New York quintet Store Front featuring Amy Rose Spiegel (vocals/lyrics), Peggy Wang (bass, formerly of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart), Bob Marshall (guitar), Brandon Louro (guitar) and Chalky Edwards (drums)—released their debut EP Task in February.
The five-track release’s lovely opening cut “Rip the Price Off” sets the tone for an EP that tries to find the joy in struggle, as Spiegel explained in a statement: “Task is about making private jokes in your head about all the big concerns you’re trying to keep track of, especially in the cases when those things are supposed to feel gravely serious,” she says. Anchored by Wang’s bass, and Marshall and Louro’s dreamy dual-guitar work, “Rip the Price Off” finds Spiegel exploring the dehumanizing effects of capitalism, which ties our self-worth to the work we do and what we’re paid for it. “When it comes to my job, look, I slack off / I don’t try too hard / Even writing this song, I wanted to do / the bare minimum,” she sings, finding the sardonic humour in being behind the eight ball, “broke and lazy.” It’s a funny and relatable sentiment, couched in the kind of gorgeous instrumentation you can’t put a price tag on, and on Task, it’s only the beginning.
New York’s Maxband, the newest project featuring Max Savage of Parquet Courts and Patrick Smith of A Beacon School, first debuted in 2018 with its low-key tape release Perfect Strangers. The band has since played support slots for Sports Team, Bambara, Tokyo Police Club, The Men, and others. The band recently returned to the studio to record their forthcoming EP, Top of The Stairs, out November 20th, and have released the first single from the project, “Cut It Loose”.
Savage, the longtime drummer of Parquet Courts, takes the lead with Maxband, playing guitar and splitting vocal duties with Patrick Smith who also plays bass. Long time friends Tim Nelson and Eric Read fill out the line up on lead guitar and drums respectively. Considering the band sports his name, it would be easy to pigeonhole Maxband as a Max Savage showcase yet, if “Cut It Loose” is anything to go off of, the band seems to be taking a more collaborative approach while carving their own lane independent of the nervy punk rock of Parquet Courts.
The rapid-fire palm-mutes and clean guitar tone give the track a bright indie flavour, bolstered by Smith’s buoyant vocals. Savage’s vocals on the chorus offer a strong counterpoint, sounding not unlike his brother Andrew’s vocals with Parquet Courts. Add in some razor-sharp call and response guitar leads and the track has an undeniable hook. At the climax, the hook gains even more urgency as the whole band locks into the groove, and Savage’s vocals gain even more of a punk edge. Yet, the band keeps the energy locked down, striking a perfect balance between breezy and fervent attitude.
The band says, “‘Cut It Loose’ was the first song we wrote for Top of the Stairs, and it functions as a good mission statement for where we are as a band: it was our first fully collaborative effort that was fleshed out from an idea that Patrick brought into a practice space, and the first song where Max and Patrick split vocal duties.”
The New York City outfit released their debut EP “Top Of The Stairs” via Holm Front, a label run by U.K. indie band Sports Team. Maxband features lead vocalist Max Savage (Parquet Courts), bassist/vocalist Patrick Smith (A Beacon School), along with drummer Eric Read and lead guitarist Tim Nelson. The five-track EP was produced by Doug Schadt (Maggie Rogers, Ashe), and recorded in Brooklyn in late 2019 and early 2020. It follows their 2018 debut album Perfect Strangers. Top Of The Stairs is imbued with an effortless confidence. Both their vocals and guitars oscillate between gentle and vehement, creating this satisfying contradiction of steady and unsteady. With shades of misty indie rock and driving post-punk, Maxband create something special out of familiar elements.
Horsegirl is on a race against the clock. The aim to release the trio’s debut album. For one, there’s a pandemic raging all around them. For a relatively new band (they only began playing their first shows in mid 2019), that means their in-person performance and rehearsal time has been drastically altered.
But looming largest of all is the reality of their ages. Band members Gigi Reece, Nora Cheng, and Penelope Lowenstein are all still in high school. And as graduating seniors, Cheng and Reece will likely be someplace else (New York City, if they have their way) come fall 2021. None of this has escaped the band members’ minds these last few months.
Horsegirl’s this Chicago trio sounds like they’ve been plotting their rise forever. The band released a collection of their first three singles on Bandcamp, in which they dive headfirst into heartfelt indie and eccentric noise rock. Their songs may evade big hooks, but they’re so magnetizing that you’ll hardly notice. With immense depth and a palpable sense of cool, Horsegirl share raw scribblings over clamorous guitars, and the result is exhilarating friction
Horsegirl are a Chicago band, through and through. All three members were raised in the city and cut their teeth in the city’s abundant youth performance programs. “I’ve gone through all of the Chicago institutions, I feel — Old Town, the Wiggleworms classes, Girls Rock Chicago,” said Lowenstein. “After taking guitar lessons for a long time, I was like, ‘In high school, I have to be in a band.’ It’s what I wanted to do.”
Lowenstein comes from a “total music nerd family,” she said, with a “crazy good” brother who plays the drums and a father who plays guitar and introduced her to Sonic Youth. Cheng began playing music from a young age and said she grew up on classic rock ’n’ roll. But after ditching music for a bit, it wasn’t until the summer before 8th grade, in 2016, that she joined School of Rock and began playing again.
“Sea Life Sandwich Boy” on Dropkick Records Released on: 2020-01-31
Dummy is five people in Los Angeles making music informed by motorik pulse and minimal composition like the Velvet Underground and Cluster before them. Across five tracks, experimental noise and ambient soundscapes intertwine with hypnotic drone-pop and avant-folk.
Earlier this year, Los Angeles noise-pop band Dummy shared their debut release, “Dummy EP”, via Pop Wig Records. In November, the group put out their second release, EP2, available now on cassette via Born Yesterday Records. They shared the song “Pool Dizzy”—which was the first taste of EP2. Their debut was rooted in krautrock and synth-laden noise pop, and they even threw in a foggy folk tune and an eight-minute new age-esque closer. EP2, on the other hand, leans more on hypnotic synths than driving guitars—apart from “Pool Dizzy.” The track’s throbbing beat, murky guitars and retro keyboards are rejuvenating, and their heavenly, overlapping vocals are the cherry on top. It’s the sound of droning pop euphoria.
Dummy returns five months later after “EP1” with “EP2”, their second release of 2020. Featuring a mix of screeching feedback-laden pop songs woven with non-sequitur ambient soundscapes, “EP2” sees the band further developing their drone-pop style with inspiration taken from kosmische, Japanese ambient, new age, and video game music. Recorded mostly at home using freeware and a smartphone, the six tracks forgo polished production in favour of a kaleidoscopic collage of improvisational sketches. Mixed by Joo-Joo Ashworth and mastered by Greg Obis. Available on cassette from Born Yesterday Records.
Dummy – Dummy EP2 (2020) Thursday Morning 00:00 Pool Dizzy 04:35 Nuages 07:31 Mediocre Garden 10:38 Second Contact 14:52 Prime Mover Unmoved 17:04
The entire sequence of EPs is available as a single cohesive twenty-song anthology. Titled “5EPs”, the collection spans the existential folk of Windows Open sung by Friedman, Douglass’s future soul on Flight Tower, Longstreth’s endless melody on Super João, and the recomposed orchestral glitch that backs Slipp across Earth Crisis. As everyone trades verses on Ring Road, these closing four songs serve as conversations among a group where “every member is talented enough to be the lead” (Time). With three- and four-part harmonies, dual guitar lines, ecstatic hooks and the propulsive drumming of Mike Johnson, the emotional and sonic threads of the previous entries are filtered through classic signatures of full-band Dirty Projectors. As Entertainment Weekly says, “[5EPs] captures a more intangible motif: the celebration of creativity and the fortuitous bonds that form.”
It’s a strange coincidence that Dirty Projectors’ founder and sole core member David Longstreth would switch up his approach in 2020. As a musician and songwriter whose defining modus operandi for the last eighteen years has been that of multi-personnel collaboration (save for 2017’s self-titled, which is the project’s only solo album to date), he found himself increasingly drawn toward changing the band’s sound to one that emphasizes its individual members, rather than the sum of its parts, following the release of 2018’s Lamp Lit Prose.
This question of whether “[everyone] could be the lead singer of this band” eventually fermented into the project’s latest release, 5EPs,wherein Longstreth sat for individual sessions with each of the group’s singing members, working both musically and lyrically to create four-track extended plays that highlight each performer’s abilities. The end result is a varied final effort, one that represents the project’s most diverse offering to date. From the stripped-down acoustics of Maia Friedman’s Windows Open, to the cool electro of Felicia Douglass’ Flight Tower, to the glitching orchestral fanfare of Kristin Slipp’s Earth Crisis, the landscape of 5EPs feels like a decidedly focused experiment in honing the outfit’s scattered, genre-averse sound into concise suites.
Moreover, 5EPs represents, in Longstreth’s view, a novel approach toward song writing, one that involves “trusting where the words fall” and enabling lyrical improvisation that’s porous and non-meticulous—a decisive break from his methods on the last two records.
Documenting a series of slow-motion smiles, spinning heads and splashes of water to the face, “My Possession” marks the sixth official music video Dirty Projectors have shared since the start of this new chapter. They’ve also released a breathtaking short film for Earth Crisis, remixes from Chromeo and Felicia’s father Jimmy “The Senator” Douglass, a timely and tasteful cover of John Lennon’s “Isolation,” and a multitude of live performances ranging from pre-pandemic acoustic jams in Dave’s living room to remotely-recorded productions for Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts and more.
5EPs was produced, mixed and recorded by Dave Longstreth, and lyrics were written in collaboration with the respective band member featured on each installment. While the limited edition, foiled and numbered box set has now sold out, 5EPs is available as a standard black double LP,
Band Members: Mike Johnson (drums), Felicia Douglass (percussion/vocals), Maia Friedman (guitar/vocals) and Kristin Slipp (keyboards, vocals), and David Longstreth (bandleader, guitarist, and lead vocalist).
Dirty Projectors – My Possession (Official Video) Out now on Domino Record Co.
Matthew Sweet fans have something to look forward too on January 15th, the day his much-anticipated album “Catspaw” album is due out on Omnivore Recordings. Rather than wait for release day to get here, Sweet is bridging the gap between then and now with the release of his new single “Stars Explode” .
One hand washes the other. What goes around comes around. The cliches can be endless but in essence, that’s exactly how the new single’s title came to be.
“Recently, I heard a song called ’Matthew Sweet’ by a band from Chapel Hill, N.C. named The Stars Explode,” says Sweet from his home in Nebraska. “I was flattered and liked the song and their band name, so I decided to use it in my song ‘Stars Explode.”
While the name may have been a smiled volley, the song itself has nothing to do with the band. Instead, the alt-rock, singer songwriter’s hook heavy, radio ready song is set in the stars and built on sparkling guitars, and his signature stacked harmonies. Side note: while on a self-described, semi-permanent hiatus, the North Carolina rockers were pretty damn good and would have fit in fairly well with Matthew Sweet fans.
The music ‘arrived,’ so to speak, together with the title. I’ve always been interested in Space and that greater nature of things; I love the concept that “we are all stardust.” I explored that idea in the lyrics. ‘Stellar winds she comes riding upon / with a nebulous intent…’ The female character here is sort of a Mother Nature of the Cosmos—maybe the queen of the universe!
“The way I come in singing that repeated note in the first verse reminded me a little bit of something Neil Young might do melodically. I had a lot of fun with the lead guitars on this one too.”
Though Sweet steps into the spotlight to take on the lead guitar duties, a first for him, that isn’t the only new territory he explores. With the exception of the excellent drumming by long time collaborator Ric Menck (Velvet Crush), Sweet handled the rest of the duties on Catspaw including Höfner bass, electric guitars and backing vocals. Even the recording and mixing was done at his beloved home studio, Black Squirrel Submarine.
Stars Explode · Matthew Sweet under exclusive license to Omnivore Recordings. Released on: 11th december 2020
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers played their first show of 2015 on December 19th – a surprise set during Mike Campbell and Jonathan Wilson’s fourth annual Merry Minstrel Musical Circus: A Holiday Gathering & Jamathon at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Joining Petty onstage was none other than longtime Petty collaborator Jeff Lynne.
Since regular Heartbreakers drummer Steve Ferrone was unavailable, Dirty Knobs drummer Matt Laug filled his role for tunes like “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” and classic rock covers like “Little Red Rooster” and “I’m A Man.”
The night also featured the rest of Campbell’s side band Dirty Knobs, Dawes, Jackson Browne, Duane Betts, and members of My Morning Jacket.
Jeff Lynne had recently powered up ELO after a much too long hiatus (since re-named Jeff Lynne’s ELO) and had released Alone in the Universein November 2015.
This was the 4th annual Merry Minstrel Musical Circus at the Troubadour in Hollywood, CA. This show is put on by the Tazzy Fund (tazzyfund.com)& Rock the Dogs (Mike & Marcie Campbell) and Jonathon Wilson, on behalf of musical education within the LA Unified School District.SHOW LESS
Bob Dylan will release a new compilation, Bob Dylan – 1970 (50th Anniversary Collection), featuring studio performances with George Harrison and more. The set will arrive on February 26th, 2021 via Columbia Records/Legacy Recordings.
Recordings from the three-disc set were released in a limited edition on December 4th as part of the Bob Dylan – 50th Anniversary Collection copyright extension series. The buzz around the recordings, especially those with George Harrison, garnered the recordings a wider release.
Still, arguably the most notable material on the three-disc collection is the complete May 1st, 1970 studio recordings alongside George Harrison. They performed a total of nine tracks together, including Dylan originals, cover songs and even a rendition of the Beatles classic “Yesterday.” Dylan and Harrison sat down in the studio and performed Dylan originals including “One Too Many Mornings,” “Gates of Eden” and “Mama, You Been On My Mind” along with covers like the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” Carl Perkins’ “Matchbox” and more. The set also features outtakes from the sessions around Dylan’s Self Portrait and New Morning albums, which feature frequent Dylan collaborators like drummer Russ Kunkel and Al Kooper on organ along with renowned session guitarist and singer-songwriter David Bromberg.
The material has never seen wide public release, but this isn’t the first time it has seen the light of day. These songs were earlier put on sale in a very limited edition in the U.K. to circumvent a European law stipulating that recordings enter the public domain 50 years after their creation if they aren’t officially released by their copyright holder. The collection sold out in seconds, as Dylan continues issuing archival material in order to avoid the legal distribution of third-party bootleg.
A 50th anniversary collection of recordings by Bob Dylan is scheduled for release on February 26th.
Zachary Cale is an American songwriter/musician based in NYC. “False Spring” is his 6th full length album. To be released May 29th, 2020.
“False Spring”, Zachary Cale’s sixth full-length album, explores the spaces between the cold we left behind and the uncertainty ahead, between that fleeting, green warmth and its lack. “Shine a light on the path so I can see,” Cale sings on the album opener, “Shine,” making a plea for hope and happiness rather than merely claiming it, starting the search for whatever possibility may exist. And the album explores so many possible paths in ever-shifting textures. On “Come Morning,” Cale admits “I’m just sitting on a fence, two fingers out to test the wind” while on others songs — the disorienting anxiety of “Mad Season”; the bittersweet travel of “By Starlight”; the mix of hope and regret that comes from staying afloat on “Slide” — False Spring vacillates between facing down the troubling now, reckoning with and paying tribute to then, and sifting through the dark to find the faintest match-head of light for tomorrow.
Cale’s poetic lyrics etches out all these themes in complex layers and careful melodies, but the band he assembled for False Spring drives home the sense of openness and possibility in these songs. Cale is accompanied here by Brent Cordero on piano, Wurlitzer and organ, James Preston on bass, and Charles Burst and Jason Labbe on drums. Cale brought the songs to the studio and enlisted the players to flesh them out. He didn’t write parts for the musicians; they figured out their own way through these tunes. The record is the sound of the band finding itself, capturing these songs live in all their subtle, ragged glory. The album’s 16 songs run just over an hour, but the expansive record is, at every turn, an intimate affair, the listener invited in as these players find connections between this part and that, between one song and another, between melody and feeling.
Stylistically, the band never hems itself in, expanding its sound and morphing it over the album’s extended playing time. Early tracks set up shop within lean, dusty folk rock, but things change from there. There are touches of cosmic Americana and country and some Petty-esque tight yet gauzy rompers. Several tracks are instrumentals, acknowledging roots and stretching exercises for Cale and the band. The sweet, solo guitar of the title track, for instance, uncovers some of the early country-blues sounds humming under these tunes, while “Magnetic North” whips up a full-band blues stomper. These instrumentals, and the album as a whole, explore tangents and push at borders, but while they add variety they also — on a more fundamental level — suggest cohesion at the heart of the album’s wide-open sound and aesthetic.
False Spring is Cale’s first album in five years, since the gauzy and atmospheric gem, “Duskland”. The album was received well, a tour followed but within the year Cale refocused his energy on writing new material. In 2016 he went on a solo tour opening for Dan Bejar of Destroyer in smaller cities across America. More recently he’s been playing in a spattering of other bands and supporting other musical projects.
And all that time, he’s kept one foot in the studio, recording lots of material, several albums worth. And all of this on top of a full-time job. In short, like so many independent musicians, Zachary Cale has been working.
This new album, though, isn’t the sound of work at all. It’s the sound of setting thought aside to feel the music. This doesn’t set out to make a product; this album explores a process. And, as a result, these dusty, bittersweet tunes stretch out, they breathe. They live in all the in-between spaces Cale evokes so beautifully in his lyrics. The fleeting spring can leave, the new growth may get marred by frost, but the warmth of these songs — in all their hope and worry and anxiety and open possibility — will stay with you long after the final note ripples out of the speaker.
Released May 29th, 2020
Performed by:
Zachary Cale: vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, electric piano, synthesizer James Preston: bass Brent Cordero: piano, wurlitzer, organ Jason Labbe: drums, percussion Charles Burst: drums, percussion
We’re not entirely sure what we are seeing in Perfume Genius’ “Describe” but we’re digging it nonetheless. Set on a dusty ranch, the music video shows the life of a cult-like group of people who eat, dance, and apparently sleep on the floor together. The video gives off major Midsommar and Wild Wild Country vibes (albeit with a much happier ending). Mike Hadreas has stated that the song is about being in a dark place and needing someone to describe what goodness feels like, which explains the overall introspective feel to the music video.
Mid-lockdown, here was my reminder that the world out there is vast and oppressive, beautiful and foul, almost psychedelically diverse and yet the very definition of mundane; sometimes fun, sometimes shit, always confusing. Perfume Genius has a way of capturing what feels like the whole human experience in a single album – heck, even a single song. Gone are the minimalist confessionals that made his name. On ‘Set My Heart on Fire Immediately’, grand, melodramatic laments on earthly fragility and the passage of time rub up against snatched reminiscences of hook-ups. It’s a sprawling, detailed masterpiece, shot through with typical Mike Hadreas yearning, that embodies just how rich and radiant and fucked up life can be.
Like an oil puddle rainbow, it shimmers. He shimmies. Hope seems to be a waking dream. It simmers. Elongates. Reverberates. You’re cradled by sumptuous arrangements, whilst sadness slow dances in the shadows. There are glimmers that you can’t quite discern. Björk? Eno’s ambient chambers? Soap&Skin? Zola Jesus? John Grant’s molten disco? There’s a sensation of the weight of the world being lifted and, just for a moment, the pins and needles leave you frozen. It’s murmurations of doves scattering to the four corners, bright white wings flapping gracefully against an ominous sky. It’s some kind of wonderful.
Listen, if you haven’t depression-fucked the love of your life to “Describe,” I’m extremely sorry. This album lights up every individual nerve ending, sometimes all at once.
From Perfume Genius’ new album ‘Set My Heart On Fire Immediately” released on May 15th, 2020 on Matador Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 