Young Guv has shared the third single, “Cry 2 Sleep,” from GUV IV. The new album is due out June 24th from Run For Cover and Hand Drawn Dracula Records. The track follows “Change Your Mind” and “Nowhere At All” (which drew praise from the likes of Stereogum, Paste Magazine, Uproxx, BrookylnVegan, New Commute, and more) and sees Ben Cook combining hazy pedal steel with bubbling keyboards and his gentle harmonies to make something that spans the many different moods of Guv.
Young Guv has also announced a run of UK shows in June. Guv will be touring around his performance at Outbreak Festival, including shows with One Step Closer, Chastity, and more.
Young Guv (aka songwriter Ben Cook) has released his new album “GUV IV“. the album comes hot on the heels of Young Guv‘s previous full-length, “GUV III”, which just came out in March. The ever-prolific musician has amassed an impressive and wide-reaching catalogue over the years and “GUV III” and “GUV IV” are the perfect place for new listeners to jump aboard.
Where “GUV III” captured Cook’s most instantly accessible guitar pop songwriting, “GUV IV” represents the most sonically adventurous side of Young Guv. The record (which has drawn early attention from the likes of Stereogum, NPR, BrooklynVegan, Uproxx, Paste Magazine, and many more) effortlessly moves between hazy Madchester-inspired rave ups, twangy California jangle, and even homemade sophisti-pop, with Cook’s knack for melody always leading the way.
If you missed “GUV III”, you can now order “GUV III” & “IV” 2xLP. The official street date is July 15th, “Cry 2 Sleep” by Young Guv, from the album “GUV IV” out June 24th, 2022 via Run For Cover Records and Hand Drawn Dracula
June 24 Glasgow, UK @ The Rum Shack w/ Chastity June 25 Manchester, UK @ Outbreak Festival June 26 London, UK @ Windmill Brixton June 27 Leeds, UK @ The Lending Room w/ Chastity June 29 Birmingham, UK @ The Victoria June 30 Brighton, UK @ The Hope & Ruin w/ One Step Closer
Pink Floyd’s long-awaited reissue of their 1977 studio album “Animals” will be issued in September (and October) of this year. This will be the first time the album will have been available on 5.1 Surround Sound. The band’s tenth studio album, Animals was recorded by band members David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Richard Wright at Britannia Row Studios in London throughout 1976 and early 1977, and was produced by the band themselves. The record peaked at number two in the UK and number three in the US, and is considered as one of the band’s best works.
The 32-page booklet features rarely seen behind the scenes photographs of the album sleeve shoot along with live images and memorabilia. The album’s iconic artwork has been reimagined for the new release, which you can see in full below.
“With the original 1977 album cover being such an iconic piece of stand-alone art, I had the chance to update it, which was a rather daunting task,” says Storm Thorgerson’s Hipgnosis partner Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell who has has re-designed the album cover for the modern era. “Hipgnosis took the opportunity to re photograph the image to reflect a changing world, and by using modern digital colouring techniques I kept Pink Floyd’s rather bleak message of moral decay using the Orwellian themes of animals, the pig ‘Algie’, faithful to the message of the album.”
The Deluxe Gatefold version includes LP, CD, audio Blu-ray, audio DVD and a 32-page book. The Blu-ray and DVD audio include the 2018 remix in Stereo, 5.1 Surround (both by James Guthrie) and the original 1977 Stereo mix. The 32-page booklet features rarely seen behind the scenes photographs of the album sleeve shoot along with live images and memorabilia. The album artwork has been reimagined for this release. “Animals” is a concept album, focusing on the social-political conditions of mid-1970s Britain, and was a change from the style of the band’s earlier work.
The album was developed from a collection of unrelated songs into a concept which describes the apparent social and moral decay of society, likening the human condition to that of animals. Taking inspiration from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the album depicts the different classes of people as animals with pigs being at the top of the social chain, dropping down to the sheep as the mindless herd following what they are told, with dogs as the business bosses getting fat on the money and power they hold over the other. Although it’s been a long time since 1977, the narrative of the album still resonates today as our social and economical situation mirrors that of the time.
The album’s iconic cover shows an inflatable pig (now known as Algie) floating between two chimneys of the Battersea Power Station, conceived by Roger Waters, and designed by long-time collaborator Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis Studios. For this new release, the artwork has been re-designed for the modern era by Storm’s Hipgnosis partner Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell. Taking new shots of the building as it appeared during the recent conversion work, Po experimented with new angles and produce some striking new takes on the classic original. Po elaborates: “With the original 1977 album cover being such an iconic piece of stand-alone art, I had the chance to update it, which was a rather daunting task, but Hipgnosis took the opportunity to re photograph the image to reflect a changing world, and by using modern digital colouring techniques I kept Pink Floyd’s rather bleak message of moral decay using the Orwellian themes of animals, the pig ‘Algie’, faithful to the message of the album.”
“Animals 2018″ mix will be reissued in all formats on 16th September, except for the deluxe gatefold edition which is 7th October 2022.
Released in the days of punk rock, and generally hated and ignored by the new generation. But dig a bit deeper and you’ll find ‘Animals’ to be much more ‘punk’ than most punk albums. ‘Animals’ by Pink Floyd is a piece of sarcastic, ironic, sour and exceptionally accurate social criticism. Lyrically, the album has more in common with punk than prog. But ironically, musically, “Animals” is also the closest Pink Floyd ever got to P{rog.
This 2018 remix largely corrects what was found to be wrong with the original mix – the slightly mushy and “flat” sound. The 2018 remix sounds so much better.
The details emerge more clearly, and each instrument has been given more room to ‘breath’. But this one is ace. It’s like having something clogged up in your ears for 45 years, and suddenly your ears pop and you can hear clearly again.
“To me, The Cure is the bluesiest song we have,” says vocalist/guitarist Josh Kennedy, of the Phoenix trio’s moody latest single; a lush yet primal marriage of emotion and Zeppelin-infused blues rock heat. “It came together very naturally and has all the sex appeal in it. It’s a love song about something being so good, but so bad for you at the same time. She’s Bella Donna.”
Their new album, Into The Night, is out on June 3rd.
These Los Angeles freakniks made their name with blood-spattered live shows, propelled by wire-thin, straitjacketed singer Arrow De Wilde – described as what would’ve happened if Ozzy Osbourne and Patti Smith had a kid in ‘75. It was mad. Unpolished. Just what you want from a bunch of rock kids starting out and declaring themselves to the world. Now a little older and signed to a major label, they’ve swapped the shlock for a driving combustion of Go Gos, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and 70s punk-meets-90s indie tones.
Johnny Knoxville and crew just released an expanded version of the new Jackass film, titled Jackass 4.5, and the soundtrack features this new, appropriately titled cover of Roger Alan Wade’s “If You’re Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough” by Starcrawler.
Finally a new song! Excellent as always. Was great so see a real rocking band with great songs musicianship and a great stage presence. All we need now is a third album!.
Turn up your stereo, warn the neighbours, “All Cranked Up” is here! A blistering original Rock’n’Roll song that demands you turn it up to 11, and blast it all night long. This is the first single and video to be taken from His Lordship’s debut E.P of the same name. The garage-fresh brainchild of guitarist James Walbourne (The Pretenders, The Pogues, The Rails) and Kristoffer Sonne (Chrissie Hynde, Willie Nelson), His Lordship play with the urgency of men being chased with flaming torches and gallons of petrol. A ram-jam barrage of 50s rock’n’roll mania, shot through with punk venom, “All Cranked Up” (the song and the EP from which it’s taken) is one of the most energising things you’ll hear all year – if you like your energy with a side of debauched, unclean living. Catch them on tour up and down the UK all this month.
They recently teamed up with Jay Som on the staggering shoegaze cut “Feelings Meeting,” and today, Living Hour returns with another new track “No Body.” The latest single to be taken from the Winnipeg band’s forthcoming third album, “Someday Is Today”, “Feelings Meeting” is a foggy piece of post-rock that hears Sam Sarty’s untethered incantations floating in the ether.
In a press release, Sarty states: “This song is about dissociating at a restaurant and feeling completely isolated and alone in the experience. Close friends all around but you can’t reach out, you can’t say anything, hands numb, mind far away and foggy. Trying to ground myself with observations and saying my middle name; focus on something small like the rainbow floating through the glass. The background voices are calming, more positive thoughts pushing the mind into a softer world. A diner is a diner, your friends love you, the sky is still out there.”
“This song is about dissociating at a restaurant and feeling completely isolated and alone in the experience,” reveals Sam. Tune in. Drop out.
Living Hour’s new album, “Someday Is Today”, out September 2nd on Kanine Records & Next DoorRecords.
Back in May, Alex G’s (Alexander Giannascoli) threw us quite the curveball with the darkly dirgy psychedelic freakout “Blessing,” and this month, the Philadelphia experimental act continues to explore the various sides of his sound on “Runner.” Featured on his forthcoming ninth album, “God Save theAnimals”, “Runner” is a bright and brilliant celebration of friendship that exudes a genuine heartland-rock soul: “I like people who I can open up to/Who don’t judge for what I say, but judge me for what I do.
Alex G’s ninth studio album, “God Save the Animals”,is further proof that he’s the Brian Wilson of the millennial generation. The 13-track release finds him once again covering considerable sonic ground, from introspective folk, hyperpop, emo, and ‘90s alt rock that almost feels cinematic in scope. Whether he’s modulating and pitch-shifting his voice or stripping his arrangements down to their bare bones, Alex G’s music is as beautiful as it is unsettling. Even when he ventures into strictly instrumental territory with tracks like “S.D.O.S,” he still conveys so much emotion and meaning. “God Save the Animals”is Alex G at peak form — defying any creative limitations in pursuit of constant exploration.
“God” figures in the ninth album from Philadelphia, PA based Alex Giannascoli’s LP’s title, its first song, and multiple of its thirteen tracks thereafter, not as a concrete religious entity but as a sign for a generalized sense of faith (in something, anything) that fortifies Giannascoli, or the characters he voices, amid the songs’ often fraught situations.
Beyond the ambient inspiration of pop, Giannascoli has been drawn in recent years to artists who balance the public and hermetic, the oblique and the intimate, and who present faith more as a shared social language than religious doctrine.
As with his previous records, Giannascoli wrote and demoed these songs by himself, at home; but, for the sake of both new tones and “a routine that was outside of my apartment,” he asked some half-dozen engineers to help him produce the “best” recording quality, whatever that meant. The result is an album more dynamic than ever in its sonic palette.
‘God Save The Animals’ out 23rd September 2022 on Domino Recordings.
This year, R.E.M.’s debut EP “Chronic Town” is turning 40 years old. Four decades since the alternative rock band first graced this planet with their music, and now they’re going to celebrate their humble beginnings. For the first time ever, Chronic Town will be released as a standalone CD with liner notes from the original producer Mitch Easter, as well as on picture-disc vinyl and cassette.
“One might fancifully say that “Chronic Town” was the sound of an expedition, ready for anything, setting forth,” Easter said about the EP ahead of its August 19th re-release. “If R.E.M. ‘Radio Free Europe’ single was a signpost, the “Chronic Town” EP was the atlas.”
“Chronic Town” established R.E.M.’s signature sound immediately, expanding the jangling riffs of their debut single, “Radio Free Europe,” into a full-fledged modus operandi. Recorded at Mitch Easter’s Drive-In Studios, the EP has an endearingly ragged sound — it’s a garage band playing jangling pop songs, and while the music is melodic and memorable, it has an underground mentality that keeps it from sounding conventional. Not only does the lo-fi production keep the music underground, but so do Peter Buck’s ringing arpeggios, Michael Stipe’s incomprehensible mumbled vocals, and the band’s amateurish enthusiasm. They might not be accomplished players, but already their song writing is distinctive, with “Gardening at Night,” “Wolves, Lower,” and “Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)” ranking as early classics straightaway.
R.E.M. released their debut EP “Chronic Town” 40 years ago, in summer 1982, and the defunct band are celebrating the anniversary with a reissue.
Ex-Weaves members Morgan Waters and Spencer Cole have shared a new single as Pink Blob, “Friday Rocker.”
The track comes from their forthcoming self-titled debut album, out this Friday, July 1st. On “Friday Rocker,” the genre-bending Pink Blob lean into a pure rock sound. It boasts some gritty guitars and fuzzed out melodies. Throughout the tune, the band’s brooding vocals take the lead, adding to the melancholic rock sound of the single.
“The lyrics started with a Melissa Etheridge reference and unfolded from there, a song about aging but not wanting to grow up,” Waters explains. “A song about finding common ground with my dad who loves smoking weed and turning up the stereo till his eyes water.”
“Pink Blob is the sound of both sides of me fighting for dominance,” Waters adds. “I’ve always felt split in two halves, and this album clashes the hooky and the noisy, the straight and the gay, the jokey and the masculine and feminine up against each other with the wild ferocity I tamper down in my day to day ‘I’m so embarrassed to be alive’ Canadian-ness. Death to boring. Death to snobs. Death to genre. Long live Pink Blob!”
