Events currently taking place throughout the world only serve to stoke a fire under the likes of a band like Pillow Queens, who find themselves continually inspired by a Dublin that is no stranger to fighting social injustice. Street artists, fashion designers, musicians, film makers and more comprise a scene which routinely champions queerness and marginalized groups, and engages with and activates young people in response to the likes of the city’s ongoing housing and mental health crises. Pillow Queens’ songs of togetherness and unity ring out louder than ever before.
In their short lifespan as a band they’ve released two demo EPs, performed on a successful string of UK & Irish dates & festival appearances, had playlisting from BBC 6 Music, and found themselves opening for the likes of American Football and Pussy Riot, as well as stadium performances opening for IDLES and Future Islands.
With all this under their belt, the band began working with Mercury Prize nominated producer Tommy McLaughlin for their single ‘Gay Girls’ – which received a nomination for the RTE Choice Music Prize song of the year, as well as International pickup from NPR’s World Cafe and KEXP. The song also found its way into the heart of actor Cillian Murphy and his BBC6 mixtape show.
2019 saw Pillow Queens venture into mainland Europe, as they lit up the Eurosonic festival and completed a string of tour dates opening for Soak. The tour was a messy and joyous affair captured beautifully in the DIY video for the bands summer single ‘How Do I Look’.
In Waiting is Pillow Queens’ debut album, the result of four years of brotherly love in a sisterly unit from Ireland’s most urgent, yearning, rock band. Crafted from our lives, and honed in a studio in rural Donegal in the northwest of Ireland, this is a record by queens in waiting and kings in the making. It’s an album about love; self-love, queer love, the anxiety-inducing fault lines of romantic love, and the love for a city and a country that simultaneously has your back and is on your back.
it is universally agreed that New Zealand’s Wax Chattels are a must- see live act; their hypnotically sinister debut captured this perfectly.
Released in 2018 and supported by relentless touring, the eponymous album reached #7 on the New Zealand album charts, and release week saw the title feature as #1 in Rough Trade’s top 20 new releases. Tastemakers like NPR and the A.V. club came on as early champions. the album’s success at home and abroad led to the well-deserved nomina- tion of best alternative artist at the 2018 New Zealand music awards, as well as the band’s inclusion in the coveted shortlist of finalists for the taite music prize and Auckland live best independent debut award. after a knock-out entrée, the anticipation that surrounds their sophomore album, “Clot” , is immense. much like their debut,
The writing process for “Clot” took the best part of a year. while some songs were written on the road, the bulk of the album was workshopped throughout 2019 across bedrooms and storage containers. demos were fine-tuned before recording engineer James Goldsmith (aldous harding, mermaidens) stepped in. the band maintained the use of only the barest of ingredients — bass guitar, keyboard, and a two-piece drum kit — but spent more time ex- perimenting with and finding new sounds. they wanted to maintain the same live element, but, this time, heavier — for which they enlisted the help of mixing engineer, and fellow noise-maker, Ben Greenberg (uniform, destruction unit, the men). the keyboards are thicker, the bass more intense. a marked step-up, this new record keeps the visceral energy of the debut, only this time they dig deeper into ca- thartic noise. at Clot’s center is confrontation. “mindfulness” asks do you accept the status quo over forcing tangible change? the vitriolic choruses of “cede” are in cheng’s native language — taiwanese hokkien — and are an indignant confrontation about cross-strait relations and self- determination. the experience of being a first generation immigrant is expressed in the melodic single “no ties”. the song touches on cul- tural differences and the parental sacrifice of careers and support sys- tems to provide a “better” future for their children. the explosive arc of “efficiency” describes knowing when to bide your time, and when to push, in which the band treads a line between the explicit and in- tuitive.
This is carried through “An Eye”, in which the band stresses the physical harm and psychological breakdown emanating from the escalating racial and political uproar throughout the world. though the band seethes and boils throughout, Clot concludes with a message of hope. perhaps it’s this capacity for self-awareness that makes wax chattels one of New Zealand’s most treasured independent exports. “this band of former jazz students is making confrontational post-punk, marrying the grind- ing keyboards of suicide with the drum-and- bass intensity of early death from above 1979. the results are stark, hypnotically sinister songs.”
Official video for Efficiency by Wax Chattels, from their album “Clot”
Anna von Hausswolff is a musician and composer exploring the myriad of possibilities and the potential for new expressions on the pipe organ.
On her continued and successful campaign to make the pipe organ cool again, Anna von Hausswolff will release “All Thoughts Fly” in September which features just the artist and the organ. “I wanted to play with dissonance and polyrhythms to create a harmonic landscape that is constantly changing and expanding into something else,” Anna says of the title track. “Everything you hear in this track, every little overtone and all ambience is entirely made through the organ. We used EQ but that’s it. The overall idea was to create an illusion of flying thoughts, intertwining and entangling into each other. Different words and worlds happening at the same time, affecting each other and changing each other’s directions and courses.”
Sacro Bosco (“Sacred Grove”) is the starting point for Anna von Hausswolff’s new album All Thoughts Fly, incoming on Southern Lord on 25th September. Here in solo instrumental mode, the entire record consists of just one instrument, the pipe organ, and represents absolute liberation of the imagination. All Thoughts Fly radiates a melancholic beauty, and is distinguished by fluid transitions of contrasting elements; calmness and drama, harmony and dissonance, much like the place that inspires the music.
Sacro Bosco is a garden, based in the centre of Italy, containing grotesque mythological sculptures and buildings overgrown with vegetation, situated in a wooded valley beneath the castle of Orsini. Created during the 16th Century, Sacro Bosco was commissioned by Pier Francesco Orsini, some say to try and cope with his grief following the death of his wife Guilia Farnese, others speculate the purpose was to create art.
About the album Anna explains “there’s a sadness and wilderness that inspired me to write this album, also a timelessness. I believe that this park has survived not only due to its beauty but also because of the iconography, it has been liberated from predictable ideas and ideals. The people who built this park truly set their minds and imagination free. All thoughts fly is a homage to this creation, and an effort to articulate the atmosphere and the feelings that this place evokes inside of me. It’s a very personal interpretation of a place that I lack the words to describe. I’d like to believe Orsini built this monumental park out of grief for his dead wife, and in my Sacro Bosco I used this story as a core for my own inspiration: love as a foundation for creation.”
The accompanying video for the first single “Sacro Bosco” is, just like the music, an interpretation of the park with an imaginary twist. Directed by Gustaf and Ludvig Holtenäs.
Anna summarises, “Sacro Bosco in Bomarzo is a creation carved out from one man’s head. A frozen thought lasting throughout time and touching people across generations. All thoughts fly, Ogni Pensiero Vola, is about this: the importance of sharing for surviving, creating space and evolving. Once you’ve shared your words they are not only yours anymore.”
All Thoughts Fly ultimately embodies the exploration of any and all possibilities, and the audience is invited to listen, liberate the mind and let it wander.
The organ on All Thoughts Fly is situated in Gothenburg and is a Swedish replica of the Arp Schnitger organ in Germany. It is the largest organ tuned in Quarter-comma meantone temperament in the world. With it’s four manuals, one pedal and 54 stops, it was built as part of a ten-year research project reconstructing 17th Century North German organ building craft. The tuning temperament is an important detail to note here, as it deeply affects the sound and tuning, and thus radically changed the process of creating this album. Anna speaks of a pleasant surprise during recording, the organ’s ability to create beautiful “pitching” notes through its stops and air supply system. She remarks “We took advantage of this so most of the pitching sounds and notes that you hear on the album comes from the mechanics of this organ, effects made entirely acoustically.” The organ was recorded with two room mics for atmosphere and two pairs of close mics placed inside the organ to capture nuances and detail for further organ sound processing by Filip Leyman in his studio.
“‘Ghosts’ is about the beauty and joy of being in a band, and the pain of losing one another to illness and time. ‘Ghosts’ tries to speak to the spirit of the music itself, something none of us owns but can only discover and share together. In the E Street Band, it resides in our collective soul, powered by the heart.” – Bruce
New album “LetterToYou” featuring the E Street Band coming October 23rd.
The Goodbye Party have shared their new song “December Boys” accompanied by a reflective and touching video edited by Ali Donohue. Read a statement from Michael Cantor on the track
“When my partner and I started dating, she was writing a graphic novel that documented her first year in Philly. Naturally, she captured the beginning of our relationship in the book. The lyrics are a short collection of some of those pages. The song itself came together in about 20 minutes, but took another seven years to make it onto an album.”
“‘December Boys‘ starts out quiet, but then kicks into a jangly fuzz when the band enters.”
—Stereogum
“Sunny, reflective.”
—FLOOD Magazine
The Goodbye Party has shared “No Reason” a gentle power-pop number his upcoming album Beautiful Motors. Brooklyn Vegan, who premiered the track today, is saying it “nails a balance between warm, summery melodies and autumnal melancholy — the perfect kind of song to drop on the first official day of fall.”
Read a statement from Michael Cantor on the song below:
“This song deals with a couple of themes. One is how people you no longer keep in your life can show up in some of your favourite memories. It’s also about the experience of passing through the same place across different tours and seeing decay creep along, seeing cascading effects from hurricanes, and recognizing that slow change in yourself. My friend Emi Knight from Strawberry Runners sings on this song. She, along with a handful of local songwriters, held monthly salons where we would demo and critique each other’s songs. Having that space helped me focus, write, and rewrite songs for this record.”
An explosive electropop collaboration between two of our new favourite bands – the Saint Agnes remix of CLT DRP‘s ‘I Always Like Your Mother Better’. The release heralds the announcement of an exciting remix edition of CLT DRP’s album Without the Eyes, due to release 13th November.
Here’s what the bands had to say about each other , CLT DRP supported us at a show on tour and blew us away. Kitty and I couldn’t wait to get our hands on the music and remix it.
Saint Agnes: We knew early on that we wanted do a remix version of this album. With our sound edging in to that electronic territory it seemed like the natural thing to do. At the start of this project, if you showed us the list of bands that all came together in the end to do remixes for this album; we would have been pinching ourselves. We’re blown away with all the artists input and really excited for everyone to hear our debut album reworked.
CLT DRP: Both bands are sparkling hot stars of Brighton’s Small Pond Recordings – a Brighton indie label serving up some very tasty fish right now (see also LibraLibra and Bitch Falcon)
Fleet Foxes have annouced the release of their surprise new album titled ‘Shore’. The album news was shared today (September 22nd) to mark the beginning of the autumnal equinox. It was first teased with posters displayed around Paris at the weekend. ‘Shore’ follows the band’s 2017 album ‘Crack-Up’, and was recorded in New York, Paris, Hudson, Los Angeles and Long Island City between September 2018 and September 2020. The band’s fourth record features contributions from Uwade Akhere, Hamilton Leithauser, Grizzly Bear’s Chris Bear and Daniel Rossen, Kevin Morby, and others
“I see “Shore” as a place of safety on the edge of something uncertain, staring at Whitman’s waves reciting ‘death’,” frontman Robin Pecknold said of the new album in a statement. “Tempted by the adventure of the unknown at the same time you are relishing the comfort of the stable ground beneath you. This was the mindset I found, the fuel I found, for making this album.”
The album comes complete with an accompanying film, also entitled Shore. It was shot in Washington, Oregon and Idaho on 16mm film by Kersti Jan Werdal. “I listened to the album while driving, and observationally shot landscapes that I felt resonated with the music, yet also stood on their own,” Werdal explained.
“The film is intended to co-exist and engage with the album, rather than be in a direct and symbiotic relationship with it. The urban and narrative scenes interact with the more surreal landscapes, rather than sit in opposition of one another. My hope is that the film, much like the album does, reflects optimism and strength.”
Speaking of the new album, Pecknold added: “Since the unexpected success of the first Fleet Foxes album over a decade ago, I have spent more time than I’m happy to admit in a state of constant worry and anxiety. Worried about what I should make, how it will be received, worried about the moves of other artists, my place amongst them, worried about my singing voice and mental health on long tours. I’ve never let myself enjoy this process as much as I could, or as much as I should. “By February 2020, I was again consumed with worry and anxiety over this
album and how I would finish it. But since March, with a pandemic spiralling out of control, living in a failed state, watching and participating in a rash of protests and marches against systemic injustice, most of my anxiety around the album disappeared. It just came to seem so small in comparison to what we were all experiencing together.
“In its place came a gratitude, a joy at having the time and resources to devote to making sound, and a different perspective on how important or not this music was in the grand
scheme of things. Music is both the most inessential and the most essential thing. We don’t need music to live, but I couldn’t imagine life without it. It became a great gift to no longer carry any worry or anxiety around the album, in light of everything that is going on.”
Fleet Foxes’ last album, 2017’s ‘Crack-Up’, was given the four-star album review, writing: “Some may be unconvinced by the ambitious leap Fleet Foxes have made on album three, but there’s really no doubting the first-rate intelligence behind this uncompromising and ever-changing piece of work.” Pecknold: I wanted to make an album that celebrated life in the face of death, honouring our lost musical heroes explicitly in the lyrics and carrying them with me musically, committing to living fully and vibrantly in a way they no longer can, in a way they maybe couldn’t even when they were with us, despite the joy they brought to so many. I wanted to make an album that felt like a relief, like your toes finally touching sand after being caught in a rip current. I wanted the album to exist in a liminal space outside of time, inhabiting both the future and the past, accessing something spiritual or personal that is untouchable by whatever the state of the world may be at a given moment, whatever our season. I see “shore” as a place of safety on the edge of something uncertain, staring at Whitman’s waves reciting “death,” tempted by the adventure of the unknown at the same time you are relishing the comfort of the stable ground beneath you. This was the mindset I found, the fuel I found, for making this album.
Elsewhere in the statement, Pecknold wrote that, next year, the band will release nine more songs, “co-written from the ground up with [Fleet Foxes members] Morgan Henderson, Skyler Skjelset, Casey Wescott, and Christian Wargo.”
Fleet Foxes are to release their fourth studio album “Shore” . The bright and hopeful album, released via Anti-Records, for a February 5th street date. In addition to the album, a 16 mm road movie of the same name by Kersti Jan Werdal that showcases the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.
On Friday, September 18th, 2020, Sub Pop will release L7’s “Smell the Magic:” 30th Anniversary Edition, the fiery, American grunge pioneers’ second album. L7 were formed by Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardner in 1985 Of their meeting and on hearing Gardner play a tape of her songs in progress, Sparks described it as “one of the happiest days of my life” with a clear synchronicity in the music they were each interested in creating. At the time, Gardner was also active as a poet. The punk rock duo brought Jennifer Finch on board as bass guitarist and Anne Anderson on drums.
This 30th-anniversary edition of the ‘90s underground rock classic includes all 9 songs from the album, remastered and available together on vinyl for the first time ever! A multitude of rock music scenes populated the expanse of Los Angeles in 1989: hardcore punk, industrial goth, roots rock, and Sunset Strip hair metal, to name a few. L7 fit into none of them, creating their own unique blend of punk and hard, hooky rock loaded with humour and cultural commentary. Originally released in 1990, Smell the Magic is a landmark of ’90s feminist rock.
But making a mark on the LA underground rock scene was more challenging than it seemed.
Originating out of art punk circles in 1985, L7 played countless poetry readings, drag shows, art happenings and punk rock dive bars. They were nothing short of perseverant.
Having already released one album, eponymously titled, L7, the band was touring up the West Coast when they began to meet like minded artists affiliated with Sub Pop Records. The band managed to score a phone number for the imprint, and convinced label founders Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman to come see them live.
That show would take place a couple of weeks later in 1989 at an arts center in Seattle. The stage was finagled out of folding tables, and friends recruited to work a smoke machine (members of the group Cat Butt) decided to drop acid before attending to their duties. This led to a thick fog filling the entire venue and the band’s performance could hardly even be seen. L7 were convinced they blew it. Instead, they got signed: Sub Pop may not have been able to see them, yet, but they could hear them and asked if L7 would do a recording for their monthly Singles Club.
Later in the year, the band went into the label’s go-to studio in Seattle, Reciprocal Recording and in one day recorded “Shove,” “Packin’ a Rod,” and “Fast and Frightening.”
Released in January, the single’s A-side “Shove” would kick off the 1990’s with a bang and L7 would have an underground hit on their hands.
The band was then given the go ahead to record a full EP. The buzz from their Sub Pop’s Singles Club release was almost immediately palpable.
A few months after “Shove,” L7 continued with recording the EP—later expanded into a full-length album with three cover songs (“Packin’ a Rod,” “Just Like Me,” and “American Society”). They recorded again with Reciprocal’s producer, Jack Endino, and later Michael James and Ramones-producer Daniel Rey in Los Angeles.
This 30th-anniversary edition of the ‘90s underground rock classic Smell the Magic includes all 9 songs from the album, remastered and available together on vinyl for the first time ever! Originally released in 1990, Smell the Magic is a landmark of ’90s feminist rock.
This 30th-anniversary edition of the ‘90s underground rock classic Smell The Magic (which originally came out as a six-track 12″/nine-track CD) includes all nine songs from the album, remastered and available together on vinyl for the first time. A multitude of rock music scenes populated the expanse of Los Angeles in 1989: hardcore punk, industrial goth, roots rock, and Sunset Strip hair metal, to name a few. L7 fit into none of them, creating their own unique blend of punk and hard, hooky rock loaded with humor and cultural commentary. Originally released in 1990, Smell The Magic is a landmark of ’90s feminist rock.
“Smell the Magic: 30th Anniversary Edition” is now available from Sub Pop. LP preorders through megamart.subpop.com and select retailers in North America will receive the limited Loser edition on clear with high melt orange, blue, and grey vinyl.
Cults’ utterly mesmerizing new album, “Host”, was written more collaboratively than ever before and recorded primarily with live instruments for the first time. The collection marks the start of a bold new chapter for the band, one fuelled by an ever-deepening trust and a boundless appetite for growth and experimentation. The songs here are deceptively charming, with lush, airy arrangements that belie their dark, weighty lyrics, and the production is rich and multifaceted to match, blending retro and futuristic palettes into a spellbinding swirl of high-def indie rock and lo-fi bedroom pop. As its title suggests, Host is an exploration of the sinister dynamics at play in a parasitic relationship, but rather than dwell in the discomfort, the record charts a cathartic journey towards freedom and self-reliance, revelling in the power that comes from standing your ground and declaring independence in the face of exploitation and manipulation.
Cults have embarked on a radical reimagining, both of the band’s sound and its dynamic, and the result is the NYC indie duo’s utterly mesmerizing fourth album, Host. Written more collaboratively than ever before and recorded primarily with live instruments for the first time, the collection marks the start of a bold new chapter for the band. The songs here are deceptively charming, with lush, airy arrangements that belie their dark, weighty lyrics. The production is rich and multifaceted to match, blending retro and futuristic palettes into a spellbinding swirl of high-def indie rock and lo-fi bedroom pop. As its title suggests, “Host” is an exploration of the sinister dynamics at play in a parasitic relationship, but rather than dwell in the discomfort, the record charts a cathartic journey towards freedom and self-reliance,
New York duo Cults struggled to piece together their fourth album. After all of the music was recorded, something wasn’t working and the two artists weren’t happy with it. “It just didn’t feel like an album yet,” says singer Madeline Follin. It wasn’t until she—for the first time—brought her own songs to the table that the album started to become more like what they’d envisioned.
The title Host is partly inspired by this newfound collaborative effort, while also playing with ideas of power dynamics and independence. Multi-instrumentalist/singer Brian Oblivion said of Follin’s contributions: “The music just floored us, and suddenly everything started to click.” the duo broke down every track on Host, explaining themes of exploitation, addiction, relationships, and more.
1. “Trials”
Focuses on the power that addictions and harmful ideologies have to transform. The chorus walks a tight rope between a metaphor for gaslighting and a despairing worry about the person you still hold out hope for.
2. “8th Ave”
A song we wrote a long time ago at our old studio on Eight Avenue across from Port Authority. It’s an area with a well documented history of exploitation and corruption, but freedom and acceptance as well. Sonically it sounded like what we saw out the window and the lyrics flowed from there.
3. “Spit You Out”
This the first song we wrote for this record, trying on some of our more left field influences from the exotica sounds of Esquivel to Nine Inch Nails–style heaviness. It focuses on parasitic relationships and breaking away from toxic patterns of interaction. We never imagined it would relate to a worldwide pandemic.
4. “A Low”
One of the few romanitic-ish songs on the record. It starts with a kind of Greek chorus, setting the scene for the narrator to step in. From there the song tries to explain how transformative relationships can be even in the deepest depression, and even when the other party isn’t aware.
5. “Honest Love”
A quick tune that harks back to our first show at the Mercury Lounge. It draws on the metaphor that the fear of unpreparedness to perform a show shares with feeling unprepared to form a new connection. It also explores the vulnerability that comes with singing a personal song to strangers and how that relates to having intimacy with a new person.
6. “Working It Over”
This is our power ballad and end of side A of the record. The song centers on the importance of holding close to personal support systems and fighting against escapism in the face of hopelessness. It’s a reminder that the past is not greater than the present, and the future is unknowable. You’re probably not going to live in space, so we have to work together to deal with the problems of right now if we want to find satisfaction.
7. “A Purgatory”
Cutting the strings on a manipulative relationship and exiting the purgatory that could have continued without action.
8. “Masquerading”
Impostor Syndrome is the name of the game here. There’s a particular fear you experience every time you hear your words and songs anywhere in public—that fear of inadequacy haunts every new effort. Masquerading is a kind of acceptance that you’ll always have to play different roles as this will likely never go away.
9. “No Risk”
Antithetical to the title, the song is all about the benefits of taking risks, and how difficult that can be as a woman when being constantly told in both transparent and subliminal ways that you’re “second best” or not worthy of the same voice. The song transforms the title from a place of complacency to a challenge to empower yourself.
10. “Like I Do”
The song starts with a boast (“Can’t nobody sleep like I do”), and gradually transforms into a song about self destructively sweeping your problems off to side so you can keep moving forward.
11. “Shoulders to My Feet”
Touches on the difficulty of fending off intrusive thoughts of the past or fears of the future that get in the way of pursuing something positive.
12. “Monolithic”
A kind of happy ending. Its about giving in, and getting outside yourself even if you aren’t sure what the outcome will be in the end. After a record of pain and self doubt, it’s a jump into the abyss.
Trials” is from Cults’ upcoming album ‘Host’, out September 18th via Sinderlyn Records
Legendary Birmingham rock n roller who was more Keef than Keef, Dave Kusworth has died at the age of 60. With his hats and scarves he epitomised the rock n roll glimmer twins dream but he could back it up with an immense gift for melodic song writing couched in the guitar strewn rock n roll of the Jacobites with Nikki Sudden in the early eighties or eventually on his own trail of great records.
Dave Kusworth, of Jacobites, TV Eye, Rag Dolls and other groups, has died at age 60. Details are scarce, but partner Anouschkat Elspass confirmed the sad new via Kusworth’s Facebook, writing, “I am heartbroken Dave the Love of my life, my soulmate, my lover and best friend has passed away in his sleep.”
Jacobites were formed by Nikki Sudden and Kusworth when their bands, Swell Maps and the Subterranean Hawks, broke up. (Sudden’s brother and Swell Maps drummer Epic Soundtracks was also in Jacobites.) Co-leading the band, Jacobites’ music was full of warm, romantic swagger, owing to Rolling Stones, Dylan and Velvet Underground. (Around the same time, Kusworth also played briefly played in glam rock band The Dogs D’Amour.) Jacobites‘ mid-’80s albums were originally released on UK label Glass but Twin-Tone released a best-of 1986, and Numero Group reissued their classic 1984 self-titled debut and 1985’s Robespierre’s Velvet Basement in 2013.
When Jacobites ended Kusworth continued to make records on his own with The Bounty Hunters and The Tenterhooks. Nikki Sudden died in 2006, and Epic Soundtracks died in 1997.
Read tributes to Dave from Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake, The Auteurs’ Luke Haines, The Lilac Time and more — and listen to some classic Jacobites
The Lilac Time said We’ve been compiling an album from old cassettes of songs from back then so the young Dave Kusworth has been with me this summer. So it’s heartbreaking to hear he has gone. Love to his family friends and fans sdx
Luke Haines : Really sad to hear of the passing of Dave Kusworth. Nikki Sudden and his brother Epic Soundtracks both gone. Kevin Junior also. True poets all.
The Fat Angel Sings 