The Joy Formidable are back with their first new single since 2018’s AAARTH, and it finds their dreamy, grungy sound in fine form. The Welsh rockers have shared a brand new song, “Into the Blue,” via a video for the track. It’s the band’s first new single since their 2018 album, “AAARTH”. Watch the video, which the band self-directed, below.
The song was written in Wales, but recorded in the band’s current home of Utah.
Lead singer/guitarist Ritzy Bryan had this to say about the single in a press release: “‘Into the Blue’ is about surrendering to love and magic. Having the courage to enjoy a new journey and the mystery and excitement of something unexpected. It’s about opening your eyes to beauty and love again. Making it to the other side. Whilst not conceived as a metaphor for the times we all live in now, it certainly turned out that way.”
Of the video, Bryan adds: “I am always daydreaming in the bathtub between recordings. That diffuse thinking where your mind wanders freely – I always finish songs when I’m in that state. The idea that your imagination, that escape into another, deeper world can sometimes create a stronger connection with yourself.”
Melina Duterte (Jay Som) and Ellen Kempner (Palehound) are Bachelor. Written and recorded in Topanga, CA over the course of two weeks in January of 2020, pre-pandemic, their debut album “Doomin’ Sun” is a record steeped in friendship.
Creating the space to explore significant themes from queerness to climate change, the collection also finds Bachelor experiencing pure, unadulterated joy: the kind of joy that can only come from creating, laughing, and having a ridiculous amount of fun with a close friend.
Written after a real-life encounter, “Stay in the Car” is a visceral experience. It’s heavy, it absolutely rips. “Stay in the Car” is a kickass, bass-heavy yearning portrait of a woman outside a supermarket. Sometimes desire is a slow burn and sometimes it hits you like a ton of bricks in a parking lot.
Last month we announced Palehound’s Ellen Kempner and Jay Som’sMelina Duterte new collaborative project Bachelor and shared their first single “Anything At All” to critical acclaim. The duo have announced their debut album Doomin’ Sun arriving May 28th.
Written and recorded in Topanga, CA over the course of two weeks in January of 2020, pre-pandemic, Doomin’ Sun is a record steeped in friendship. Kempner and Duterte hybridized their individual song writing talents, producing a collection that slips between moods with ease and showcases their lyrical prowess. While the album features collaborations with the likes of Big Thief’s Buck Meek and James Krivchenia, as well as Duterte’s partner and Routine-counterpart Annie Truscott of Chastity Belt, the record was largely made by the two musicians in isolation as a fitting precursor to the forthcoming year. Creating the space to explore significant themes from queerness to climate change, the collection also finds Bachelor experiencing pure, unadulterated joy: the kind of joy that can only come from creating, laughing, and having a ridiculous amount of fun with a close friend.
Pre-order your limited edition Early Bird copy on Cloudy Orange vinyl (limited to 500) from the Polyvinyl Store before they sell out. Snag a test pressing copy with 10% of proceeds going to For the Gworls. Doomin’ Sun includes “Anything at All,” Bachelor’s debut single, which was shared in February
Alongside today’s album news is a brand new single and official music video “Stay in the Car” directed & edited by Haoyan of America. Kempner explains, “I wrote the lyrics to ‘Stay In the Car’ back in December of 2019 when I was in Florida for my partner’s top surgery. I had run out one afternoon, post op, while he was healing to grab lunch for us and as I was gathering my stuff in the parking lot, a big car pulled up and this absolutely beautiful woman got out. She was dressed all in red, dripping with jewellry and had the most wild fiery mane I’d ever seen. She was yelling at the man behind the wheel asking him what he wanted from the store and I wished I was that man. I wanted to be a part of her life, her best friend, her driver, whatever she wanted me to be. I was completely mesmerized.”
Duterte continues, “We wanted this song to be a visceral listening experience, inspired by The Pixies and The Breeders. For the music video, we worked on a two-day shoot with Haoyan of America in Poughkeepsie in extremely cold weather. We all collaborated on the idea that our friendship should be portrayed in a fun and stylish way. Haoyan captured that energy in his own unique and creative lens through his collection of 80s/90s/00s props and toys, CGI, and anything car-themed.”
Limited edition Early Bird copy on Cloudy Orange vinyl (limited to 500) from the Polyvinyl Store before they sell out.
In 2019 Christian Savill found himself alone and with a year off from playing guitar for his grown-up band Slowdive. He started writing and demoing songs with no particular plan. From 2001 he had recorded with long time friend and collaborator Sean Hewson as Monster Movie releasing several albums on Graveface Records. with help from RachelGoswell (Slowdive)These new ideas felt different in that they’re more personal and honest.
Christian sent these sketches to good friends and multi-instrumentalists, Ryan Graveface (Dreamend / The Casket Girls) and Steve Clarke (The Soft Cavalry), and Beachy Head was formed. Ryan and Christian put flesh on the bones in Savannah just before Covid struck. Matt Duckworth (Flaming Lips) added drums. In between lockdowns back in the UK Steve added harmonies and other instrumentation. The final touch of recording was Rachel Goswell (Slowdive / Mojave 3 / The Soft Cavalry / Minor Victories) contributing vocals on a few songs.
“Christian and I recorded the structure of these tunes in Savannah 2 weeks before the pandemic hit and we’ve been file-trading ever since,” say Ryan. You can listen to the album’s closing track, “Destroy Us,” which sounds a little like Slowdive and a little like Graveface bands (and a little like M83).
The final touch of recording was Rachel Goswell (Slowdive / Mojave 3 / The Soft Cavalry / Minor Victories) contributing vocals on a few songs. Beachy Head is a chalk cliff in Sussex. It’s one of Britain’s most popular beauty spots but also a notorious suicide spot.
Goswell was also in The Soft Cavalry with Clarke and the two are married.
Anna Fox Rochinski (of Psych indie rock band Quilt) has shared a new single titled “No Better.” It is the latest single released from her upcoming debut solo album, “Cherry”, which will be out on March 26th via Don Giovanni.
Carlos Hernandez and Julian Fader (both of Ava Luna) produced Cherry.“Everybody’s Down.” It is the third single to be released from her upcoming album, Rochinski speaks about the concept behind the song in a press release: “‘Everybody’s Down’ is a song that’s meant to be a little abstract but is generally about feeling run down and bewildered by rampant complicity during catastrophic times. ‘Everybody’s Down’, including you and me. And yes, also, ‘down’ like bummed, if that speaks to you. And yes, also ‘down’ as in, just casually down to do something, like, down to go grab food with your homies or whatever. It’s a triple entendre. We all feel all of these things every day. It’s a lot. Literally all I can do anymore to stay sane is have a sense of humour and laugh at stuff. I am so much less randomly sentimental than I used to be, but I think it’s because I have learned what really deserves my love and attention.”
She adds: “There was a primordial version of this song that I brought in to [album producers] Carlos [Hernandez] and Julian [Fader], but in the studio, we would visit it at the end of the night after all our serious work was done and throw stuff at the wall to see what would stick. It was like a way to release tension, and we didn’t take it very seriously. We made this minimal, weird, scuzzy instrumental with bass, guitar, synth and programmed drums, and I then took this raw creation home and worked out the structure and the melody and lyrics. In the end, I fell in love with this song, much to my surprise.”
Quilt’s most recent album, Plaza, came out in 2016 on Mexican Summer.
English rock band Field Music (led by brothers Peter and David Brewis) are releasing a new album, Flat White Moon, on April 23rd via Memphis Industries. On Wednesday, they shared the album’s third single, “Not When You’re In Love,” via a video for the track. Andy Martin directed the video, which features images from old movies while one brother plays piano and the other sings the song from an old TV screen.
The band’s last couple of albums were fairly complicated, with this one they wanted to be a bit looser and perhaps, despite the pandemic upending live music, make something that comes off well onstage.
Not When You’re In Love is taken from the album Flat White Moon,
The album also includes “Orion From the Street,” a new song the band shared in January. Then when the album was announced they shared its second single, “No Pressure,” via an amusing tutorial music video that shows fans how to achieve the band’s signature sound.
Speaking of the album as a whole in a press release, David Brewis says: “We want to make people feel good about things that we feel terrible about.”
Peter Brewis says he was inspired by Beck’s Odelay and De La Soul’s Three Feet High and Rising. “I love how they use samples on those albums, taking parts that are obviously played—that are gestural—and then reconstruct them.” “We don’t usually record a song thinking about how we’re going to play it live,” says David. “We’re not that kind of band. But there was a sense that it would be fun to do new songs which didn’t have those complications.”
“We say it all the time: You make music with your ears and your brain first,” Peter adds. “But I trust my ears and my brain, so let’s make something which just feels good and feels physical.”
In December, Field Music released “Home For Christmas,” a song for Memphis Industries’ holiday compilation Lost Christmas. They released their last album, Making a New World, in January 2020 on Memphis Industries.
Produced by long time friend Cate Le Bon, ‘Boy from Michigan’ is Grant’s most autobiographical and melodic work to date. Grant stopped being a boy in Michigan aged twelve, when his family moved to Denver, Colorado, shifting rust to bible belt, a further vantage point to watch collective dreams unravel. Across 12 tracks, Grant lays out his past for careful cross-examination. In a decade of making records by himself, he has playfully experimented with mood, texture and sound, all the better for actualizing the seriousness of his thoughts. At one end of his musical rainbow, he is the battle-scarred piano-man, at the other, a robust electronic auteur. ‘Boy from Michigan’ seamlessly marries both.
With Le Bon at the helm, Grant pared back his zingers, maximizing the emotional impact of the melodies. A clarinet forms the bedrock of a song. One pre-chorus feels lifted from vintage Human League. There is a saxophone solo. ‘Boy from Michigan’ ultimately swings between ambient and progressive, calm and livid. The album’s narrative journey opens with Grant at his artistic prettiest, three songs drawn from his pre-Denver life (the Michigan Trilogy, as Grant calls them): the title track, “The Rusty Bull,” and “County Fair.” Each draws the listener in to a specific sense of place, before untangling its significance with a rich cast-list of local characters, often symbolizing the uncultivated faith of childhood.
Elsewhere, tracks like “Mike and Julie” and “The Cruise Room” offer an affecting plunge deep into Grant’s late teenage years in Denver, while the midpoint of the album is highlighted by “Best in Me” and “Rhetorical Figure,” a pair of skittish, scholarly dance tunes that build on the lineage of Grant’s electropop heroes, Devo. Childhood as a horror narrative is the theme of “Dandy Star,” which observes a tiny Grant watching the Mia Farrow horror movie ‘See No Evil’ on an old family TV set, and finally on “The Only Baby” (released this January) Grant removes his razor blade from a pocket to cleanly slit the throat of Trump’s America, authoring a scathing epitaph to an era of acute national exposition.
Though he has lived in Iceland since 2011 – the same year he was also diagnosed HIV-positive – Grant spent his childhood and formative years in the US and maintains US citizenship. Growing up, Grant was subjected to a deeply ingrained hatred of anyone perceived as homosexual at school. Following the demise of his first band The Czars, Grant left music entirely for over five years, only to achieve greater success as a solo artist (his acclaimed 2015 solo LP ‘Grey Tickles, Black Pressure’ went Top Five in the UK). Grant has sold out Royal Albert Hall, performed at Glastonbury, Latitude + more, and his song “Snug Snacks” was featured on Pitchfork’s ‘Songs That Define LGBTQ Price’. BBC Radio 6 host Mary Anne Hobbs described Grant’s music: “Most songwriting, even if it’s based on a true story … is embellished in some way. But John’s lyrics — they’re so true they might as well be written in blood.”
Taken from the album “Boy From Michigan” by John Grant, due for release 25th June 2021 via Bella Union and Partisan records
Beartree Records are hosting a discussion with John Grant when his new album ‘Boy From Michigan‘ is released. The event will be at The Abbeydale Picturehouse on Abbeydale Road, Sheffield, on 29th June.
John Grant will be in conversation with Richard Hawley, for around 1 hour. Following the talk, there will be an album signing with John. The event is very close to when ‘things get back to normal’, so as a precautionary measure, this event will be socially distanced, so hopefully all being well it can happen regardless. This means the capacity is very low, just over 100 seats available, so around 50 bundles, and will be fully seated in pairs.
We will happily ship albums, but we recommend if you want it signing to arrange collection from the shop (shipping delays can happen from time to time and are beyond our control). The album is released on the 25th June.
Over the course of three albums Australian psych band Babe Rainbow have built an enthusiastic fanbase with their neo-hippie psych pop style. They’ve lately found an unexpected fan in actor, activist, and musician Jaden Smith. After hearing “Us and the Rainbow” from the band’s 2019 album “Today”, Smith connected with the band over Instagram and one of the year’s most unexpected pairing was born.
Though the track may initially seem like an oddball pairing, Jaden fits seamlessly into Babe Rainbow’s world of languid melodies and dreamlike instrumentals. As usual with Babe Rainbow, the new track is a gentle psych pop daydream, with the band and Smith guiding listeners through a wonderland of velvety atmosphere and euphoric summer haze.
Along with the new single, the band have also announced details of their forthcoming fourth studio album, Changing Colours. The band decamped to Topanga Canyon last year to record with producer Kyle Mullarky before returning to The Music Farm studio in Byron Bay, Australia to finish the record with Wayne Connelly (The Vines, Neil Finn, You Am I). Together the band honed a psych sound informed by California beaches, easy going Laurel Canyon pop, and a trippy haze of melody, all coming together on Changing Colours, coming May 14th via Eureka Records through AWAL on digital and Flightless Records on vinyl.
Babe Rainbow’s new album ‘Changing Colours’ will be released 14th May 2021.
“New York City’s layers of continuous noise have become the backdrop to a rising four-piece that NME already calls “one of New York’s most exciting new bands.” Just like the city, The Muckers’ sound is equal parts vital and timeless, resolute and vibrant.
As The New York Times tells the story, lead guitarist and vocalist “Emir Mohseni, was inspired by the Strokes to pursue a career in music — a passion that brought him to New York all the way from his native Iran.” The move, profiled across acclaimed publications, from Rolling Stone to Billboard, only marked the beginning of the band’s story. Upon landing in this new environment, Mohseni met the three guys that would become his closest friends, and build with him the vitalizing sound and enrapturing live show that The Muckers are garnering early praises for: Anthony Azarmgin at the bass, Chris Cawley on rhythm guitar, and John Zimmerman behind the drums.
It’s fitting that “Roll The Dice”, the first single off their debut album is a song about forgetting the past and taking big risks, as The Muckers move on from the novelty of a musician that has taken considerable risks to be free to perform his music to becoming a fully fledged band whose legion of fans grows bigger after each performance.” from supporting Pond on the road in 1000-cap rooms to making the crowds dance and sweat in the divey bars of Brooklyn. One of their performances, at Treefort Festival, had caught KEXP’s Cheryl Waters eye who commended them for “captivating the crowds” on her Music That Matters show.
“There is something altogether fresh in their energy, in Mohseni’s fast-moving guitar licks and his lyrics full of yearning,”
Last month, Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy announced their new album, “Superwolves”, out digitally April 30th and physically June 18th. Today, they release a new single “My Blue Suit,” with an accompanying video directed by Geoff McFetridge, and announce their first tour together since 2014. The tour will see the duo return to their ancestral lupine roots in Big Sur, the site of one of their first live performances, and beyond. “My Blue Suit” follows previously released singles/videos “Make Worry For Me” and “Hall of Death.” Where “Hall of Death” featured a full band (courtesy of Tuareg guitar giant Mdou Moctar), “My Blue Suit” presents the duo at their core with Sweeney on acoustic guitar and Bonny (aka Will Oldham) on vocals.
McFetridge elaborates on the video below: “I started this video by painting. The work I created, in response to the song, was large scale figures I could use in scenes filmed on camera. All the images in the film are done in camera, there are no digital effects. The graphic sequences were done with paintings wrapped around a garbage can placed on a Techniques 1200 turntable. The tools used to create the effects were knives, glue, paint and tape. The pieces created for the film are nearly life size portraits done with acrylic on paper. These works, the film and the animated elements will be shown in the project space of Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto, opening May 1st.”
Track from the Matt Sweeney & Bonnie “Prince” Billy album “Superwolves,” out on Digital & Streaming on April 30th, 2021 and LP/CS/CD on June 18th, 2021 from Drag City/Palace Records and Domino Recordings.
What’s set The Peacers apart from other bands from that scene they’re travelling alongside (and exchanging members with) is a more baroque, acoustic approach to their garage vision; maybe a little more Pearls Before Swine in that initial mix than say, Bubble Puppy, maybe more ’66 than ’69.
It’s about time we had a third album from them; There was the 2015’s self-titled debut, full of lazy, glammy nuggets, and Introducing The Crimsmen, which followed two years on and well, whaddya know, the second Peacers line-up, the one that recorded that second album after exactly two-thirds of the album one version made for the out door – they’ve held firm to the tiller for this little beauty, “Blexxed Rec”, so props, Bo Moore, Shayde Sartin and Mike Shoun. Mike Donovan may have headed for the east coast and dropped a couple of solo sets, but they’ve kept a welcome in the Cali hillsides. Jolly good show. No time to shilly-shally.
we are hyped that The Peacers return on Drag City with “Blexxed Rec”. Lush details and laid back psych-pop vibes. We really like this band. Irrepressible full-spectrum psych-pop. Suddenly, with three singer-songwriters, they’re the subterranean Beatles, a loaded Revolver. Strumming every guitar and every bass drum, rebuilding pop in it’s own fiendish image,Blexxed Rec is a blessed event for all you rock and roll people. Go knock on every door! Wake the world! The Peacers are at hand.
“Ghost of a Motherfucker” takes us on deeper, every riff counting, Mike beaming in from AM radio in a rusty Chevy a la Christine; timeless. And it riffs up atonally and lazy ass deliciously while that motherfucker sleeps all day.
“Ghost of a Motherfucker” is a track from The Peacers album “Blexxed Rec,” . This long awaited album from The Peacers, Blexxed Rec, is out today! Full spectrum psych-pop for all. Strumming every guitar and every bass drum, rebuilding pop in it’s own fiendish image, Blexxed Rec is a blessed event. Wake the world!
The actual album came preluded by a single, “Irish Suit Oblique”, and that also came with a video; so why the hell not, you can take a squinny at that down by the sales kickers desk. It has an eerie little eddy, it does, with that oblique comment on the masked world we currently inhabit in that mesh fruit bag face covering, maybe; strange, cut-up sentences steal up the screen, all to visually inform a tune with bags of atmosphere and a deliciously baroque-psych vibe.
“Irish Suit” is a track from The Peacers album “Blexxed Rec,” out on LP, Cassette, & Streaming on March 26th, 2021, from Drag City Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 