Big Thief revealed in an interview in October that they’re releasing a 20-song double album in 2022, and today they’ve officially announced it. It’s called “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You” and due February 11th via 4AD Records (pre-order).
“Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You” is a sprawling double-LP exploring the deepest elements and possibilities of Big Thief. To truly dig into all that the music of Adrianne Lenker, Max Oleartchik, Buck Meek, and James Krivchenia desired in 2020, the band decided to write and record a rambling account of growth as individuals, musicians, and chosen family over 4 distinct recording sessions. In Upstate New York, Topanga Canyon, The Rocky Mountains, and Tucson, Arizona, Big Thief spent 5 months in creation and came out with 45 completed songs. The most resonant of this material was edited down into the 20 tracks that make up “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You” a fluid and adventurous listen. The album was produced by drummer James Krivchenia who initially pitched the recording concept for “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You” back in late 2019 with the goal of encapsulating the many different aspects of Adrianne’s songwriting and the band onto a single record.
As mentioned in that interview, the album was written while the band quarantined for two weeks in a house in the Vermont woods in July 2020, and it was recorded at Sam Evian’s Flying Cloud studio in upstate New York, Jonathan Dixon’s Five Star Studio in California with engineer Shawn Everett (The War On Drugs, The Killers, etc), Colorado’s Studio in The Clouds with engineer Dom Monks (Nick Cave, Laura Marling), and Tucson, Arizona’s Press On with engineer Scott McMicken (of Dr. Dog) and frequent Big Thief collaborator Mat Davidson (of Twain) on pedal steel and fiddle. Big Thief drummer James Krivchenia produced.
Big Thief’s highly anticipated 20-song double album comes out in February via 4AD, and you can now hear fifth single ”Time Escaping”
The album includes the band’s four recently-released singles (“Change,” “Little Things,” “Sparrow,” and “Certainty”), as well as the just-released “Time Escaping.” The song was made with prepared acoustic guitars and a heavily percussive backdrop, and it doesn’t sound like anything Big Thief have ever released.
It’s very cool stuff, and you can hear it for yourself below.
On May 15th 2021 Paul Weller performed an exceptional concert with the hugely talented BBC Symphony Orchestra and award winning arranger Jules Buckley. This extraordinary performance was a first for Paul, performing with a full orchestra, and saw a quintessential selection of his vast catalogue exquisitely reworked and updated into 75 minutes of breath-taking music that was broadcast across the BBC. And now, this wonderful concert will be released by Polydor Records on 2LP Heavyweight double LP in heavyweight tip-on gatefold sleeve with 8-page booklet. This live album is the first to be released which features Paul performing with an orchestra.
‘English Rose’, taken from Paul Weller’s hotly-anticipated upcoming album “An Orchestrated Songbook”, recorded with the hugely talented BBC Symphony Orchestra and award-winning arranger Jules Buckley is out now!. The album features a reimagined selection of Paul’s vast catalogue with classic tracks spanning Paul’s The Jam, Style Council and solos career.
Due to unforeseen circumstances in the production of the vinyl version of ‘An Orchestrated Songbook’, we’ve unfortunately had to push the release date of the album back one week, with a new release date of 10th December.
David Bowie, “Live from the Dallas Convention Center, TX” on 10th April 1978.
Escaping his drug-fuelled life in Los Angeles at the end of 1976, David Bowie took up residence in Berlin, and between 1977 and 1979 he kicked his coke habit, rediscovered his love of painting, and in so doing, reinvigorated his musical career. During this period he released three albums known to Bowie aficionados as the Berlin Trilogy, comprising of the albums Low (1977), Heroes (1977), and Lodger (1979).
David Bowie’s Isolar II World Tour in 1978 introduced the world to the first two of these albums – Low and Heroes – and took him to 14 countries. For the first time since starting out as Davy Jones in the sixties, Bowie was Bowie, not Ziggy, not Halloween Jack, nor the sinister and skeletal Thin White Duke. This was Bowie the suffering, introspective artist.
This concert, recorded by NPR and broadcast live, features Bowie’s Dallas Convention Center gig in Texas in the opening leg of the Isolar II World Tour.
• Legendary performance from the Dallas Convention Center • Includes the entire National Public Radio broadcast. • Digitally remastered for greatly enhanced sound quality
White Manna’s longevity as one of the leaders of the modern psychedelic movement is attributed to their willingness to introduce new elements to their sonic repertoire. Initially, these moves were subtle, but as the band has moved on through the years, these moves have become much more pronounced, always leaving listeners wondering what is in store for them as new releases are announced. So, here we are with “First Welcome“, an album that features warbled country leanings, airy blooms of ambience, and occasional hints of a German yesteryear, all implemented into the band’s signature hazy and spacey mosaic of sound. None of these developments are unexpected, as they do build off of their previous album ARC, but here we see the band expand these elements and really make them their own.
It should be noted that “First Welcome” is a product of the COVID era, with much of the recording happening in quarantine or while socially distanced. The band’s process relied on communicating via email and sending music files back and forth. For White Manna this made the world of COVID both more fun and challenging, and they used the opportunity to get friends in different places to overdub tracks. Backing vocals and slide guitar were recorded while camping in the Mojave Desert. The saxophone was recorded in Liverpool. England. The trumpet sounds and some of the passages on the Rhodes were laid down in Northern California, and much of the vocals, piano, and synthesizer tracks were recorded in Costa Rica. As a result, the sound of First Welcome is reflective of the circumstances of these contemplative times.
New Zealand indie-pop group Yumi Zouma shared a video for their new song “Mona Lisa.” The self-directed video stars frontwoman Christie Simpson and was filmed in Lyttleton, New Zealand.
“‘Mona Lisa’ came to us gradually over a long period of time—so its story has changed and shifted, developing new relevance with each new phase of our lives,” states Simpson in a press release. “It’s a song that ruminates on conflicting, shifting uncertainty—of wanting someone that maybe you can’t have of uncertain boundaries, of confusing interactions, misunderstanding, yearning. Trying to forget an obsession or shifting between losing all hope and giving in to the obsession lured back by the excitement and promise the moments of feeling so alive. The terror and joy of a big crush.
“And so we wanted the video to feel like a mirror to all those emotions along the passage of time—except in isolation. A year stuck inside (as we have been), alone with the big feelings, the big highs, and the low lows—dancing around your bedroom, losing it a little bit. Moving in, making it yours, moving out again. The strange phase we’ve been existing in, trying to thrive in (occasionally succeeding, but often not). The joy, the sadness, the conflict, the chaos—without ever really leaving your bedroom.”
In September, the band shared the track “Give it Hell.” Their most recent album, “Truth or Consequences“, came out last year via Polyvinyl,
“Painless” is the follow-up to Nilüfer Yanya’s renowned 2019 debut album “Miss Universe”, which fully established her as a singular artist and a distinctive voice that simply has to be heard. The critically acclaimed “Miss Universe” – a widescreen concept record that took a tongue in cheek swipe at the most self-involved corners of the health and wellness industry – was followed last year by the three song ep “Feeling Lucky?“, which further explored Yanya’s fascination with ‘90s alt-rock melodies and drew on themes of resentment, her fear of flying, and the concept of luck. And her now peerless song writing aptitude best: “Nilüfer Yanya’s melodies have a pull so strong they almost necessitate their own law of physics.” Yanya also re-released her early eps on vinyl for the first time this year on the record inside out. the release is a fundraiser for artists in transit, a collaborative not for profit group she founded with her sister molly that delivers art workshops to displaced people and communities in times of hardship. as the daughter of two visual artists (her irish-barbadian mother is a textile designer and her turkish-born father’s work is exhibited at the british museum) creativity was always destined for Nilüfer Yanya’s future. now she enters the next stage of her creative journey, Yanya is running head first into the depths of emotional vulnerability on her sophomore record painless.
The album was recorded between a basement studio in stoke newington and riverfish music in Penzance with Miss Universe collaborator and producer Wilma Archer, Deek recordings founder bullion, Big Thief producer Andrew Sarlo, and musician Jazzi Bobbi. where miss universe stretched musical boundaries to include a litany of styles from smooth jazz melodies to radio ready pop, painless takes a more direct sonic approach. by narrowing down her previously broad palette to a handful of robust ideas that revolve around melancholy harmonies and looped industrial beats to mimic the insular focus of the lyrics, Yanya has smoothed out the idiosyncrasies of previous releases without losing what is essential to her. painless is a record that forces the listener to sit with the discomfort that accompanies so many of life’s biggest challenges whether it be relationship breakdowns, coping with loneliness, or the search for our inner self. “it’s a record about emotion,” Yanya explains. “i think it’s more open about that in a way that miss universe wasn’t because there’s so many cloaks and sleeves with the concept i built around it.” she adds, summing up the ethos of the new album, “I’m not as scared to admit my feelings”.
At the dawn of the 80s, Blondie was one of the biggest bands on the planet. They’d hijacked the mainstream with 1978’s flawless release “Parallel Lines” and consolidated that success with the following year’s multi-platinum“Eat To The Beat“. However, while these legend-enshrining titles showed that the New York sextet had outstripped both the punk and new wave scenes, the group made an even more radical departure with their fifth album, “Autoamerican“.
The album was a radical departure for the band, with opening track “Europa” setting the pace. The track is a dramatic instrumental overture featuring orchestral arrangements and ending with vocalist Debbie Harry declaiming a passage about automobile culture over an electronic soundtrack. Incorporating elements of jazz, blues, disco, and the avant-garde, “Autoamerican” was still a sizable commercial success (going platinum on both sides of the Atlantic), but it confounded critics at first. Rather like The Clash’s equally ambitious Sandinista!, “Autoamerican” attracted criticism simply for daring to embrace sonic diversity – something that was an element of Blondie’s DNA from the get-go.
“Blondie was probably the most modern band I’ve ever worked with in that they soaked up influences from innumerable sources,” Blondie and No Exit producer Craig Leon said in a 2019 Record Collector interview.
“As songs like [Parallel Lines’] ‘Heart Of Glass” show, they were like human samplers when it came to incorporating ideas and concepts and genres, often in just one song. They are probably the most eclectic band I’ve ever worked with.”
“Eclectic” remains the watchword where “Autoamerican” is concerned. Marking the first time Blondie had left their native New York to make an album, the recording sessions took place at United Western Recorders (now part of the Ocean Way complex) in Hollywood, where The Beach Boys recorded parts of “Good Vibrations”. During their Californian sojourn, Debbie Harry’s team was joined by“Parallel Lines” producer Mike Chapman and studio engineer Lenise Bent. The latter recalls band and producer being meticulous in their preparation. Producer Mike Chapman insisted the band record in Los Angeles. Guitarist ChrisStein lamented: “Every day we get up, stagger into the blinding sun, [and] drive past a huge Moon-mobile from some ancient sci-fi movie.” Drummer Clem Burke welcomed the change: “Autoamerican” was fun. We got to spend two months in California. I’m always up for a free ride.
“They’d done a lot of pre-production”, she said in 1999. “Everybody was pretty prepared by the time they got into the studio. Magical things did happen, there was room for those spontaneous things, but the preparation helped because you didn’t have to think about the basics.”
Blondie brought a wealth of new songs to the sessions, a clutch of which – “T-Birds,” the cinematic “Angels On The Balcony” and the aggressive, drum-heavy “Walk Like Me” – could easily have graced “Eat To The Beat“. Elsewhere, however, the band fearlessly grappled with everything from the jazzy cabaret of “Here’s Looking At You” to the shimmering disco-funk of “Live It Up” and the smoochy, noir-infused blues of “Faces,” with the latter featuring a gloriously smoky vocal from Harry.
Two radically disparate musical genres, meanwhile, provided the album’s signature hits. Blondie had already dabbled with reggae on Eat To The Beat’s “Die Young, Stay Pretty,” but at the instigation of guitarist Chris Stein, they delved deeper into Jamaica’s rich musical heritage for a sunny, horn-laced cover of The Paragons’ 1967 ska hit, “The Tide Is High.”
“I was the one who picked ‘The Tide Is High’,” Stein told The Village Voice in 2008. “That’s the only song [from Autoamerican] I was sure was going to be a hit beforehand – not least because it said ‘number one’ in the chorus!”
Stein’s assumption proved entirely correct when the infectious “The Tide Is High” – released as the album’s lead single, in October 1980 – shot to the top of both the UK Top 40 and the Billboard Hot 100. Its follow-up, “Rapture,” also broke new ground. A hypnotic hybrid of disco, funk, and New York’s emerging hip-hop scene, the song featured an extended rap from Debbie Harry, who namechecked hip-hop pioneers Fab Five Freddy and Grandmaster Flash.
“Rapture” also topped the Billboard Hot 100 and received numerous critical plaudits, but while “Autoamerican“, which was released on November 14th, 1980, fared well on the charts, it was greeted with less than sparkling reviews. These days, forward-thinking music fans would welcome a record which so brazenly pushes the envelope, but, in 1980, contemporary critics struggled to get a handle on this mind-bogglingly diverse disc, which concluded with a heartfelt cover of Lerner & Loewe’s “Follow Me,” from the musical Camelot.
Divorced from the times, though, “Autoamerican” has come into its own. In an interview on Blondie’s website, drummer ClemBurke enthusiastically cited it as “my favourite… it’s a very eclectic album”.
Deborah Harry – vocals
Chris Stein – guitar, tympani
Jimmy Destri – piano, organ, synthesizer, background vocals
Laura-Mary Carter, best known as one half of rockers Blood Red Shoes, will make her solo debut this December with the release of mini-album, “Town Called Nothing“, due 3rd December. Following title-track “Town Called Nothing“, today Laura–Mary has shared the new single “Ceremony“. The accompanying video sees her performing the song in Jimi Hendrix’s bedroom, backed by a band consisting of Seb Rochford (Polar Bear, Electric Ladyland, Patti Smith), Jack Flanagan (The Mystery Jets) and Patrick Walden (Babyshambles).
Laura-Mary explains of “Ceremony”: “The song is about my career. It’s about being in debt to someone and trying to break free. It’s about the feeling of not having a choice but to make music because that’s who I am but that sometimes comes with a price or with massive sacrifices. It’s about making peace with the choices and decisions I have made over the years and moving forward.”
Of the writing process, she adds: “Ceremony” started with the bass-line and I really enjoyed the feel as it reminded me of The Pink Room, a track from the David Lynch movie “Fire Walk With Me”. I created the song around the groove, which is very different to the rest of the mini album as the other songs all started with the guitar and voice. I wanted it to be percussion driven so I found random stuff I could hit, shake, smash that would add interesting layers and create an uneasy feeling. I wanted the guitars to sound like violins that bite like rattlesnakes. I always imagined it to be the last song on the record, so it fades out at the end like the end credits of a movie.”
Incase you didn’t know I have a band camp where you can pre order my record in various formats and I just put up a very limited photo print for sale as my first merch item. Thanks all for your support https://laura-marycarter.bandcamp.com
I have been waiting to show you this for a long while and finally the time has come. So pleased to announce the release of the title track to my debut solo ‘mini-album’, “Town Called Nothing”. I started making solo music which was totally different to my band and this was the first song that I wrote and thought “where did this come from?”
I guess my name fits the music, maybe I was country gal in a past life or something haha. Anyways I will save all the mushy thanks and stuff for when it fully comes out but I am really happy that I get to share with you the first song.
Melbourne trio Camp Cope have released their new single “Blue” today, their first release in three and a half years. “Blue” is the first single taken from Camp Cope’s to-be-announced third album, the follow up to their critically acclaimed record “How toSocialise and Make Friends” (2018). “Blue” is out now through long-time labels Run For Cover and Poison City Records.
Ruminating on what it’s like to love through depression, and persevering while the world outside has other plans (“I put down your pain, but I’ll pick it up again / it’s all blue, that’s why I fit in with you“), ‘Blue’ is a calling card for acceptance, both in that external forces cannot fundamentally change what’s going on inside your head, and searching for peace amidst the chaos.
“Blue” is a signal of what’s to come sonically from Camp Cope on their highly-anticipated, as-yet-unannounced new album – and their most triumphant yet – that will be released in 2022. The band entered the studio during the pandemic, without the pressure of deadlines and global touring schedules, which allowed them to take their time and just create beautiful music. They, like many of us, were living in a whole new context – new jobs, new cities, and a completely altered outlook. When brought into the studio, it culminated into a change in gears for the three-piece.
“Blue” by Camp Cope out now via Run For Cover Records
Screaming Females’ lead singer and head shredder, Marissa Paternoster is all the justification needed to expand this year’s Best Guitarist entry slightly beyond New York City’s borders and into New Jersey — and not just because her band plays this side of the Hudson every other week. No, it’s because Paternoster’s versatile virtuosity is unparalleled. Perhaps world-famous record producer Butch Vig said it best after Screaming Females toured with Garbage: “She has the chops to absolutely shred, but she can also push a song into crazy places: primal punk riffs, complex jazzy motifs, beautiful shimmering chords, and speed metal, sometimes all in the same song!” Ours isn’t the first list to say so; she’s been christened one of the 30 Best Guitarists Under 30 byredbull.com and came in at No. 77 in a 2012 Spin rundown of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. The band’s latest LP, sees Paternoster pulling a dazzling array of sounds and tones out of her G&L S-500, but the true testament to her picking prowess is seeing her do it live.
About new single “I Lost You,” Paternoster had this to say: “It’s one of my favourite songs I’ve ever written, and I think it’s safe to say that all parties involved brought their A game to this tune. After initially sending Andy (Gibbs, of THOU) the framework for this song, he immediately knew it could be transformed into more of an up-beat dance song with ease. I told him to go for it, and he did. Shanna’s (Polley, of Snakeskin) vocal refrains draw out the end of the song perfectly, and Kate’s (Wakefield, of Lung) rapid-fire cello breaks add a lot of cutting texture to the song.”
After a handful of releases under the moniker Noun, “Peace Meter” is the first ever recording to be released under Paternoster’s name, a deliberate choice making it stand on its own as a unique statement from the prolific guitarist.
Don Giovanni Records has just released the second single from the new solo album from Screaming Females guitarist and vocalist Marissa Paternoster. The track “I Lost You” is now available across all streaming platforms and Bandcamp. The album is titled “Peace Meter” and it will be released on December 3rd 2021.
The Fat Angel Sings 