Today we’re sharing two new songs from Turnover, returning with their first music in almost three years. Join the band on a dizzying journey in the music video for lead single “Wait Too Long” and the psychedelic b-side “Mountains Made of Clouds”. The passing of time is on vocalist Austin Getz’ mind in Turnover’s latest single “Wait Too Long.” Groovy drum & bass, jangly guitar and unforgettable synth soaring over the choruses are a dizzying combination of new sonic elements and the band’s disposal to further evolve the sounds and moods explored on Turnover’s last two albums, “Altogether” and “GoodNature“. And while the festival-ready, psychedelic sway of the song makes it feel both calm and cool, the song’s true intention is about the difficulty of maintaining close relationships, both in friendship and love.
Turnover make perfect summer music. Sometimes you just want to embrace the heat and vibe to something assured and cooling, that’s “Wait Too Long.”
The swirling psychedelia of “Mountains Made of Clouds”makes the song feel like a brief but enchanting hallucination. Chirping birds, oscillating synthesizers and leisurely guitar leads create an all-encompassing atmosphere that add to the song’s ethereality. At its heart, “Mountains Made of Clouds” is a song about painful goodbyes, masked in escapist imagery about transcending sadness by somehow floating above it, as vocalist/guitarist Austin Getz mournfully recalls “Watching stars all disappear / from above you even nights the sky is clear / the warmth of tears behind your eyes / from the long and sad goodbye”
Turnover’s hitting the road starting on June 11th for a West Coast run that includes dates with Healing Potpourri and Temple of Angels. They’ll have a limited edition 7” with both of these songs on it, only available from the band for now.
“Wait Too Long/Mountains Made of Clouds” by Turnover, out now via Run For Cover Records
Ekkstacy’s moody goth rock is clearly indebted to godfathers The Cure and The Smiths, bringing melodrama and gloom to the party. You don’t write an opening line like, “Sitting on Mulholland drive, Waiting for my tears to dry” if you don’t know what you’re doing.
EKKSTACY unveiled his debut album “Negative” in the latter stages of 2021 and immediately showed his expressive class, undying charisma and commanding presence his soundscape possesses. The Vancouver based indie star blended the early 2000’s era of emo rock with the thrilling guitars of classic Brit rock and insatiable hooks from contemporary indie pop, giving his music a fresh taste that was completely his own. It was an utterly outstanding debut album, compelling in every way imaginable and made you contemplate the meaning of the artistic project long after it was finished playing.
With all of this being said, it should come as no surprise that his first offering in 2022 is another jewel to add to his back catalogue.
In this time of strife, insanity and confusion, only one band is depraved enough to offer themselves up as herald. Like sin-eaters if sins had to be ingested from a very small spoon, Viagra Boys have consumed the utterly incomprehensible chaos of our era and distilled it into 12 immaculate tracks of post-truth-cow-funk-kraut-wave-enlightenment.
This album is a pure feral attack and an absolute immense release. “Cave World” — Out now via YEAR0001, YEAR0001 is a multidisciplinary record label, management and creative studio founded in Stockholm in 2015. Our vision is to act as an independent incubator active in the landscape of music, culture, fashion and technology. We believe in using transparency and co-creation to achieve a more sustainable landscape for our artists and creators.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs are back and Karen O is still the master of an evocative song title. Perfume Genius joins the party for a comeback single that dials down the Yeah Yeah Yeahs punk spirit and ramps up the atmospheric bombast. The change suits them.
It could only be called alchemy, the transformative magic that happens during the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ most tuned-in moments in the studio, when their unique chemistry sparks opens a portal, and out comes a song like “Maps” or “Zero” or the latest addition to their canon, “Spitting off the Edge of the World” — an epic shot-to-the-heart of pure YYYs beauty and power. “It’s really awe-inspiring to watch the process of Karen’s melodies and lyrics just coming to her, right there,” says guitarist Nick Zinner. “Like, ‘what the fuck, where did that come from?’ When it strikes her, it’s the most incredible thing.”
“The look on Nick’s face when that happens,” Karen O says, with a laugh, “it’s primo, man. I know I’m onto something because I can tell it’s hitting him somewhere in his soul. We’ve been doing this together so long, and there are moments when the song comes from God-knows-where, and it feels like there’s a change in the air quality, in the atmosphere, like when it’s about to thunderstorm.”
A thunderstorm of a return is what the legendary trio has in store for us in 2022, with the release of “Cool It Down”, their first new music since 2013’s “Mosquito“. Their fifth studio album is an eight-track collection, and an expert distillation of their best gifts that impels you to move, and cry, and listen closely and is bound to be a landmark in their catalogue.
They never expected it to be so long between albums, and they certainly had stayed busy: There was a tour for their 2003 debut album, “Fever to Tell” that was re-issued in 2017; Karen released an album with Danger Mouse (Lux Prima, 2019) and co-composed the score for the animated film “Where Is Anne Frank?; Nick made an album with his hardcore side-project Head Wound City, scored Films, and collaborated with artists including Phoebe Bridgers, Amen Dunes and Songhoy Blues, Brian started his own label Chaiken Records. Karen and drummer Brian Chase both became parents in recent years.
She and Nick got together in spring of 2021 to give it a try. “We started playing music and it just came flooding out of us,” Karen remembers. Their longtime collaborator Dave Sitek (“basically a fourth member of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, at this point”) had shared some tracks he’d set aside, including the framework for “Spitting Off The Edge of The World,” and Karen connected with it right away. “When I heard the opening line, it felt like a waterfall,” she says. “[David] Bowie came to mind immediately. Sitek was actually friends with Bowie, and it felt like he was tuning into that frequency of artistry. And so when I was writing the lyrics and the melody, that’s who I was trying to tune into, as well. Because I’ve never tried to evoke Bowie before. But he’s gone now, and there’s a big, gaping hole.” And when she imagined another voice joining hers on the tune, the idea to invite Perfume Genius’s Mike Hadreas felt obvious. “Mike really has a bit of Bowie in him,” she says. “He was literally the first and only person that came to mind for it.”
Perfume Genius also co-stars alongside Karen in the visual for “Spitting,” as an avenging angel limo driver to her desert rebel queen. The visual was directed by another long time YYY’s collaborator, Cody Critcheloe (aka Ssion), who designed the artwork for “Fever To Tell” and also directed Perfume Genius’s amazing “Queen” video.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Spitting Off the Edge of the World ft. Perfume Genius (Official Video) from the upcoming album ‘Cool It Down’, out September 30th.
Any year with a new Alex G album is a good one and this is shaping up to be the singer-songwriter’s most confident project yet. “Runner” will feature on the forthcoming album “God Save The Animals“, out September 23rd via Domino Recordings. The announcement comes along with new single “Runner” and its accompanying video. The video was shot by Aldo Fisk and features an affectionate performance by Giannascoli and his bandmates Sam Acchione, Molly Germer, John Heywood, and Tom Kelly.
Filtering his experiences through fact and fiction, Giannascoli also opened up the songs through a more practical method: collaboration. “God Save the Animals” features several individual contributions from his bandmates and frequent collaborator Molly Germer on strings and/or vocals. As with records since his adolescence, Giannascoli wrote and demoed the songs of “God Save the Animals” by himself, at home; but, for the sake of both new tones and “a routine that was outside of my apartment” during the pandemic, he began visiting multiple studios in greater Philadelphia. “God Save the Animals” consequently features the work of some half-dozen engineers whom Giannascoli asked to help him produce the “best” recording quality, whatever that meant. The result is an album more dynamic than ever in its sonic palette and its thoroughgoing complexity.
Alex G – the Philadelphia singer, songwriter, and producer Alex Giannascoli – returns with new album the first track released is “Blessing.” The track was produced by Giannascoli and his longtime collaborator Jacob Portrait and comes with an accompanying video directed by Zev Magasis. “God Save the Animals” “Blessing,” which received praise from NPR (“delightfully weird, minimalist and dark, it doles out many curiosities over its three short minutes”) and the New York Times (“His predictable unpredictability strikes again… the whole thing is eerie, hypnotic and, somehow, strangely moving.”)
Alex G’s last album “House of Sugar” was named one of the best albums of 2019 by Pitchfork, The Guardian, GQ, American Songwriter, Stereogum, Consequence, and Esquire, who called it“a layered, ever-changing work from an artist who seems to have no limits in taking his music anywhere his imagination can go.” This spring he released his first-ever film score for Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, earning praise from outlets including the LA Times, who wrote, “Alex G’s melancholic guitar-centric score hypnotizes.”
Pinkshift is a rock band new to the scene from MarylandBaltimore. With writing inspired by 90s grunge and 2000s pop punk, the band walks the lines between riot grrl, punk rock, and post-hardcore. Comprised of vocalist Ashrita Kumar, guitarist Paul Vallejo, drummer Myron Houngbedji, and bassist Erich Weinroth, the self-described ‘rat city rock nerds’ formed in college in 2018. All studying at a research university in Baltimore, they’re the first to admit there’s not much of a scene at their school, so they found each other through music clubs and – would you believe it – a Tinder search party. Reminiscing on their formative days, Ashrita recalls the tipping point: she and Paul had written so many songs that they thought “logically, we should play these out loud, and how do we do that? We have to start a band to do that.”
Punk bands have taken a stand against subjugation and Pinkshift continue the legacy by kicking back against their modern oppressor; smartphones and social media. “nothing (in my head)” is a heavy AF ode to turning off your devices and embracing the smooth brain lifestyle.
The official music video for Pinkshift’s new single “nothing (in my head)” available now on Hopeless Records!
A grassroots, no-label/DIY, compilation album project benefiting 501(c)(3) nonprofits. 100 percent of the funds raised go directly to the respective charity (less the cost of processing fees).
“Through The Soil II” is a great compilation raising funds for the National Network of Abortion Funds with the help of new music from Julien Baker, MJ Lendermann, and Faye Webster among many others (seriously, this thing is stacked). It’s also a great spotlight for lesser-known artists such as LA’s Cryogeser, whose shoegaze-y pop hit “Obvious” stands out among the crowd.
These charity compilations would be absolutely nothing without the generosity from all the artists involved. Thank you to all who took part in the making of this release, for sharing a piece of your art for this project and for your continued support.
Cat Power is set to recreate Bob Dylan’s iconic recording and performance at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester on May 17th 1966, which was mistakenly labelled as taking place at the Royal Albert Hall, with her own performance at the latter venue in London on November 5th.
Cat Power, real name Charlyn Marie Marshall, will recreate Dylan’s entire set and play the same songs he did in ’66, and in the same order. Also keeping to Dylan’s original format, Marshall will play the first half of the set acoustic before switching to electric for the second half. When Dylan originally switched to electric during his 1966 show, he was backed by The Hawks, who went on famously to become The Band.
No stranger to covering Dylan songs, Marshall has performed a number of his songs, including “Paths of Victory,” “Hard Times in New York Town,” “Moonshiner,” and “Kingsport Town” during past concerts, in addition to recording “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” for the 2007 Dylan biopic “I’m Not There”. “When I finally got the opportunity to play the Royal Albert Hall, it was a no-brainer,” said Marshall in a statement. “I just wanted to sing Dylan songs. And as much as any, this collection of his songs, to me, belong there.”
Dylan’s 1966 concert was officially released as the fourth volume of Dylan’s The Bootleg Series and subtitled as the “Royal Albert Hall” concert. The concert took place several months after Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in the summer of 1965. At the Manchester concert, a fan famously yelled “Judas,” a moment that has appeared on bootlegs over the years before being featured in Martin Scorsese’s 2005 Dylan documentary “No Direction Home“.
Marshall, who recently finished the European leg of her tour—supporting her most recent album “Covers“, and featuring her renditions of songs by Bob Seger, Iggy Pop, Ella Fitzgerald, The Pogues, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and more.
If the “Summer of Love” had a theme song, it would have to be “Get Together”, by The Youngbloods. With its warm cascade of chords and message of aspirational brotherhood, “Together” swirled the hippie ethic into a song.
As far as choruses go, few are as instantly identifiable as this one: “Come on, people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now.”
The song, “Get Together” (sometimes called “Let’s Get Together”), has a fascinating, convoluted history. For most people, it will always be associated with the Youngbloods, whose primary lead singer, Jesse Colin Young originally born Perry Miller in November 1941 in Queens, N.Y. Young got his start in the early ’60s as a solo folk-blues singer on the Boston-Cambridge club circuit. He released two acoustic albums, “The Soul of a City Boy” (Capitol Records, 1964) and “Young Blood” (Mercury, 1965), before the rock and roll bug bit him.
Along with guitarist-singer Jerry Corbitt, keyboardist-guitarist Lowell “Banana” Levinger and drummer Joe Bauer, Young (who switched to bass in the band) formed the Youngbloods in Boston in 1966 and, after signing with RCA Records, they recorded their self-titled debut album the following year. Corbitt and Young started playing together on his back porch. Then one day after the Beatles came out we said, “Could we just transition into a band?” Banana lived down the street from Corbitt, and Joe Bauer had just come up from Memphis and moved in upstairs from Banana. There weren’t a lot of drummers around, because the folk thing was pretty strong. Pretty soon I was playing duo and then we were Jesse ColinYoung and the Lonely Nights or the Jerry Corbitt Three. We had a bunch of names before we got around to Youngbloods.
The debut album produced by Mountain‘s Felix Pappalardi, who had a reputation as an gifted arranger on the New York folk scene, later he would also produce Cream around the same time, the folk-rock album, which bore a resemblance to the sound of the Lovin’ Spoonful. Even while they were moving forward, the Youngbloods experienced a surprise hit when “Get Together,” from the debut, was re-released in the summer of ’69. This time it resonated with the larger audience, The Youngbloods’ debut album, a self-titled work which minted a signature sound sifting together folk, jazz, ragtime, country-rock and psychedelia. During their 5 year run, The Youngbloods recorded a deep trove of elegant tunes
A single taken from the album, “Get Together,” credited to Chet Powers (who was actually future Quicksilver Messenger Service singer Dino Valenti), The Youngbloods’ sophomore LP, “Earth Music”, in the same vein musically. Jefferson Airplane had already recorded the song for their pre-Grace Slick debut album in ’66 (Jefferson Airplane “Takes Off“). But The Youngbloods‘ version idealized its melody with their finely-twined harmonies. “I got a chill down my whole body,” Young said. “The song was became a hit in San Francisco!”
The Youngbloods’ second album was “Earth Music” and then, during the 1967 Summer of Love, The band all moved to the West Coast.
We played the Avalon [Ballroom, in San Francisco] and it was full of freaks and they all looked like Banana with the big hair. So we realized we could work there. Then we walked into this cheap motel and there’s this funny little radio built into the bed and I turn it on and there’s “Get Together.” Wow!.
When the time came for “Elephant Mountain” we had been on the West Coast for a year. Clearly, they needed a change if they were to survive, so in mid-’67, the band yanked up its roots and relocated from its then-current home of New York City to the San Francisco Bay Area. There they found greater acceptance among the local rock aficionados, and set out to make their third album for RCA, which would be titled “Elephant Mountain” (named after an actual peak near Pt. Reyes Station in Marin County, north of San Francisco, where the band, now reduced to a trio with the departure of Corbitt, resided). With Charlie Daniels producing,
Images of wind, sunlight and mountains began to inform Young’s songs. “Love of the natural world is as much a theme in my music as romantic love,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s even more dominant. I got more out of walking over the ridge top in Marin and looking out at the national sea shore than any drugs I ever took.”
The inspiration that gave found full focus on the band’s third, and best, studio album, “ElephantMountain”, released in 1969. featured the seminal tracks, At the same time, the band experienced a serious rupture. Corbett ditched the band three songs into recording ‘Elephant Mountain.’ The guitarist had developed a fear or flying, got into serious drugs, and also pined to focus on country-rock rather than The Youngbloods’ more eclectic mix. But instead of subverting the band, Corbitt’s parting opened them up to a new sound. Continuing as a spare trio allowed them to experiment, employing more improvisation to fill the space. The players were greatly encouraged in that regard by their producer, the later country-rock star Charlie Daniels. “He said to us ‘some bands need a push, and some need you to get out in front of them and say ‘woe,'” Young recalled. “‘But you guys just need me to be there.
The album, despite its underwhelming chart performance, gave The Youngbloods a large credibility boost it is considered not only the band’s finest but a sleeper classic from that era, with jazz-informed songs like “Ride the Wind,” “Sunlight,” kissed by a luminous melody and a rapturous lyric. “Darkness, Darkness,” (Mott The Hoople recorded their own haunted version for their 1971 album “Brain Capers“). A bad acid trip had inspired the song. “It put me in touch with terror,” Young said. “Later, I came to think of my friends in Vietnam. They live with this terror every night. After the war, we played a lot of veteran’s benefits. The veterans told me that ‘Darkness, Darkness’ and ‘Get Together’ were the songs that really got to them in that period. Other songs “Quicksand” and “Beautiful” receiving massive amounts of airplay on the FM rock stations of the day.
They released their next album, a live set called “Rock Festival”.
Informed by a sensibility finely attuned to the natural world. Young’s flexible tenor expressed unalloyed freedom, while the band played their instruments with supple care. Their 1971 live album, “Ride The Wind”, remains one of the greatest concert documents of the classic-rock era. The nine minute take on the title track remains the ultimate Youngbloods’ jam. “We were playing music at the edge of my learning curve,” Young said. “There’s not a lot of half-step chord changes in pop music. With that success in hand, the Youngbloods were able to launch their own RCA-distributed label, Raccoon Records.
No live album of the prime San Francisco era so perfectly captured the lightness of the scene. Appropriately, ‘Ride The Wind’ documents a free concert in the city’s park. “The most transformational thing about that scene was playing for free,” Young said. “You could pull a permit from the city for $100, get a flat bed truck, pull up in the pan handle of the park and people would come hear you play. Free music was like two halves of a great being meeting.”
After ‘Ride,’ the band released two more studio works, though neither captured their essence as sweetly as their previous work. Young went on to create solo albums with more elaborate instrumentation while still retaining his commitment to the character of Marin. Some observers have speculated that the reason The Youngbloods didn’t become bigger had to do with their home base in low-key Marin rather than in the city centre. Observers also believe the press’ snubbing of the band had to do with a prevailing critical bias against “mellow music” in favour of more aggressive sounds. Young isn’t sure about either of those things, but he does feel that one factor in the band’s low profile has to do with him being a reluctant performer. “I don’t feed on adulation,” he said, Young is simply content to have made a living in music. He’s also proud of the band’s catalogue
For over a decade, Joyce Manor have epitomised pop-punk’s cathartic power. Although they bear some of the genre’s conventions – namely their impassioned expression of suburban angst and songs that breeze by in one or two minutes – they don’t sit squarely within its walls. If you go back through their albums so far, you’ll find traces of Midwest emo, chugging power-pop and delicate, jangly indie rock. Their channelling of influences posits them as one of the most curious yet inventive bands of their ilk.
This lead single from Joyce Manor’s sixth studio album, “40 oz. To Fresno” (due for release on June 10), feels like a release of pressure. The feeling of a valve being eased in singer/guitarist Barry Johnson’s head as he barks his way through evocative lines like “Big Yellow Shell All Fucked Up And Haunted” is palpable.
It results in some of the catchiest songs in the band’s arsenal. Take ‘NBTSA’, a 2017 single given a fresh lick of paint. It’s the musical equivalent to dropping Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke; guitars fizz as Thaxton’s drums and Matt Ebert’s bass drive towards the eruptive chorus. As jubilant as the song is, it reflects Johnson’s bubbling anxiety, which intensifies at the titular refrain.
The dichotomy between fragility and buoyancy is well-trodden ground for Johnson. “40 oz. to Fresno” is strewn with familiar weariness. On pop-punk throwback ‘Gotta Let It Go’, he reminisces about walking aimlessly at night and hitching a ride in his friend’s stolen car, ultimately coming to terms with his lost youth. He’s at his most direct on ‘Don’t Try’, where he achingly admits to his loneliness (“I feel so far away/I missed you so much today”).
It’s Joyce Manor’s ability to meld disparate styles that still sets them apart. Whether it’s the wistful ‘Reason to Believe’ with its chiming guitar, or the heartfelt Weezer soundalike ‘Secret Sisters’, every song is quintessentially them. While their pop-punk peers stagnate, Joyce Manor continue to take interesting and surprising shapes.
