reconstellated” feature alternate lyrics and intimate acoustic arrangements that highlight the power of Walker’s voice and musicianship, while ambient pieces like “Thunder Interlude” and “Earth Into Air” plumb deeper depths of tension.
“I first notice how vulnerable it feels, to hear certain lyrics sticking out, different from the words that finally stuck. But I do like returning to these songs, remembering why words shifted and settled as the songs took shape, and remembering that so many of these did not appear as immediately apparent and whole.
“They’re a lot more like my everyday life, revealing itself in time, while I try to let things register in my body… Then I go back in and push things around and figure out what I’m doing… Others are knit together from other projects, pieces and fragments that inspired the emotional timbre of the record, and in some cases were woven directly into it. Some here did appear complete and whole, but I either forgot about them, lost them or saw them as outliers. Either way, I like how the pieces hang together as a simpler account of the time from which the record finally came, and I hope you do too.” – Karima Walker
Karima leaves for an East Coast tour next week supporting the wonderful Flock of Dimes before a West Coast tour in May with Advance Base and Claire Cronin.
The forthcoming album from Nashville-based and Melbourne-bred songwriter Jo Schornikow is a clip show of sorts. The record’s title, “Altar”, takes its name from a physical and more importantly: symbolic shrine she keeps of souvenirs from past chapters of her life, with the highs and lows all revisited on the new LP. The latest single to be revealed ahead of its May 20th release date captures both of these extremes, with the equal-parts nostalgic and comfortably of-the-present “Plaster” summing up a particular recurring theme in her life.
“‘Plaster’ is a song about my favourite kind of magic that done in plain sight, no smoke or mirrors,” she shares. “When the magician calls the play, shows their hand; and still the audience sees what they want/expect, not what’s there. I’ve been on both sides and wrote a verse from each; the fooler and the fooled. ‘Plaster’ is a glittering, disco-ball lit, slow-dance love song to all the fools I’ve been. Nothing to do with plaster, but both my wrists were broken when I wrote it. Never bike-ride in NYC snow.”
Along with the glossy tune comes a slo-mo music video which sees Schornikow making her way to the front of a sanctuary over the course of the song’s two minutes, where the colourful aforementioned altar awaits her.
Within 11 seconds of clicking “play” on “Lava Lamp Pisco” it’s instantly apparent why “Night Gnomes“, the latest album from Psychedelic Porn Crumpets might be their greatest offering yet.
The track is a riffy monster that delivers a much-welcome Black Sabbath-style slap to the head. It’s big, shiny, sleek and irresistible. It’s Psychedelic Porn Crumpets giving their best and Jack McEwan the band’s fearless leader has the battle scars from the four-second harmonica solo to prove it.
“I hadn’t blown the harmonica in five years. It was just sitting on my desk,” he recalls. “The first thing I did was suck in all this dust, and I couldn’t talk for like a day. Afterwards, the rest of the band was like, ‘You have to scrap that. It’s so cheesy.’ Anyone under 30 hates it, but it has the dad-rock vibe, so I kept it in.”
That devil-may-care spirit is present on each and every song on “Night Gnomes“. With guitarist Luke Parish, drummer Danny Caddy, bassist Wayon Billondana and multi-instrumentalist Chris Young by his side, McEwan bunkered down in his home studio, creating a sonic pastiche that almost sounds like turning the dial on a temperamental old radio every few minutes.
“A lot of these songs are structured from the beginning, but then we add another part towards the end to really keep it interesting, even if it’s just for ourselves,” he says of the project, which was recorded at McEwan’s home studio in and around Perth. “Like on Fleet Foxes’ “Helplessness Blues,” every song has an ending that is completely different than the first part. That was the idea here.”
Hence, distorted synths giving way to and then enveloping the lighter-waving riffage on opener “Terminus, The Creator,” a magnificent string section suddenly appearing on the nostalgic acoustic folk ditty “Dread and Butter” and a dizzying array of sounds linking arms on the title track, which imagines the proverbial creatures frolicking around a campfire in some far-off, mystical forest. “It feels jolly, but it’s also kind of terrifying and disturbing. My girlfriend told me she couldn’t listen to that song,” McEwan says of “Night Gnomes,” adding, “I’ve always liked how some Beatles songs just come out of nowhere, like “Mean Mr. Mustard.” This is our own little jingle that doesn’t fit with anything else on the record.”
On “Bubblegum Infinity,”the Crumpets waded through nearly 50 different variations of the track before a Eureka moment during a rehearsal jam session revealed its final structure. The song itself wound up as a commentary on the often rudderless nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and “taking comfort in the fact that nobody had a clue what was going on,” according to McEwan. “The song used to open with a huge riff that was side chained to the kick drum so it sounded like it was thumping, but then that’s how every Crumpets song starts. I swapped the heavy guitars for acoustics, which made it feel way stronger, both dynamically and sonically. It felt like we’d uncovered the clutter which guides the song to build into that chorus and not give anything away beforehand.”
McEwan is particularly proud of the dreamy “Sherbert Straws,” which he says “actually has some dynamics in it rather than having nine elements in the same spectrum as my vocals that I’m trying to constantly mix in and out of the track.” The song descends from the proud lineage of Australasian rock acts such as Tame Impala and Unknown Mortal Orchestra to whom McEwan professes devotion. “When we formed back in 2015, we marvelled at how these awesome bands from around here could self-release music on vinyl and create their own stories. There wasn’t any waiting for labels to come knocking. It was all DIY and we loved that concept. We’re still holding right onto those coattails and we’re getting dragged as far as we can,” he jokes.
For all of its varied vibes, the album never skimps on massive rockers sure to delight Psychedelic PornCrumpets fans across the world in 2022. “Acid Dent” thrashes with abandon, but actually offers a slight concession to advancing age. “When we were younger, we were carefree and living tall, “McEwan says. “You get home with a handful of stuff in your pocket from whatever festival and just munch all of it, until you wake up in the morning so scattered. If we kept carrying on this way, we’d wind up in mental institutions by 35. So this is a nice little story about slowing down a bit.”
“Bob Holiday” pays homage to classic riffs McEwan remembers from his youth, like Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” “We’ve been trying to emulate that sound forever,” says McEwan, who also played in a Rage Against The Machine cover band when he was younger. “I also thought ‘Bob Holiday’ was a really strong name — like, if you were called that, you’d be able to do anything.”
The album comes full circle with the one-two closing punch of the instrumental “In Dreams, Out” and “Slinky/ Holy Water,” touching again on the thumping drums, acoustic guitar flourishes, washes of sound and strange noises introduced on the opening track. With the pandemic having provided McEwan the chance to “get my life together and get healthy,” not to mention move 200 meters from his favourite pub, he and his bandmates will soon be onto their next musical adventure. But exploring the undiscovered territory of “Night Gnomes” has already made a major impact on its creators.
“I have no idea what I’m doing half the time,” McEwan says. “It’s like, plug in, record. Why does this sound like shit but this other thing works? I needed five albums to get to this point of revealing some golden nuggets of information about dynamics, production and exploring new sounds. Everyone finds fault in their own work, but that’s probably what makes us want to keep creating.”
Toronto’s Jerry Leger was building up a fine head of steam on this side of the pond a few years back. His live shows and almost back-to-back releases of “Too Broke To Die” (a retrospective collection) and “Time OutFor Tomorrow” were widely acclaimed. He was due to build on this acclaim with a spring tour of the UK and Europe in 2020 but like everything else back then, the shutters sprang up.
Two years later, Leger has a new album out and a whole new set of dates over here coming up. The album, “Nothing Pressing“, can be considered (like numerous other current releases) as a product of the pandemic. In plain terms it consists of home recorded songs, solo studio efforts and, once they were able to do so, his band (The Situation) weigh in. This allows the album a fine degree of light and shade. Delve into the songs however and there’s more shade than light in terms of Leger’s lyrics and preoccupations. There’s none of the mercurial Dylan like rock which Leger is so adept at, instead the band songs are stoic and grounded, more rooted in a Neil Young like ditch than Dylan like flashes of lightning. When he does root around in a Dylan like guise it’s on the skeletal “Underground Blues”, a home recorded demo with sparks flying from Leger’s raw electric guitar calling to mind the bard’s ghosts of electricity.
The album opens with Leger strumming his 1959 Gibson acoustic guitar on the title song. Predating the pandemic but eerily prescient, it’s a sylvan fantasy of sorts as he moves into the country but is soon “bored out of his mind.” As if his wish to leave this fantasy was borne out, “Kill It With Kindness” is announced with a blast of electric guitar as the band sway in on a crunchy rocker which tackles personal demons, Leger here sounding like Phil Ochs fronting Elvis Costello’s Attractions. There’s more crunch on the swampy Stray Gators like slouch of “Recluse Revisions” which dives head first into ditch territory. Apparently inspired by the ennui encapsulated in Joan Didion’s 1970 novel, Play It As It Lays, Leger sings of a slightly jaded bunch of comrades, getting on in years, content now to just “play cowboy songs they know by heart.” It’s a mighty achievement and the towering point of the album. “Wait A Little Longer”, another full band outing has Angie Hilts singing harmony giving the song a lilting Everlys’ like sound, somewhat akin to that employed by the likes of T Bone Burnett or Nick Lowe when they go down an Everlys’ alleyway. Hilts also features on the jangled power pop of “Have You Ever Been Happy”, its upbeat sound belying the questing lyrics.
The remainder of the album is more introspective, perhaps reflecting Leger’s time spent in lockdown. “With Only You” is a yearning love song given a late era Beatles’ like burnish while “A Page You’ve Turned” is a sad, country like lament which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Flatlanders album. He delves deep into his vulnerabilities on “Sinking In“, another home recording, which exists on a similar plane to Alex Chilton’s fragile songs on the third Big Star album, but the crux of the disc is the deeply moving “Still Patience“, a song which came to Leger following the death of a close friend. Lennon like in its intimate delivery, the song resonates with loss. Closing the album as he began, strumming his trusty Gibson, Leger offers up “Protector“. A brilliant hangdog weariness inhabits the song which is like a self-composed eulogy with Leger posing at times as a gunfighter facing his last shootout. It’s kind of brilliant.
Highly nuanced and very finely written and delivered, “Nothing Pressing” certainly deserves Leger’s description of it as his “deepest artistic statement yet.” It’s a superb album.
“Underground Blues” is from Jerry’s new album “Nothing Pressing” out on Latent Recordings on March 16th, 2022. Produced by Michael Timmins, written by Jerry Leger
“Zorked” (adj.) – what happens when you end up thunderbaked, as in extremely stoned–or in any situation where you feel not sobre. You can feel so tired you’re zorked. In fact, any state, so long as you’re a little out of it, qualifies. And Julia Shapiro, of Chastity Belt, Childbirth, and Who Is She?—much like everyone on this earth with a pulse—was zorked on more than one occasion in 2020. In March, she packed up her things and traded Seattle’s late-winter gloom for the perennial sunshine and seemingly endless opportunity of Los Angeles only to be forced into near-total isolation. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, she began working on her second solo album, “Zorked”. On the resulting batch of songs, we’re given Julia’s vision of Los Angeles: a wasteland melting in slow-motion, a place to commune with ghosts and warped legacies.
Living within earshot of a man who spent his entire 2020 singing karaoke for over 10 hours a day, Julia could write, record, and play an album’s worth of instruments without fear of noise complaints. Her roommate Melina Duterte (Jay Som) transformed their house into a viable home studio, making it easy to fully realize the sound in her head, even at the height of a global lockdown. Taking things a step further, Melina agreed to co-produce the record, pushing Julia to make these new songs sound less like “Perfect Version“, her first solo album, or like the songs she performs in Chastity Belt. At the peak of her uncertainty and discomfort, she jumped into the deep end in search of something new—and found power in heavy sounds.
This is evident in the first few seconds of album opener “Death (XIII).” Taking newfound inspiration from the namesake Tarot card, drone metal, and shoegaze, Julia layers walls of guitars, bass chords, and programmed drums. “Come With Me,” the album’s lead single, takes inspiration from a mushroom trip gone bad. “Take me to awful places now,” she sings, envisioning heat death as her own eyes stare directly into the sun. On “Wrong Time,” shimmering guitars smoulder and levitate, yet she finds herself “stuck inside this hole I’ve dug.” That said, these songs aren’t unbearably sad, nor has Julia become any less of a merciless observer of human behaviour. By album closer “Hall of Mirrors,” she’s come full circle. Over fingerpicked guitar, the sense of lost identity becomes all-encompassing. It’s the sound of a life lived in servitude to digital screens and the psychic damage invisibly done along the way.
Though Julia Shapiro found herself in a near hermit-like existence, writing and recording almost all of the album’s instruments herself and struggling to navigate her place in a city and world rendered nearly comatose, she maintains a sense of humour about all of it. At the very least, “It’s funny to force people to have to say “Zorked” out loud. Any other title sounded pretentious.”
How about Miles Davis? For issue #301, we wanted to make a statement, debut a new cover star and tell a story that remains largely untold elsewhere in mainstream music magazines. Davis – an artist who revolutionised music several times over – seemed like the perfect fit, and the period covered in Tom’s excellent cover story captures him during one of his many transformative periods, conveniently pulling him closer into our world that ever before. As Tom notes in his excellent piece, “Like Dylan, like Bowie, Miles contained multitudes”; read more on page 88.
Elsewhere in the issue, you’ll find excellent new interviews with Michael Head, Arooj Aftab, Glen Matlock, The Black Keys, Fatoumata Diawara, the Associates, Sharon Van Etten, Brian Eno and more. Eno’s old sparring partner, Bryan Ferry, has also written at length for us about all eight Roxy Music studio records, while the Stones’ most iconic album is saluted by a panel of heads, including Cat Power, J Mascis, Mike Scott, Adam Granduciel, Jennifer Herrema and Kurt Vile, and we take a peek at Dylan’s upcoming archival exhibition.
The Experience cut a live TV session for ITV’s “It Must Be Dusty” at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire on June 5th, 1968. Hendrix launches into ‘Stone Free’ with “This is dedicated to Brian Jones”, who had recently been arrested for possession of marijuana. Side One finishes up with a bit of chat between Jimi and Dusty, then on Side Two Jimi accompanies Dusty with solo guitar on a duet of Charlie and Inez Foxx’s “Mockingbird”. The session ends with a powerful rendition of their latest single, “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).” The show was broadcast on July 12th, and although the video performance no longer exists, a grainy clip of “Mockingbird” from a Super 8 camera pointed directly at the TV can be found on a popular video hosting site.
Side One: 1. Introduction 2. Stone Free (Hendrix) 3. Interview
Side Two: 1. Mockingbird (Inez & Charlie Foxx) 2. Voodoo Chile (Hendrix)
The Fat Angel Sings 