Tame Impala will revisit their 2020’s album “The Slow Rush” with a new deluxe edition, featuring new remixes and b-sides. To give fans a taste of the new release, Tame Impala braintrust has re-released “Breathe Deeper” with a feature by rapper Lil Yachty. “It was so amazing to work with Kevin as I’ve been a big fan since high school, so it was a pleasant surprise and honour to be a part of such an incredible song,” Yachty said in a statement about his remix.
Initially released in February 2020, ‘The Slow Rush’ served as the follow-up to the Kevin Parker-led band’s 2015 LP ‘Currents’.
The new release will feature B-sides and remixes of tracks from the record, with the physical version being pressed on two transparent red LPs and featuring alternate artwork – including a 40-page booklet and The Slow Rush2050 calendar.
Both the physical and digital versions of the deluxe box set will feature two never-before-heard B-sides, the pre-album single ‘Patience’ (both the original and the remix) and additional extended versions and remixes from the likes of Blood Orange and Four Tet.
The Slow Rush Deluxe Box Includes:
• THE SLOW RUSH ON NEW TRANSPARENT RED 2LP FEATURING UNIQUE ARTWORK ELEMENTS TO THE ORIGINAL PRESS • 2 X 12″ VINYL REMIXES • B-SIDES 7” VINYL • DELUXE BOOKLET INCLUDING IMAGERY FROM THE SLOW RUSH PHOTOSHOOT & OPENING NOTE • THE SLOW RUSH 2050 CALENDAR • LIMITED EDITION COLLECTORS BOX
A deluxe box set of ‘The Slow Rush’ is now set to be released via Fiction Records on February 18th, 2022.
Big Thief have announced that following their tour across Europe between January and March of 2022 they’ll be heading to North America to continue to share their sound through May. The North American tour is widespread–the band will hit cities all around the U.S. and Canada including Brooklyn, N.Y., Montreal, Los Angeles, Portland Ore., Toronto, Salt Lake City.
The announcement comes with the release of their latest single titled “Change.” The track marks the fourth single the band has recently shared following “Little Things,” “Sparrow” and “Certainty.” Big Thief also shared with Mojo that they’ll be releasing a double album next year.
Another new song – it’s called “Change.” This one is really special to us. Engineered and Mixed by Dom Monks – thank you for all the love you put into this track, it can be heard.
Feb. 24 Manchester, England – Manchester Academy Feb. 25 Glasgow, Scotland – Barrowland Ballroom, Feb. 26 Dublin, Ireland – The National Stadium, Feb. 27 Bristol, England – O2 Academy Bristol, March 2 London, England – 02 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, March 3 London, England – 02 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, March 4 London, England – 02 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Erland Cooper explores the natural world of his homeland through an evocative mix of music, words and imagery. Cooper, formerly of The Magnetic North and Erland & The Carnival, is joined by the London Contemporary Orchestra for a journey across a trilogy of albums inspired by his childhood home of Orkney – its air, sea, land, community and dialect. Solan Goose is a record of symphonic pastoral scenes peppered with birdsong, written to escape the stifling reality of city life. We also visit the roaring seascapes of Sule Skerry and hear new pieces from his upcoming album, the last part of the triptych, delving into Orkney’s myth and mythology.
The concert also features spoken word from author Amy Liptrot, whose story echoes Cooper’s own. Leaving Orkney to pursue writing in London, she became overwhelmed by the difficulties and addictions of her urban life.
“… carves out a moment of audacious tranquility” The Guardian
“… at once calming and euphoric, with a beauty that’s its own justification” Uncut
“A special thing to experience the resolve of a perfectly formed trilogy … a vast, lush, mass of movement, colour and life.” NARC 5/5
Join me and my nest of musicians as we take our last ferry to Orkney in these special venues, performing my album trilogy show on its final trip north. We’ll play music from across Solan Goose, Sule Skerry and Hether Blether bidding farewell to this ships voyage.
Tom Waits is a great storyteller. As a songwriter, it’s one of his greatest talents, the world of his extensive catalogue is filled with rogues and miscreants, oddballs and outcasts, people you may or may not relate to, but you damn sure want to know what happens to them, where they came from and how they ended up in a lonely room full of junk, or on a boat, or perhaps through the looking glass. It’s easy to think of Waits himself as one of the characters in his own songs, in part because of his gruff bark and fascination with the absurd, and in part because, well, he’s a notorious liar. Not for diabolical reasons mind you, it’s just part and parcel of his uncanny skill for spinning a yarn. “My father was a knife thrower,” he said in a interview. “And my mother was a trapeze artist. So we were a showbiz family.”
It’s important to remember that when going into “What’s He Building?”, the deeply unsettling spoken-word centrepiece of Waits’ 1999 album “Mule Variations”. It’s not a true story not exactly. There are truths within it, and Waits has certainly written songs that are based in real (sometimes tragic) circumstances, but he’s not a biographer or a journalist.
We actually don’t know much about the central figure in “What’s He Building?” He’s a composite of his neighbours’ observations and speculation, the subject of busybodies’ gossip and unearned prejudices. The glow of a television screen emanates from his dark windows, there may or may not be poison under his sink. Nobody really knows for sure, but there’s just something not right about what’s happening down the street, in this house, where this unnamed loner, perpetrator of unseen deeds, lives.
The track, inspired by the “word jazz” of Ken Nordine, isn’t so much a song as a miniature radio play, crafted not with melody but static-laden drones and sound effects beneath Waits’ grumbled, one-sided narration. Squeaks, clinks, honks, crashes and rustles erupt beneath Waits’ ominous, darkly humorous reading of the neighbours’ fears and suspicions: “He’s hiding something from the rest of us“; “I heard he has an ex-wife someplace. “I swear to god I heard someone moaning low…” At one point Waits even declares, “You won’t believe what Mr. Stitches saw.” And I’d like to just take a moment to say: Mr. Stitches?!
The entirety of the track’s three minutes is filled with an eerie sense of foreboding. And there’s definitely something fucked up happening here. The He that we hear so much about in this song—without learning a single thing about him is building something. A reanimated corpse? A murder room? Some other kind of sinister mechanism for spreading mayhem among his neighbours, perhaps. But it’s not until the end of the song that Waits reveals the true menace of the song, growling, “We have a right to know.”
The song strangely took on a second life more recently as an ironic backing for videos. Though that doesn’t necessarily remove the sense of morbid curiosity and menace that the track harbours. It’s really just a question of which person on either side of that property line is the truly dangerous one. This isn’t really about what he’s building, but why it seems to bother us so much.
“What’s He Building?” by Tom Waits from the album ‘Mule Variations’, 1999
Jethro Tull’s 1970 classic “Benefit” will be celebrated with a 4-CD/2-DVD set, featuring remixes by StevenWilson, and an abundance of previously unreleased material. After pandemic-enforced delays, Benefit (The 50th Anniversary Enhanced Edition) will be released on November 5th, 2021, via Rhino.
[Note: The title was announced on Sept. 28 but didn’t appear on Amazon until Oct. 5. Best Classic Bands is an authorized affiliate of Amazon.]
The set is packaged within a deluxe hardback book, containing 100 pages of commentary from numerous contributors alongside images of memorabilia from the era, and of the band creating and performing their first million-selling album.
From the announcement: Following the successes of This Was (1968) and Stand Up (1969), Jethro Tull returned in 1970 with their third studio album in as many years. For Benefit, Ian Anderson (flute, guitars, vocals), Martin Barre (guitars), Glenn Cornick (bass), and Clive Bunker (drums) were joined by John Evan on piano and organ, who would go on to play on all of Jethro Tull’s albums throughout the 70s. The album featured more advanced studio techniques, such as a backward-recorded flute on “With You There To Help Me” and a sped-up guitar on “Play in Time.”
Compared to Stand Up, although containing a similar mix of bluesy hard-rockers and melodic acoustic numbers, Benefit had, as Anderson put it, a “harder, slightly darker feel” compared to previous material. Peaking at #4 in the U.K. Singles Chart, “The Witch’s Promise” continued Tull’s success in the charts, with the album faring equally as well. Benefit charted in the top 10 across six countries, including U.K. (#3), Australia (#4), and Germany (#5), while peaking at #11 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S., where it was certified Gold.
The new edition contains a previously unreleased Steven Wilson remix of Jethro Tull performing at Tanglewood in 1970, as well as previously unavailable film footage of that show.
During the summer of 1970, Bill Graham presented an extraordinary series of concerts at Tanglewood, the renowned classical music venue located in the scenic Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. Much like his approach at the Fillmores, Graham’s “The Fillmore at Tanglewood” series presented diverse handpicked triple bills, but with the added advantage of a beautiful open-air venue and plenty of informal lawn seating. With the Fillmore East crew providing technical support, these concerts would be hailed as a technical and artistic triumph and would entertain the largest Tanglewood audiences to date.
The July 7th presentation at Tanglewood, featuring the Who as headliners, Also on the bill that night were San Francisco’s It’s A Beautiful Day and an up and coming English group Jethro Tull, then in the midst of their first tour of America as headliners.
1970 was a pivotal year for Jethro Tull, when their relentless roadwork and perseverance began paying off. The group’s third album, “Benefit” was their most ambitious and original work to date. In terms of the band’s profile in America, 1970 was the year Jethro Tull had truly arrived. The previous album, “Stand Up” introduced guitarist Martin Barre to the fold and found the band stretching well beyond the parameters of the blues-based debut. Both albums conveyed Anderson’s growing confidence as a songwriter and with Barre on board, the group’s originality and style had come into sharper focus.
The 1970 American tour would find the group expanding to a quintet, with Anderson’s longtime cohort John Evan joining the group on keyboards, further expanding the sonic palette. With Evan on board, the group’s sound became more compelling. Classical elements now entered the already heady brew of blues, jazz, traditional English folk, and hard rock that defined the band’s sound. Extended soloing, often featuring an extraordinary amount of spontaneous improvisation, became a major ingredient on stage. This tour would primarily focus on choice material from the group’s first three albums. The one notable exception was the introduction of a new song, more scathing than anything Anderson had written before, titled “My God.” Destined for the centrer position on “Aqualung” the most popular album of Tull’s career, this new number wouldn’t see a release until the following year, and then in considerably shorter form.
Jethro Tull’s performance from that legendary summer night at Tanglewood opening for the Who, freshly mixed multitrack masters for the first time ever. Although occasionally self-indulgent, this recording clearly captures an inspired moment in Jethro Tull’s career, when their creativity was soaring. Anderson’s song writing was becoming distinctly original and the musical chemistry of the group on stage had become more seductive than ever. Yet as powerful as this performance is, for the Tanglewood audience it was only the middle of an extraordinary night of live music, as the Who would soon follow Jethro Tull onstage.
There’s also a newly remastered mono version of a previously unreleased concert at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom in 1970. The 100-page book, enclosed within the elegant, hardback book packaging, contains an essay from Martin Webb, who expands upon the 2013 “A Collector’s Edition” booklet notes. Following that are comments on each of the album’s tracks from Anderson, Barre, Cornick, and Bunker, as well as interviews with Robin Black (studio engineer of Benefit and many other Jethro Tull albums), Chrysalis’ Terry Ellis (executive producer of Benefit), Joshua White who directed the 1970 Tanglewood Festival which features on DVD2, and Wilson explaining the mixing of Benefit in 2013.
A new album EP from our upcoming Charles Moothart (Ty Segall Freedom Band, Fuzz, CFM, GØGGS) The EP is out today! Head over to the bandcamp to listen to “Losing Ground”, the excellent new single that finds Charles experimenting with electronic instruments and delving into Numan-esk territory.
Charles Moothart on “Losing Ground:” “Losing Ground is the mutated bridge that connects Soft Crime and Blood Machine. It is the piece that fastens the three songs together and outlines them as new visions. Originally, I thought of the riff for Losing Ground as a bridge in the song structure sense, but when I took a step back I realized it had the potential to be a structure of its own. It is one of the more vulnerable tracks I have made with the vocals pretty far out front. I wanted it to feel hopefully battered. Looking up from the floor with feelings of intention and understanding.”
Pre-order start shipping this week and we’re nearly sold out of the limited starburst vinyl, if you haven’t gotten your copy yet then don’t wait another second!
“This EP was a personal feat in light of the existential malaise we have been wading through. The songs are surreal and honest. My take on current reality inevitably takes a bit of a nose dive in to spiraling repetition. This isn’t new to me as I am by nature an over thinker. I would take the instrumentals on hikes to sort out the lyrics. A blend of physical and mental exhaustion ultimately let me lower the guard. I found the concept of Soft Crime could be the slight of hand that takes place in front of our eyes … or the small things we let ourselves get away with; either way Soft Crime goes down every day. The Blood Machine turns, and we sacrifice ground to take steps. It’s important to remember that by the burning light of the dumpster fire, we can still find the true beauty of our neighbours. We’re in it together until the very end. Whether that is tomorrow or was yesterday.” – Charles Moothart
Where most Tonstartssbandht albums come together slowly over years, recorded on the fly whenever the Whites have a few spare moments on the road, “Petunia” was largely written and recorded in their home city of Orlando in 2020. Many of the tracks had been played live, but in extremely rough form (“skeletons of songs,” as Andy puts it), and hadn’t yet developed into any kind of mature stage. With plenty of time on their hands thanks to the lockdown, and no shows to play, Andy and Edwin decided to pack some flesh onto those skeletons and bring them to life on their own. Petunia is the first Tonstartssbandht album to be created in a sustained manner and in a consistent environment, written and recorded in a single place over a focused period of time.
Tonstartssbandht – are the brother duo of Edwin and Andy White – have returned today to share new single “Pass Away”. The album opener expands upwards on the back of Edwin’s maracas and tapped percussion, as the brothers’ falsetto-feathered singing blends seamlessly together. The self-directed video, edited by Adrian Randall, is a live studio performance of “Pass Away.” The second single from the band’s forthcoming record Petunia, out October 22nd.
“Tonstartssbandht sounds like it’s discovering folk music beamed in from another galaxy — and ready to follow wherever it leads.” – NPR Music “The brother duo of Edwin and Andy White has traversed genres with rugged, psychedelic style and impressive consistency.” – The FADER
“Petunia” is their first since 2017, and it feels like a potential breakthrough, with the excellent new single ‘What Has Happened’ sounding like a jammier Radiohead.” – Uproxx
Tonstartssbandht – “Pass Away” (Official Video) – from the upcoming album “Petunia” out October 22nd, on Mexican Summer.
“Great American Painting” is the rare album that shines a bright light on all that’s wrong in the world but somehow still channels a galvanizing sense of hope. With equal parts nuanced observation and raw outpouring of feeling, the Philadelphia-based band confront a constellation of problems eroding the American ideal (gentrification, gun violence, the crushing weight of late capitalism), ornamenting every track with their explosive yet elegant breed of indie-rock/post-punk. Threading that commentary with intense self-reflection, Great American Painting ultimately fulfills a mission The Districts first embraced upon forming as teenagers in small-town Pennsylvania: an urge to create undeniably cathartic music that obliterates hopelessness and invites their audience along in dreaming up a far better future.
Great American Paintingwas deeply informed by the two months that Grote spent living in a cabin in Washington state at the height of the pandemic. “While we were there I spent some time driving near all these crazy rivers and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and I was mesmerized by how those unspoiled landscapes really capture a timeless idea of what America is,” says Grote. “I’d just come from taking part in the protests in Philly and getting tear-gassed, and it felt so strange to go between those two extremes. In a way this album is asking, ‘What is the great American painting? Is it police brutality, or is it this beautiful landscape?’ And the truth is it’s all of that.”
Mostly made up of songs sketched by Grote during his time at the cabin, Great American Paintingmarks a significant departure from 2020’s acclaimed “You Know I’m Not Going Anywhere”. The last album almost felt like a recording project of my own rather than a band affair, so from the start the goal was to focus on what’s always worked well with us: an element of simplicity that’s still very powerful, with a lot of visceral rock-and-roll energy to it,” says Grote. To that end, Great American Paintingendlessly spotlights The Districts’ greatest assets—the sharply detailed and prismatic tones of guitarist Pat Cassidy, the complex yet combustible rhythms of drummer Braden Lawrence and former bassist Connor Jacobus, who has since amicably departed the band (Lawrence will switch to bass in the band’s live show)—while introducing a new subtlety into their sound. “We usually love to just keep making everything louder, but this time there was a lot more attention paid to carving out space within the songs to really showcase each instrument,” Grote points out.
“I Want To Feel It All,” the first single off our upcoming album “Great American Painting“, is out now
In the making of “Great American Painting“, The Districts found their sense of connection exponentially intensified. “It just felt so nice to spend time with the people I care about, to have fun and try to make something good for the world,” Grote says. That feeling of kinship and solidarity is something the band hopes to extend with the album’s release. “The thing I value most in music is when an album expresses some sort of pain or frustration or hope that I also feel,” he explains. “I hope this album makes people feel like something within themselves is reflected in the wider world, and I hope that makes them feel less alone.”
Mitski is back. in addition to announcing a 2022 tour, she’s shared a new song called “Working for the Knife,” which arrives with a new video directed by Zia Anger (with Ashley Connor directing photography). The song surges with synth and a syncopated beat, driven by Mitski’s tenor was produced by Mitski’s frequent collaborator Patrick Hyland, and the video was filmed at the Egg in Albany, New York. Watch it.
“It’s about going from being a kid with a dream, to a grown up with a job, and feeling that somewhere along the way you got left behind,” Mitski said of the new song in a statement. “It’s being confronted with a world that doesn’t seem to recognize your humanity, and seeing no way out of it.”
Mitski’s dedication to both sonic and physical presentation is on full display — every muscle is activated and purposeful, giving itself over to the story of the choreography. It’s dynamic and gritty with a new intensity we haven’t yet seen from Mitski.
Thu. April 21, 2022 – Bristol, UK @ Marble Factory Fri. April 22, 2022 – Leeds, UK @ University Stylus Sat. April 23, 2022 – Glasgow, UK @ Queen Margaret Union Mon. April 25, 2022 – Dublin, IE @ Vicar Street Tue. April 26, 2022 – Manchester, UK @ O2 Ritz Thu. April 28, 2022 – London, UK @ The Roundhouse
Mitski’s last album was 2018’s “Be the Cowboy”, “Working for the Knife” the new song by Mitski out now on Dead Oceans.
Silverbacks recently shared the exquisite ‘Wear My Medals’ with the news that they had signed to Full Time Hobby for the release of the Irish art-rock band’s new album. Today we know now that the album is called “Archive Material” and will be released on January 21st 2022 via the label. The title track has also arrived and see Daniel O’Kelly take the vocal spotlight for a charming tune that is the sound of a band bringing their interlocking and interweaving instruments into a space that feels a bit groovy and individually Silverbacks.
The track comes with a cheeky video also directed and starring Daniel O’Kelly with the singer flapping about in Dunkirk, “The initial demo version started from a drum sample taken from the opening of Jean-Pierre Massiera’s “Bonne Annee”. When we fleshed it out as a full band and Gary gave the track his usual kick up the arse, the song went full Les Baxter exotica mode.
When writing the lyrics, I imagined a bunch of government officials in the deep underground of their building digging into archives. As the night continues, they get unusually aroused by the access they have to top secret information that the common folk never see.
Archive Material only cements Silverbacks’ status as one of Ireland’s most fascinating bands. Recorded at Dublin’s Sonic Studios in November 2020, with Daniel Fox undertaking production duties once more, it finds the band leaning into their early influences, delivering idiosyncratic indie-rock packed with intricate, Tom Verlaine-esque “guitarmony”. Other reference points for the record included Neil Young, Weyes Blood and – on ‘Wear My Medals’ in particular – Bradford Cox and Cate Le Bon’s collaborative record Myths 004.
Where “Fad” found Silverbacks focused on recapturing the live experience rather than revelling in studio experimentation, “Archive Material” skillfully traverses the line between the two. As a unit, they replicate that irrepressible live energy via complex arrangements incorporating everything from wistful Rhodes (‘Carshade’) to congas and Gang Of Four-style bass (‘Different Kind Of Holiday’).
Thematically, the record is every bit as rich, displaying an anthropological approach as exemplified by the album’s artwork. The initial premise for ‘They Were Never Our People’ came from a YouTube comment, portraying the decline of a town that has lost its footfall as the result of a bypass. Meanwhile, ‘Central Tones’ is an empathetic character study of someone seemingly content to trade off former glories, but secretly deeply unhappy.
Capturing the absurd mixture of monotony and creeping disquiet experienced by many of us this past 18 months, it’s simultaneously sobering and wickedly droll.
On several songs, the pandemic functions as a particularly effective prism through which to examine ideas of community. ‘A Job Worth Something’ finds Daniel reflecting on his real-life experiences working in insurance while his sister treated patients on a COVID ward, and the feelings of futility and guilt he felt at the time. ‘Different Kind Of Holiday’ was inspired by the ways in which previously uncommunicative neighbours bonded with each other during periods of enforced confinement. Throughout, his observations arrived drenched in the same surreal strain of gallow’s humour that many of us were forced to adopt to lighten the toughest moments of the lockdown.
Daniel explains, “I can’t remember who it was, but I saw a musician who said that they’d be keeping away from writing anything about the pandemic, because who wants to hear about that? But I’d much rather hear about an event via someone who actually lived through it, rather than someone writing about it retrospectively.”
Keenly observed and vividly rendered, Archive Material is an eye-witness account of human resilience as much as it is a compelling indie-rock record.
Also released will be a very special Dinked edition of the record featuring alternative sleeve art, a bonus 7”, clear vinyl and a lyric insert.
The Fat Angel Sings 