Anna Calvi’s debut for Domino was set to be one of the most talked about records of the year. Brian Eno has championed her as the most visionary female artiste since Patti Smith, Nick Cave took her out around Europe as special guest of Grinderman, and Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey’s right hand studio man) produced the music. An inspired guitarist influenced by Django Reinhardt as much as Jimi Hendrix, and with vocals inspired by Nina Simone and Mariah Callas, Anna Calvi’s music is a passionate and incredibly original mix. The live shows with her permanent three piece band are wowing audiences across the land.
An astonishingly confident record; Anna Calvi showcases the unique strengths of her song writing, singing and virtuoso guitar-playing all jumping out of the speaker together. Calvi drew on the ghosts of Nina Simone and Maria Callas for influence to create a stunningly modern sound.
The LP which includes the likes of “Desire”, “Blackout”, “Rider To The Sea” and “Suzanne And I”, will be reissued for the first time on red vinyl, it also features brand new cover artwork and a signed 8-page booklet containing previously unseen photographs.
Commenting on the milestone, Calvi said: “10 years ago, my life was cast open. All the things that I dreamed of, when I was little girl wishing to be a little boy, learning David Bowie songs on my first guitar, being brave enough to start my first band at 14, learning to sing by hiding behind closed curtains when everyone was asleep at 25, trying to ingest the craft of song writing as I wrote my first album – all of this life’s work of learning to be close to what I dreamt of – all of this was realised when I released my first album.”
To date, Anna Calvi has released three studio albums (Anna Calvi, One Breath and Hunter), a collaborative EP with David Byrne (Strange Weather) and the most recent Hunted – a seven-track reworking of Hunter. Additionally, Calvi wrote and performed the score for season 5 of BBC One’sPeaky Blindersand wrote the music for the opera The Sandman, directed by Robert Wilson. Anna is the first solo artist to achieve three consecutive Mercury Prize nominations and has also received a Brit Award nomination. Throughout her career, Calvi has worked with Brian Eno, Marianne Faithfull, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Joe Talbot (Idles), Dave Okumu (The Invisible), Johnny Flynn, Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Courtney Barnett.
Released on May 14th,
10 year Anniversary edition
The debut LP reissued for the first time on red vinyl
The eponymous debut album from Anna Calvi is an astonishingly confident record; the unique strengths of her song writing, singing and guitar-playing all jumping out of the speaker together.
Jellyfish were one of the great powerpop bands of the 90s. Now three of their former members, The Lickerish Quartet, have released their new EP. With their blend of psychedelic indie powerpop, Jellyfish became one of the great cult bands of the 90s. Led in part by songwriter Roger Joseph Manning Jr, they produced two highly influential albums. For his new band, Manning has hooked up again with Jellyfish bassist Tim Smith, who has been part of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds for the last decade, and Eric Dover, who joined Jellyfish in their later years before going on to front Imperial Drag and Slash’s Snakepit. Their current EP, their second, Threesome Vol. 2, is out now and they have now dropped the video for the song “The Dream That Took Me Over”.
Set in Los Angeles, or is it set in a dream? Has this happened before or is this the first time? The Dream That Took Me Over reflects on longing as well as the uncertainty of desire and it’s addictive pursuit. While the singer of this track, Eric Dover roams the dark shadowy alleys and neon-lit cityscapes, curiosity mixes with elements of danger and the surreal. Shot over the course of only a few hours in Downtown LA and the San Fernando Valley, The Lickerish Quartet with their in-house production team filmed gorilla style; not unlike the quest of Eric’s character lurking in secret. The music video was filmed from the viewer’s perspective playing up the voyeur element our world has grown so accustomed to over the last year of lockdowns. You are along for the ride, but keep your eyes open, things aren’t as they seem.
On the song, Dover says: “You are driving without a destination lured by the wanderlust of your own making. You turn up the stereo volume and continue along, moonlight reflecting off the chrome of your vehicle. We invite you to put the top down and take a ride into the inner dialectic of our conflicted protagonist as we answer the question: Is there equilibrium in the chaos or does science hold the key?”
The song has a dreamy 70s vibe as the music shimmers, the visuals fitting perfectly with it. The video is a follow up to the track “Snollygoster Goon”, which drives a more typical psych-powerpop force, just like their previous band.
“The Dream That Took Me Over” · The Lickerish Quartet · Roger Joseph Manning Jr. · Eric Dover · Tim Smith The EP is available directly from Lojinx
In 1978, The Clean were the seeds of New Zealand punk scene. In the years since, they have carved out a big sandbox for everyone to play in, and their influence resonates not only in NZ but around the world. A group that thrives when free of expectations, The Clean’s Robert Scott, Hamish Kilgour, and David Kilgour are, as Tape Op described, “a casually wonderful band.”
If the Clean were motivated by anything other than a seemingly pure love of music, “Mister Pop” would have been a very different album. Since the last time the band made a record, scores of new bands have discovered the awesome early work the Clean recorded back in the ’80s and have incorporated the raw, scratchy, and energetic feel of those records into their sound. The group could have easily tried to capitalize on its newfound icon status and made an album that harked back to its early years. No one would have blamed them for cashing in; nobody would have begrudged them a few minutes of near fame. Instead, the band — still the brothers Kilgour (David and Hamish) and Robert Scott have made a laid-back, hazy, and thickly psychedelic album that sounds more like something the band might have made in the ’90s.
This is a double reissue on the Merge Records label from The Clean’s ‘Unknown Country’ and ‘Mister Pop’ on vinyl. Originally released in 1996 and 2009, respectively.
The Clean have always exuded a casual grace that suggests they’d still be making the same records even if no one was listening, employing the same set of devices ramshackle locomotive rhythms, buoyant basslines, swirling organ lines, and wide-smile melodies irrespective of prevailing fashions, technological developments, or geopolitical unrest. And yet, the Clean’s periodic resurgences serve as a reminder that, in a world of uncertainty, there are still some things you can rely on.”
Originally released in 1996, The Clean’s “Unknown Country” makes its debut appearance on vinyl . Recorded and mixed in two sessions during 1996, The Clean yet again prove to be masters of musical innovation, three guys who can only amaze when they come together and throw all their ideas down on tape. And as a mood of supreme grooviness is all-pervading on Unknown Country, this is The Clean at their most timeless.
The odd pop songs focus on the tension and the release that characteristic of psychedlic rock although Champagne and Misery stays close The Clean’s canon, Wipe Me I’m Lucky experiments shyly, and Walk Walk is warped like a cartoon soundtrack.
David Kilgour on “Mister Pop”: “Mister Pop began in Brooklyn, NY, at Gary Olson’s Marlborough Farms studio and was completed in the basement hall of First Church Dunedin. There is more synthesizer on this album than the others, mainly an old Juno synth. I do remember having a bath in Brooklyn while Robert was downstairs singing and writing. I thought he was singing “he’s a factory man,” so I dried off and went down and wrote “Factory Man” while thinking heavily of The Kinks. Rainy and Geva from Haunted Love did some great work on backing vocals for “Loog” and “Dreamlife.” And old friend and long time Clean collaborator Alan Starrett makes an appearance on “Moonjumper.”
Of this album, The Clean’s David Kilgour writes, “The Clean always wanna try something different, but on this LP, we were obsessed with the idea.” Bandmate Robert Scott agrees, saying, “I really enjoyed recording this as it was free of expectation. Certainly our most experimental album.”
‘Unknown Country’, the third LP by New Zealand indie band TheClean, was originally released in 1996. Whilst they are generally known for their jangle-pop nuggets, this sprawling masterpiece is the result of studio experimentation and spontaneous recording sessions. Gorgeous instrumental tracks such as ‘Wipe Me, I’m Lucky’ and ‘Franz Kafka at the Zoo’ are interspersed with wonky pop gems such as the Pavement-esque ‘Twist Top’. For fans of The Bats and The Chills.
On March 26th Merge Records will reissue The Clean’sUnknown Country and Mister Pop on vinyl Originally released in 1996 and 2009, respectively, this marks the first time each of these albums will be available on vinyl in the U.S. (they’ll also be available worldwide).
Robert Scott on “Mister Pop”: “I remember thinking at the start of the NY sessions with Gary Olson, “Is this the start of a new album?” We were coming up with quite a bit of new stuff, and of course, Gary is great to work with. We carried on at Burlington St in Dunedin with (engineer and Heavy 8) Tex Houston at the controls, good fun from what I remember, lots of mucking around with keyboards and synths. We were going for that Krautrock groove and we sure got it on “Tensile,” one of my faves along with the pure pop of “Dreamlife.” “Loog” was a fun song to put together. “Asleep in the Tunnel” is written about being stuck in traffic in a tunnel under the Hudson River in NY.”
In 1978, The Clean were the seeds of New Zealand punk. They carved out a big sandbox for everyone to play in, and their influence resonated not only in NZ but around the world. This fall’s Mister Pop sees The Clean continue the great pop pastiche. Circus ragas (“Moonjumper”), hazy sunset anthems (“In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul”), and the loose Dada approach to word-smithery continue alongside “proper” lyrical forays and a few Autobahn-referential instro moments to boot (“Tensile”).
The Kiwi Pop giants and lo-fi all-stars return with, incredibly, only the fifth LP in their storied career from 2009. In 1978, The Clean were the seeds of New Zealand punk. They carved out a big sandbox for everyone to play in, and their influence resonated not only in NZ but around the world.
Mister Pop sees The Clean continue the great pop pastiche. both albums are out in March, through Merge Records
2020 was a terrible year for gardening. It was terrible for peppers, it was terrible for tomatoes, it was terrible for the condition of the soul. But Chad VanGaalen somehow raised a garden all the same: carrots and sprouts and broccoli and a revivifying new album, all of them grown at home.
He likes to eat directly off the plant, he says—”I get down on my knees and graze. It’s nice to feel the vegetables in your face”—and the 13 songs on ‘World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener’ were harvested with just such a spirit: in their raw state, young and vegetal, at the very moment, they were made.
What that means is that the Calgary songwriter’s new album is a psychedelic bumper crop. A collection of tunes that does away with obsessiveness, the anxiety of perfectionism, in favour of freshness and immediacy — capturing the world as it was met while recording alone at home over a period of years.
“Don’t overthink it,” VanGaalen told himself again and again, despite the push/pull love/hate of his relationship with song writing. “I’m always trying to get outside of the song—but then I realize I love the song.” This is a record that gleams with VanGaalen’s musical signatures: found sound, reverb, polychromatic folk music that is by turns cartoonish and hyperphysical—like ultra magnified footage of a virus or a leaf. Apparently, the LP began life as a “pretty minimal” flute record. (There’s only a vestige now, on “Flute Peace”—one of three instrumentals.) Later it became an electronic record “for a while” and finally, “right at the last second,” it “turned into a pile of garbage.”
The good kind of garbage: glinting, useful, free. Music as compost leaves, and branches ready to be re-ingested by the earth, turned into a flower. Throughout these 40 minutes, VanGaalen floats from mania to solace to oblivion, searching for zen in all the wrong places. “Turn up the radio / I think we’re dead,” he sings on “Nothing Is Strange”; or, on the inside-out rocker “Nightmare Scenario”: “You’re stressed out when you should be feeling very well.” The singer’s mental landscape is rotting and redemptive, beautiful in spite of itself—and his soundscapes reflect this fertile decay.
He has been influenced by his instrumental work on TV scores (Dream Corp’s third season began this fall), but still “nothing can really replace the human voice,” he admits. Like Arthur Russell or Syd Barrett, it’s VanGaalen’s vocals that shine a path through the swampland from the cello-lashed “Water Brother” to “Starlight” krautrock pipe-dream. These days, VanGaalen cherishes the privacy of the studio, the capacity to wander around, get distracted, and “move at the speed of life.” Whereas once he would obsess over mic techniques, now he puts the microphone in the same place every time trying to capture a song quickly, the idea at its heart.
He’ll act on his infatuations for the flute, a squeaky clarinet, his basement’s copper plumbing (remade into xylophones for “Samurai Sword”)—and then he’ll try to get out, “veering away from responsibility,” before he overdoes his stay. In the end, it’s like gardening.
You have to live with your horrible decision-making; the weather’s going to fuck you if it wants to; and if you plant a hundred heads of broccoli, “now you gotta eat a hundred heads of broccoli—or watch them go to seed.” But mostly VanGaalen just tries to be a deer: “I remember seeing some deer come out in the Okanagan Valley once,” he says, “watching them wait for a sunbeam to hit a perfect bunch of grapes and then eating them right out of the sunbeam. I’d recommend that.”
The majestic new album from multimedia auteur Chad VanGaalen, is out NOW! In celebration of this release, VanGaalen has created a video for the single “Starlight.” The song is a “celebration of our cosmic origins” shares VanGaalen, who fused old Super 8 footage of his family from the ’50s and ’60s, circular photos that were taken in his studio, and quick sketches to stylistically create a visual fusion unique to VanGaalen’s body of work.
On April 8th, VanGaalen will perform a live stream from his Yoko Eno studio via NoonChorus. The show will be available for viewing in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia at 7 PM local time. Ticket holders will be able to stream the performance for 5 days following and will also be able to buy merch.
“No idea is too strange and nearly anything can be used as a musical instrument… Is it incoherent? Absolutely, but that’s all part of the fun.” [8/10] – Exclaim
“A tour de force of all the things that make the Canadian singer-songwriter great, from the kaleidoscopic psychedelia of ‘Starlight’ to the hazy, laid back pop of the single ‘Samuari Sword’.” [8/10] – Loud & Quiet
Chad VanGaalen’s album ‘World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener’ (Release date: March 19, 2021)
Diagonal is a psychedelic six-piece from Chicago. Formed out of the ashes of a local post-punk cover band, the core of the group have been playing music together in one way or another since 2015. Their early works combine hazy waterfalls of shoegaze guitar, serious pop hooks, and layers upon layers of reverb.
They’ve made their way throughout the Midwest bringing a wall of sound to small clubs and festivals like Milwaukee Psych Fest and Detroit’s Echo Fest. They approach the three guitar line-up with nuance, wrangling melodies and riffs in a controlled way leaving room to let the song explode into complete sonic annihilation at any moment, while the rhythm section keeps things running on time. The first single to come out of their current line-up, 2019’s “Detroit”, is a slow driving Motorik drum and bass groove that started as an impromptu basement jam while on tour in Detroit. On the B-Side, the band morphs Gary Numan’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” into an epic 7 1/2 minute guitar exploration.
Weekly garage jams laid the groundwork for the songs that would form their latest LP. In May of 2019, the band recorded four new songs including the follow-up singles “Negatives” and “Anticipation”. After retreating back into the garage to write and demo they made the trip to Key Club Recording in Benton Harbor, Michigan at the end of 2019. In one lock-in studio weekend, Diagonal recorded nearly ten songs, some pre-arranged and others spur of the moment improvisations.
The quintet’s latest single, “Anticipation,” is a catchy and shoegazey groove that makes me feel like I’m inside a lava lamp as I listen to it. Along with the single, they released an 11-minute instrumental jam that keeps the vibe going perfectly. For a taste of their live experience, I would recommend checking out their live sessions of “Negatives” and “Monotony” recorded at DZ Records, which can be found on YouTube. The band recently announced that their upcoming self-titled LP will be released mid February on Little Cloud Records.
The bands line-up features Silas Mishler (vocals/guitar), Dan Jarvis (guitar), Alex Brumley (guitar), Chris Detlaff (drums), and most recently Brad Althaus (organ/keyboards/percussion).
The resulting self-titled LP is a mix of highly polished psych rock, contemplative moments, and angular jams. The band’s first vinyl release will be out in February 2021 via Portland’s Little Cloud Records.
Skullcrusher, the musical moniker of Los Angeles based singer/songwriter Helen Ballentine, has shared a new song, “Song for Nick Drake,” via a video for it. Ballentine spent the fall in rural New York State, working on new material with her collaborator Noah Weinman, and this is another fruit of those sessions. Ballentine and Weinman both directed the video, which seems to have been shot on VHS or some other tape format. Skullcrusher’s understated energy radiates with the atmosphere of waking up to the quiet terror of shapeless, structureless days, but it finds power in eschewing the pressures of careerism and a vapid culture of productivity. Instead, as Skullcrusher, Ballentine has the audacity to be comfortable enough with herself, and to simply accept the unknown as her life.
Ballentine had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Song for Nick Drake’ is about my relationship to the music of Nick Drake. It recalls moments in my life that are viscerally intertwined with his music, specifically times spent walking and taking the train. The song is really my homage to music and the times I felt most immersed in it.”
It follows the previous track “Farm,” a new song released in October. At the same time she also released a cover of Radiohead’s “Lift.” They followed her self-titled debut EP, released in June 2020 via Secretly Canadian.
Skullcrusher featured four tracks, written by Ballentine and produced by Noah Weinman, all about the influx of media she consumed after leaving her 9-5 day job. The EP is available digitally and on Vinyl,
Storm in Summer EP Tracklist: 01. Windshield 02. Songs for Nick Drake 03. Steps 04. Storm in Summer 05. Prefer
Spectres return with ‘It’s Never Going To Happen And This Is Why’, their bluntest, most bludgeoning LP yet. The oft sprawling and trance-inducing explorations of feedback and terror featured on their previous two critically acclaimed albums ‘Dying’ (2015) and ‘Condition’ (2017) have been supplanted by a rifle chamber of condensed noise nuggets firing in at three minutes or less. Spectres have gone pop. Recorded by Alex Greaves at The Nave, a 19th century Methodist church in Leeds, and released on their own new Dark Habits imprint in Europe / Little Cloud Records in the USA, the mischievously titled album sees Spectres at their most radical and playful, splattered with guest spots from experimental artists Klein, Elvin Brandhi, Ben Vince and French Margot.
Massive album! Powerful sound. Hard to say which is my favourite track. Playing it both in track order and randomly brings loads of energy. Spectres can do no wrong to my ears. Been a big fan since “Dying”. I was lucky enough to see them live a few years back and they blew me away. This album is as good, if not better than anything they’ve released to date. A lot of the tracks are considerably shorter than their previous work, but no less powerful. An excellent piece of work and already one of my faves from this year.
Making her stage debut in April 2019 and selling out her first headline show at London’s prestigious Southbank Centre less than a year later, A.A. Williams has hit the ground running. Similarly, the acclaim for her performances and her music has been unanimous from the start. After one self-titled EP and the 10” vinyl collaboration “Exit in Darkness” with Japanese post-rockers MONO, the London-based singer-songwriter has signed to Bella Union and made a stunning debut album, “Forever Blue”.
A rapturous blend of post-rock and post-classical, Forever Blue smoulders with uncoiling melodies and haunted atmospheres, shifting from serenity to explosive drama, often within the same song. Williams is a fantastic musician as well as songwriter, playing the guitar, cello and piano, and her voice has the controlled delivery of a seasoned chanteuse whilst still channelling the rawest of emotions.
Forever Blue is named after a song that didn’t make the album’s final cut, “but it still encapsulated these songs,” Williams explains. “It sounded timeless and in the right place.” The album’s threads encapsulate the anxieties and addiction of love and loss with haunting detail, for example ‘Glimmer’(“I wasn’t meant to see the sun washed out and pale / I wait undone / I wasn’t meant to be the one hollow and hurt and meant for none”), though Williams admits the theme was shaped more by her subconscious than any grand plan.
Therapy is intrinsic to Williams’ approach: to not just express and unpick her feelings of longing and loss but to work through them. “Verbalising something, you feel a weight has been lifted,” she says. The transition can be mirrored in the dynamic shift from ‘quiet’ to ‘loud’, as on ‘Glimmer’ and arguably at its most euphoric on ‘Melt’. “There’s something very satisfying and elating about songs that have that drop in them, to stomp on the guitar pedal on and let it all out.”
Forever Blue will spread the news of A.A. Williams’ extraordinary talent far and wide – and once lockdown is over, she and her band will be taking the next steps on her journey by touring the record. She’s already come so far but this story is only just beginning. For the past year or so, dark singer/songwriter A.A. Williams has been releasing gloomy, minimal covers that put a hauntingly beautiful spin on the originals, and here’s another great one. She makes the ’60s prog-pop hit sound like something that could’ve come out on ’80s 4AD.
Taken from the album ‘Songs From Isolation’ by A.A. Williams
Supergroup “Halloween Jack” is set to release “Trash”, a cover song video by The New York Dolls as a tribute/ token of love to the glam/punk band’s Sylvain Sylvain who died last month after losing his battle with cancer.
The New York Dolls, known for their glam rock androgyny and their signature attire including women’s makeup and frenzied, bizarre fashions, revitalized the New York City underground music scene in the 70s foreshadowing punk by half a decade. The Dolls were an anomaly, considered to be one of the most influential bands on the planet with their unpolished, chaotic music expression that combined British invasion-influenced rhythm and blues with the guitar distortion and booming backbeat of proto-punk bands such as Iggy and the Stooges.
Halloween Jack combines the talent of Stephen Perkins, drummer of Jane’s Addiction, Gilby Clarke, former guitarist of Guns N’ Roses, Dan Shulman former bassist of Garbage, Eric Dover guitarist from Jellyfish, and guest guitarist Steve Stevens of Billy Idol, a huge fan of the Dolls.Halloween Jack’s “Trash” video is filled with a texture and colour completely reminiscent of the orgasmic, sophisticated anarchy that captured the essence of the kaleidoscopic vibrancy transmitted by the original New York Dolls. Halloween Jack wished to celebrate the memory of Sylvain using the video as a token of love to the fallen Icon.
Sylvain Mizrahi, best recognized by his stage name Sylvain Sylvain, was the guitarist for The New York Dolls. One of the key architects of rock music, Sylvain was the driving force behind the band and the soul of the clothes, style and thrilling guitar combinations that would be such a profound influence on punk rock. As a precursor to the dolls, he created the band Actress from a bunch of guys that hung around his clothing store that would later give birth to the Sex Pistols. In 2019, Sylvain announced that he had cancer and he died in his home on January 13th, 2021.
The Fat Angel Sings 