The Fat Angel Sings

Angel Olsen has announced her new album “Big Time“. It’s out June 3rdx via Jagjaguwar and features the new single “All the Good Times.” Watch the video for the album’s opening song below.

According to the album’s announcement, “Big Time” was written during a period of time when Olsen was coming out . “Some experiences just make you feel as though you’re 5 years old, no matter how wise or adult you think you are,” Olsen said in a statement about coming out to her parents around that time. “Finally, at the ripe age of 34, I was free to be me.” Both of her parents died just before she began recording the album.

Kimberly Stuckwisch directed the new “All the Good Times” music video, which stars Olsen and her partner. “Angel’s story is a gift,” Stuckwisch said in a statement. “It allowed me to visually explore the universal themes of love, loss, and most importantly what holds us back from realizing our true selves.”

“Big Time” was recorded and mixed with co-producer Jonathan Wilson. It also features pianist and organist Drew Erickson and bassist Emily Elhaj. The new album is the follow-up to Olsen’s 2021 covers EP “Aisles” and the 2020 album “Whole New Mess“—a counterpart to 2019’s “All Mirrors“. She’ll soon tour with Sharon Van Etten and Julien Baker. 

On “Big Time“, the grand, burgeoning, symphonic gestures of Angel Olsen’s last three studio LPs are gone, substituted with “Phases”-era, minimalistic, pedal steel-tinged sobcore and dreamy twang. It’s a one-woman show, a prize fight where the challenger no-showed. “Big Time” isn’t a bummer opera; it’s a last-call, honky-tonk bar encore—and it rules. On opener “All The Good Times,” Olsen surrenders the album’s thesis, declaring that she’s done making excuses for everyone else. “I can’t say that I’m sorry when I don’t feel so wrong anymore,” she sings. The horn arrangements here are subtle, and Drew Erickson’s organ trembles slightly beneath Olsen’s vocals. It’s an announcement, a warning, that this is a new era of her songwriting.

“All The Good Times” by Angel Olsen from the forthcoming album ‘Big Time’, out June 3rd on Jagjaguwar.

The Chameleons are an English post-punk band formed in Middleton, Greater Manchester in 1981. The band consisted of singer and bassist Mark Burgess, guitarists Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding, and drummer John Lever. Their debut single “In Shreds” released in March 1982, was produced by Steve Lillywhite. The single’s cover – a harrowing painting by Smithies, who created the artwork for all of their releases – mirrored the band’s tense, atmospheric sound. During this time, the Chameleons’ independent style clashed with their label’s visions for the band. The Chameleons were protective of their image and consequently were dropped by the label soon after the release of “In Shreds”.

The band released their debut album, “Script of the Bridge“, in 1983. They followed it with “What Does Anything Mean? Basically” and “Strange Times” in 1985 and 1986, respectively, before abruptly disbanding in 1987 due to the sudden death of the band’s manager. After the split, Burgess and Lever formed The Sun And The Moon, while Fielding and Smithies formed the Reegs. Burgess also had a short solo career with backing band the Sons of God. The band were then inspired by U2’s early recordings : “U2’s first record was a big album for us. Edge’s guitar opened it up in terms of how you could build an ambient atmosphere”

Known for their atmospheric, guitar-based sound, the Chameleons are regarded as one of the most underrated Manchester bands of the 1980s. They did not attain the commercial success of other groups from the Manchester scene but developed a cult following.

Marking their tenth anniversary, Carpark Records bundles up the first two self-released EPs from Speedy Ortiz, dating from a time when it was still Sadie Dupuis’s solo vehicle rather than a full-time band. Both originally released in 2011, ‘Cop Kicker’ and ‘The Death Of Speedy Ortiz’ laid the groundwork for one of 2010s American indie’s most compelling artists.

Speedy Ortiz haven’t released an album since 2018’s lively “Twerp Verse“, an unabashedly pop-leaning turn from a band that established itself at the beginning of that decade with a considerably less polished grunge sound providing a solid foundation for the project. Instead, the group’s mastermind Sadie Dupuis has set out on a solo venture as Sad13 to explore various facets of this pop-star persona hinted at on “Twerp“, fully chasing the experimental highs achieved on the synth-infused choruses of “Lean in When I Suffer” and “Lucky 88.”

Yet this technically isn’t Dupuis’ debut as a solo artist—the earliest Speedy recordings were captured before the band expanded into a four piece, with the EP “Cop Kicker“ and LP “The Death of Speedy Ortiz” celebrating 10 years of life in 2021, as commemorated by the package-deal compilation “The Death of Speedy Ortiz & Cop Kicker .​.​.​Forever”, a fused-together collection of tidied up versions of those projects released digitally back in November. In place of the band’s familiar deadpan wisecracks and bulky riffs was the lone Dupuis kicking out demo-quality noise-rock jams documenting a period of extreme uncertainty in the song writer’s life, documenting everything from heartbreak, to more impactful personal tragedies, to an obsession with late-’00s feminist horror.

1. “Hexxy Sadie”

I wrote this on my 23rd birthday, about being a “twinless twin” and the random luck of being alive. Sometimes fighting to stay alive makes you do gross, weird, ruthless things. I was really into horror manga then (and now), and imagined myself as a bug, eating all the other hatching insects around me, final-girl-style. I was really into early Rob Crow bands—my then-bandmate Chuck was constantly singing the Thingy song “Rope Swing” that summer—and I can hear those bands’ influence in some of the arpeggios. 

2. “Cutco”

The most passive-aggressive way of letting your friends know you’re pissed is through an elaborate cannibalism metaphor. The real Cutco is an O.G. MLM scheme, and an ex-boyfriend had worked for them right out of high school and lost money. A losing effort of putting on a brave face for diminishing returns—that’s how it feels trying to be honest about your hurt feelings against defensiveness. There’s a very specific kind of half-step-up, universe-shifting Deerhoof does in its chord changes, and this bridge is the first time I can remember trying to incorporate that move into my own writing. 

3. “Phish Phood”

A scary story about breaking and entering laid over pitched-down audio of me reading a long confessional letter from the serial killer Albert Fish—but make it cute by giving it an ice cream name? I loved the Earl Sweatshirt mixtape and basically all horrorcore; I tried to make this creepy with swelling dark tones on the guitars. The serial killer stuff scared me so much to listen to in mixing I had to reverse most of the speech vocals, one of the only substantial edits I made in 2021. Timpani booms for extra fright factor! I kinda called myself out for over-milking the slasher tropes with a line that still has my number: “You’re no ghost / You’re just some kid / So why are all your songs so mean?”

4. “Kinda Blew”

Chris Lord-Alge, am I the only person to sing your full name in a song? A reference that cracks me up—I definitely used some of his plugins on this. This is about a specific brand of late-’00s/early-’10s feminist horror protagonist—I was obsessed with Jennifer’s Body and Scream 4 around this time, and still. I wanted some of that debauchery-adjacent, whip-smart nihilism for myself. Lots of late night lake swims and putting out matches in my mouth that summer. This is skinny-dipping and fire-swallowing but translated into a whole lot of guitars. I really loved Telephono by Spoon, and slid a little reference to “Don’t Buy the Realistic” in.

5. “Ken-Ohki”

Ken-Ohki is the half-cat, half-rabbit from the anime Tenchi Muyo, who transforms into a spaceship for the bounty hunter Nagi. Now that you’re caught up on my super-cool reference…the character singing this song is some kind of ruthless bandit, acting shitty, but half-apologetic, and at least they didn’t traffic organs? The aforementioned Cutco boyfriend really had gone on a drunk rampage after scratching his truck, and then became a Marine; I brought that in as a contrast to the coldness I saw in myself while moving on from my life in New York and the friends I’d left behind (both in moving and in living past them). It’s a bitter rubberneck away from grief, perfect for several layers of banjo—all of which I recorded from my tiny single bed, feeling like a townie. The Chipmunk-y, pitch-shifted backing vocals felt like an alien and left-field texture to me at the time; now it’s Bandcamp de rigueur! 

6. “Speedy Ortiz”

The cutest part of this song is how I can hear Ellen Kempner singing and laughing and trying to get me to laugh in the back of the drum tracks. This song is super literally about the character Speedy Ortiz from Love & Rockets, and pulls plotlines from a few different issues surrounding that character’s death. Jaime Hernandez’s stories were lifesaving escapism for me, even when they dealt with issues that closely resembled my own. Despite the dark subject matter, this song sounds palpably joyful because it’s a tribute to comics I love so much. Thanks, Jaime! 

On a musical level, this is one of the simpler songs I’ve written, and acted as sort of a mission statement for what I wanted my new project Speedy Ortiz to sound like. My old band Quilty had veered toward proggy and space-rock-y, with a big pedalboard and weird open tunings. I initially called this new solo project my “no pedals, standard tuning band,” a chance to get a literally clean break with a diminished arsenal of effects. So “Speedy Ortiz” is a simple punk song, not too many sections, and the only real treatments are distortion times twenty.

7. “Hurricane Speedy”

All of these songs came out of songwriting prompts from the kids I taught (or my co-teachers), and this one was ”Spirited Away.” The lyric “I know there’s a No-Face waiting for me” sounds so menacing, removed from the Miyazaki context! I can’t remember this song’s original title, but when I was finishing mixing these to first release on Bandcamp, it was the middle of a pretty intense hurricane season. The structure of the song—a quiet, acoustic intro building to a psychedelic clash of sliding guitar riffs and pummelling drum layers—echoed the ominousness of an impending storm. And maybe there was a parallel to the inner turmoil of uprooting myself to a new state—the hurricane is coming from inside the house. I think I was trying to sound like Trail of Dead, but one of the riffs is a pretty direct homage to The Craters, whose frontperson Wes Kaplan is the brother of Speedy bassist Darl Ferm’s high school bandmate Cas Kaplan—six degrees of Massachusetts, etc., etc., etc.

8. “Thank You”

“Keep It Like a Secret” is the single biggest influence on my guitar playing, so here’s my big blatant Built to Spill moment! I remembered this one as harsh, but when I went back to re-mix it, I wound up pretty impressed…maddened by the 40,000 guitar tones and three layers of drums competing with the vocals, but still, impressed. I think I made most of these parts up on the spot, something I don’t do much anymore. Lyrically, just a classic kiss-off to somebody who wasn’t good for shit! Thanks for nothing, jerk!

9. “Frankenweenie”

This song still fucks me up. It’s about putting down my childhood dog, but I used that as a metaphor for my first big breakup—euthanizing your first love after five years of codependency. Yeesh! I’m a sucker for slow-build, mid-tempo ballads with pianos and twisting guitars, a formula Elliott Smith pretty well perfected and I keep trying to inhabit, never more directly than here. The snare sound is one of my favourite things on this record—I tracked it in a tent with the laptop mic right on the drum as a way to dampen it. It sounds like the wildest re-amped sample ever, but it’s all natural clipping, baby.

10. “Blondie”

Written a few weeks after the rest, my song writing friend group remotely worked on the prompt “blown away”—during one of those aforementioned late-summer hurricanes. During re-mixing, Justin Pizzoferrato and I both had a head-scratching session trying to figure out how my guitar and vocal doubles were so close to the original, and how to make them more distinct from each other. Then we realized some of the dripping faucet and tapping sounds are only in the “original”—I guess I tracked guitar and vocals separately, then played them both back through a speaker in the bathroom, which (we guess) I recorded to create an echo chamber effect, with some weird auto-gating kicking in, too. Sneaky move, past me!.

11. “Ka-Prow!”

My covers band Babement has been written about way more times than we actually practiced or gigged—two whole shows. But I made this song shortly after those, and I actually hear the Pavement influence, especially in whatever Malkmus-patented tuning I used. The prompt for this song was “explosions”; Porches, my friend from another band’s brand new solo project, had just put out a song “Tan Lines,” and I think my “tans” here are a reference to that. I loved including easter eggs to my friends’ bands’ songs back then, since that was basically the entire demographic of folks who’d hear mine. This was one of the first songs I tracked for this project, and it had a lot less layers of guitars than the ones that came later. So I dove really deep into automating delays and tremolos to make the one lead line as colorful and dynamic as possible. It was first called “Ka-Pow!,” like the comic book onomatopoeia, then a friend misread it as “Ka-Prow,” an Austin strip mall restaurant where I’d once tried to get a dishwashing job, and then that was its name. 

12. “Necronomicon”

The original mixes of these songs had a lot of ambient sounds in them—other people whispering or shouting in adjacent rooms, laptop spacebar clicks, some intentional noises, some not. I had a good time shaping the rustles into new textures, especially in this intro and outro. “Necronomicon” vaguely touches on the plot of Evil Dead, duh, and there were some definitively evil sounds I did battle with in trying to re-mix. Bringing out the piano and kick and climbing guitars also brought up some cursed hissing. At some point, I had to let the evil noise prevail—just as the woods would’ve wanted. 

13. “Teething”

This melody kicked around in my head for at least a year before I recorded (unlike most of the rest of them, written in an hour and recorded later that day). Around the corner from my apartment, I witnessed a man on a motorcycle hit by a truck. He was thrown about 20 feet from his bike, landed in a scarily contorted position, and I never knew if he survived. The shock and brutality and sadness of it stuck with me then and still does. I was re-diagnosed with OCD in 2019 after dealing with complicated grief—similar to the circumstances I was in before writing this album—and “Teething” feels like a recognition of my need to verbalize my fears about death and dying, rather than ruminating cyclically. (“A word should come from my head before it grows in size / But what breaks through me instead are all the spiders inside” equals talk about your fears, maybe, before they overtake you?). I was really into the Scout Niblett album Kidnapped by Neptune, where her drumming feels like it’s bending time, and I can hear her influence.

14. “Doomsday”

Another one I’d written a few months before recording. It came to me while I was biking over the Williamsburg bridge into Manhattan, shortly after my roommate James McDowell died. Someone in my family had a TBI from an accident while biking, which scared me off it for a while, but James loved biking all around the city, and I got braver because of him. He was an amazing photographer, writer, and friend, who championed the music and art of those he cared about. Life felt doomed without him, to put it plainly. He’d died suddenly and unexpectedly from an undiagnosed heart condition, and it just didn’t make sense that I wouldn’t see him again. There are no silver linings to losing a friend, but knowing him and losing him inspired me to seek out art and community and adventure, because that’s what he did every day. I even got a tattoo of one of his photos to remind me to stay engaged. My old band Quilty tried to do “Doomsday,” but it wasn’t coming out right, and I knew this song was too important to get wrong. Speedy re-recorded it as a full band a few years later, but this early solo one still feels definitive to me. I can hear my love for James in every layer of the recording.

15. “All Red”

This was recorded along with the “Death of Speedy Ortiz” and “Cop Kicker” stuff, a re-telling of the Grey Selkie folk song, but I wasn’t brave enough to mix it right so it’s stayed unreleased ’til now.  Its layers feel unwieldy, lots of raw sounds whirling around and turned up. I love noisy home-taped recording projects and was especially enamoured with Sparklehorse, which I can hear on this one. The ending cracks me up

I remember recording this in a practice shed the camp would use for strings and woodwinds lessons. A friend is clearly waiting for me to finish up recording so we can go eat dinner or something, and I’m stalling for time. “Should we do it? Right on, do it! Wait—what the fuck? Let me make sure…”

16. “Let’s Get Evicted”

If there are cellos and violins and upright basses in a closet you have the keys to, you are obligated to record with them, even if you don’t know how to play them. That’s the philosophy of “Let’s Get Evicted.” Some brutal breakup lyrics on this co-dependency jam—”Let’s kiss off a cliff / Take a nap in the grave / Let’s get evicted and torture our enemies.” True love, right? Puddles of irony dripping off those ending “la-las.”

17. “Open Sesame”

Tracked in my mom’s basement, a nylon string guitar layered over some unhinged drums and a whole lot of layers of spoken and screamed vocals. A friend was dealing with a shitty parole situation, and I think that’s where the lyrics came from—as well as the title “Cop Kicker,” even though this song didn’t make it to that EP. I love all the delay squiggles that sound like a radio being tuned, and the Casio-y drum loop that comes in for only four measures. 

18. “Bill Sauce”

Get in and out quick! Inspired by and sounds like the cheap beer–saturated punk and hardcore shows I was hiding in the corner at when I first moved to Western Massachusetts. All of the boy-band drummers wanted to sound like GOAT Brian Chippendale, I didn’t stand a chance of that, so I looped some ridiculous fill named “Chugger” from a sample pack I stole from an old bandmate and sped it way up, adding irregular MIDI hi hat accents to it. I had to work hard to track down “Chugger” in 2021—the file probably lurking on a hard drive two or three past—it involved looking up the names of owners of a drum samples company that was seemingly many years defunct, who very nicely emailed me the file so I could do my re-mix. 

19. “Summon It”

There was some bumper music on MTV(U?) around 2011 that was a soundalike for a section of YYY’s “Maps,” and some of the triumphant rhythm guitar/noodle interplay is way in that vein. The verse is probably the surfiest part I ever plucked—definitely a then-hot trend among the Brooklyn DIY crew I gigged around with, but which I mostly avoided (along with all reverb). I got diagnosed with a rare blood clotting disorder that’s tested for by mixing blood with snake venom, the gothest medical procedure I’ve ever been party to. How could I not write a song about that? I clearly wanted “Summon It” to sequence into “Deady,” since the former’s outro anticipates the latter’s chorus. And now that these songs are seeing release for the first time, I’m happy I get to honour that old idea. 

20. “Deady”

“Deady” is the name on a prominent tombstone in a notable cemetery at an unskippable stoplight in Amherst, MA. Tracked in 2011, this first came out on a Post-Trash compilation in 2015 under “Sadie Dupuis.” But, let’s be real, this was Speedy. There are 10 guitars on this one, all tuned down lowwww. No bass! I remember my neighbour coming over to knock on my door, like, “Hey, can you turn down the bass you’re playing?” I was like, “I’m not playing bass! No bass here at all.” A medieval jam about working through depression, every wart out. Acknowledge your worst thought, sing it in a song, then let it go, something like that. I was absolutely in a regular D&D session with other students in my MFA program. Will I ever be this cool again? 

21. “Meat of Contract”

Another “no bass” jam, but you sure wouldn’t know it after all the octave and re-amping effects on the guitar. The prompt was “critter,” and I wrote it after the Angela Carter short story “The Tiger’s Bride,” a warped re-telling of Beauty and the Beast. “White meat of contract” is her line, and I chant it in demonic, wall-of-sound harmonies over the outro. It’s kind of shadowed and spooky—“Critter, c’mere, lick the blood out my bullet hole” is one of my favourite lyrics from this whole collection. But a lot of the critter-y language that seems like a metaphor was just from happily hanging out with my sweet dog Buster, who loved to curl up at my feet all day long. 

22. “Son Of”

This kind of sounds like Sugar Ray to me now, and don’t let anyone tell you that’s not a good thing! Legally, my name is “Sarah”; “Sadie” is a nickname for Sarah, and one of my great-grandparents went by it. I started going by Sadie for all music-related endeavours when I was 20 and didn’t want people to connect me at my day job to me in my bands on MySpace. Around 2011, as playing in bands had become the most important part of my life, I stopped wanting to go by Sarah at all. This song was about forming an intense new bond with someone, and wanting them to know the real me, not just the “Sadie” they knew through music. In hindsight it’s very funny that I had these concerns over my own authenticity when I was regularly playing to, like, eight to 10 people. But, for whatever reason, needing to carve out a private, honest space for myself through lyrics has been a concern for me since I started making songs around age 13. Please don’t call me Sarah, by the way. Unless you’re my mom.

“Speedy Ortiz” is taken from Speedy Ortiz’s album, ‘The Death of Speedy Ortiz & Cop Kicker… Forever,’ out now on Carpark Records.

Regardless of which niche corner of rock music you most frequently inhabit, it’s been an exciting week for collaborative singles. the New Weird Australia EP from leaders of the movement Tropical Fuck Storm and King Gizzard, and a worthy contribution to the power pop group chat courtesy of Dazy and Militarie Gun, Ducks Ltd. are now pushing forward with their jangle-pop renaissance agenda by covering renowned not-jangle-pop outfit The Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Head On” with the help of illuminati hotties.

Re-contextualizing the track from its very-’80s noise-pop origins to another movement from that decade, The Ducks replace the original track’s massive weight with the tight, breezy sounds of last year’s debut “Modern Fiction“, with Sarah Tudzin’s vocals underlining those of Tom McGreevy. “Every time we do [a cover] we feel like we learn something about song writing and arranging that makes us better at making our own music,” he shared in a press statement. “This project is kind of an extension of that exercise, and as a band who obviously wear our influences on our sleeve a bit, it’s a fun way to share some stuff we’re into.”

After continuing on to make the bold claim that “Trompe le Monde” is the best Pixies album (obviously incorrect—it’s “Bossanova“), McGreevy says of the collaboration: “Sarah Tudzin has an immense and powerful production/mixing mind and one of my favourite singing voices of anyone doing stuff right now, so we asked her if she’d be down to work on it with us and she helped us figure out how to make all the pieces fit together. Truly a high honour! She also persuaded us to record our guitars through actual amplifiers for the first time ever, rather than going straight into the box like we normally do which feels momentous! Amplifiers! Who knew!”

The collaborative single arrives ahead of Ducks’ imminent U.S. tour. “Head On (feat. Illuminati Hotties)” is the first cover of a series by Ducks Ltd. called The Sincerest Form Of Flattery, out on Carpark Records. More to come hopefully.

Over the past 18 months, Camp Cope have become a force in modern music, a wholly independent band who will only do things on their terms, and refuse to compromise on their values. The three-piece have already garnered international acclaim. Selling out two shows at the Sydney Opera House last month, taking home wins for multiple Australian music awards including Best Emerging Act at The Age Music Victoria Awards, the Heatseeker Award at the inaugural NLMAs, a nomination for Australian Album of the Year at the J Awards and being shortlisted for the Australian Music Prize.

While Camp Cope’s politically forthright sophomore effort was defined by its penetrating admonishments, Hurricane is contemplative and peaceful. This is unsurprising, considering it took four years for the album to materialize, during which time Maq worked as a nurse issuing COVID vaccines. “I used to place a lot of importance on music—I was like, ‘this is the most important thing in the world,’” she recently told NME. “And then the pandemic happened, and my focus completely shifted.” Lead single “Blue” is emblematic of this focus shift, as Maq permits herself to look inward. “Sat in my car ’til the song stopped playing / See I’m blue with or without you, baby,” she shivers over milky open chords, landing on the inevitable realization that our sadness is attached to ourselves alone. Interrogations of love and relationships spread across the album, and vacillate between stoic self-assurance and unabashed servility. On “Caroline,” Maq tells herself, “I know there is love that doesn’t have to do / Anything that you don’t want it to do.” Meanwhile, “Jealous” finds her admitting that she begrudges an ex-lover’s pet (“You’re never in the wrong / I’m so jealous of your dog / Still got my collar on”).

“Running With The Hurricane” finds Camp Cope on the other side of a storm. The third LP from Melbourne trio Georgia Maq, Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich and Sarah Thompson is about what happens after chaos hits; when you’ve walked through the fire and come out stronger, calmer and happier than ever before.

The band’s last album, 2018’s How To Socialise And Make Friends, put Camp Cope under an intense spotlight. That release allowed the trio to say what they needed to but both professionally and in their personal lives, they’re in a very different place this time around. On “Running With The Hurricane”, Maq (songwriter, vocals, piano, acoustic & electric guitar), Hellmrich (bass guitar) and Thompson (drums) are older, wiser and happier. It’s an album that is gentler than what they have done before, more positive and more at peace with the universe. Because as Georgia Maq sings on the album’s title track, sometimes “The only way out is up”.

While the Big Stuff of this album is all about growth, over- coming and pushing through the pain, the little details are still quintessentially Camp Cope. “Running With The Hurricane” reflects on faltered romances, secret crushes and vibrating with the confidence that makes you feel like you’re on fire. It’s about taking comfort in knowing who you are, feeling yourself and returning, always, to the city of Melbourne.

For fans of Courtney Barnett, 10,000 Maniacs and Bettie Serveert.

“Running With The Hurricane” by Camp Cope off of their upcoming album ‘Running with the Hurricane’ out March 25th via Run For Cover Records.

UK duo Let’s Eat Grandma will release their anticipated new album Two Ribbons on April 29th, and they’ve just shared a new single from it, a soaring dance number appropriately titled “Levitation.”

“It’s about feeling all over the place, escaping to your imagination and being in a disorientating and surreal mental state, which can be both scary and elevating somehow – everything feels more creative and things look brighter,” says Rosa Walton. “You’re with someone you’re close to, trying to reach out and connect to them, and even though you’re both struggling, you’re able to find comfort in one another, and have an absurdly funny yet meaningful time together. You begin to see some hope in your future again after a time when you’d started to lose sight of that.

The video for the song, directed by Noel Paul, makes clever use of in-camera false mirror effects that work off Walton and Jenny Hollingworth’s bond. 

Levitation is the fourth single from Let’s Eat Grandma’s upcoming album Two Ribbons, out on Transgressive Records 29th April 2022.

Soccer Mommy has announced a new album, “Sometimes, Forever” , and shared the instantly addictive first single, “Shotgun.” So excited to announce that my next rec ‘Sometimes, Forever’ is out in June, It feels like a long time coming and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Soccer Mommy (aka Sophie Allison) announced the release of a new album, “Sometimes, Forever“, which will be out on June 24th via Loma Vista. Allison also shared a video for the album’s lead single, “Shotgun.” 

The new track opens with a grungy melodic guitar and snappy drums. Sophie Allison’s hushed, satiny vocals detail the thrill of a sweet relationship. “Uppers and my heart never meshed / I hated coming down / But this feels the same without the bad things,” she sings on the opening verse. Visceral images of fogged windows, menthol breath, and a room dirtied with beer bottles and ice cream cartons transport us into the middle of a relationship that makes Soccer Mommy feel like a “bullet in a shotgun ready to sound.” Galaxies away from “Color Theory’s” sombre tone, “Shotgun” allows Allison to flex her skilled song writing in an entirely different hue.

Kevin Lombardo directed the video. “‘Shotgun’ is all about the joys of losing yourself in love,” explains Allison in a press release. “I wanted it to capture the little moments in a relationship that stick with you.”

“Sometimes, Forever” was produced by Oneohtrix Point Never. Allison’s most recent album was “color theory“, came out in 2020 via Loma Vista. 

It’s been just under a year since Russell Edling dropped his debut album as Golden Apples, and it seems that over this brief period of time the Philadelphia-based songwriter’s bedroom-set lo-fi compositions have blossomed into a full-band affair. “High School,” the first taste of Golden Apples’ newly revealed self-titled second full-length, sees the outfit expanded into a five-piece with the hazy, nostalgic sounds of “Shadowland” clinging to a handful of specific subgenres popular in the late-’80s and early-’90s like jangle pop, grunge, and dream pop. Which feels apt when you consider the track’s lyrical content. 

Golden Apples possess the rare ability to make music that’s at once familiar and elusive, instantly satisfying and also undeniably unique. On their self-titled sophomore album, the Philadelphia-based band have seamlessly combined the off-kilter catchiness of ‘90s college rock with dashes of dreamy shoegaze, scrappy bedroom pop, homespun psychedelia, and more.

The result is a vibrant and eclectic sound that works in tandem with Edling’s agile lyrics, and an album that aims to capture the endless highs and lows of life without sanding down the complexities and contradictions–all done with humour, humanity, and most of all, hooks. Led by songwriter Russell Edling, Golden Apples began as something more akin to a solo endeavour. The project started as his previous group, Cherry, was ending, and the pandemic was beginning. Edling hunkered down in relative solitude outside of Philadelphia and made Golden Apples’ 2021 debut LP, “Shadowland“, but it wasn’t long after that he began writing again. This time, however, he sought a very different creative process. “With the last record, I felt like everything was under the microscope of my vision and my abilities,” he explains. “This time I wanted the opposite, I wanted to go to a studio with musicians I trusted and just knock it out.” Edling recruited an all-star line-up of Philadelphia’s best players–including drummer Pat Conaboy (Kite Party, Sun Organ, Spirit of the Beehive), bassist Tim Jordan (Kite Party, Sun Organ, Lowercase Roses), guitarist/vocalist Mimi Gallagher (Nona, Eight, Cave People), and guitarist Matt Scheuermann (Lowercase Roses)–and convened for two weeks at The Bunk recording studio with engineer/multi-instrumentalist Matt Schimelfenig (Gladie, Sun Organ, Three Man Cannon). “One of the nice things about Philly is that the music community is so intermingled and everyone collaborates,” says Edling (also of Kite Party, Lowercase Roses, and Cave People). “I’ve always been inspired by bands that felt like they were part of a creative network of people. I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania and we didn’t have a lot of that, so finding it always felt important to me.” That cooperative spirit is palpable on Golden Apples, throughout which a crackling spontaneity accents Edling’s tightly written guitar pop. “I didn’t have the ability to be so precious about every little moment and I think that’s central to how it sounds,” says Edling. “I wanted to step away from the microscope.” There’s an organic collision of warmth and noise across the album’s ten song, 28-minute runtime: gentle acoustic guitar meets ripples of feedback and ‘90s alternative bombast intersects with jangle pop sweetness, all working together to recall everything from Yo La Tengo’s wide-ranging-yet-intimate indie to The Velvet Underground’s fractured version of elemental rock and roll songwriting. Opener “Good Times” begins as a feel-good sing along before devolving into a blown-out keyboard drone, immediately setting the album’s musical and lyrical tone. “I think I’m always writing about the existential trials of coexisting with depression,” Edling explains. “But with every record I make, I take a different stance with that relationship. This is the first time I’ve ever confronted that batch of feelings with some light-heartedness or a joke in my pocket. It’s sort of like ‘I see you, but I’m not afraid of you anymore.’” It’s a sentiment best encapsulated by “Let Me Do My Thing,” an album standout with a laid back mood and a highly memorable chorus. “I wrote that song after having a depressive episode,” says Edling.

“The whole idea was ‘Please understand that this is something I’m really feeling,’ but also to look at how silly the things that take me there can be. Sometimes it takes a joke to help me snap out of it.” Elsewhere on songs like the dreamily rocking “High School” and the psych-tinged “Grass,” Edling takes on the complexities of emotional evolution and even the Sisyphean absurdity of life itself, and then compacts them into surprisingly affirming songs that stick around long after their concise runtimes.

It felt like a loss, watching people and scenery disappear in a peripheral blur. I tried to reanimate that moment with this song because it felt formative and I believe it marked the beginning of my experience with hypersensitivity and existential dread.”

“High School” is the first single from upcoming album “Golden Apples”

On 6th April, 2018, Bristol-based musician Fenne Lily self-released her debut album “On Hold” – a break-up record uncompromising in its intimacy and vulnerability. With songs written as young as fifteen, the record was a viral hit, racking up millions of streams and announcing Fenne to a worldwide audience.

“To have this record physically rereleased is a big deal for me and the person I was when I made it. A lot’s changed since then but these songs and what they’ve given me will remain dependable reminders of beginnings and endings that shaped me as a teenager. For an album whose title is half ‘hold’, it makes sense that now whoever wants to can finally do that again.” – Fenne Lily

The album is out via Dead Oceans. Also today, 2021’s “Breech (Acoustic)” EP gets a physical release; the acoustic companion EP to Fenne’s diaristic and frequently sardonic second album “Breach” (‘At times compassionate, at times derisive, the record captures some of Lily’s most musically compelling moments yet.’

“St. Ides Heaven (Companion Version)”, an Elliot Smith cover, from ‘Letting Off The Happiness: A Companion‘ in the Bright Eyes reissue series.

Bright Eyes have announced an extensive reissue / re-recording project on Dead Oceans for 2022. The revered band, who moved their entire recording catalog over to the Secretly Group label last year, have unveiled plans to re-issue all nine of their studio albums as a ‘Companion’ series with additional recordings created together at their ARC Studios in Omaha. The album reissue series will be partnered with the release of a Companion EP of five new recordings of songs contained on the original release plus a cover version from an artist they found particularly inspiring at the time of the original recording. The Companion series gives Conor Oberst, Mike Mogis and Nathaniel Walcott a chance to revisit some of their earlier material and re-work it entirely – with the occasional addition of some talented friends.

This ambitious project will see the release of 54 new recordings over the coming year.

First to receive the Companion treatment on May 27th are Bright Eyes’ first three albums – “A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997, Letting Off The Happiness” (initially released in 1998) and the now iconic 2000 LP “Fevers and Mirrors”. 

We’re excited to share our new “Companion” EP rendition of Elliott Smith’s “St Ides Heaven”, out everywhere released through Dead Oceans Records.

“St Ides” is part of our forthcoming “Letting Off The Happiness: A Companion album“, releasing May 27th.

Last, and certainly not least, the band are embarking back on tour, We will be supporting our most recent album ‘Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was’ along with selections from across the Bright Eyes catalogue.

Conor Oberst – Vocal, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar Mike Mogis – Electric Guitar, Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Mandolin, Dobro, Pedal Steel, Percussion Nathaniel Walcott – Piano, Trumpet, Synthesizers, Electric Piano, Hammond and Wurlitzer Organs, Mellotron Strings and Vibraphone, Pump Organ, Drum Machine Operation, String Arrangements Kevin Donahue – Drums Phoebe Bridgers – Vocals