Bleachers Jack Antonoff have released their new song, “How Dare You Want More,” from their upcoming album, “Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night“, out July 30th.
“How Dare You Want More” — which Bleachers recently debuted on the Tonight Show is a rambunctious and ramshackle blast of Springsteen-ian pastiche complete with rowdy gang vocals and a blazing saxophone-guitar call-and-response breakdown. Along with releasing the studio version of “How Dare You Want More,” Bleachers released a special live-in-studio performance clip, which was filmed during the actual recording of the song and includes some takes that ended up in the final version.
“Over the past few years I found out things about my family that challenged some of the myths of our structure,” Antonoff said of the song in a statement. “I’ve felt rage, fear, darkness etc. around it, but at the end of the day what I am left with is that everybody wants a little more and going out there and trying to get it is something that can produce a lot of shame in people. So … how dare you want more? How dare you go out and get what you want? How do you ask for it when you’re not sure if you even deserve it? It’s an easy song to write about the people in my life and the hardest thing to do to oneself.”
“How Dare You Want More” marks the latest offering from Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Nightfollowing “Stop Making This Hurt” which arrived in May. Last year, Bleachers released a pair of songs as well, “Chinatown,” featuring Bruce Springsteen, and “45,” both of which will appear on the new album as well. Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Nightmarks Bleachers’ third album and follows 2017’s Gone Now.
Bleachers will embark on a North American tour in support of “Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night” later this year.
Los Angeles band The Wild Reeds are known for their blend of folk and rock, bright melodies, and rich three-part harmonies. After starting out as a folk trio, the group added a rhythm section and introduced a more exuberant indie folk sound with their second album, 2014’s “Blind And Brave”. Their fourth full-length release “Cheers” marked their debut in the Top 40 of the independent albums chart.
Formed by Sharon Silva, Kinsey Lee, and Mackenzie Howe, all of whom share lead vocals The Wild Reeds eventually began playing with bassist Nick Phakpiseth and drummer Nick Jones, greatly expanding the scope of their songs on 2014’s lush “Blind and Brave”. The album would prove to be somewhat of a breakout for The Wild Reeds and their touring schedule reflected their growing success.
In 2016, they released the EP Best Wishes before signing with Nashville indie Dualtone Records. The Wild Reeds now a five-piece followed it with “Cheers” issued by Dualtone in March of 2019.
This year, well-known roots and folk label Dualtone Records is celebrating two decades on this planet. In celebration of their 20th anniversary, the label has put together a covers album with artists reimagining cuts from their label mates titled “Amerikinda: 20 Years of Dualtone“. The Wild Reeds’ take on Mt. Joy’s “Younger Days.”
The Wild Reeds added, “Dualtone creates a familial environment for the artists they work with. They’re hands on and make sure their artists feel attended to while pushing for their success. We have always been fans of the DT artist family. Some of them have taken us on tour, became our friends, confidants, collaborators, and teammates. We got to watch Mt. Joy rise in their successes and were honoured to play a couple shows together pre-pandemic. ‘Younger Days’ feels like the perfect choice for a future on-stage song-along when we meet again.
In the early 2000s, Wire cultivated a creative process that can never be repeated. Though this era is bookmarked by the end of the iconoclastic U.K. post-punk band’s original incarnation, it includes a series of releases that are unique to their discography, drawing on the quartet’s contemporary interests in dance music, industrial, and metal. A new compilation, the double 10-inch “P456 Deluxe”, collects the definitive version of Wire’s output from 2001-2003, making several titles available in full on vinyl for the first time.
Following their electronica-speckled 1990 album Manscape, Wire’s members shifted their focus toward individual pursuits. Singer/guitarist Colin Newman and his wife Malka Spigel of Israeli post-punk group Minimal Compact launched the label Swim drifting into the uncharted waters of ambient music and techno. Bassist Graham Lewis moved to Uppsala, Sweden and worked on various projects as he explored the Scandinavian metal scene. For several years, drummer Robert “Gotobed” Grey left music behind altogether. Yet guitarist Bruce Gilbert’s work during this era is likely the most experimental, with guises including DJ Beekeeper—a project that found him performing in a garden shed while blindly selecting tracks from CDs spray painted black.
When Wire reunited for a performance at London’s Royal Festival Hall in the year 2000, alongside an American tour and an appearance at All Tomorrow’s Parties, it ended a nearly decade-long hiatus. “I was very, very nervous,” Gilbert remembers with a pained laugh. “I suppose the rehearsals were quite fun, but I was completely shattered by the actual shows. It was mostly because I was so nervous about having to relearn how to play the guitar, which I was never much good at anyway.”
As they returned home for a residency at London venue The Garage, Newman began recording Wire’s sets. Using one of their most beloved songs from the late 1970s as a building block, he transformed “12XU” into a pair of experimental remixes, imagining “what it would sound like if Fatboy Slim made punk rock records.” Beyond giving the other three members a hearty laugh, this sampling and resequencing approach became the basis for a new form of composition. With Grey’s drums already recorded, and Lewis sending over his bass parts while remaining in Sweden, Newman and Gilbert became the band’s primary architects.
“During that period, Bruce came over to my home studio two or three times a week,” Newman explains. “The process was nebulous, but I realized early on that we had hit on something. Even though we had something in common as guitarists, we didn’t necessarily get on with each other. Working together in this way, we discovered that we had complementary skills and were capable of giving each other the space to get along with what we needed to do. Going into it with zero expectations helped us, too.”
Since their groundbreaking 1977 debut album Pink Flag, Wire have maintained a steadfast belief that less is more. A formative manifesto written by the group in that year includes various rules such as “no solos,” “no rocking out,” and “when the words run out, it stops.” This minimalist modus operandi was carried into the early aughts with “In the Art of Stopping,” the song that opens both 2002’s Read & Burn 01 EP and the new compilation. When it came time for Newman to add lyrics, he reached for a note left in the studio by Gilbert that simply read “trust me, believe me, it’s all in the art of stopping.” In a trademark example of the singer’s slyly absurdist humour, these 11 words were stretched across the song’s entire 3:35 duration.
“That note could be a rather bleak commentary on Wire, or Bruce’s relationship with the band,” Newman laughs. “Or it could just be the fact that the song has a lot of stops. What I’ve learned over the years is that it doesn’t pay to over-interpret Bruce. Taking things completely literally is a style of comedy we enjoy that also has a certain beauty to it.”
As P456 Deluxe unfolds across four sides of 10-inch vinyl, the guitars grind and churn with an industrial abrasion, while Grey’s heavily processed drums keep time with robotic punk precision. “Comet” barrels forward at a frenetic pace as the lyrics written by Gilbert once again become a self-conscious meta-commentary: “And the chorus goes / B-b-b-b-bang / Then a whimper.” Elsewhere, Newman’s pissed-off sloganeering is reminiscent of Dutch anarcho-punks The Ex, while his shout-rap delivery on “Spent” sounds like a precursor to Sleaford Mods. The laundry list of clipped, rhyming phrases that propel “Raft Ants” (“Tim Roth, Tiger Moth, altar cloth, dot.com froth”) take a similar lyrical approach to Wire’s 1988 pop hit “Kidney Bingos,” but could also be mistaken for a piss-take on Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire.”
The relentless thump of “Half Eaten” features a melody that bizarrely recalls “The Name Game” yet its lyrics are far more bleak than anything Shirley Ellis could have turned into a fe-fi-fo-nana nursery rhyme. In under two minutes, Gilbert’s ominously slurred vocals describe a state of environmental devastation where even God can’t save us: “The temperature is rising / It isn’t surprising / The fires are everywhere / There won’t be any water.” “I’m pretty disappointed in the human race, so that’s bound to come out in my lyrics,” Gilbert says. “Of course there has to be humor as well. Having that makes the pessimism even more exaggerated and poignant.”
Throughout the course of a singular career, few bands have evolved as rapidly and radically as Wire. In the span of their first three albums alone, the quartet showcased the pipeline from punk to post-punk, before transitioning into left-field synth-pop in the 1980s, then burgeoning forms of big beat electronica in the ’90s. Needless to say, after their first quarter-century of musical metamorposis leading up to the period documented on P456 Deluxe, Wire were keen to continue swimming against the tide. “Rock devalued itself in the ’90s,” says Newman. “With the rise of Britpop, indie bands became mainstream. It wasn’t just something you read about in music magazines; you could read about it in normal magazines. People from Blur and Oasis were famous. None of it seemed very interesting to me.
What was great about dance music in that era was that it was kind of faceless,” he continues. “You didn’t know what anyone looked like, or whether they were even Black or white. That was an area where Bruce and I could hit it off because he’s never been driven by fame. We enjoyed the fact that we were using elements of dance music and rock music to create a new hybrid that didn’t exist.”
Newman acknowledges that Wire weren’t alone in their electronic fusions of the early 2000s, but is quick to mention his distaste for the band’s peers. “There were other artists using guitars and beats back then, but that was more like indie trip-hop,” he says. “It was mainly just horrible.” Even within Wire itself, the singer has never shared bassist Lewis’s interest in metal, or believed it impacted their sound in this era. “Dance music with pummelling tempos could draw some comparisons to metal, but I don’t like it personally,” Newman shrugs. “Heavy metal is for 14-year-olds, as far as I’m concerned. It’s the most safe, conformist style of music you can get.”
These kinds of creative disagreements, coupled with feelings of exhaustion, led to Gilbert’s departure from the band in 2004. “I got very fed up with touring and just needed a rest,” he says. “Things like festivals were a nightmare in the end. We would turn up in the morning for a sound check and then have to stooge around until midnight or even later until we got on stage. Of course that meant avoiding drinking and not being relaxed enough to enjoy reading a book.”
Wire have continued without Gilbert—first replacing him with Liz Phair guitarist Margaret Fiedler McGinnis and more recently Matthew Simms—but this final period of studio collaboration is a fitting culmination of the band’s founding line-up. Gilbert’s buzzsaw riffs and bitter lyrical fixations are featured heavily throughout the songs of P456 Deluxe, immortalizing a late-period apex from two decades ago. “People seem to discover things for the first time after 20 years,” says Gilbert. “In the end, we just decided that these recordings deserved to be heard. I’m quite proud of them, but that’s not always a good sign!”
Newman agrees that this era of Wire has been unfairly overlooked. With their inability to tour during the pandemic, the time became ripe for an archival release. He shares a few gripes about Record Store Day, but is thankful for the opportunity to support brick and mortar music shops, while exposing new listeners to the band’s rewired rock sound of the early 2000s.
“Malka and I have barely been out of Brighton for the past 12 months, so the idea of the band getting together to do anything was very unlikely,” Newman concludes. “There are lots of annoying things about Record Store Day, but we decided to do a special project this year. If you want something that defines a Record Store Day release, forget your Bruce Springsteen on purple vinyl and get this instead.
Long a rarity to own on vinyl, Prospect Hummer, the magnificent collaborative EP from Animal Collective and Vashti Bunyan, is finally being repressed this Record Store Day. A gem from Animal Collective’s freak-folk era, the EP represents each artist at the top of their craft, with the legendary Bunyan’s hushed soprano falling perfectly within the hypnotizing soundscapes the band is known for. The lush, textural strumming of songs like “Baleen Sample” and the hushed crystalline guitars of “It’s You” beget an almost magical sonic experience, making a vinyl copy of Prospect Hummer a can’t miss.
Track listing:
“It’s You” , “Prospect Hummer” , “Baleen Sample” , “I Remember Learning How to Dive” .
Porridge Radio have released a transcendent cover of ‘Happy In A Crowd’, A track first released by Chicago singer-songwriter Bobby Burg through his project Love Of Everything.
In a statement, frontwoman Dana Margolin explained that she was inspired to cover the track which first appeared on Burg’s 2000 released album “Drinking Feeling”.
“I remember watching Bobby perform for the first time and being completely captivated,” she said.
Porridge Radio have returned with a cover of Midwestern band Love of Everything’s “Happy in a Crowd.” The gloomy new cover is pretty unique, as it comes packed with silky shoegaze vocals atop a deeper trap beat, making for a perfectly peculiar blend of genres. Porridge Radio’s Dana Margolin came across Love of Everything when her old band Garden Centre was an opener for them, and the track really stuck with her.
“A song that really stuck with me was ‘Happy In A Crowd’, and this bleak January I learnt how to play it on guitar after Bobby randomly got in touch, and sent my cover to Sam [Yardley] who had never heard the song before.
“We made this cover together, with Sam producing it, and we’re really happy with how it turned out. I feel like something has come full circle through releasing this cover and I’m so glad we get to share it.”
Fresh off the release of her new collaboration with Lorde, Clairo has returned with her own new single, “Blouse,” which also features Lorde on backing vocals. Alongside the release, Clairo has announced her sophomore album, “Sling”, which is out on July 16th via Republic Records. The follow-up to 2019’s Immunity was recorded with Jack Antonoff. “Blouse” is a stunning ballad that sees Clairo playing off of Lorde’s background vocals, with a simple guitar line that allows the lyrics to truly shine, with lines like, “Why do I tell you how I feel/ When you’re just looking down my blouse/ It’s something I wouldn’t say out loud/ If touch could make them hear, then touch me now.”
Not only does Clairo (and Phoebe Bridgers) sing on the just-released, Jack Antonoff-produced Lorde song “Solar Power” she also just announced her own album Sling and the lead single “Blouse,” which features backing vocals by Lorde. It’s a gorgeous song that channels ’70s folk but sounds entirely modern. Listen below.
Associated with soft, intimate vocals, day-dreamy atmosphere, and rumination, Clairo is lo-fi singer/songwriter Claire Cottrill. Alternating keyboards and guitars as accompaniment, and often colouring her recordings with samples and sound effects, Clairo began uploading dozens of her styled, but low-key, melody-driven tunes to music-sharing sites as a young teen in 2013. Introduced by the delicate lead single “Blouse”, her second studio album Sling follows-up her 2019 debut Immunity.
If their 2020 critically-acclaimed album “The Sun And Her Scorch” wasn’t enough, Oshawa-based indie outfit Dizzy have released a spine-chilling and stunning reconstructed version on their new “Separate Places” EP. Featuring five new collaborative renditions of some of the best tracks from the original LP, the JUNO-nominated quartet bring along Kevin Garrett, Overcoats, Luna Li, Flyte and Jahnah Camille to create a parallel universe of soul-touching music.
Ahead of its release last July, the quartet of Katie Munshaw and brothers Charlie, Alex and Mackenzie Spencer had begun a winter U.K. stint supporting Oh Wonder. The Sun and Her Scorch showed a young band that had come into their own and taken control of their sound. Dizzy’s 2018 debut, “Baby Teeth” was a dark Bildungsroman that revelled in lush electronic flourishes courtesy of producer Damian Taylor. The band produced this record themselves this time around, shedding the ambient soundscape for something more organic and authentic to who they’d grown into.
Separate Places is Dizzy’s way of breathing new life into some of the songs they’ve barely had the opportunity to play. The EP features five album cuts — including singles “The Magician,” “Sunflower” and “Beatrice” — reimagined with the help of different guests. Said collaborators come from separate places as near as Toronto’s Luna Li and as far as London based band Flyte. They range in stature from Kevin Garrett, who’s previously collaborated with Beyonce to relative-unknown Jahnah Camille, a 16-year-old rising singer-songwriter from Alabama. Each brings something from their own stylistic arsenal to assist in recasting Dizzy’s sonic vision.
So happy to share that our EP ‘Separate Places’ will be released on June 11th. it features 5 songs from The Sun and Her Scorch reimagined in collaboration with some of our fav artists. the first track ‘The Bird Behind The Drapes’ featuring Luna Li. She and Munshaw play call-and-response from different spectral planes over muted piano chords and muffled conversations, culminating in a cinematic crescendo of cascading strings.
It’s a similar feel on Flyte-featuring “Primrose Hill at Midnight,” with Will Taylor’s trademark vocal multitracking hauntingly repeating, “Anywhere you go / I’ll be there to dote” throughout its final third. The ballad gets some added edge from an insistent pulse of whirring low-end-frequencies and the London trio’s sweeping harmonic envelope.
Born out of Covid boredom and a freshly acquired TASCAM 388 recorder in Northern California, The Wind-Ups are the fully realized bedroom project of Jake Sprecher (Terry Malts, Smokescreens, Jonathan Richman). The debut LP“Try Not To Think” is a lo-fi punk rock ‘n’ roll burst that veteran Infrasonic mastering tech Dave Gardner (Black Lips, King Khan) calls “one of the loudest records I’ve ever worked on.”
It might quickly remind you of The Saints, The Ramones or The Spits. But listen a little longer and you’re certain to pick up on an unabashed power pop backbone, one that sources influence from The Modern Lovers, Paul Collins’ Beat, The Shoes and so forth.
The Wind-Ups are a project Jake (Smokescreens, Beehive, Jonathan Richman) put together during quarantine up in Chico CA. Phil (Neutrals) lives in SF and is playing bass. Cool guys like Nathan and Blaine will be playing drums. Our first record, “Try Not To Think”, comes out on Mt. St. Mtn. Records. We love power pop and punk.
all songs and instruments written, performed and recorded by Jake Sprecher at The Cottage in Chico, CA
U.K. band The Lounge Society are about to release their Dan Carey-produced debut EP “Silk For The Starving”. With three singles under their belts —“Generation Game”, “Burn The Heather” and “Cain’s Heresy” plus a raft of accolades for 2021, there is much anticipation for what lies next for the band.
The EP title Silk For The Starving probes at a society that routinely neglects the needs of the have-nots. The Lounge Society sing about what they know then. Make no mistake, this is the sound of young England: articulate, enraged and energised. And — perhaps crucially — highly danceable too. It should give hope to anyone who has lost faith in the future, because here the future is in safe hands.”
Calder Valley’s The Lounge Society were among the raft of Ones To Watch accolades for 2021, there is much anticipation for what lies next for the band. Silk For The Starving is what happens when four people pour all their passion and worldly frustration into 15 minutes of sound. It’s a cocktail of danceable hedonism and bitter observations of the world around us. Making this EP took our minds away from the misery of the present and helped us forge a sonic vision of the future – and we hope it can do that for other people too.
In early 2020, “Generation Game” announced the band as artists shaping powerful narratives around a fast-fragmenting society. With the lyric “what will the US do?” they served up a painfully prescient prediction of American unrest. Follow-up single “Burn The Heather” made a left-hand turn for the more punk-funk, sneering at culture wars and the damaging impact of a class divide.
New single “Cain’s Heresy” shakes with the propulsion of a nimble rhythm section, full of bite and scorn, simultaneously swinging angrily at a negligent political class (“The death of four souls is less than a kick in the teeth, for them”), the threat of misinformation (“Poisonous ideals on the screen breed a vicious way of thinking, off the screen”) and the noxious follow-the-leader march of celebrity culture (“They’re servants to fame”). The EP title Silk For The Starving in itself probes at a society that routinely neglects the needs of the have-nots. The Lounge Society sing about what they know then. Make no mistake, this is the sound of young England: articulate, enraged and energised. And – perhaps crucially – highly danceable too. It should give hope to anyone who has lost faith in the future, because here the future is in safe hands.
‘Cains Heresy’ – Produced by Dan Carey Out February 18th at 6PM on Speedy Wunderground
The debut EP by The Lounge Society, ‘Silk For The Starving’, out June 18th on Speedy Wunderground
The Fat Angel Sings 