Psychedelic indie rockers Sundara Karma have had fans waiting a year for a new piece of music, but have made a triumphant return with new single ‘Kill Me’, proving they have not lost their touch.
Taking a break after their second album Ulfilas’ Alphabet, seems to have focused the vision of the band. ‘Kill Me’ explores themes of depression and desire in its lyrics while still maintaining an upbeat sound. Upon a first listen the themes may not be clear, and the track can risk sounding like any other, but take a scratch under the surface and it holds a multitude of deeper meanings.
In an interview frontman Oscar Pollock said, “Right now, I feel like I’m able to be the most personal I’ve ever been in my songwriting and ‘Kill Me’ is definitely a reflection of this. Lyrically it draws upon actual events that happened to me throughout the last year and it was cathartic to be able to condense all of that into a track.”
The track was produced by Clarence Clarity who has worked with the likes of Charli XCX and Rina Sawayma and is accompanied with a video directed by Hannah Diamond, who appears to have helped usher in a new era of the band.
Sundara Karma released first album Youth is Only Ever Fun in Reterospect in 2017 and helped them create a dedicated fanbase before releasing Ulfilas’ Alphabet in 2019, with a new sound for the band. The song is the first single from their upcoming EP set to come out later this year, and if this is anything to go by, we’re very excited to see what the future holds.
Alt-rock poster girl Tanya Donelly of Belly (who are reuniting to tour this summer!), Throwing Muses, and The Breeders is preparing to bid farewell to her solo career for now with a 3-CD set called Swan Song Series. “In terms of releasing under my name, I’m definitely done with that. I feel like I’m over my name at this point,” she tells EW, laughing. “If I do anything from this point on, I’d like to do it under a band name.”
Sparked by performing in her friend John Wesley Harding’s “Cabinet of Wonders” vaudeville-esque reviews, Donelly began reaching out to other authors and musicians to create this series of songs that feature everyone from Harding to Belly bandmate Tom Gorman to Rick Moody to Magnetic Fields’ Claudia Gonson. The 31-song collection, released in early summer 2016, is a compendium of collaborations with other artists and includes her first five self-released digital EPs and seven new tracks, but EW is premiering a highlight off the collection, “Wild Love,” today.
On this song, Donelly worked with singer/songwriter Will Dailey to create a sweet love song touched by a fuzzy, mystical folk vibe. “This is one of the most organic in terms of process because Will and I live in the same town and we’re friends,” Donelly says. “We wrote together, and it resulted in a song that neither one of us would have come up with individually — which is kind of the entire point of the series. There was one point where we were like: Is it too stylistically simple? Is it too direct? Usually both of us are a little more opaque. And this one is just so transparent and such a clear love song.”
“Wild Love”Swan Song Series is on American Laundromat Records.
Dirty Dishes released their long awaited full length debut “Guilty” all the way back in January on Exploding In Sound Records and the band have remained busy over the course of the year. The then Los Angeles band toured their way to SXSW and back and supported Shamir for a string of dates throughout California before eventually moving across the country to Brooklyn, bringing the trio back to the East Coast. Since their triumphant return, the band have kept a busy show schedule including CMJ and a tour with label mates Stove.
Wasting no time, Dirty Dishes are set to hit the road again this winter for a massive US tour, In conjunction with the upcoming tour, the band are sharing the official video for Guilty stand-out track “Dan Cortez” with us. The video, directed by documentary filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon captures a rainy drive throughout China in long cuts that reflect the song’s slow creeping pace with tranquil visuals that blur along as the music twists and turns, slowly building in time.
Sheldon spoke about the footage, offering:
“In May of this year I found myself filming the life of a young girl in Shenzhen, China. One day we left the city and took a day trip to a fishing town. As we were driving, we passed several ghost cities. Haunting places with tall buildings stacked upon one another–some finished and some without windows–built as glowing new beacons of hope but never becoming home to anyone. The solemn rain, the abandonment of these cities and the quietness of a language barrier, brought me to shoot the 4-minute long take of lights dancing through the lonely tunnels that led us back to Shenzhen.”
Psyched to see what’s next from these geniuses of rockcraft.
While singer and multi-instrumentalist Bonnie Bloomgarden and guitarist Larry Schemel knew their intention for the album before a single note was written, the actual nature and direction of the music was a mystery. The initial inspiration for the record came from the jubilant spirit of Ethiopian funk records the band had been listening to on tour, but once they began to channel the songs it seemed like the music came from somewhere not in the past but in the future. In the weeks leading up to recording, Death Valley Girls relied on their subconscious and effortlessly conjured Under the Spell of Joy’s eleven tracks as if they’d tapped into the Akashic Chronicle and pulled the music from the ether.
LA’s indie mystical punks Death Valley Girls with their new album Under the Spell of Joy, out today via Suicide Squeeze. “Under the Spell of Joy is a space-gospel record,” said vocalist/guitarist Bonnie Bloomgarden of the album and lead single “The Universe.” “We believe we served as channels for what we think are guides. As we learn what the songs are about we realize they are meant to be sang like chants, hymns, or spells. Most of the songs were recorded with 12 voices, including a kids choir! We are learning that words with intention and energy hold so much power, especially when said or sang with a group. “The Universe” is a song to sing, a space to be, a time to think, remember, and truly feel that not only are we all connected, but we are also being guided.”
The album opens with “Hypnagogia,” an ode to the space between sleep and wakefulness where we are open to other realms of consciousness. The song slowly builds along a steady pulse provided by bassist Pickle (Nicole Smith) and drummer Rikki Styxx. Tripped out saxophone bleats from guest player Gabe Flores swirl on top of the organ drones laid out by guest keyboardist Gregg Foreman. The band’s choral objectives for Under the Spell of Joy are established right off the bat, with Bloomgarden’s melodic invocations bolstered by a choir, giving the album a rich and vibrant wall-of-sound aesthetic.
The song ominously builds on its hypnotic foundation until it opens up into a raucous revelry at the four-minute mark. The portentous simmer of the opening track yields to the ecstatic rocker “Hold My Hand,” where verses reminiscent of Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting For The Man” explode into big triumphant choruses. From there the band launches into the title track, which marries the griminess of The Stooges with an innocence provided by a children’s choir chanting the album’s primary mantra “under the spell of joy / under the spell of love.”
Death Valley Girls have always vacillated between lightness and darkness, and on “Bliss Out” they demonstrate their current exuberant focus with a patina-hued pop song driven by an irrepressibly buoyant organ line laid down by keyboardist The Kid (Laura Kelsey). A similar cosmic euphoria is obtained on “The Universe,” where alternating chords on the organ help elevate soaring saxophone and keyboard lines out beyond the stratosphere. If you’re looking for transcendental rock music, look no further.
After announcing it just two days ago, Drive-By Truckers have released a surprise new album, The New OK, out today via ATO Records. The New OK arrives just months after the release of the band’s acclaimed new LP, The Unraveling, and marks Drive-By Truckers’ 13th studio album.
Originally conceived as a quarantine EP comprised of material recorded in Memphis during sessions for The Unraveling, the project quickly grew to include provocative new songs written and recorded over what Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood calls “this endless summer of protests, riots, political shenanigans and pandemic horrors”—including a cover of The Ramones classic “The KKK Took My Baby Away”. The themes of the album are readily apparent from the get-got, with cover art depicting a headstone that’s been tagged with rainbow colors and a prominent “BLM.”
Tracks like Hood’s “The New Ok” and “Watching The Orange Clouds”—inspired by the protests which followed George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police—were exchanged between Hood, co-founding singer/songwriter/guitarist Mike Cooley, bassist Mike Patton, keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez, and drummer Brad Morgan and subsequently mixed by longtime DBT producer David Barbe. The result, says Hood, is “a full album that hopefully balances out the darkness of our current situation with a hope for better days and nights ahead.”
“To call these past few months trying would be a dramatic understatement,” Hood continues. “Our lives are intertwined with our work in ways that give us our best songs and performances. It is a life that has often rewarded us beyond our wildest dreams. Speaking for myself, I don’t have hobbies, I have this thing I do. To be side lined with a brand new album and have to sit idly while so much that I love and hold dear falls apart before my very eyes has been intense, heart-breaking, anger provoking and very depressing. It has gone to the very heart of our livelihoods and threatened near everything that we have spent our lives trying to build. Here’s to the hope that we can make 2021 a better year than this one has been. In the meantime, here’s to The New OK!”
Los Angeles-based Americana rockers Dawes have released their latest album, “Good Luck With Whatever”. The new record was produced by six-time Grammy-winner Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton/Brandi Carlile/Jason Isbell/Marcus King) at Nashville’s storied RCA Studio A. The new studio effort from Dawes comprised of Taylor Goldsmith (guitars, vocals), Griffin Goldsmith (drums), Wylie Gelber (bass), and Lee Pardini (keys)—marks the band’s seventh full-length release.
“Good Luck With Whatever”, released via Rounder Records, follows a series of acclaimed self-released albums including 2013’s STORIES DON’T END, 2015’s ALL YOUR FAVORITE BANDS, 2016’s WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE, and 2018’s PASSWORDS, all of which reached the top 10 or higher and “Americana/Folk Albums” charts.
The album deals with reflective themes like grappling with the expectations of adulthood over the familiar Dawes brand of graceful melodies with kinetic riffs and intricate musical interplay. A culmination of their entire catalogue and decade-long career all wrapped up in nine tracks, Good Luck With Whatever reclaims the rugged urgency and easy confidence of Dawes’ early work while tapping into the veteran band’s intense musical connection more effectively than ever before.
“In the past, I’ve definitely been more precious about the way I wanted the songs to sound, but that’s never as fun,” says Taylor Goldsmith in a press statement. “The music we make is everyone’s mode of expression, and the other guys all have chops that I don’t have and never will. The fact that we’re able to lean on each other and celebrate each other as individuals just makes us so much more excited about getting to play together in this band.”
In celebration of the new album, Dawes also recently announced a drive-in performance on Saturday, October 17th at City National Grove of Anaheim in Anaheim, CA. For more information and ticketing details, head here.
Listen to Good Luck With Whateverby Dawes below and check out the official music video for “Who Do You Think You’re Talking To?”.
Jay Watson multi-instrumentalist and longtime staple of Australia’s psych-rock scene, isn’t planning on recording a deathmetal song. But if he happened to come up with a killer riff in that vein, he already has a plan for it: “If I was vibing on it because I’d be listening to heaps of Swedish death-metal, then I’d definitely put it on album,” he says. “I’d probably just try to make a few more songs like that—a deathmetal EP or something.”
The songwriter—who plays in Pond, has been a live member of Tame Impala since the project’s inception and is the rare musician to occasionally join Kevin Parker in the studio—is reflecting on the wild eclecticism of Out in the World, his fifth solo LP under the GUM name. The largely home-recorded LP drifts from twinkling space-folk of “Weightless in LA” to the psychedelic R&B of “The Thrill of Doing It Right” to the electro-Afrobeat pulse of “Low to Low” (which he describes as a “broken robot samba”).
Watson doesn’t have a clue how to categorize his music, though he thinks critics tend to look in the wrong place for their reference points. “With GUM and Pond and Tame Impala, the influence of hip-hop is not that talked about,” he says, noting he and his friends got “really obsessed” with rap music around 2014. “It was a major influence— as big an influence as Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and stuff were early on. But people don’t pick up on it as much.”
Ultimately, though, Watson isn’t concerned about being pigeonholed. “I’d say there are bigger critics of my music than me, but I’m up there,” he says. “So if I finish a song and it doesn’t make me cringe, it makes it on.”
Despite the array of styles on the record—and his admiration for “musical chameleons” like Beck—Watson isn’t chasing the thrill of shapeshifting. “I’ve never thought of it as trying to make something eclectic,” he says. “It’s more that I just make up songs and hope they go together. I can’t fathom that people can make one type of music for 20 years. There are so many artists I admire, like The Ramones, who just master one thing. But I would get so jealous of other people getting to do other stuff.”
40 Years Ago: Wall Of Voodoo – “Wall Of Voodoo” (EP) released “September 30th, 1980
WALL OF VOODOO see the release of their debut EP on Index Records. It’s four unusual songs: “Longarm”, “The Passenger”, “Can’t Make Love” and a version of Johnny Cash’s “Ring Of Fire”.
On the jacket of the EP is a little black devil dog. Throughout the band’s early years that dog would always seem to be just lurking in the wings, waiting.
The group has been together about three years and started when StanardRidgeway and Marc Moreland got together in a duo along the lines of Public Image. They played what they referred to as “soundtrack music”, cutting backing tracks for commercials and a few indie films. They opened a Holly & The Italians show in Los Angeles and decided that they ought to make more of this band thing. Wall Of Voodoo began by recruiting Marc’s brother Bruce Moreland on bass, Chas Gray on synth and extraordinary, quirky Joe Nanini on percussion.”
Numerous cover versions of “Ring of Fire” have been produced, the most commercially successful version being by Social Distortion, who released their punk rock version on the album Social Distortion (1990). 27 years after the song was first recorded by Cash. Pop punk band Bowling for Soup would later cover the song on their live album Bowling for Soup: Live and Very Attractive. The Eric Burdon & the Animals version, recorded at the end of 1968, it failed to chart in the US. In late 1974, the Eric Burdon Band released a heavier version. In 2006, Burdon performed the song sometimes at his concerts. A cover of the song was released as a single by Alan Jackson on December 6th, 2010. It served as the lead-off single to his 34 Number Ones compilation album. His rendition of the song also features guest vocals from Lee Ann Womack. Dwight Yoakam also recorded a version of the song, which appeared on his debut album Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. He continues to include the song in his live performances. The song was covered by Frank Zappa in the late 1980s, and is offered on the 1995 The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life. release showcasing a short-lived band line up from a late-1988 tour. Zappa introduces the song by saying he’d met Johnny Cash that afternoon, and that Johnny was going to come to the show and play with Zappa and his band, but “his wife got sick.” Zappa and the band proceed to play a seriously gonzo reggae version of the song, with a caricature vocal impersonation of Johnny Cash. A euphemistic take on the song’s title (meaning anal/rectal discomfort) permeates the song, and a number of other numbers throughout the Best Band release. In the early 1980’s, the experimental/new wave band “Wall of Voodoo” (Mexican Radio) recorded a version of “Ring of Fire” that included extended guitar and synthesizer solos. This version of song can be found on the Wall of Voodoo compilation album “Grandma’s House,” and can also be heard as background music in the adult film “Night Dreams.” This version of the song also includes some slight rearrangement in so much as the repeating background music (layered behind the synth and lead guitar solos at the end of the song,).
An in-depth exploration of a music movement in the late twentieth century, a fascinating period when some innovative musicians mixed guitar noise into conventional pop song structures while maintaining a philosophy of letting the music speak for itself. Although many of the people interviewed are notoriously press shy they have opened up about their music and experiences from over 20 years ago, how they defied the rules and became sonic innovators that have inspired so many.
Adult Mom’s most recent album was 2017’s Soft Spots, and they’ve spent the last couple years covering some good songs — by Green Day, the Swell Season, Laura Stevenson, and Taylor Swift and extricating themselves from a sticky label situation. Today, the Stevie Knipe-led group is releasing a new original song, “Berlin,” ahead of their imminent tour with Palehound. “Berlin” is all warm tones and ruminative memories. “Sit in the car parked in the dark/ Hearing rain drop on the roof,” Knipe sings in the chorus, their voice echoing as the song clicks into place.
“‘Berlin’ is a song that took over a year to write. It’s about processing the loss of an important friendship without knowing the exact cause of the loss,” Knipe said of the track. “Through loss, there are moments recalled, like meeting for the first time, the moment you got close with that person, singing Hole in dorm rooms, drinking beer in a bathroom, and of course, the complete paralyzation that comes with loss. It’s about being in between healed and not, and trying my best to calculate the reasons why she left.’
The Band:
Rhythm Guitar, Keys, Vocals, and Songwriting by Stevie Knipe Drums and Percussion by Olivia Battell Lead Guitar by Allegra Eidinger Bass by Kyle Pulley
The Fat Angel Sings 