Los Angeles-based project Drugdealer shares the new single “Madison,” their first musical offering since their 2019 album “Raw Honey“. Led by frontman and primary songwriter Michael Collins, Drugdealer expands on their 1960s and 70s-inspired sonics with the new song, which features a newly discovered vocal range from Collins and pays homage to musicians like Van Morrison and Nick Lowe. The visuals paired with the track see Collins and friends riding around in their cream vintage Mercedes. “Madison” is the first taste of new music to come from Drugdealer in 2022.
Speaking about the new song, Collins says “Madison was the first song I wrote in the period after “Raw Honey“. I hadn’t been feeling very confident about my voice for a while, when a chance encounter with an older artist, Annette Peacock, happened. She helped change my perspective, and style. She told me I wasn’t singing in my correct range, to modulate it up. She was right and it shifted my perspective on singing.
“Madison” is the first time I felt like I was hearing what I really sounded like, after years of defaulting more towards numerous collaborators who I knew had their voices. It was pretty surreal and I’m really thankful for her advice.”
A throwback, Van Morrison-style anthem from LA-based band Drugdealer. “Madison” instantly feels like it could’ve been on the Anchorman soundtrack with its warm retro keys and harmonies. If you dig it, the band’s 2019 album “Raw Honey” is full of similar tunes.
“Madison” follows Drugdealer’s latest full-length album, Raw Honey, which Pitchfork described as “a pristine portrait of early-’70s AM radio” and includes the tracks “Honey,” featuring Weyes Blood and “Fools,” along with their 2016 debut album, “The End of Comedy“, which houses their hit track “Suddenly,” featuring Weyes Blood.
Check out “Madison” above and stay tuned for more from Drugdealer coming soon.
Brooklyn 5-piece Been Stellar cement their status as one of the best new bands around, with their new track ‘My Honesty’. A song about the search for authenticity in oneself, ‘My Honesty’ is the sound of a band seizing their own future and cutting through the tension.
With Steve Lamacq’s endorsement already under their belt (he made them one of his spotlight artists), Been Stellar embark on a UK and European tour this September.
Formed somewhere in the last five years, Been Stellar (Sam Slocum on vocals, Skyler St. Marx on guitar, Nando Dale on guitar, Nico Brunstein on bass, and Laila Wayans on drums) is our favourite new addition to the enticing coven of NYC post-punk bands interested in creating music that has the melody, vigour and rawness of the city. BeenStellar play stylish, confrontaonal indie rock. Coming together from around the globe to reside in Brooklyn, the 5 piece share their honest account of a city hyper-saturated with commercialism, consumerism, and aging cultural touchstones.
Indie folk/dream pop band The Deer have announced a new album, “The Beautiful Undead”, due September 9th via Keeled scales. Lead single “I Wouldn’t Recognize Me” is fuelled by a guitar melody that borrows more than a little from Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My,” and it’s a gorgeous, airy song that frontwoman Grace Rowland calls a letter to her younger self.
New single out now from The Deer’s new album “The Beautiful Undead” – out 9/9 on Keeled Scales!
Horsegirl are best friends. You don’t have to talk to the trio for more than five minutes to feel the warmth and strength of their bond, which crackles through every second of their debut full-length, “Versions of Modern Performance”. Penelope Lowenstein (guitar, vocals), Nora Cheng (guitar, vocals), and Gigi Reece (drums) do everything collectively, from song writing to trading vocal duties and swapping instruments to sound and visual art design. “We made [this album] knowing so fully what we were trying to do,” the band says. “We would never pursue something if one person wasn’t feeling good about it. But also, if someone thought something was good, chances are we all thought it was good.
”Versions of Modern Performance” was recorded with John Agnello (Kurt Vile, The Breeders, Dinosaur Jr.) at Electrical Audio. “It’s our debut bare-bones album in a Chicago institution with a producer who we feel like really respected what we were trying to do,” the band says.
Horsegirl expertly play with texture, shape, and shade across the record, showcasing their fondness for improvisation and experimentation. Opener “Anti-glory” is elastic and bright post-punk, while the guitars in instrumental interlude “Bog Bog 1” smear across the song’s canvas like watercolours. “Dirtbag Transformation (Still Dirty)” and “World of Pots and Pans” have rough, blown-out pop charm. “The Fall of Horsegirl” is all sharp edges and dark corners.
“The Gold Experience” was the first full-length Prince album to be credited to his unpronounceable symbol, (SYMBOL ICON), and was released at the most public, heated stage of his battle with the major label industrial complex. With the word “SLAVE” written on one cheek, Prince shined on the opulent ballads “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” and “Gold” and the defiant single “Eye Hate U,” and the album earned widespread critical acclaim. The Record Store Day re-release of “The Gold Experience” is an homage to the rare US-only promo version of the album that was released in 1995. The two-LP set is pressed onto translucent gold vinyl with a bonus suite of “Eye Hate U” remixes on Side D.
The Kinks – Waterloo Sunset
All tracks mono and remastered. This 55th anniversary release of the classic Kinks single features 6 tracks with artwork from the original French 1967 release.
The Who – Its Hard
It’s hard celebrates its 40th anniversary with a 2-LP expanded vinyl version, disc one a ½ speed master contains a re-mastered version of the album while disc two continues the rest of the album but also has a disc of rare and unreleased material.
Pearl Jam – Live on Two Legs
Originally released in 1998, Live On Two Legs documents that year’s US summer tour in support of the Yield album. Sixteen tracks on crystal clear vinyl, in double LP gatefold packaging.
Sandie Shaw – Hand In Glove
Originally released in 1984 and unavailable for almost 40 years, this was a collaboration between one of the most successful (UK) female stars of the ‘60s and indie darlings the Smiths, who were big fans.
It features three Morrissey/Marr originals on which Sandie is backed by Messrs Marr, Rourke and Joyce.
Peter Gabriel – Live In Blood
Recorded at the Hammersmith Apollo, London, 23rd & 24th March 2011 and originally released the following year, Live Blood is exactly what its name suggests – the live incarnation of Peter Gabriel’s New Blood project where he reworked a chunk of his back catalogue for a 46-piece orchestra. The album has been Half-Speed Remastered and cut to lacquers at 33RPM, across 3x heavyweight LPs, pressed on blood red vinyl.
The Heartbreakers – The LAMF Demo Sessions
The Heartbreakers (Johnny Thunders, Walter Lure, Billy Rath and Jerry Nolan) with four studio demo sessions from 1976 and 1977, compiled onto one album for the first time. Two sessions were recorded in 1976 in New York, including four tracks in their early incarnation with Richard Hell and later six tracks after Billy Rath had joined on bass. In London in 1977, they recorded one session just prior to signing with Track Records, and another after L.A.M.F. had been released, with The Clash’s Terry Chimes on drums replacing the newly departed Jerry Nolan.
Pressed on transparent magenta vinyl, it comes with a 12” poster of the Roberta Bayley cover photo, an outtake from the L.A.M.F. cover session, and an inner bag with Walter Lure interviewed by Johnny Thunders’ biographer Nina Antonia in 2005.
The album shows the development of the band building towards their classic 1977 ‘L.A.M.F.’ album (recently reissued with a newly found original master), and further points to the direction they would have gone had they not split up.
The Lightning Seeds return with a new studio album called “See You In The Stars” dur for release in October.
The 10-song collection features the first single, ‘Sunshine’, which you can preview below and also boasts a collaboration with Terry Hall who co-writes Emily Smiles (Hall co-penned, Jollification‘s ‘Lucky You’, you might recall). Two songs on the album – ‘Great To Be Alive’ and ‘Live To Love You’ – also saw Ian Broudie co-write with the Coral’s James Skelly.
The new album will be the first Seeds long-player since 2009’s Four Winds. Why’s it taken so long? Here’s what IanBroudie has to say: “I always think music’s like attack and defence in football –or like politics – or like life. It’s about balance, and achieving that is the challenge for me.”
“See You In The Stars” will be released on 14 October via BMG.
Jack White’s label Third Man Records has already put the final album by the White Stripes back in circulation through their subscription-only Vault Series, packaging the 2007 release with a double-LP set of demos and tracks from the same sessions. This new edition is just the original LP, as it was originally released on vinyl, right down to the sticker placed in such a spot that it needs to be cut through to access the actual records. It’s a cute little trick but will surely leave collectors drooling over whether they can safely peel it off without it tearing or whether cutting into the album’s resale value will be worth it. Whatever your feelings on the matter are, it’s great to have the ultimate statement by Jack and Meg White brought back to the format that serves their high-wattage garage blues antics best.
The White Stripes seemed to have wandered far afield of the nervy electric blues of their breakthrough album “Elephant” with 2005’s gloomy “Get Behind Me Satan“. Then came “Icky Thump”, their last blast of garage-band glory.
This return-to-form LP arrived on June 15th, 2007, It couldn’t have had less in common with “Get Behind Me Satan”, which sold about half as much as 2003’s “Elephant” – a platinum smash that featured “Seven Nation Army.” The experience seemed to have stung singer/guitarist Jack White, who developed a newfound appreciation for remaining true to one’s roots.
“I told someone that one of these new songs could be an old 45 of ours,” White admitted in a 2007 talk with the New York Times. “And they said, would you want the Beatles to have ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ on the White Album? And I said, yeah, I would love that — what would be wrong with that?”
With “Icky Thump”, White’s stinging guitar moved forward where pianos and light orchestral arrangements once were. Tough, blues-inflected songs replaced the quiet balladry that dominated Get Behind Me Satan.
Credit must also go to a year spent on the road with White’s other band, the Raconteurs. The time away seemed to have sharpened his riffs to a razor’s edge – even as it loosened him up. “Rag and Bone,” a talking-blues in the style of John Lee Hooker, boldly recalled the White Stripes‘ fizzy initial successes, while “Little Cream Soda” grew out of an on-stage improvisation.
“You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You’re Told)” howled with an open-hearted, country-soul rawness, while two tracks (“Prickly Thorn, but Sweetly Worn” and “St. Andrew”) featured a bagpipe. The White Stripes converted a video treatment by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry into a finished song (“I’m Slowly Turning Into You”), and even included a mariachi-driven cover of Patti Page’s “Conquest.”
“When it comes to the songs themselves, the songs are in charge – not me,” White told Reuters in 2007. “Take a song like ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told).’ That was pretty much a country song in my mind. If I really was in control I could have just said, ‘Hey, how dare you allow electric guitar and heavy organ on there,’ but I don’t do that. I let the song tell me what it wants.”
Recorded over three weeks with drummer Meg White in Nashville, “Icky Thump” also arrived as they made a seemingly uncomfortable shift to a major label. Hints came in the selection of “Conquest,” but also the subtext of this album’s gnarled title track – their first-ever Top 40 single. Both seemed to point to lingering trust issues for the White Stripes, those heroes of garage-rock outsider-dom. “Icky Thump” is “about people using other people,” White said in 2007. “The theme is ‘Who’s using who?'”
As with many bands who came before them, it seemed the White Stripes‘ long-awaited success simply created more pressure. “Icky Thump” scored a career-best but, like “Get Behind Me Satan“, that didn’t match the million-LP sales of “Elephant” or 2001’s “White Blood Cells“. An accompanying tour was cut short, with White citing Meg’s growing anxiety about performing, and the White Stripes went into an extended hiatus.
Critically acclaimed, award winning icon for her generation, beabadoobee returns with her second studio album ‘Beatopia’ (pronounced Bay-A-Toe-Pee-Uh). ‘Beatopia’ is a fantastical yet deeply personal world that was formed in the imagination of a 7 year old beabadoobee and has been carried with her ever since. Housing Bea’s most impressive work to date, ‘Beatopia’ marks a huge progression, in 14 songs she traverses fuzzy rock, classic singer-songwriter, psychedelia, midwest emo and outright pop whilst remaining undeniably herself throughout.
‘fake it flowers’ landed as a fully formed, rounded beast – fans of everyone from the pixies to japanese breakfast to american football were picking up on different notes and claiming beabadoobee’s sound for their own.
The Filipino-born, London-raised singer/songwriter/guitarist beabadoobee announced her new album, and shared its first single, “Talk,” via a video for it. “Beatopia” is due out July 15 via Dirty Hit Records. Alexandra Leese and Luke Casey directed the video.
Beabadoobee’s real name is Beatrice Laus (and she is also known as Bea Kristi). “Beatopia” is her sophomore album, the follow-up to her debut album, “Fake It Flowers”, and 2021’s “Our Extended Play EP”, which was co-written with and produced by Matty Healy and George Daniel of label-mates The 1975.
Beabadoobee had this to say about the new single in a press release: “I wrote ‘Talk’ just after my first album. I was obsessed with Tuesday because I thought it was the best night to go out, not too much chaos but just enough to have a good time. Generally, it’s about doing things that aren’t necessarily healthy or great for you, but you can’t help indulging. It’s like that unavoidable feeling that you get. You can’t get rid of it, and you know it’s bad, but you love it really, and it’s whatever, so you do it anyways.
but the truth is, for all of it’s obvious touchstones, ‘fake it flowers’ doesn’t sound wholly like anything else. there’s a niche, hidden in what we thought was a well trodden path, that she managed to carve out and present in a way we’d not heard before.
we’ve been desperate for more of that magic ever since. and now she’s delivered. ‘beatopia’ promises to be her “most impressive work to date”, 14 songs that traverse “fuzzy rock, classic singer-songwriter, psychedelia, midwest emo and outright pop whilst remaining undeniably herself throughout.” we cannot wait to dig in.
If you’ve read any 2019 album-of-the-year lists, then you’re familiar with Black Midi—the young SouthLondon band whose music exploded the minds of music critics and nerds alike. They possess unbelievable technical skills, but they also have a strange allure that helps bring their dramatic vision to life. Their debut album, “Schlagenheim”, is one of the most inventive guitar records in recent memory, and their improvisational live shows have to be seen to be believed.
If someone asked me for a quick introduction to what makes black midi special, I’d recommend their three-song EP Cavalcovers. The band’s curious spirit is perfectly represented in their covers of King Crimson (“21st Century Schizoid Man,”) Taylor Swift (“Love Song,”) and Captain Beefheart (“Moonlight on Vermont”) even if the steel wire-tense experimental post-punk they’re known for is loosened up slightly to showcase the strength of the original compositions. It’s also what makes their albums “Schlagenheim” and “Cavalcade” as good as they are, this sense of self-control over the riots they unleash that’s almost surprising as the chaos itself.
“Eat Men Eat,” the second single from black midi’s third album Hellfire, is another unexpected transmission from the band and a pitch-perfect channelling of their signature restless energy. Flamenco guitar spurs the song forward as Geordie Greep, singing ambitious and literary-minded lyrics from bassist Cameron Picton, describes an anti-corporate fantasy thriller that would make Ted Chiang smile. The atmosphere is pure black midi, but the planet they’ve landed on is somewhere thrillingly new, even for this perpetually forward-pushing band. Hear it in the music video below, directed by Maxim Kelly.
The post-punk band’s third album “Hellfire” is out July 15th.
