Ali John Meredith-Lacey, better known under the moniker Novo Amor, is a Welsh multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, sound designer and producer. The past three years have been a burst of creativity from Aberystwyth-born singer/songwriter Novo Amor (AKA Ali Lacey). In 2017, he dropped debut album ‘Heiress’ which first introduced us to his unique pop/folk infusion followed a year late by second record ‘Birthplace’ – and now he drops stunning third instalment ‘Cannot Be, Whatsoever’.
Bright yet contemplative, Lacey describes his latest LP as “a shift towards the light” across the ten tracks which he self-produced. The optimism shines through as he deeply reflects upon the most important moments in his life and their meaning. When Ali Lacey was 20 years old, he had his heart broken. “As clichéd as it sounds, I wrote love songs about the whole situation,” he recalls. “You’re in those formative years when everything just feels more emotionally charged. But looking back, I kind of cringe about the way I acted.” He grimaces. “I was writing the songs as soon as things happened and then I would send them to her. Argh, I wish I didn’t. The lyrics are just so obvious.
Novo Amor will be playing headline dates during Spring 2021 to show off his new material, Official video for ‘I Feel Better’ by Novo Amor Lifted from the album ‘Cannot Be, Whatsoever’, out now.
“Whether it’s the reminder that aloneness isn’t singular or a simplistic jolt of motivation that is far from cheesy, Novo Amor delivers an album with complexity and subtlety all at once. At a time when chaos and pain seem next to impossible to look away from, Novo Amor gently reminds us of all the possibilities and ways of being true.” – Clash
Quarter-Life Crisis is a collaboration between Ryan Hemsworth and various artists who’ve come to prominence over the past couple of years, many of whom got their start playing scrappy DIY shows. The self-titled debut EP released on December 4th, 2020 features contributions from Frances Quinlan (Hop Along), Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Charlie Martin (Hovvdy), Yohuna, and Claud. It showcases Hemsworth in a new phase of his career, one that is perhaps a bit less indebted to the nightclub dance floor. “It’s always been a goal to mix, like, 25% electronic sounds and 75% live indie rock sounds,” he says. Collaboration is paramount to Hemsworth’s process, and though he produced all of the instrumentation on the album, he left the lyrics and intention of the song up to the contributors. The resulting collection shapeshifts from track-to-track, taking on new personalities as it moves between artists.
Quarter-Life Crisis, Ryan Hemsworth’s shared another new track from their self-titled EP: “Comfortable” featuring Meg Duffy of Hand Habits. Quarter-Life Crisis‘ debut EP also features collaborations with Frances Quinlan (Hop Along), Of the track Duffy said “When I was asked to do a writing session with Ryan, I had no idea who he was or what his music sounded like or what his life may be like. I completely showed up to this weird little studio completely blind to predisposition, a little embarrassed because the first time Ryan and I tried to connect I accidentally no-showed him after writing in the date on my analogue calendar wrong. I had never done any sort of co-writing session before and was a little nervous, but since I had no investment I went in with the intention of having fun and being open to whatever spirits wanted to move. We threw autotune on as a joke (half-joke because I can be pretty pitchy especially in the writing process) and it sounded kind of cool. I started thinking about AI and cyborgs and people/souls disassociating from bodies and identity and kind of just freestyled until a mildly understandable common theme started to swim up. It was really fun!!”
The collaboration is paramount to Hemsworth’s process, and though he produced all of the live instrumentation on the album, he left the lyrics and intention of the song up to the contributors. The resulting collection shape-shifts from track-to-track, taking on new personalities as it moves between artists. Quarter-Life Crisis announced the EP with “Postcard From Spain” feat. Frances Quinlan, which Stereogum, Paste and Under The Radar hailed as one of the best songs of the week upon its release. This was the followed by “Waterfall” feat. Charlie Martin of Hovvdy, which was highlighted by NPR, Under the Radar, and others.
The genesis of Ryan Hemsworth’s new project, Quarter-Life Crisis, can be traced all the way back to his childhood bedroom in Nova Scotia, where the producer spent the bulk of his high school years listening to emerging indie acts and playing guitar. Not loving the sound of his own voice and without a band, he eventually started making music on his laptop, which earned him accolades as he stepped out into electronic and club music scenes. His prolific output, paired with a voracious appetite for a wide range of genres and creation of his own label Secret Songs, has made Hemsworth a fixture since he released his debut solo album, Guilt Trips, in 2013.
But now, Hemsworth’s trying his hand at something unexpected that is nonetheless close to his heart and origin story as a musician. Quarter-Life Crisis is a collaboration with various artists who’ve come to prominence over the past couple of years, many of whom got their start playing scrappy DIY shows. “This project has me in the process of going back to when I was a kid when I’d sit down and play guitar for hours and come up with melodies and chords by just messing around,” Hemsworth says. “It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for ages. Quarter-Life Crisis is just another way for me to work with artists whose music I really enjoy and listen to all the time.”
Working with musicians who largely fall into the category of “indie” gave Hemsworth the opportunity to revisit some of the artists who inspired him to become a musician in the first place. He cites bands like the Cardigans, Grandaddy, Bright Eyes, and Sparklehorse as being foundational to his writing process this time around. Quarter-Life Crisis a sharp turn away from his last project, 2019’s CIRCUS CIRCUS, which he made alongside the Japanese rap duo Yurufuwa Gang, but for Hemsworth, working in a wide array of genres and modes keeps him on his toes, and ultimately, keeps his career interesting. “Getting out of my comfort zone and bringing others into that process has always led to something really unique,” Hemsworth says. “As a producer, I really respond to other people’s ideas and whatever they can bring to a song. Being in a room with someone with a different outlook, or working remotely with them, I hopefully help facilitate something that feels new and exciting for both of us.”
Quarter-Life Crisis – from the Quarter-Life Crisis EP out December 4th, 2020 on Saddle Creek Records.
The War on Drugs have announced The Super High Quality Podcast, premiering November 23rd, a few days after the release of their forthcoming live album. That’s not it, though—they’re also sharing a live cover of Warren Zevon’s “Accidentally Like a Martyr.”
This cover is the second single from the forthcoming live album, which is titled “Live Drugs”. It, according to the press release, collects “over 40 hard drives of recorded live shows.” That’s a lot of hard drives. The podcast will feature the band discussing those live performances and why they decided to make the live album. According to the announcement, “The Super High Quality Podcast” is a four-episode series, airing weekly beginning on the album’s release day. Throughout, guitar tech and band confidant Dominic East listens as the band talks casually about how they arrived at the performances and the decision to release their new live album.
“Live Drugs” is a collection culled from over 40 hard drives of recorded live shows spread out across years of touring behind multiple albums, according to the announcement — and anyone who’s seen the band live knows that someone heard an awful lot of soloing on those 40 hard drives. Sequenced to reflect how a typical 70-minute show would flow, it’s the first volume to capture the band’s live interpretations and a document showcasing the evolution of The War on Drugs’ live show over the years.
“Live Drugs” is not your typical live album. Rather than recording a board feed from a specific night at a specific venue in a specific city, this is a collection of live recordings from multiple live shows that the band feel best represents what they’ve done on stage. “Even though this recording is from a year of tours, this is really how these six guys evolved as a band from 2014 to 2019,” frontman Adam Granduciel says. In essence, even though these are all different recordings stitched and mastered into Live Drugs, the album is sequenced like how a live set would feel. And damn it if anything remotely resembling a real live concert ain’t exactly what we’re all craving right now. So if we can’t be at a live show just yet, we’ll gladly take the mind trip that Granduciel and company are so graciously handing us.
The group recently debuted a brand new single, “Ocean of Darkness,” on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” The song is the first release of any new material by the band since the release of 2017’s Grammy-winning “A Deeper Understanding,” and a taste of what they have been working on in the studio these last many months. “Ocean of Darkness” does not appear on “Live Drugs.”
“Live Drugs” arrives November 20 via Super High Quality Records.
After delivering ‘Day By Day’ and ‘Night Drive’, White Flowers are back with ‘Within A Dream’, the title-track of their forthcoming EP, to be released via Tough Love Records on January 15th 2021. Following the release of two 12″s in the past year, White Flowers returned with the “WithinA Dream” EP, a recently recorded four song collection to be released on 15th January 2021. Alongside digital formats, it will be pressed to 12″ transparent vinyl in an edition of 300 units. The four songs on the EP came together earlier this year during various periods of enforced isolation, and somewhat inevitably reflect the conditions of their provenance, exploring themes of dissociation, multiple selves, and the role of the individual in an increasingly strange and fragmented world. Alongside the three originals is a cover of Mama Cass’ ‘Didn’t Want to Have to Do It’ that closes the EP, and as with their version of Red House Painter’s ‘Katy Song’ from their previous 12”, is a further example of how defined their aesthetic has become, as they’re effortlessly able to shape the music of others to their own vision. Indeed, as with all their videos and records to date, the artwork for the single is again created entirely by the band, another example of their intentions to create a defined White Flowers universe.
Preston’s White Flowers, made up of Katie Drew and Joey Cobb, have so far not disappointed, and this third track – accompanied by the self-directed video below – from the Ali Chant (PJ Harvey, Perfume Genius, Portishead) co-produced EP, delves further into their gothic dreampop world, with enticingly atmospheric instrumentals and hauntingly whispered vocals.
Within a Dream EP out 15th Jan 2021 on Tough Love Records.
Working Men’s Club release their highly anticipated self-titled debut record! Following the early October release of their excellent self-titled debut album, “Working Men’s Club” have today shared the video to the latest track to be taken from the album, “John Cooper Clarke”. Directed by Warmduscher frontman Clams Baker, Working Men’s Club share new video for ‘John Cooper Clarke’.
Taken from the band’s just-released self-titled debut album, the track is an homage to the Northern poet.
“I think John Cooper Clarke is a Northern icon,” says Sydney Minsky-Sargeant. “One of the last survivors of that era, going back into that period of time where he lived with Nico and lived in Hebden Bridge, which is down the road from me. He’s just a proper punk, and one of the last remaining punks there is. Now Andrew Weatherall’s dead, and people like that have fallen, he’s still going. He just does it how he wants to do it, and I think that’s quite admirable, as a creative.”
“My idea behind this video was to show three different generations and situations of celebrating with as little to do with JCC as possible and if I said anymore I’d be lying,” adds Baker. “I just wanted to make something fun in these hard times and visually tell all the screwballs to relax and keep your peckers up.”
“Britain’s most urgent new young band… Covid era’s first rave classic” – MOJO ★★★★ “Outstanding debut” – The Guardian ★★★★ “Completely unforgettable” – DORK ★★★★★ “Pulsating rave anthems on attention-demanding debut” – NME ★★★★★ “A scintillating debut” – Uncut 9/10Working Men’s Club overcome change to create a debut more than worth the wait.” – The Line of Best Fit 8/10Working Men’s Club are this unholy brew, this broad, immersive elixir.” – Clash
Working Men’s Club is the thrilling, energising, bracing sound of a reformed indie kid who side-lined the guitars and amped up the post-industrial synths, glacial beats and a bored-but-impassioned vocal style pitched somewhere between Ian Curtis and Mark E. Smith.” – The Face
“An explosive cocktail of emaciated rock with post-industrial ambiences, funk and electro beats designed for dark and feverish nights.”…”From this intense album we come out washed out but powerfully invigorated.” – Télérama 4 ffff
Upon its release in 2009, I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose cemented a barely-out-of-school Bombay Bicycle Club as key players in a thriving indie music scene; an unpredictable new act and a rapidly rising one, too. Its second single, ‘Always Like This’ is still an undeniable live favourite and has slotted seamlessly into their sets throughout those ten short years. If you’ve seen the band headline a festival or play one of their many notoriously-stellar live gigs, you’ll have seen first hand just how beautifully this track translates on to a live stage. We can’t wait to see similar ingenuity from the other eleven tracks that make up the album, and how the sometimes criminally underplayed tunes are brought rightly back into the limelight.
The album’s youthful vitality and thoughtful takes on life as an ’00s teenager have continued to enchant new audiences as the band’s career has flourished, and stayed with day one fans as they’ve grown up alongside the band. Therefore, I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose seems the perfect album to remind us once more of live gigs; of the shows we went to and sang along at not too many months ago.
The exciting news of the live album follows the release of the band’s fifth studio album, “Everything Else Has Gone Wrong” earlier this year. The album peaked at #4 on the UK album chart and garnered widespread acclaim from fans and critics alike. The release was due to be followed by an extensive European and North American headline tour and numerous festival headline appearances, which would undoubtedly have been brilliantly received and long-remembered. The new live album acts as a timely gift to their fans and a fine celebration of the power and togetherness of live music.
Speaking about the release, the band say, “This time last year – in the good old days when live music was possible – we played a handful of shows around the UK to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our debut album, ‘I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose.’ This tour finished on a Friday night at Brixton Academy in London, and we took the decision to record the show that evening.”
“This was a particularly special night for us in any case – seriously a show that we’ll all remember forever – and especially considering what’s happened since, we’re grateful we have a memory like this to keep us all going until live music can resume.”
I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose – Live At Brixton will be available digitally, on vinyl and CD and as a double LP, which includes the original studio album as well as the live recording.
The album was recorded on 8th November 2019 at the band’s sold out Brixton Academy show, celebrating the 10th anniversary of their debut album. It will be released on 11th December via Mmm… Records + Caroline International.
Depending on your definition of “supergroup,” Adulkt Life are either a handpicked ensemble of some of the U.K.’s most fondly recalled punk acts—spanning the culty riot grrrl of Huggy Bear to the overcast take on West Coast American garage rock of Male Bonding—or just another collection of nobodies who stumbled into each other’s lives at a record store. Either way, Book of Curses sounds as complex as its individual band members’ back stories, fusing the influences of grunge, post-punk, and post-hardcore icons like Flipper, Wipers, and Nation of Ulysses with modern sensibilities.
With their debut record out today, Chris Rowley—co-vocalist for Huggy Bear coming off a quarter-century musical hiatus—gave us an enlightening and frequently cryptic breakdown of each of the record’s tracks, touching upon moral decency, “hopelessfullness,” and raising kids in a world that struggles with such concepts. Reading Rowley’s scattered thoughts on the project, that silent “K” in the band’s name starts to make a little more sense.
1. “Country Pride”
Simply put, it’s an escape song, it’s the embodiment of too much casual racism and sexism and the need to stop accepting it as part of your day-to-days’ poisons that’s not going to kill you necessarily but… We should all get a sense of humor, right?
It’s a reverse-engineered anthem with all the jingoistic bits and flag-waving burned and buried—our protagonists aren’t ideally suited in a perfect world, but as we said, it’s a messed up one, so tradeoffs in car parks and behind supermarkets better count for something!?
2. “JNR Showtime”
Maybe we’re becoming too mistrustful or cynical about decency and morals and goodness in the world!? The little things that used to give us hope and make us want to love our neighbors—working for a children’s charity for a good few years we’ve heard and seen some stories you would not want in your head…and having children myself you can’t help but become more repelled and vigilante in your thinking however wrong this is to admit. The scumminess of wrongness turned out to be shown for what it is. Cowards and liars should be scared. Always hurts to play this dark rager out, but that’s what you do with poison, innit? Suck then spit!
3. “Whistle/Country”
John’s guitar part translated to the drums and bass so quickly it unlocked a feeling in the room as we practiced it. It’s a plea for authenticity, whatever that means, a song about illusions or cutting through bullshit. Who knows, it’s a series of images linked to what it says in the lyrics—old guys round fires, wanting to be real/looking from a slightly (?) younger point at experience and rich lives lived. But who decides what that is, and if things are tough like they have been for us at points? Is anything better? But this is optimistic, a stone skimmer for the lost generations…
4. “Taking Hits”
This is the Adulkt Life (please don’t worry about pronouncing the “K”) “battle anthem.” We needed to write a song that lifted us up, and the KO’d and arisen scream for deliverance got us there. We were and are a lot of the time about boxing—fights, failures, movies, writing—and this became our backdrop, complete losers (as the idealistic and too sensitive can be) finding a glint or glimmer of something to believe in again! We’ve traded the Joyce Carol Oates book around us a good few rounds, so this is a thanks to no one and for nothing.
5. “Flipper”
I used to love the weird second Flipper album Gone Fishing and really didn’t understand it in the context of what I was listening to at the time, and it’s haunted me a bit with my probable misreadings.
Anyway, John wrote a guitar part that was akin to how I thought the Flipper record was. So it had the subterranean feel and we knew it was going to be a sodium light noir journey of a track, episodic and about revenge, making do, looking after family but risking it all because of your postcode or what yer famz do. The clapping coda is the triumph in the murk if you like…and so we had to name it “Flipper” in homage.
6. “Stevie K”
Kevin’s bass tearing into this idea with Sonny rocking after him set the touch paper for a cyclone of a track that John sabotages beautifully from a chronological sense with feedback lacunas. It’s meant to be a mod anthem, but who cares about the mods anymore anyway?
So it’s a cool song for Steve Kroner from Nation of Ulysses, a band that we loved and that was ruined for regular life by (they were/are just “too much”) and wanted to cast Kroner as a catcher-in-the-rye type figure, literally beyond good and evil…ice-cream under the pier as bottles fly.
7. “Room Context”
One of the first Adulkt Life songs that sort of arrived fully formed—a paranoia anthem casting spells and occulting damage against those who would trespass against us. The album was originally called “Deliver Us From Evil” for a host of reasons we won’t go into. “Room Context” is against power structures and authority charlatanism. It’s for misfits and outcasts, it reminds me a bit of, like, a record biz version of the De Palma movie The Fury, but I’ll get over that in a week or two. Being an older band, I felt not just like we’d be tarred with an ageist brush maybe, but there were whole swathes of audiences/fans who were not allowed or were shunned from feeling part of something. We don’t hate “the kids,” but we definitely don’t get them anymore.
8. “Move”
In the context of feeling separated from activism or rebellion or underground action, because of age or class or gender roles, I tried to write a Wipers song for the disenfranchised using the Kelly Reichardt film Night Moves as the inspirational germ for the narrative. I say all this loosely, but we’re all big film fans and lovers of cinema discourse in Adulkt Life, and that film/filmmaker is “the bomb” as they say—and aptly—here. To move forward we have to get rid of guilt impulses and relationships to past failures or success/require new dialogue. The changes in this are always hard to play if you’ve seen us play the two times so far we have. You’ll know what I’m talking about.
9. “Clean (But Itchy)”
This was Sonny’s defining moment in the young Adulkt Life story. His epic movement of boulders and rock face to scrape and bash this wild styler into shape. John was conducting hot lab sources and Sonny went after him with little concern for his well being. Maybe you can hear this? It’s a lovers’ quarrel played out large—the worst curses, the can’t-take-it-back moments, the no apologies stuff all rolled into one, but perversely it all sounds weirdly sexy, too. Who would’ve thought?
10. “New Curfew”
This ends the Adulkt Life record Book of Curses. Everyone—well, the three people that’ve heard it—think it’s strangely prophetic, and that we were ahead of a curve with prophesying this one, out of the sound dust and word play. Who would’ve wanted to predict where we are now, for goodness sakes, so this is an urban/suburban paean to disappointment, fear, hopelessfullness. In the face of age and responsibilities—the law, your belief/our belief in it, or turning away from it—at a certain point we/you will be replaced and our energies and counter intuitions gone. When you have children of your own or are around kids, you’ll know. They are the future, whether you like it or not. It’s a parents’ prayer in the smoke and petrol.
Adulkt Life’s debut LP Book Of Curses available November 11th.
Making for quite the meta experiment, the fictional cult leader from BC filmmaker Panos Cosmatos ‘ Mandy, Jeremiah Sand, is getting set to release an album this month called “Left It Down”. To give you a better idea what the leader of the Children of the New Dawn has in store for us, he’s now given us a video for the record’s “Golden Desert.”
In 1974, Jeremiah Sand and his nascent cult The Children Of The New Dawn decamp LA for the Shasta Mountain region and Redding, CA. They set up shop, begin printing leaflets, hold gatherings and start growing their ranks through recruitment. Jeremiah and the Children are not necessarily an odd addition to Redding in 1974. Since the 1930s, psychonauts and spiritual seekers have been drawn to this area in Northern California under the shadow of the dormant volcanic cone of Shasta. By 1974, urban California hippies worn down by direct political engagement with state security forces have started drifting North and the towns along the border with Oregon state are filled with ad-hoc spiritual organizations, commune builders and lost souls. Jeremiah and the Children fit right in. A few years prior to assembling his flock, Sand had self produced and released an album of psych-folk that was unremarkable in almost every way, save for the unrelenting vanity and egoism on display in the lyrics.
This early album is one of the only existing documents of Sand. The commercial failure of the album became the catalyst for Sand to leave Southern California and settle in a place where his “truth” would be “received by pure and open hearts”. By mid 1974, the Children have grown in rank and Jeremiah becomes obsessed with recording “his masterpiece”…a musical message to the world, communicating a “Truth” that only he has been given spiritual access to. This project becomes the central focus of the Children. His lieutenant Brother Swann overhears that there is a small recording studio just North of the city. He arrives one day at the reception with a large gym bag full of cash and instructs the owner to cancel all sessions on the books. The studio will now focus on one thing and one thing only: helping Jeremiah realize his vision. Tents and rough structures appear on the surrounding property as the Children make the studio and its grounds their new home. They hold recruitment meetings where Jeremiah evangelizes in between endless recording sessions. The owner and his staff begin to feel as though they’re being held hostage but the money is good and the Children keep paying. Overpaying. This goes on for years. New members drift into the sessions. A disgraced professor from the Electro Acoustic Music program at Evergreen state arrives with a full Buchla system he’s “liberated” from the university, Jeremiah is entranced by it and for a few weeks the only sounds coming from the studio are blasts of atonal, corroded noise underpinned by ominous chanting. The mood changes. The town begins to turn against the Children. A few people have gone missing. Some teenagers. A studio engineer. By the Spring of 1977, the entire session has broken down into hallucinogen and cocaine fuelled chaos. Bad vibrations. One night in early March, after a particularly grueling mixing session, the producer and owner of the studio is startled awake by an extremely agitated looking Brother Swann. Swann is sweating and wild eyed, casually holding a gun, explaining to the producer that “plans have changed” and that Jeremiah has “heard a calling and a Great Summons”. They are leaving. All of them. That night. Swann directs the producer to put the existing reels in a lock box along with a short 16mm film, lyrics, album art and scribbled notes. Swann tells the producer Jeremiah will be back to finish his masterpiece. It all goes in the box and it’s not to be opened until the Children return. They never do.
In 2018, wildfires rip through Redding, CA and burns it to the ground. Over a thousand of homes are incinerated. One rough structure north of the city is partially saved. There’s a massive concrete basement filled with smoke and water damaged recording equipment and in the back…a lockbox.
No one knows who originally took the tapes out of the charred ruin of the studio but in a few months, a very strange album is making the rounds in the more esoteric circles of the underground. A long and confusing chain of custody ensues. A lost artifact of the transitional period between the late 60s and late 70s. A flawed and malignant sounding unfinished thing, clearly the product of a psychotically inflated ego and hubris. The album is by turns: amateurish, haunting, deranged, ridiculous and (for those attuned to these things) filled with crackling negative psychic energies. So much so that Light In The Attic flat out refuses to reissue it. Eventually, it lands in Calebs lap and Sacred Bones decides to restore the audio and give it a general release all in the name of preserving a historical document of a very weird place and a very weird time.
2020 Jeremiah Sand under Exclusive License to Sacred Bones
White Fence’s “For the Recently Found Innocent” . After many years spent wringing all the warped psychedelic magic he could out of a four-track recorder, bedroom-style, White Fence’s Tim Presley moved his operation one step closer to the real world for his 2014 album, For the Recently Found Innocent. It was recorded in Ty Segall’s garage studio, Segall and live bandmember Nick Murray provided drums, and the record was mixed in a real studio. The big question before hearing a single track has to be something like “Does this mean curtains for the wonderfully oddball psych pop Presley has been churning out like a mad lo-fi scientist?” The short and definitive answer is no. The Presley and Segall team is in no rush to “fix” up the sound; at best it is mid-fi, and it retains all the intimate charm of previous records. Maybe it’s a little bit cleaner and easier to imagine hearing on the radio, but beyond that there’s not much change. Well, the occasional country-rock pastiches on the record (“Afraid of What It’s Worth” and “Hard Water”) are a bit different, but still psychedelic in a way Beachwood Sparks wish they could be.
Once you get beyond the trappings of recording styles and collaborators, the music is what’s left and this album is just as packed with gems as any White Fence album. Swirling, trippy rockers like “Wolf Gets Red Faced” and “Anger! Who Keeps You Under?” sit nicely next to relaxed pop songs like the very Donovan-like “Sandra (When the Earth Dies)” and the acoustic folk-rocker “Goodbye Law,” and hard psych blowouts “Paranoid Bait” and “Arrow Man” clear away the cobwebs. There’s even a track, the incredibly hooky “Like That,” that sounds like you could slot it into the middle of the Who’s Sell Out album and no one would think it odd. So basically, it’s another weird, great White Fence album, only the bass is a little clearer, the drums a bit louder, and there’s less tape hiss.
Only die-hard four-track fanatics could complain about that. Wide fends the big river of anglo-American pop music. Hits to the skies! Ears to the mind! A classique of LA underworld sunshine sounds and visions. For The Recently Found Innocent is the sixth studio album by American musician Tim Presley, who goes under the name White Fence. It was released in July 2014 under Drag City Records.
The Antlers are very pleased to share another new song with you today. This one’s called “It Is What It Is,” and it’s out now via Anti Records and Transgressive.“It Is What It Is” is a song about hindsight. It considers what might have changed had you handled things differently back then, and the reluctant acceptance that it’s too late for all that now. It the inevitability of changing seasons, transitions that feel like loss in the moment, but come to represent growth over time. Accompanying the song is another beautiful video.
The Antlers shared the video for new single ‘It Is What It Is’, which sees the New York band enlisting the skills of world-renowned contemporary dancers Bobbi-Jene Smith and Or Schraiber.
Describing the new offering, lead singer and songwriter Peter Silberman said: “‘It Is What It Is’ is a song about hindsight. “It considers what might have changed had you handled things differently back then, and the reluctant acceptance that it’s too late for all that now. It’s the inevitability of changing seasons, transitions that feel like loss in the moment, but come to represent growth over time.”
The latest effort comes after they returned last month with ‘Wheels Roll Home’, which ended the long wait for new material from the band, whose last album came in 2014
The Fat Angel Sings 