Sharon Van Etten’s career since the release of her second album, 2010’s epic is well-known; critically lauded albums, films, and television shows have continually displayed her expanding artistry. Upon its release, epic laid a romantic melancholy over the gravel and dirt of heartbreak without one honest thought or feeling spared. Her songs covered betrayal, obsession, egotism, and all the other emotions we dislike in others and recognize in ourselves. Van Etten’s grounded and clenched vocals conveyed a sense of hope–the notion that beauty can arise from the worst of circumstances.
The resulting epic Ten is a double LP featuring the original album plus the new album of epic covers and reimagined artwork.
“Epic” laid a romantic melancholy over the gravel and dirt of heartbreak without one honest thought or feeling spared. Her songs covered betrayal, obsession, egotism, and all the other emotions we dislike in others and recognize in ourselves. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of this special album’s release, and to acknowledge the convergence of Van Etten’s present and past work, she asked fellow artists she admired to participate in an expanded reissue, where each artist would cover one different song from epic in their own style.
Van Morrison has shared the first single from his new album,”Latest Record Project: Volume 1“. It’s got the sound and spirit of a classic Van Morrison song and single: upbeat, swinging and cool. He merges purity and passion with R&B, rock and roll, blues and whimsy, resulting in a song that is essentially Van, a story told in real-time soul by one of the greatest of the greats.
The lyric is songwriter-oriented more directly than most songs, based on this minimization of the impact and meaning of any one song:
That idea, and the words chosen, echo quite closely what Bob Dylan said about his songs when I interviewed him in 1991. I asked about his song “Precious Angel,” from Slow Train Coming, and he said this: BOB DYLAN: It could go on forever … When people ask me, “How come you don’t sing that song anymore? “It’s just too much and not enough. … It’s too hard to wonder why about them. To me, they’re not worthy of wondering why about them. They’re songs. They’re not written in stone. They’re on plastic.
Either way, Van is invited to talk to us anytime. It would be our honour. He’s one of those songwriters whose songs matter forever. His impact on song writing is vast. People are forever getting through life with the great soulful and lyrical aid of his songs. And songwriters are forever exulting in those great little details, so specific that they become universal. Randy Newman, and other songwriters, told me they loved his song “Brown-Eyed Girl,” and especially this picture of young romance:
Making love in the green grass Behind the stadium with you From “Brown-Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison
“I just love that it’s ‘behind the stadium,’” Randy Newman said.
Latest Record Project: Volume 1 has a great range of songs. And the fact that this is Volume 1 indicates there is more coming, which means the man has been on song writing fire.
Both “Only A Song” and the recently released title track are provided as instant downloads to fans who pre-order the album. Latest Record Project: Volume 1will be released May 7th via Exile/BMG.
Steve Miller has again dug deep into his archives and found a never-before-heard-or-seen, full-length concert recording from 1977. Steve Miller Band Live! Breaking Ground: August 3, 1977, featuring such classic rock staples as “The Joker” and “Rock’n Me,” arrives via Sailor/Capitol/UMe on May 14th, 2021. Listen to the performance of several tracks including “Jet Airliner” below.
Of the performance, the guitarist, multi-platinum-selling singer-songwriter, bandleader, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and Songwriters Hall of Fame member says, “This show at the Cap Center in Landover, Maryland, captures the band right at the peak after The Joker, and in the middle of Fly Like an Eagle and Book of Dreams, a stream of hit [album]s… We decided to call it Breaking Ground because that’s exactly what we were doing.”
Steve Miller Band Live! Breaking Ground: August 3, 1977 includes original liner notes by music journalist David Fricke who says – “Breaking Ground captures the Steve Miller Band on stage in one of their biggest years, 1977. They were at a perfect crossroads of psychedelic zeal and progressive, popcraft while staying true to Miller’s first love, the blues.”
The recording captures Miller’s legendary 1977 lineup at the beginning of the band’s turn from playing ballrooms and theaters to arenas and football stadiums.
The band members: Steve Miller – Guitar, Harmonica and Lead Vocals Norton Buffalo – Harmonica and Background Vocals Lonnie Turner – Bass Gary Mallaber – Drums David Denny – Guitar and Background Vocals Greg Douglass – Guitar Byron Allred – Keyboards
A Capitol Records release;; ℗ 2021 Sailor Records,
It seems we’re starting to come out of darker times, it’s been overdue as has new music. In this whole process RCA studios in Nashville has become my new home, where magic just keeps pouring out and into the music. I’m holding on to the album for a few months longer but until then I have this EP for you, a collection of my favourite songs I performed live at RCA studio A earlier in the year.
The singer-songwriter debuted her live recording of “The Bends” track at RCA Studios in Nashville to mark the release of her new live EP, “RCA Studio A Sessions”.
Jade Bird shared her hauntingly beautiful cover of Radiohead’s Black Star this week.
I wanted to release the video of us playing Black Star as I know a lot of you may have seen me playing it in your venue, in your city, and I appreciate you always took a minute to be silent and listen. The lyrics are so beautiful in this song.
Cover of Radiohead’s “Black Star” performed by Jade Bird at RCA Studio A, Nashville.
L.A.-via-New York rockers Slothrust today announced that their fifth album, “Parallel Timeline,” will be out via Dangerbird Records.
Having teased the project with the release of “Cranium” last month, the band (core trio of singer-guitarist Leah Wellbaum, drummer Will Gorin and bassist Kyle Bann) celebrated the announcement with the release of a new single and video.
“Strange Astrology” is a ballad, giving Wellbaum a chance to shine. And she does. “‘Strange Astrology’ is one of the only proper love songs I have ever written,” she says. “It’s an honest exploration of what it means to love someone who is intrinsically different than you. It’s about hoping that those juxtaposing qualities and instincts encourage meaningful growth instead of chaos, but knowing that inevitably it will always be a bit of both. That is part of the fun of being in love with someone whose way of being starkly contrasts yours. I have always been fascinated by those differences and all the adventures and new perspectives they offer.”
As for the video, colour it strange, too. For almost five minutes, Wellbaum interacts (to choose a neutral word) with all kinds of fruit.
“The music video for “Strange Astrology” explores an idea I’ve always been fascinated by, which is: where do I end and you begin?” Wellbaum says. “We chose fruit to explore this theme because, in the moments where I find myself caught in a loop of existential dread, fruit has been a surprisingly grounding force. In a world with so much perceived chaos, fruit anchors me in a reality where all is intentional and perfect as is. It offers truly wild colours and has shockingly well-organized insides. Fruit is an epic sensory experience and full of surprises. Sometimes when I think about fruit, the presence of the void falls away and all is exactly as it is meant to be. In many ways, love and intimacy are mirrors of that experience. Also, the world needs more gay anthems about astrological connection and I am happy to provide that.”
The official music video for “Strange Astrology” from the forthcoming new album ‘Parallel Timeline’
Driven by the force of nature, The Black Angels singer’s solo journey takes an hypnotic detour along the wild trails of his indigenous homestead with songs of love, hope, human connection whilst navigating perils of modern society and tentatively facing the darkness.
The music of Alex Maas has always mesmerised. Now, on his soul-baring solo debut Luca, the Texan and The Black Angel’s singer journey is taking an equally hypnotic detour along the wild trails of his indigenous homestead. Driven by the force of nature, each phase of life is celebrated through songs of love, hope, human connection whilst navigating perils of modern society and tentatively facing the darkness.
It’s a record fuelled by memories of an upbringing in the strange, unique paradise of his father’s plant nursery in Seabrook, Texas by the waterfront of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Native American sounds that would drift through the garden’s hidden speakers, ricocheting off multi-coloured pottery mazes of curiosities from across the world.
Casting shades of deeply personal wide-eyed innocence and the darker realms of paranoia, “Luca” has its sights set on the near and distant future. Subtle psychedelic flourishes and instrumentation come from a cast of expert players in Austin but this is a deeply personal endeavour.
There will be a new Birds of Maya record out June 25th on Drag City Records.
Much about this album, including the name and artwork is in honour of the beauty and wildness of the vacant lots where we used to play shows, garden, or build playgrounds for our kids before they were all dug out to build gigantic condos. It’s harder now to find the Earth around here. It’s not gone, just hiding, waiting to be let loose again.
This record is the first one we ever recorded in an actual studio, Black Dirt Studio.
A long era of dull ringing and nothing else in our ears is over. Once again, winds of warm guitar and humid thunderheads of bass and toms rumble all around. With Valdez, Birds of Maya are back in flight. And like the first song title explicitly states, this latest is a soaring blast of riffers, rife with punk rock abandon, sludge, treble, distortion, neck-throttling rock n roll solos, pummelling drums and bass and half-shouted/half-gargled vocals, all of it half on and half off the mic. For the good times as always, these Birds!.
That’s how they’ve done it: fast and heavy, hard, live and loose, amid accumulating piles of empties, in appropriately informal environments since 2004ish, with their three LPs (on Holy Mountain, Richie and Little Big Chief) ripping us up whenever they drop. With each release, our thirst has increased, but to our horror, we haven’t found any fresh feathers from their tree in the new release bins since 2013. Somewhere in Philadelphia, Jason Killinger, Ben Leaphart and Mike Polizze played on — preferably outside (the shows are always extra-good), but wherever, really.
Recorded in 2014 at Black Dirt Studios in New York. Yeah: Birds of Maya packed up their shit, drove out of North Philly to a recording studio hundreds of miles away and made an album. Kinda nuts. And then didn’t release it until…well, yeah — now! Time is a test that Birds of Maya recordings need to pass before they see the light of day. At the time this was recorded, Birds of Maya were standing on the other side of ten years kicking around town, suddenly far away from the primordial ooze they’d flopped forth from. The streets where all this had happened on were changing, with new money rolling in, but they were the same old Birds, content with their libations and ear-splitting variations on old favourite Stooges chords. The cover art of Valdez is a couple images from those days, glimpses at the old grass roots before they were ripped up by developers to build condos. But nothing ever really goes away, Valdez stands tall amongst the changing landscape.
“BFIOU” is from “Valdez” released on LP & Streaming on June 25th, 2021 by Drag City Records.
From the start, Son Lux has operated as something akin to a sonic test kitchen. The band strives to question deeply held assumptions about how music is made and re-construct it from a molecular level. What began as a solo project for founder Ryan Lott expanded in 2014, thanks to a kinship with Ian Chang and Rafiq Bhatia too strong to ignore.
Arriving at a time of considerable uncertainty in the world, Son Lux’s multi-album ‘Tomorrows’ is ambitious in scope and intent. Born of an active, intentional approach to shaping sound, the music reminds us of the necessity of questioning assumptions, and of sitting with the tension.
The music encompassed on Tomorrows provides an appropriate parallel for the sustained cacophony of the present moment, advancing a friction that reveals the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange. While this carefully crafted inversion acclimatizes the ear to tension, the steadily hardening exterior fractures at unlikely moments, revealing a strikingly visceral, emotional core. The process of creating Tomorrows is iterative in nature, with the lyrical content and music continually adapting and responding to one another and the shifting landscape of the moment.
The Fat Angel Sings 