Katy J Pearson has shared a video for her new single, “Game of Cards.” It is the latest release from her forthcoming album, “Sound of the Morning”, which will be out on July 8th via Heavenly. View the Benjamin Spike Saunders-directed video below.
In a press release, Pearson states: “‘Game of Cards’ dates back two years ago, initially written with my friend Ben Hambro (who was the lead singer of Lazarus Kane). We hung out a lot together as I’d sing in his band, and he used to be part of the KJP ensemble. I forgot about the song for a while, then rediscovered it and sent to Heavenly who liked the chorus but the verse wasn’t quite working.
I wanted to give it a chance so took it with me to the Dan sessions where we assembled fresh verses—he really helped me work out where the song should go. ‘Game of Cards’ is about finding someone you click with on a romantic level and how it really is a game of cards in that you don’t know what hand you’ll be dealt. It’s about the vulnerability of a blossoming relationship and not knowing where it’s headed.”
“Game of Cards” is taken from the new album ‘Sound Of The Morning’, out 8th July 2022 via Heavenly Recordings.
Claud just finished a run of shows supporting Phoebe Bridgers, and they’ve now shared a new single, “GoHome!,” which they say is “about falling into that hole of feeling awkward and uncomfortable in your own skin that all you crave is going home and sliding into whatever is familiar.” Playing this song live the last couple months has given me such a great appreciation for it.
“Go Home!” by Claud, out now on Saddest Factory Records.
“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.
New York-via-Texas indie folk band Why Bonnie recently announced their debut album “90 In November” (due 8/19 via Keeled Scales), and now they’ve shared two more lovely songs from it.
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.
Lana Del Rey has shared her rendition of Father John Misty‘s ‘Buddy’s Rendezvous’
Lana Del Rey’s gorgeous cover of “Buddy’s Rendezvous“. Her interpretation of the song was previously only available as a 7” single included with the limited edition box set of Chloë and The Next 20th Century. In 2017, Tillman hailed Del Rey as a “genius” before covering her track ‘Ride’ the following year.
The ‘Blue Banisters’ singer-songwriter’s cover of Joshua Tillman’s ‘Chloë And The Next 20th Century’ track was first previewed back in January. It was later exclusively released on a seven-inch vinyl as part of a limited edition box set of the aforementioned record.
Featuring piano, strings and saxophone, the alternate version of ‘Buddy’s Rendezvous’ sees Del Rey and Tillman join forces towards the end. “Whatever happened to the girl I knew?/ In the wasteland, come up short and end up on the news/ Hey, hey, hey, hey/ Whatever happened to the girl I knew?” the pair sing together. This is not the first time Tillman and Del Rey have worked together – FJM appeared in her music video for ‘Freak’ in 2016.
“I’d do anything she told me to,” he explained, joking: “That’s what I enjoyed about the video, just being [Del Rey’s] puppet. I like being told what to do by a woman in that position.”
After “Beautiful Desolation” came out, I felt flat and lost a deeply rooted compulsion to create that I’d had as long as I can remember. For about a year, I barely touched an instrument, and didn’t write a thing. Then, in 2015, a song came out of nowhere.
“Heartlands“, was finished in a day, and I felt all the colour rushing back into a great void. It felt like the start of something new. The experience was like feeling a comforting hand on my shoulder from the oldest of friends – and that’s what I wanted the lyrics to represent. A gentle empathy – exploring your decisions and your dreams that made you who you are, inquisitive to how you got there.
The new Album ‘Figure in a Landscape’ will be released on September 30th on 7476.
Along with sharing my new single ‘Heartlands’ which is available now, from today you can also pre-order a limited gatefold vinyl of my new LP, featuring the beautiful expressionist artwork of Adfail (Jacob Chandler) 7 years later, it’s the wildest, and most satisfying feeling to be able to share “Heartlands” with you, my next single. This song was the start of a long journey that’s lead me here, able to announce, that my new album ‘Figure in a Landscape’ will be released on 7476 on September 30th.
It’s a collection of songs that I feel know me better than, at times, I have known myself. Produced by me, at home – in partnership with my two long-time creative muses Ali Thynne and Max Prior. It features collaborations with some wonderful artists; Ajimal, Hilang Child & SIVU, along with friends who play music simply for the joy of it.
It’s terrifying, and thrilling – to share these innermost vulnerabilities with you.
Hatchie, the dream pop project of Australian musician Harriette Pilbeam, released a new album, “Giving the World Away”, on April 22nd via Secretly Canadian. She shared its fourth single, album opener track “Lights On,” via a video for it. Long-time Hatchie collaborator and guitarist Joe Agius (who also releases music as RINSE) directed the video.
Pilbeam had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Lights On’ was one of the first songs written for this album and set me on a path of writing more honestly and personally than previously. I don’t often write about physical attraction, but wanted to peel back the layers of a certain type of relationship. The video was conceptualized around a blend of our favourite sci-fi influences from the last 30 years relating to the title of the song.”
“Giving the World Away” includes “This Enchanted,” a new song Hatchie shared in September via a video for it. “Giving the World Away”was announced Hatchie shared a new song from it, “Quicksand,” Then Hatchie shared its third single, title track “Giving the World Away,” via a lyric video for it.
“Giving the World Away” is Hatchie’s second full-length album, the follow-up to her acclaimed debut album, “Keepsake“, which came out via Double Double Whammy.
Jorge Elbrecht (Sky Ferreira, Japanese Breakfast, Wild Nothing) produced the album, which also features Agius and Beach House drummer James Barone.
Hatchie is featured on Under the Radar’s 20th anniversary compilation album, “Covers of Covers”, where she covers HAIM’s “FUBT.”
“Lights On” by Hatchie from the forthcoming album ‘Giving The World Away’, out April 22nd on Secretly Canadian & Ivy League Records (for AU & NZ).
Few bands make it to album number seven with the same energy or passion they had in “the good ol’ days”, but sporting their stickiest hooks, tightest playing and sharpest song writing, ‘Weirder & Weirder’ is Ball Park Music’s best record yet. The band wrote it at their lowest point, yet it’s inescapably upbeat, and although it landed at the start of a brutal winter, it feels tailor-made for summer festivals, road trips and beaches. Even its subtlest flourishes – like the grit spiking the otherwise beautiful pop melodies, or the twinkly atmospherics that add an extra dash of magic to the soundscape – make ‘Weirder & Weirder’ a home run for Ball Park Music.
“Stars In My Eyes” by Ball Park Music is out now via Prawn Records.
First time on vinyl. Originally released as a CD only album on Riot Season back in 2008 and out of print ever since. Fourteen years later it’s finally getting the double vinyl release it fully deserves. It’s a pretty big gamble doing gatefold double vinyl releases these days, as the manufacturing costs have gone through the roof in some instances. But you’ve got to follow your gut instincts and get it done
Now expanded, and with new artwork ‘Pink Lady Lemonade – You’re From Outer Space’ really could be Acid Mothers Temple’s first ‘summer album’. Here, Acid Mothers Temple’s most representative song ‘Pink Lady Lemonade’ is dismantled and reconstructed as a blissful ecstatic psychedelic trip where chaos and silence intersect.
These were the first AMT&TCI studio recordings since the addition of Pikachu, drummer and vocalist with Osaka grenade-girl duo Afrirampo. The popularAcid Mothers Temple’s standard “Pink Lady Lemonade” showcases a 21st century acid rock update on the 60s San Francisco psychedelic sound.
This one doesn’t reach in the red status often – it’s a more out-there trippy ride. But when it does finally soar, Kawabata’s guitar has never sounded more alive.
“Pink Lady Lemonade, You’re from space, You’re soooooooooo sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!”
Preoccupations have announced a new album, “Arrangements“, and shared its first single, “Ricochet.” The band has also announced some fall tour dates.”Arrangements“is due out September 9th. In Canada Flemish Eye will be putting “Arrangements” out and the band will self-release it in America and the rest of the world.
“The lyrics are pretty conspicuous and self explanatory on this one, but it’s basically about the world blowing up and no one giving a shit,” says vocalist/songwriter Matthew Flegal in a press release, in regards to “Ricochet.”
“Arrangements“is the band’s fourth album (and their third under the name Preoccupations). It follows 2018’s amusingly titled “New Material”. Flegal, guitarist Danny Christiansen, and guitarist/keyboardist Scott Munro convened in 2019 at Munro’s Studio St. Zo in Montreal to start work on the album. Then drummer Mike Wallace joined in. COVID-19 derailed continued in-person work on the album, so the band finished the album remotely, with Munro recording at a makeshift studio he set up at his parents’ house. Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck) mixed “Arrangements“, and Mikey Young (Total Control) mastered it.
After completing a UK headline tour which included a triumphant four-night run at London’s Olympia in front of a combined audience of 40,000 people, Foals are set to take the sun-kissed sounds of their ‘Life Is Yours’ album to an array of major festivals this summer. As the June 17th release of ‘Life Is Yours’ approaches, Foals unveil their new single ‘2001’ elevates the disco and funk influences that permeate Foals’ recent tracks ‘Wake Me Up’, ‘2am’ and ‘Looking High’. Yannis Philippakis’s falsetto soars as high as the sky he references in the song’s opening lyrics, accompanied by a riff that bounces with groove and precision, and a popping P-funk bassline. While ‘2001’ finds Foals stepping boldly into the most electrifying example of their new sound, lyrically it’s pure reflection.
Yannis says, “‘2001’ feels like a postcard from the past. We moved to Brighton around that time, we were a young band, and there was the feeling of the first taste of independence. The moment you get those freedoms, you’re surrounded by temptation. The references to beachside candy and Brighton rock are symbols for drugs and hedonism. This was written in the depths of the pandemic winter, and there’s an escapist desire to break out from the feeling of being cooped up, both in terms of the pandemic and adolescence.”
The ‘2001’ video transports those themes to Costa Brava, Spain to place the song’s nostalgic ambience firmly in the here-and-now. Two young men lug their sofa from their apartment to soak up some rays on the beach. Other vignettes of coming-of-age experiences follow their every move, from the effortlessly cool group of young women who observe their struggle with nonchalant indifference to a couple kissing. When one of the men chews a sweet that everyone seems to be consumed by, his summer day takes on a new hallucinogenic edge.
The video’s modernist nostalgia is heightened by its aesthetic – a washed out palette and Polaroid-style framing. It was directed by ESTEBAN (Arca, Peggy Gou) for the creative production company CANADA.
‘2001’ was written by Foals – Yannis, Jack Bevan and Jimmy Smith. The track’s production is one of a number of songs on ‘Life Is Yours’ that benefit from an experimental approaching of mixing up different configurations of creative voices. On ‘2001’, production was led by A.K. Paul (co-founder of the Paul Institute with his brother Jai Paul) and John Hill (Cage The Elephant, Florence + The Machine), with co-production from Miles James. It was then mixed by the ten-time Grammy Award winner Manny Marroquin (Post Malone, Kanye West, Rihanna).
A portion of “Crest of the Wave” existed in 2011, and we had demoed it in Australia and just left it for years. But it was one of those songs which had always been at the back of our minds, like there was some unfinished business there. As we were playing around with it with some of the themes on this record, we cracked it open and really revelled in adding lots of layers to it in the studio. It’s another transportive song. It’s set in St. Lucia, which has always struck me as being very powerful visually, with the mountain plummeting into the sea.
‘Life Is Yours’ is available to pre-order HERE and is already in phenomenal demand – its beautifully realised zoetrope format sold-out its entire 5000 copy pressing in a matter of days. Another essential release for vinyl connoisseurs and Foals collectors comes with the long-awaited vinyl repress of their debut album ‘Antidotes’, which will be manufactured using recycled vinyl records – a process that ensures that each individual record is unique. Both ‘Life Is Yours’ and ‘Antidotes’ are also available as specially priced bundles.
Foals performed on ‘Later… with Jools Holland’ on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer on Saturday, June 11th. They will also play an array of key UK festival dates including headline sets at Latitude and Sounds of the City, plus Radio 1’s Big Weekend, Glastonbury and TRNSMT.
