Brooklyn band Pom Pom Squad signed to City Slang records with their new single, which is inspired, in part, by The Virgin Suicides, as is the accompanying video, which was co-directed by lead singer and guitarist Mia Berrin and Julia Sub. If the song sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been around in demo form for at least four years.
“It’s about the fear of intimacy I felt as a teen that stemmed from negative early experiences of male attention,” Mia says. “The Virgin Suicides, one of my very favourite movies, captured that fear in a way that deeply resonated—the scene where Trip leaves Lux alone on the football field. He had gone through the effort of making her love him and then, when he got what he wanted, he left. I released the demo for this song on Bandcamp when I was in college and it ended up being played on BrooklynVegan’s blog radio on Sirius XMU. It was the first lightbulb that maybe I had a calling in music. The release has been a long time coming, but ultimately, I’m glad I waited so that I could really do right by this thing and simultaneously, by my teenage self.”
Worriers are a band from Brooklyn, New York, centered around the songwriting of Lauren Denitzio, with the help of friends Mikey Erg, Nick Psillas, and more. They released their 2nd LP Survival Pop w/ SideOneDummy Records and have toured with John K Samson, Against Me!, Julien Baker, Anti Flag, and more. Worriers‘ debut album “Imaginary Life” was produced by LauraJane Grace of Against Me! .
Nathan Followill is reflecting on the year-long wait to release Kings of Leon’s next and eighth studio album “When You See Yourself”, released March 5th, and how the band circumvented their natural instincts to completely overhaul the album after sitting on it for so long. The band’s first release since 2016’s Walls, now the Followills seem more relieved that the album is finally on its way out, following its delay around the onset of the pandemic. Some band members choose not to listen to it for fear of wanting to make changes to songs, lyrics, or completely scrap the album.
“It’s been a long wait sitting on this music, and it’s always difficult knowing that you have something that you’re really excited for everyone to get to hear, and then being told you have to sit on it for a minute was tough,” says Nathan Followill. “But it also gave us a chance to live with it for a little while, and it’s still just as fresh today as it was on the first listen.”
“I was worried that I was going to want to change things, but when I did finally listen to it, I was very pleased,” says Caleb Followill. “If we did want to change something, we could have gone back and done it, but I think we had put in the work and it was the album that we wanted to put out.”
Throughout the recording of When You See Yourself, produced by Markus Dravs (Arcade Fire, Coldplay, Mumford & Sons), who also worked on Walls, all the innate concerns of how it would be perceived went out the window,and everything centred around the band making an album they would enjoy. “It was super important for us to feel like we made an album that we liked… and trying not to think about anything else,” says Matthew Followill. “We didn’t even think about radio or anything like that.”
Most of the 11 tracks averaging four and a half minutes, says Caleb, which doesn’t make it the most radio-friendly record by Kings of Leon. “It was just more like play the song while it feels good, and when it’s time to end the song, we end the song,” says Caleb. The band was also on the same page, sound-wise and with tracks, for the first time in nearly 20 years from the moment they stepped into Nashville’s Neon Leon studio for pre-production.
“This was definitely the most on the same page that we had all been on going into a project,” says Nathan. “In the past, Jared and Matt were like the younger voices that would bring cool type music that me and Caleb might not be listening to, so there were times when we were kind of in different directions… There was this just natural vacuum, and that makes it so much easier when you’re not feeling like you’re having to swim upstream to get a song as a group.”
Pulling a piece from the end of one of the album’s songs, the band landed on When You See Yourself as the title—and it stuck. At first, the words didn’t resonate with Caleb, who remembers writing them down and singing them.
“After all of this, that we’ve all gone through together, you really do have to take a hard look at yourself, and see exactly who you are and how you can handle situations, and how you can be a part of the solution and be a part of something,” says Caleb. “I think I relate to it a little more than when I actually wrote the words down on paper, but the guys, they were the ones that had to fill in, ‘This means something more than what you just said.’”
The connecting for the band was in realizing that as you get older there’s so much that is out of your control, you begin questioning your place in the world.
“It’s just kind of trying to connect with yourself and ask yourself, ‘What do you see when you see yourself?’” says Jared. “Sometimes you’re way harder on yourself than anybody else would be, and it’s just a good question to ask yourself… It really kind of just stuck with me and it kind of just grew from that—and it kind of shaped the vision of the whole album from that point on.”
For Kings of Leon, every album since 2003 debut Youth and Song Manhood has been a musical reflection of their growth.
“We were discovering new music and new things and we were growing as men,” says Caleb of the band’s journey together. “And so every experience we had, we’d come home and we’d just put it into music. And when you’re doing that, you look up and it’s like, ‘wow, we’ve made five albums in seven years,’ and it didn’t feel like that. It just felt like we were living our dream and something that we never thought would actually come true was coming true and just kept feeding the fire.”
Proud of When You See Yourself in its entirety, one song, “A Wave,” continues to echo for the band an is admittedly their favourite track. “I love ‘A Wave,’ and I think it’s just because we worked so long and so hard on it that if I didn’t say that, I would probably jump off a bridge or something, because I felt like we honestly worked on that song for about eight months, and it changed so many times,” says Jared. “I’m just proud of where it ended up, but I really like all of it.”
Working through its lyrics, Caleb remembers the band struggling to figure it out, and recording it several different ways. In the end, everything came back to the lyrics and lines, he says, because there was something pure about the song. “When we finally got it right, all of us were just like, ‘The nightmare is over,’” says Caleb. “We found a way to put it on the album, and we’re all very proud of it. It’s one of my proudest moments on the album.”
Kings of Leon “When You See Yourself” The New Album Available Now
In this episode of Fender Sessions: Soccer Mommy performs three songs on the American Professional II Strat HSS and talks writing in the van, finding her sound and why she’d never want to take the stage without her guitar.
FenderSessions by Soccer Mommy
Setlist:0:00 bloodstream 7:03 royal screw up 12:58 circle the drain
Michelle Zauner is back with her first Japanese Breakfast album since 2017’s ‘Soft Sounds From Another Planet’. Zauner will publish her memoir Crying In H Mart later this year. Set for release in the UK on August 5th, the book is described as an “unflinching and powerful memoir about [Zauner] growing up Korean-American, losing her mother and forging her own identity”.
The new album ‘Jubilee’ – you can hear its lead single, ‘Be Sweet’. ‘Jubilee’ will be released on June 4th via Dead Oceans. Speaking about the process behind making the album, Zauner said that she’s “never wanted to rest on any laurels. I wanted to push it as far as it could go, inviting more people in and pushing myself as a composer, a producer, an arranger.”
“After spending the last five years writing about grief, I wanted our follow up to be about joy,” Zauner explained. “For me, a third record should feel bombastic and so I wanted to pull out all the stops for this one. “I wrote ‘Be Sweet’ with Jack Tatum from Wild Nothing a few years ago. I’ve been holding onto it for so long and am so excited to finally put it out there.”
For today, Michelle Zauner the mastermind behind Japanese Breakfast already has a busy year ahead of her third album “Jubilee”, the awaited follow-up to 2017’s Soft Sounds From Another Planet, which will be out June 4th. The song is packed with massive drum hits, Nile Rodgers-like guitar strums, and shimmering synths (Oh! How those synths shimmer). The album’s lead single is a joyous and hopeful introduction to Zauner’s next album, but it comes after a long period of mourning and growth; her first two albums coincided with witnessing her mother undergo cancer treatment and grieving her death. “After spending the last five years writing about grief, I wanted our follow up to be about joy,” she said of the new project. “For me, a third record should feel bombastic and so I wanted to pull out all the stops for this one.
“Be Sweet” also comes with a fun video that Zauner directed which features Mannequin Pussy’s Marisa Dabice. Together they search for UFOs with a very legitimate looking neon-lit UFO tracker. “I want to believe in you / I want to believe in something,” Zauner sings during the chorus.
“Be Sweet” the new song by Japanese Breakfast from ‘Jubilee’, out June 4th on Dead Oceans Records.
Fans of shoegaze have long been praising the miraculous music of Australian four-piece Flyying Colours. Ever since the release of debut album Mindfulness in 2016, they have shot into the worldwide consciousness and developed a cult following. Now, with the release of second LP “Fantasy Country”, that underground audience is bursting at the seams and looks likely to break the band right into mainstream popularity.
Released through acclaimed indie label AC30, “Fantasy Country” is a delightfully playful revamp of 90’s psyche and alternative rock which recalls the best of the past whilst being energetic and innovative enough to always feel fresh, vital and new over the eight tracks.
“This album was supposed to now be 6-12 months old. We take touring and supporting our music live pretty seriously so it would have been very difficult for us to put out this album during the early stages of the pandemic. We are very lucky to be in Australia right now where shows are starting up again, and we of course hope to be touring internationally again soon”.
Flyying Colours have announced headline dates to promote their new material. Don’t miss them playing spectacular shows at The Chameleon in Nottingham, The Prince Albert at Brighton and The Lexington in London.
Chicago trio FACS have announced their fourth album, which is titled “Present Tense” and will be out May 21st via Trouble in Mind. The title would also make a great descriptor for the band’s style of bleak, tightly wound post-punk, but this album marks a progression into slightly more approachable music.
The album was made at Chicago’s Electrical Audio before and during the pandemic, the seeds of which were planted with “Alone Without,” FACS’ 2020 Adult Swim single. “Alone Without was the first song we recorded and we really built it in the studio” says singer-guitarist Brian Case. “Alianna [Kalaba] and I played different instruments, and I think that freedom informed how the other songs developed. All the lyrics were random phrases on a big sheet and were put together as the songs took shape, so I feel like I was collecting these thoughts and trying to figure out how to process them as a big picture vs making complete ideas in individual songs.”
“Strawberry Cough” is about the world of interiors, and the line between where influences come together or split off. Going into record stores and having conversations with strangers, learning about new sounds, and finding something I’ve been looking for has been sorely missed over the last year. Seeing records spread out all over the house while working on Present Tense made me wonder how these different eras and sounds found their way into our music. I spent a lot of time trying to find the visual / emotional connections between seemingly unrelated works, and walking that back into my subconscious when writing. Sometimes the video is a visualization of the words or music, and sometimes it’s just some random themes you notice while refiling your record collection.”
The new single is “Strawberry Cough” which is the friendliest face FACS have put forward yet. It’s still pretty dark, though, with Noah Leger’s massive drums leading the charge. Taken from the Chicago band’s fourth full-length album “Present Tense”, out May 21st, 2021 via Trouble In Mind Records (www.troubleinmindrecs.com)
This was a concert that took place on 16th October 1970 at the Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver, Canada. A really great inspiring opening speech by Irving Stowe. Opens with Phil Ochs and his folk songs with just voice & acoustic guitar & so it is mainly down to strong words. Phil’s version of ‘Changes’ is not so different to Crispian St Peter’s & is a highlight of the set & really valid for this gig “Scenes of my young years were warm in my mind, Visions of shadows that shine. Till one day I returned and found they were the Victims of the vines of changes”.
His last song ‘No More Songs’ is also brilliant. His guitar picking sometimes is a bit shaky but with his voice & words there is something enigmatic about this (6 years later he sadly took his own life). Next up is James Taylor with his distinctive voice & guitar, In his quietly mesmerizing voice – a combination of Bostonian accent and Southern drawl – Taylor lulled us seemingly effortlessly into a blissful euphoria Taylor’s songs are much more well known with highlights being ‘Something In The Way She Moves’, ‘Fire & Rain’ and particularly the brilliant ‘Carolina In My Mind’ (always loved the version by Marmalade) are classics.
The hour was close to midnight when Joni walked on stage with her long blonde hair cascading over her guitar, and as she soared into “Chelsea Morning”, the whole stadium seemed to rise several inches off the ground. Equally at home on guitar, piano and dulcimer, she selected a range of songs from older albums as well as a few from the as-yet-unreleased “Blue”. Near the end of her set she called James back to sing a duet of “Mr. Tambourine Man”, and then both artists called their managers (Elliot Roberts and Peter Asher), and Terry David, onstage to join them in “Circle Game”. Joni Mitchell alternating between guitar & piano provides soothing type music. Joni seems a nice innocent lady & is the star here. Joni Mitchell even donating the cost of renting her grand piano. “Ladies Of The Canyon” had been released in April to acclaim, and ‘Melody Maker’ would vote her the Top Female Performer of 1970. She was as big a draw as we could possibly hope for.
When the piano chords of ‘Woodstock’ slowly starts up it is very moving. It’s an historic moment. 2nd from final track ‘A Case Of You’ is simply beautiful, brilliant & probably the highlight “I am a lonely painter I live in a box of paints I’m frightened by the devil & I’m drawn to the ones that aren’t”. Other highlights from Joni are ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, ‘Cactus Tree’, ‘For Free’. Perhaps should lose a mark for its recording quality but historically both musically & politically this concert is inspired & essential listening.
Fake Fruit distill Pink Flag era Wire, Pylon, and Mazzy Star to expound on the absurdity of modern life. Front woman Hannah D’Amato leads the group through three minute clap backs of minimal, moody post-punk. San Francisco’s Fake Fruit make indie rock that owes a little to Courtney Barnett, Life Without Buildings and early-’80s postpunk. Their debut album is out this Friday via Rocks in Your Head (the label run by Sonny Smith). The album’s lead track, “No Mutuals,” is a great taste of what’s in store. “Old Skin” is about that moment where you reach the clearing after digging yourself out of a no-good state of mind or relationship. It’s when you’re finally liberated and gain perspective on how bad things were. You can finally *exhale* as you put some dirt over the hole knowing you won’t be going back in there”
Fake Fruit distill Wire from the time of Pink Flag,Pylonand Mazzy Star to expose the absurdity of modern life… when you find such condent claims regarding what’s going to be Oakland quartet’s self-titled debut album, which will be available on March 5th thanks to Rocks In Your Head Records, you know that Hannah D’Amato (vocals and guitar), Alex Post (guitar), Martin Miller (bass) and Miles MacDiarmid (drums), come willing to alter the minds of those who wish to put their ears on the post-punk, maximized in ‘No Mutuals’,which waters his first single and with which we can speculate on everything said above, sloping a daisy in which it appears that, Public Practice and PinchPoints, may be somehow represented in the instrumentation, leaving the vowels for a ponytail that would envelop the courtney Barnett more pipe , screaming with sentimentality that is out of the ragepour into their subjects, and is that their thing, and more in the times they run, is to have fun on the stage.
Hannah D’Amato– Vox + Guitar Alex Post– Lead Guitar Miles MacDiarmid– Drums Martin Miller- Bass
“No Mutals”, the new single from the debut record of Oakland’s Fake Fruit, available on Rocks In Your Head Records March 5th.
The plans for, and the realities of, 2020 were so very different things for Chicago band Fauvely Indie rock with a dose of dream-pop, folk, and shoegaze for their upcoming album, “Beautiful Places”. The quartet, who split their time between Chicago and their home-town of Savannah, Georgia, A slot at an official SXSW Austin Showcase didnt go ahead. Like so many bands though, plans were dashed, the band instead turned their attention to the studio. The result is their upcoming debut album, “Beautiful Places”, a reflection on when things go awry and maintaining hope in the face of adversity. What makes anything beautiful? This collection of songs is about finding beauty where it might not traditionally exist. It’s about duality: light and dark, memory and haze, being stuck and running away. It’s about wanting more and needing less. Some of it autobiographical and some of it is not. This is a hopeful album about small moments of beauty and joy. We hope it brings you some sort of light in a world that can, at times, feel very dark.
Having previously supported the likes of Stella Donnelly and Hand Habits, Fauvely’s sound walks the line between the driving and the dreamy; at times drums clatter, bristling with intensity, at the other moments guitars seem to spiral off in almost directionless beauty. At the core throughout is songwriter and vocalist, Sophie Brochu, seems to be able to find a pocket of space in all the noise, With a presence demanding your focus, even as the backing gets chaotic and noisy, swirling around her. t arrives later in the Spring, “Beautiful Places” lives up to its name, it might just be the sort of destination you will want to head too this summer.
All songs written by Sophie Brochu except “Run Run” (by Dale Price and Sophie Brochu) and “In the Dark” which is a cover of “Fishin’ in the Dark” (by Wendy Waldman and Jim Photogo). The Band: Sophie Brochu: guitar, vocals, lyrics Dale Price: lead guitar, backing vocals, keys Dave Piscotti: drums, backing vocals Phil Conklin: bass
The Fat Angel Sings 