Deap Vally, the Los Angeles duo of Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards, have always relished the challenge of working within the limitations of being a two-piece, but after two records (2021’s Sistrionix, and 2016’s Femejism, produced by Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and years of touring as a duo, they felt an urge to reinvent their writing and recording process. They say: “American Cockroach” is a collection of songs we’ve been working on for a while, including collaborations with Jennie Vee (Eagles of Death Metal) and Ayse Hassan (Savages) that run the gamut from deeply personal to outright satire and everything in between. These are songs for the underdog, the outlaw, the defeated, for days when you feel like no one understands you or you can’t do anything right.”
Taken from the “American Cockroach” EP. Releasing June 18th.
‘The Last Beat Of My Heart’ by Siouxsie and the Banshees, They opened with this song on the “Peepshow” tour, 1988. Darkened stage, Budgie drumming, a much longer intro than the record, creating a swell of anticipation that was palpable in the darkened theater. Eerie blue light in back centre stage then slowly fades up to reveal Siouxsie standing, posed, in silhouette. The rowdy crowd is instantly hushed. Then, slowly moving to the rhythm of his drum in her catlike stride. Louise Brooks bob, satin top hat tilted, cabaret style satin bodysuit, french cuffs at her wrists, smoky clouds surround her, tilting the side of her face ever so slightly up towards the tiniest white pin light that has been turned on just above. Her profile of porcelain skin, black lashes, and red lips can be seen. She takes a barely audible breath, and begins… For the entire duration of the song the crowd remained absolutely silent and still, transfixed. It was breath taking magic, beyond exquisite, profoundly beautiful. We witnessed the performance of a Goddess that night
Siouxsie and Severin wrote this song together at a time when the band was close to falling apart. According to Budgie: “it was a sad, intense expression of how far you would go for somebody”, it was the last song they wrote together.
“In ‘Hardcore From The Heart’Joana Serrat mixes folk sensitivity from her earlier albums with the vast sonic landscapes developed within ‘Dripping Springs’. It is an album about broken promises, where rich complexities combine to form a masterful and moving piece of work, a glorious slice of Americana that is infused with Catalan passion and fire.”
Serrat comes from the Catalonian city of Vic, not far from Barcelona, but recorded this album in Denton, Texas. She used some great musicians to build these soundscapes including Jesse Chandler on keyboards and Eric Swanson on pedal steel. But it is the production, the full and symphonic sound achieved by Ted Young (who has worked with Sonic Youth and Kurt Vile), that is the album’s hallmark.
The album is a painfully honest and moving album, which grows on you with each hearing as new and rich complexities are discovered. Hardcore From The Heart showcases Serrat’s best vocal performance to date and marks a literary peak in her songwriting career.”
Ultimately it is this clash between strength and fragility, between quiet introspection and swelling, anthemic sounds, that characterises ‘Hardcore from the Heart’. Serrat has supported Neko Case and their music shares this clash between the personal and the performance: between exploring yourself and presenting it to others.
All songs written by Joana Serrat
Joana Serrat: vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar Joey McClellan: electric guitar, baritone guitar, acoustic guitar, echoplex, juno, backing vocals Jesse Chandler: organ, moog, mellotron, celest, omnichord, glockenspiel Aaron McClellan: bass, acoustic guitar, backing vocals McKenzie Smith: drums Eric Swanson: pedal steel guitar on “These Roads” Toni Serrat: drums on “Take Me Back Where i Belong”, percussions on “Pictures”
“Planet X” Emma Danner’s second LP as Red Ribbon and debut for Danger Collective Records, explores the joys, tragedies and perils that come with being alive and searching for meaning in an at once beautiful and crumbling world. With an aesthetically varied sound and a trove of multi-layered lyrics, the album continues to expand and transform with every listen.
Red Ribbon which began in Seattle and is now based in Los Angeles. The project Seattle songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emma Danner. Having put her music online for almost a decade, Emma caught the ear of a wider audience with her debut album, “Whatever I Can Get”, back in 2018. Now three years on, and newly signed to Danger Collective Records.
“Planet X” was almost by design an attempt to push Emma out of her comfort zone. The ambitious approach starting with her choice of producer, Randall Dunn, who is known primarily for his work in the doom-metal genre, although he has worked with everyone from Sunn O))) to Marissa Nadler.
Taking influence from the great and good of folk music and the great American songwriters, however for Emma that is just a starting place for her sonic exploration. “Planet X” is a record that goes searching for the joys and the tragedies that life has to offer, looking at a world facing the threat of a climate emergency and trying to find hopefulness peaking through the cracks. Even as the world quite literally burns there is room for a bit of optimism and Red Ribbon’s fabulous album offer a reason to feel very cheerful indeed.
Danner and her talented cadre of multi-instrumentalists (Shahzad Ismaily, Monika Khot, Abbey Blackwell, and Veronica Dye) pushed themselves to the outer reaches of their creative comfort zones, while discovering the deeper meaning of each song along the way. Through creating the album, the now Los Angeles-based songwriter was able to find purpose in the face of life’s frightening fragility, and craft her most beautiful and touching songs to date. Although pain and hardship are inseparable from the songs and the time spent making them, Danner here is able to offer an unbridled hopefulness through the stories she tells.
Where W.H. Lung’s 2019 debut Incidental Music found the band blending post-punk and krautrock guitars with synth-pop propulsion, “Pearl in the Palm” shifts the scales towards the latter end of the rock show vs. dance floor spectrum. Synth sounds evoking both Blade Runner and Giorgio Moroder swirl around uptempo drums and Evans’ reedy vocals, with funky guitar accents, group vocals and a sprawl that never slows evoking the best of dance-punk greats like LCD Soundsystem. “The song is exploring relationships, the stakes of relationships, and how that defines the individual,” says Evans of the song and its video—which he co-directed alongside Gracie Collier, shooting in January in the Irish midlands—in a statement. “You can find yourself in a balloon, if you’re willing to let that happen. Just like you can find yourself in another person. And you’ve got to go away to come back.
Vanities is the band’s sophomore album, the follow-up to 2019’s Incidental Music. W.H. Lung’s main songwriters are Tom Sharkett and Joe Evans.
In a press release, Sharkett says that their hometown is integral to their sound. “Manchester is a very important part of this record,” he says. “The White Hotel, nights like Wet Play, seeing Gerd Janson DJ at the End of Year Riot (Electric Chair) and then discovering all the amazing stuff on his label Running Back. Then when we moved to Todmorden it was the same. Seeing Andrew Weatherall down the road from our flat at The Golden Lion—it just felt like an exciting time for us and I wanted to consume as much new music as possible.”
“Pearl in the Palm”, from upcoming album “Vanities”, out September 3rd on Melodic Records.
An epic tale of self-discovery by a self-confessed Rock n Roll disciple
What story begins in a bedroom in suburban New Jersey in the early ’60s, unfolds on some of the country’s largest stages, and then ranges across the globe, demonstrating over and over again how Rock and Roll has the power to change the world for the better? This story.
The first true heartbeat of UNREQUITED INFATUATIONS is the moment when Stevie Van Zandt trades in his devotion to the Baptist religion for an obsession with Rock and Roll. Groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones created new ideas of community, creative risk, and principled rebellion. They changed him forever. While still a teenager, he met Bruce Springsteen, a like-minded outcast/true believer who became one of his most important friends and bandmates. As Miami Steve, Van Zandt anchored the E Street Band as they conquered the Rock and Roll world.
And then, in the early ’80s, Van Zandt stepped away from E Street to embark on his own odyssey. He refashioned himself as Little Steven, a political songwriter and performer, fell in love with Maureen Santoro who greatly expanded his artistic palette, and visited the world’s hot spots as an artist/journalist to not just better understand them, but to help change them. Most famously, he masterminded the recording of “Sun City,” an anti-apartheid anthem that sped the demise of South Africa’s institutionalized racism and helped get Nelson Mandela out of prison.
By the ’90s, Van Zandt had lived at least two lives—one as a mainstream rocker, one as a hardcore activist. It was time for a third. David Chase invited Van Zandt to be a part of his new television show, the Sopranos—as Silvio Dante, he was the unconditionally loyal consiglieri who sat at the right hand of Tony Soprano (a relationship that oddly mirrored his real-life relationship with Bruce Springsteen).
Underlying all of Van Zandt’s various incarnations was a devotion to preserving the centrality of the arts, especially the endangered species of Rock. In the twenty-first century, Van Zandt founded a ground breaking radio show (Underground Garage), a fiercely independent record label (Wicked Cool), and developed a curriculum to teach students of all ages through the medium of music history. He also rejoined the E Street Band for what has now been a twenty-year victory lap.
“UNREQUITED INFATUATIONS” chronicles the twists and turns of Stevie Van Zandt’s always surprising life. It is more than just the testimony of a globe-trotting nomad, more than the story of a ground breaking activist, more than the odyssey of a spiritual seeker, and more than a master class in rock and roll (not to mention a dozen other crafts). It’s the best book of its kind because it’s the only book of its kind.
Bob Dylan and his band played over 3,000 shows on the Never Ending Tour and it’s gone through countless iterations since beginning in 1988, but when asked author and long time Dylan scholar Clinton Heylin to name his favourite period, he instantly said 1985. “That year was amazing, absolutely amazing,” he said. “The whole year was fascinating in terms of the shifts and changes that he went through.”
Some fans may be surprised to hear this opinion, as it was a somewhat of a lost era for Dylan. In 1995, it had been five years since his last LP of original songs (the underwhelming Under the Red Sky), Dylan hit the road for a 115-date tour, one of the longest of his entire career.
The tour began in the Czech Republic at the intimate Prague Congress Centre, although opening night was delayed because Dylan was suffering from the flu. And when he took the stage on March 11th for the first show, many fans said that he still looked a little off. “Throughout the show, he retired to the rear of the stage between numbers and sat bent double seeming to gather his strength,”. “but then launched into each new number with even more feeling.”
Perhaps to save his strength, Dylan barely touched his guitar this night. This allowed him to focus all his energy on his vocals, and it let guitarists Bucky Baxter and John Jackson, bassist Tony Garnier, and drummer Winston Watson carry more of the musical weight than usual. “I was sitting here last night, got the flu,” Dylan says at one point. “Listen, you got a good place to recover from the flu!”
There’s not a weak moment in the entire 14-song set, but the highlights are powerful, electric renditions of “Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood),” “Man in the Long Black Coat,” “All Along the Watchtower,” and tender, acoustic takes on “Boots of Spanish Leather,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” and “It Ain’t Me Babe.”
There’s no soundboard recording from the show, but a stellar audience tape has surfaced. There are many other great 1995 bootlegs, including Philadelphia 21/06/1995 and the Oslo show on the 29th June 1995, but there’s something magical about this Prague gig they don’t quite capture. “That’s still probably my favourite Dylan concert of all time,” said Heylin . “I’ll put that show next to any 1966 show you want to pick.”
And while Dylan World has released every single 1966 show they have on a 36 cd Box Set, including a couple that sound like they were recorded in a wind tunnel 20 miles from the stage, they haven’t released a single show from the 33-year history of the Never Ending Tour, aside from the MTV Unplugged special. When they finally get around to it, this Prague gig should be near the top of their list.
The Never Ending Tour 1995 started in early March in the Czech Republic. The tour moved on to Germany, the Netherlands, France and Belgium. Dylan performed a large number of concerts in the United Kingdom performing three concerts in London, three in Manchester, two in Edinburgh, one in Glasgow, one in Birmingham, one in Cardiff, one in Brighton as well as one concert in Belfast. The tour finished the following day in Dublin, The tour came to an end on November 11th in Paradise, Nevada. Dylan continued to tour North America in small club venues into late December. The Never Ending Tour 1995 came to an end on December 17th in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after one-hundred and sixteen shows.
Bob Dylan (vocals & guitar) Bucky Baxter (pedal steel guitar & electric slide guitar) John Jackson (guitar) Tony Garnier (bass) Winston Watson (drums & percussion)
Sarah Tudzin’s tenderpunk project illuminati hotties is back with their first new music since their acclaimed 2020 release “FREE I.H.: This Is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For“, and the music-industry rigmarole that has dogged the band in the past is now behind them. In addition to sharing the video for their first single of 2021, “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA” (pronounced “Moo!,” they say), Tudzin announced her own new label, Snack Shack Tracks, in partnership with L.A.-based indie label Hopeless Records, so when the one you have been waiting for comes out (a release window has yet to be revealed), you’ll have her to thank for it. “Somebody told me my music is too ‘cute’ to take seriously” Tudzin says of the band’s new single. “So I wrote them a love letter. I hope they’re laughing their patoots off.” “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA” kicks “cute” to the curb with queasy guitars and synth stutters, with Tudzin contorting her voice as she sneers at pushes to make her art more “palatable” (read: profitable): “You think I wanna be a part of / Every self-appointed startup? / Every brand-approval markup? / Place that precious pretty product,” she mocks, having a blast as she colours outside the lines.
The official music video for “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA” out now on Snack Shack Tracks/Hopeless Records!
Illuminati hotties, the exhilaratingly noisy project of Sarah Tudzin, has dealt with a lot over the years. From label disputes to unpaid royalties, it has been a rocky road to get to the point of independence. Today, illuminati hotties announces their third album “Let Me Do One More“, came out October 1st via Tudzin’s imprint label Snack Shack Tracks. To kick off the summer, the band shares “Pool Hopping,” the album’s second single following “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA.” Tudzin uses the pool as a cheeky metaphor for relationships and her desire to find someone better.
Her spry lyrics and the beach-punk vibes of the song lend itself well to the equally fitting music video: Everyone is in a pool. Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin went through some shit with her label last year, but she just announced her own imprint, Snack Shack Tracks. Its first song, a wild-eyed pop-punk ripper called “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA,” is the sound you make when you are this close to losing it. The song opens with a few stabs of guitar and scattershot drums, but then Tudzin swoops in like a cheap vacuum, sucking up chaos and spreading it around. She’s setting up first dates (“Won’t you swing by after hours so you know just what you’re getting into?”) and sassing customers (“On the phone when they call me ‘Mister’/I say, ‘Ma’am, that’ll be just fine’”) and having bad trips (“Man, I was scared but I took his drugs”). She’s spiraling into depression (“I’m so sad I can’t do laundry”) and surging up on a mood swing (“I had it bad but now I’m back in the saddle, baby!”).
It’s all pulling toward that chorus—“Mmm/Ooo/Aaaaa/Ya ya”—the one-sided onomatopoeia of a conversation she can’t bear to keep having, while meanwhile her mind is racing, racing, racing through marketing strategy (“Place that precious pretty product!”) and U.S. politics (“The DNC is playing dirty!”) and sexual roleplay (“Call me, Daddy!”). “MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA” is a pressure valve release for digital-mental-emotional-spiritual overload, sneering and ironic, gross on purpose: In her video tribute-slash-parody of D’Angelo, Tudzin mugs for the camera shirtless and gets dressed like nachos in a goopy stream of something she describes as “slimey” and I might optimistically call “gruel.” It doesn’t make any goddamn sense (whose life does anymore); the final line hits with an orgasmic gasp, a Cruella de Vil laugh, and the total gracelessness of truth under capitalism: “If you’re not laughing, baby/Then you’re not making money!” Mmm-mmm-mmm.
Primal Scream – ‘Riot City Blues’ double red coloured vinyl LP, This year sees the 15th Anniversary of “Riot City Blues“, Primal Scream’s 8th studio album. Featuring fan favourites Country Girl and Dolls, it was the last album to include guitarist, Robert ‘Throb’ Young, who later departed the band after 22 years. Contributions to the album came from Alison Mosshart (The Kills) and Will Sergeant (Echo and The Bunnymen).
To mark the occasion, frontman Bobby Gillespie has added seven tracks previously released as b-sides, including a cover of Townes Van Zandt’s To Live Is To Fly, and has re-sequenced the album to flow across 4 sides of vinyl in an expanded 2LP set – which is released on Red and Green coloured vinyl. The anniversary edition’s cover will feature the original William Eggleston photograph from which the 2006 cover image was taken.
This year sees the 15th Anniversary of “Riot City Blues”,
Johnny Thunders – ‘Live in Los Angeles 1987’ double black vinyl LP. Double LP of two live shows including insert with sleeve notes. This release commemorates the 30th anniversary of Johnny’s death on the 23rd April 1991. Never released previously on vinyl.
Band Line-up at The Roxy Theatre, Los Angeles, USA, 4th January 1987. Johnny Thunders – Vocals & Guitar Arthur Kane – Bass Jerry Nolan – Drums Barry Jones – Guitar
Band Line-up at Club Citta, Osaka, Japan, 3rd April 1991. Johnny Thunders – Vocals and Guitar Stevie Klasson – Guitar Jamie Heath – Sax Alison Gordy – Backing vocals Chris Musto – Drums Stuart Kennedy – Bass
LP1: 1. Pipeline / 2. Blame It On Mom / 3. Personality Crisis / 4. I Can Tell / 5. Dead Or Alive / 6. Can’t Keep My Eyes On You / 7. Ain’t Superstitious / 8. Medley: Too Much Junkie Business/Pills / 9. You Can’t Put Your Arms Round A Memory / 10. Eve Of Destruction / 11. It’s Not Enough / 12. Lonely Planet Boy / 13. The Wizard / 14. Play With Fire
LP2: 1. Green Onions / 2. In The Midnight Hour / 3. Sad Vacation / 4. Little Queenie / 5. Born To Lose / 6. Sad Vacation / 7. Too Much Junkie Business / 8. Personality Crisis / 9. Born To Lose
This release commemorates the 30th anniversary of Johnny’s death on the 23rd April 1991. Never released on vinyl before.
The Fat Angel Sings 