London-based duo Jockstrap (Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye) announced the release of their debut album, “I Love You Jennifer B”, which will be out on September 9th via Rough Trade. They also shared a video for a new album single, “Glasgow” in addition to announcing a North American tour in support of the album.
In a press release, the band state: “I Love You Jennifer B” is a collection of Jockstrap tracks that have been three years in the making. Everything on it is pretty singular sounding so we hope there is a track on there for everyone and something that speaks to you and says ‘I’m a banger.’”
They add, regarding the new single: “‘Glasgow’ is our coming of age, moving forward, long-distance, travelling, beautiful bosk, wonderful thicket song. Glasgow is a great city, perhaps my favourite city in the U.K. Only downside is that it’s so damn cold all the time.”
when georgia ellery and taylor skye make music as jockstrap, the process and result has one definition: pure modern pop alchemy.
With their debut album “I Love You Jennifer B”, Jockstrap will cement themselves as one of the most vital young groups to emerge from London’s melting pot of musical cultures in years. commenting on the album.
Last November, the duo shared the album track “50/50.” They later shared the album track “Concrete Over Water,” Their most recent music project was the EP “Beavercore”, which came out in 2020 via WarpRecords.
“She Said” was one of the first songs written for this album. It was at the beginning of the pandemic and Henri came to my window and played me the demo, and we wrote the lyrics together like Romeo and Juliet. It’s what really kicked off the writing process of this album, and it was such a powerful moment that we wanted to name the record after that song.
Beabadoobee has shared “10:36,” the latest single from her forthcoming album “Beatopia“. The song follows the previously released “Talk,” “Lovesong,” and “See You Soon.” “Beatopia” is out July 15th via DirtyHit. Scroll down to stream the new track now.
“‘10:36’ was written after [2020 debut album] Fake It Flowers and just before Our Extended Play, and I had envisioned it to be on that EP,” beabadoobee said in a statement. “I was just sitting on that riff for ages and then I properly made a demo during lockdown. It was called ’10:36′ because that was the time I finished writing it. It’s basically about how I have this weird dependency on human contact to sleep.”
She is also scheduled to perform at Glastonbury Festival in the U.K.
Big news in the world of Art Moore! We are incredibly excited to announce our debut self titled album out August 5th on Anti Records! The first song we ever wrote together, ‘Muscle Memory’ is out now!
It’s about the different phases in life. How friendships and relationships change over time and how we come to deal with it. Art Moore make vivid, heart breaking short stories. Each song on the newly formed three-piece’s self-titled debut album is its own individual universe of bittersweet feeling: a brief snapshot of a moment in time that captures the fragility and occasional impossibility of human connection. The ten tracks that comprise the record are deft character studies, zeroing in on restless widows, shy beginners, jilted friends and friendly exes, chronicling minute moments — road trips, casual dates, games of truth or dare — with rich detail and subtle wit. The result is a world of remarkable emotional complexity, an album-length study of loneliness, heartache, and loss that’s sweet but never saccharine, sad but never maudlin. Featuring the inimitable song writing of beloved Oakland luminary Taylor Vick of Boy Scouts set in sharp relief against lush production from Ezra Furman collaborators Sam Durkes and Trevor Brooks, it’s a quietly wondrous record — a set of songs that sketch out the struggle and beauty of coping with everyday life.
The idea of Art Moore, as a band, or Art Moore, as a cohesive, ingratiating record, was still a ways away. “We all met up at the studio, and it was never even like, ‘Let’s be a band’, that was never a thing,” recalls Durkes. “It was more like, ‘Let’s write for movies and art projects’ — let’s think of a movie scene or a photograph or still image and see if we can write some shit around it to see if we can pitch it.”
A mutual admiration for each others’ work guided the initial days of Art Moore, says Durkes. “Taylor can just nail harmonies right off the bat, like, no bullshit — it’s an incredible skill,” he says admiringly. “It’s amazing to see, because a lot of singers, they gotta work at it a lot harder. Taylor works at it too, but it seems so fucking effortless.”
Writing synth- and drum machine-led songs for the project proved to be a kind of full-circle moment for Brooks, who, prior to Art Moore, had spent time making ambient music as part of the Bay Area experimental electronic group Awefekt. “I spent a few years where I sort of left the whole indie-rock [world] and I was making a lot of ambient synth and improv modular stuff,” Brooks recalls. “I realized through that process that I really missed writing more traditional songs.
The electronic elements that gild Art Moore are subtle, but add distinctive shading to each story. The strobing synth pulse that undergirds “A Different Life” shifts the weight of the song dramatically from a heartbroken lament to something that bristles with the endless possibility that comes part-and-parcel with a breakup. “Something Holy’s dubby drum machine beat places it in the realm of atmospheric ambient pop a la HTRK or Tropic of Cancer, while the rhythmic electronic spines of “Rewind” and “October” place Taylor’s inventive vocal phrasing in a milieu closer to R&B than indie rock.
“The way the chorus of ‘Sixish’ sounded to me at first listen was heart breaking, so I wanted to write lyrics to match that feeling,” Vick recalls. Art Moore finds her writing fiction in song for the first time — but the emotions at the core of these songs always ring profoundly true. .
We filmed an amazing, West Coast gothic music video with visionaries Rocco Rivetti and Gilles O’Kane
“A Different Life” by Art Moore from the self-titled album, available August 5th
Sun’s Signature, is the new project from former Cocteau Twins Elizabeth Fraser along with her partner DamonReece, their self-titled debut EP comes out this Saturday via Partisan Records. Elizabeth needs no introduction. The unforgettable voice of the Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil’s haunting, epic cover of “Song to the Siren,” she is internationally recognized for her vocal contributions to Massive Attack’s trail-blazing “Mezzanine” LP – most notably their biggest hit, “Teardrop”. She has revisited this material live, to devastating effect, on the recent Mezzanine XXI world tour.
This week they shared its third single, the seven-and-a-half-minute long “Apples.”
Previously they its shared its first single, “Golden Air,” which was also Fraser’s first original music in 13 years. Then they shared its second single, “Underwater,” via a lyric video. The song was originally released in 2000 as a limited-edition single.
The EP was unofficially announced in February and is due out on Record Store Day, with a digital release to follow sometime in July. The EP features Fraser’s 2000 limited-edition single “Underwater” as well as two songs that she performed at the 2012 Meltdown Festival, “Golden Air” and “Make Lovely the Day.”
Back in 2016, Fraser and Reece composed the score for the British TV series The Nightmare Worlds of H.G.Wells. Fraser’s most recent solo release was the 2009 single “Moses.” In 2020, she was featured on the Jónsi song “Cannibal”.
Reece has been the longtime drummer in Massive Attack, who Fraser has also collaborated with. He was previously a member of Spiritualized and Lupine Howl (an offshoot of Spiritualized), as well as Echo and the Bunnymen. He also recorded and performed with Baxter Dury, Goldfrapp, The Flies, Butch Vig’s 5 Billion in Diamond, and more.
The songs on Sun’s Signature have been in the works for over two decades, since the breakup of CocteauTwins in 1997.
Following on from their signing to Captured Tracks, Vermont’s newest group, Thus Love, share their debut single ‘Inamorato’. Utterly engrossing right from the slacker-ish get-go, Thus Love, with their pink hair, poetic nonchalance, and suburban sense of DIY, are the perfect band for a new-generation of articulately-nimble guitar-music.
Sprawling, hook-laden and pristinely drooled, ‘Inamorato’ gently seeps into every crevice it touches with effortless cool. Like city rain dripping down the up-turned collar of a leather jacket; all oversized comfort and adolescent identification, we should all know better by now than to brandish our delicate’s during an internal-hail-storm and yet, Thus Love turn naturally murky substance matter, into durable bright-ideas.
With notions of routinely-mesmerising-mundanity- Sunday morning’s turning into a mid-week-crisis all in the stroke of some obsessively peculiar-riffage, this is “alternative” at its most sophisticated. When apprehension in its eye, ‘Inamorato’ smartly charms with displayable-sincerity; texturally pliable in the same manner mohair demonstrates fuzzy resilience with stylish warmth and lustre.
Now that their windows of opportunity are flung wide-open, there’s no shadow of a doubt there’ll be plenty more of Thus Love nimbly-authentic outlook, in the not so distant future.
Long overdue and welcome re-issue of this 1992 debut album and shoegaze classic, Plus six additional bonus tracks chosen by the band including the limited edition 2,000-only pressing of the ‘30 Century Man’ EP, the non-album single ‘Balloon’ and live fan favourite ‘Intravenous’ which fans have been trying to get hold of for years.
Centred around re-recorded versions of four songs from the band’s two Wilde Club singles and the seven minute lovelorn “Black Metallic” – which was referred to as the “Like a Hurricane” of the ‘90s – the deeply rich “Ferment” firmly established Catherine Wheel amongst the shoegaze contingent of the early ‘90s. The band would proceed to denounce the shoegaze tag, but it was a fitting one, at least with everything they released prior to 1993’s harder edged “Chrome“.
Catherine Wheel buried their sing-along melodies in wafts of distortion and blurry production values. Rob Dickinson had yet to find comfort as a lead singer, so his somewhat fey and dazed emoting blended perfectly with Tim Friese-Greene’s comfy production. The employment of numerous guitar pedals didn’t serve as a smoke-and-mirrors ruse, and Friese-Greene knew enough to allow room for bassist Dave Hawes and drummer Neil Sims to flex their able muscles. Dickinson and lead guitarist Brian Futter were immensely skilled and complementary to each other from the band’s inception; certainly they were one of the most unrecognized guitar duos of their stylistic brethren.
Hailing from Great Yarmouth, Catherine Wheel were one of the original shoegaze bands of the early ’90s time along with Ride, Slowdive and Chapterhouse.
They had already released two independent single and recorded a Peel session before signing to the Phonogram Records imprint Fontana in 1991. Their epic debut single for Fontana, ‘Black Metallic’ brought them attention and praise from the press and fans, it also became their biggest hit in the States making the top ten in the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and is still name checked now as indie classic of the early ’90s.
The band followed this with two more singles, ‘Balloon’ and ‘I Want To Touch You’ before releasing their debut album ‘Ferment’ in mid-1992. The album was produced by Talk Talk’s Tim Friese-Greene.
Like all fine debuts, “Ferment” is varied emotionally, ranging from lust (“I Want to Touch You”) to bliss (“Shallow” and “Salt”). It’s a record that makes you want to crawl inside its sleeve and remain. It’s as welcoming as it is insular and sheltered.
On Record Store Day this year, The Who are releasing a special 40th Anniversary edition of their 1982 album “It’s Hard“. The 2-LP release includes a half speed master of the album along with rare and unreleased material, including the Roger Daltrey vocal version of ‘Eminence Front’. There’s no denying that “Eminence Front” boasts a gas pedal-mashing groove – but listen more closely: John Entwistle thunks his bass, but without the murderous intent we’ve come to expect. And that tense little keyboard figure can’t obscure the fact that Roger Daltrey is nowhere to be found. Instead of ending “It’s Hard” with a sense of newfound direction from the remaining three founding members, this sounded like what it was: The next Pete Townshend solo song as the Who went dark.
The Who’s album,“It’s Hard“, celebrates its 40th anniversary with an expanded 2 LP set. Disc One (Orange Vinyl) contains a half-speed remaster of the album, while Disc Two (Yellow Vinyl) continues the rest of the album with additional rare and unreleased material. This edition, with art by Richard Evans, also comes with a poster from the era.
“Athena” With its rumbling guitar opening, striking tempo changes, and the way Daltrey’s barking verses bleed into Townshend’s “she’s just a girl” Greek chorus, “Athena” seemed to point to a return to form for the Who on their second Keith Moon-less project. Kenney Jones, his oft-maligned replacement, even tosses in a few explosive drum rolls as a bright brass section weaves in and out. Unusual for ’80s-era Who, “Athena” was perfectly suited for Daltrey’s staccato rasp. Only now, this reliably cocksure street tough has become romantically confused. “Athena” ends with a thrilling flourish amid Daltrey’s desperate pleas.
“It’s Hard” an early version of this song, then titled “Popular,” was rejected during sessions for 1981’s “Face Dances” and reworked with a new chorus. The result is just one of the contemporary Pete Townshend tracks that doesn’t seem to have been written with Roger Daltrey’s cadence in mind, including the somehow even more wordy “Cry If You Want.” “It’s Hard” then failed to chart after the lead single “Athena” reached a high-water mark among the Top 40 in both America and the U.K. Still, a bouncy propulsion carries everything along.
“I’ve Known No War” isn’t exactly the most musical song on “It’s Hard”, but the bluntly honest “I’ve Known No War” may be the most important. Townshend thought so: “It’s possibly one of the best Who tracks we’ve ever done, I believe,” he later said. “It’s very archetypal, very ’60s issue, but it’s also bloody great.” Everything started with the very Cold War construct of a clock ticking. The underlying message – “basically we’re a bunch of spoilt brats,” Townshend admitted – would resonate for generations.
“It’s Hard“. Originally released on 4th September 1982, “It’s Hard” was the last studio album to include bass guitarist John Entwistle who sadly passed away in 2002. It was also the last studio album to feature drummer Kenney Jones. The album is spread over three sides of the 2-LP set. Side Four on the second LP includes four previously unreleased tracks including the much-anticipated version of ‘Eminence Front’ featuring a lead vocal by Roger Daltrey. The original album has been remastered by Jon Astley, cut at half speed by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios and pressed on orange and yellow vinyl.
Chicago duo Whitney are back with their third studio album of originals, “Spark”, which will be out September 16th via Secretly Canadian. While their soulful song writing style remains, this is a very different record than they’ve made before. After writing songs during pandemic lockdown — which they spent in Portland, OR — they teamed up with producers Brad Cook and John Congleton, who helped them incorporate synthesizers and sampled beats into their sound.
The buoyant drum loops, the effortless falsetto hooks, the coruscant keyboard lines. They suddenly sounded like a band reimagined, their once-ramshackle folk-pop now brimming with unprecedented gusto and sheen. So in the ad hoc studio the Chicago duo built in the living room of their rented Portland bungalow, a shared 2020 escape hatch amid breakups and lockdowns, Julien and Max decided to find out. somewhere between midnight and dawn every night, their brains refracted by the late hour and light psychedelics, they’d play their latest creations while a hardware store disco ball spun overhead and slowed-down music videos from megastars spooled silently on youtube. Did their own pop songs—so much more immediate and modern than their hazy origins—fit such big-budget reels? “We’d come to the conclusion we weren’t going to be filming super 8 videos to this stuff anymore,” Julien remembers with a grin. “how about something more hi-fi, cinematic?” when the footage and the tunes linked, Julien and Max knew they had done it, that they’d finally found Whitney’s sound.
“Spark” reintroduces Whitney as a contemporary syndicate of classic pop, its dozen imaginative and endearing tracks wrapping fetching melodies around paisley-print dilla beats and luxuriant electronics. what’s more, Whitney reduces three years of extreme emotional highs and lows into 38 brisk but deep minutes, each of these 12 tracks a sing-able lesson in what it is they (and, really, we. have all survived. the recalcitrant ennui of opener “Nothing Remains,” the devastating loss of “Terminal,” the sun-streaked renewal of “Real Love”: however surprising it may sound, spark is less a radical reinvention for Whitney than an honest accounting of how it feels when you move out of your past and into your present, when you take the next steps of your lives and careers at once and without apology. “Spark” maintains the warmth and ease of Whitney’s early work; these songs glow with the newness of now.
Listen closely, and you’ll notice frequent references to smoke and fire throughout “Spark”,
Itself a double entendre for inspiring something new or burning down the old. Max and Julien were indeed in Pportland for the fall of 2020, When smoke from nearby fires choked the city at record levels. it was terrifying and tragic, but they pressed on. “we found a way to live while the world was burning/real life was caving in,” Julien sings almost merrily during “back then,” an anthem for finding out what’s on the other side of hardship.
Whitney’s circumstances were so fraught on so many levels that they hung “the past…out to dry” and began again, finding a fresh version of themselves, their relationship, and their band after the blaze. Max and Julien are back in Chicago now, sharing a cozy walk up with a little studio, where they’re already building songs for the next Whitney album. they’re both in happy romances, too. now that they let the past burn, everything is new for Max and Julien. spark is not only Whitney’s best album; it is an inspiring testament to perseverance and renewal, to best friends trusting each another enough to carry one another to the other side of this season of woe.
