Following up his series of drive-in live show performances in Anaheim earlier this month, Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness has returned with new single “Get On My Wave.”
The tune first debuted at one of McMahon’s live drive-in shows in Orange County. McMahon later tweeted that the tune would be available today.
In his online comments about “Get On My Wave,” McMahon says, “I wrote and produced ‘Get On My Wave’ with Kyle “King Tuff” Thomas the day we met last summer.” McMahon tweets “It’s about love, alienation and how in a world where things can look perfect on the surface, there are currents running beneath and tides which push and pull at the shore.” The track is romantic and reminiscent of McMahon’s former projects, Jack’s Mannequin and Something Corporate.
What really stands out about “Get On My Wave” is the driving acoustic guitar and shaker. The piano takes on more of an accent to McMahon’s voice, following the melody line in the chorus and shining through at the beginning of the bridge.
I wrote and produced “Get On My Wave” with Kyle “King Tuff” Thomas the day we met last summer. I’ve struggled with releasing the song during the pandemic because it felt too happy; detached from the tumult of our current world. Lately it’s been making more sense to me. It’s a song about love and alienation and how in a world where things can look perfect on the surface there are always currents running beneath and tides which push and pull at the shore. It’s about finding your people and acknowledging your relationship with those forces outside of your control and saying, “let’s ride this out together.”
As to whether the single will be featured on a new full-length or EP, only time will tell. His last full-length, “Upside Down Flowers” was in 2018.
Earlier this month, the members of the dearly beloved and dearly departed band Krill announced they were reforming, with an additional guitarist, as Knot. Their self-titled debut is going to be out at the end of August, and they’ve already shared a promising first glimpse called “Foam,”
Today, they’re back with another one. Knot’s latest is called “The World.” Here’s what Jonah Furman had to say about it: “The World” is supposed to be about the experience of wanting to change the world — or maybe the experience of insisting on wanting to change the world. I guess in some basic way it’s just about anti-escapism — what it means to accept the world, your life, the political situation, as real, as something one cannot retreat from, and as something one should try to not want to retreat from, but to push through, look in the face, and demand some kind of transformation. In my head there was the phrase “another world is possible,” which is heard in movements and protests, and seems to be consciously or unconsciously associated with the idea that we can build something parallel or separate from the corrupted and horrific institutions and instantiations of actually-existing society. I want on some level to reject that; not that change can’t happen, but I want to insist that it happens through, not around, the sick and failed parts of human political experience.
The Band:
Jonah Furman: Vocals, Guitar
Joe Demanuelle-Hall: Guitar
Aaron Ratoff: Bass, Guitar (4, 9)
Ian Becker: Drums
Knot from the upcoming LP, “Knot” out August 28th, 2020 on Exploding in Sound Records.
A lot of musical transplants find themselves in the sunny city of Los Angeles, but few pay tribute to the city they call home in such a candid way. Armed with a stunning voice and a pensive approach to song writing, Golda May captures the disillusionment of many young artists chasing their dreams in the less than angelic City of Angels on “Dear Los Angeles.” The songwriter started earning some early attention with the release of her 2019 single, “Wish I Was Someone Else,” but it looks like 2020 will be an even bigger year for Golda. She released her sophmore single, “Under,” late last year and now “Dear Los Angeles” is slowly making its rise. Take the new single for a spin and then make sure you like/follow Golda to stay ahead of more tracks from this songwriter as they come out. You don’t want to miss out. Golda May is a Ukrainian-American artist who blends authentic alt melodies and lyrics with pop sensibility. Golda’s soft andintimate vocals encompass an astonishing spectrum of moods, sounds, and intensities, from ethereal and other-wordly to dark and resonant.
Super talented singer songwriter Golda Maygolda has just released a new single called ‘Dear Los Angeles’. Her vocals need to be heard to be believed. With success singles ‘Wish I Was Someone Else’ and ‘Under’ already under her belt Golda is an artist to watch. Her unique vocals are showcased in ‘Dear Los Angeles’ as the song is stripped back with just gentle guitar playing supporting the vocals. “Dear Los Angeles,” is a frangible acoustic memorandum to the city that’s part love letter and part therapy session. It’s a change-of-pace from her previous two singles, “Under” and “Wish I Was Someone Else,” a pair of crisply produced alt-pop singles that revealed her skills as a confessionalist.
She is well-equipped to sound that way. Reared in Chicago and San Diego by Ukrainian parents who spoke nothing but Russian at home, she wrote her first song as a 7th-grader (and it was titled “Genocide in Darfur”), graduated high school at age 16 and had founded a non-profit before she was out of her teens. The first Golda music appeared in 2015 when she was still studying business at UC Berkeley.
“I started taking song writing more seriously in college when I began recording an EP after a school trip to India,” Golda says. “When I was 22, I worked as an assistant for a music manager who sort of ‘discovered’ me as a songwriter and started developing me, leading me to get really involved in the L.A. music writing scene. I turned my attention to my own artist project after really missing writing songs that felt like me, like Golda.”
When I first heard “Old Mountain Boy,” I imagined it was written from the top of an Appalachian mountain and sung to the clouds overhead. I’m happy to say that I’m at least partially correct. Howard wrote “Old Mountain Boy” when he decided to drop out of medical school to pursue music. The songwriter said, “I wrote the song out in nature on top of a mountain and while looking out I felt paralyzed by my fear of this decision.” So, check on the mountain top part. Whether in Appalachia or sung to clouds remains to be determined, but the dulcet delivery overpowering the sense of trepidation feel like a sky-cast hope. This single comes to us from Howard’s new LP, Together Alone, which is available on Spotify. I definitely suggest you check it out because there is quite a bit of variation as you move through the tracks. The one constant is Howard’s impeccable song writing. As days start getting warmer, we need a record that helps us digest our thoughts and just lets us chill our neurons. Howard’s new EP, Extended Play, is a compilation of five tracks that helps us step out of our routines and reflect on our own larger, abstract issues. “Modern Love” is a piano-fueled anthem that throws you into a kaleidoscopic loop. In “Saturn Return,” Howard taps into the inevitable identity crisis that we face every 29 years according to astrology. His struggles with his own doubts is also found in “Old Mountain Boy” where Howard presents us a younger version of himself questioning his decisions while hoping for the better. The final tracks, “Save What’s Lost” and “Waiting In The Garden,” is Howard’s own process of letting his old self go:
Howard, opted to go by only his forename… which can be really hard to Google. So you’re going to want to follow Howard on his socials to stay up-to-date.
On Arcade Fire’s greatest album (to date), the band creates something of an alternate universe where the suburbs are literally a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Win Butler and pals spotlight their uncanny ability to slip into the sights, sounds and feelings of childhood, melding memories (both happy and unhappy) into a greater portrait of comfort and rebellion in the outer environs. The theme unifies a diverse palette of relentlessly exciting rock ’n’ roll, from the punky “Month of May” to the synth-pop stunner “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).” On the latter, Regine Chassagne belts the eternal credo of tortured teenage artists: “I need the darkness, someone please cut the lights.”
“It has left me restless and endlessly frustrated, thinking about this, about a place that isn’t necessarily just a place but is also a state of mind.”
That’s how Eric Eidelstein begins his personal yet overarching look at Arcade Fire’s monumental 2010 album The Suburbs. The indie rock outfit is responsible for a handful of impeccable releases—from their sweeping 2004 debut Funeral to 2013’s daring Reflektor—but none triggers the imagination quite like The Suburbs, named one of the best albums of the 2010s. That restlessness Eidelstein describes in his 33 1/3 book is what makes The Suburbs such an inescapable and timeless classic. No matter how much bigger the urban/rural divide gets, people will always get stuck places—whether metaphorical or physical. And they’ll always find reasons to be restless.
The Suburbs, their third studio album, turns 10 this Sunday, August. 2nd, and in the years since its release, Arcade Fire have found themselves both at the forefront of the critical conversation and general rock music discourse. For most of the last 20 years, it seemed like they could do no wrong. They released four rock-solid albums, and then, in 2017, they dropped a dud (critically, at least). Even though this writer (and this writer) has found certain aspects of it to be redeemable, Everything Now was panned by everyone from Pitchfork to SPIN (who went so far to say it was a “deeply cynical, joyless album”). The Suburbs has endured throughout these conversations, perhaps because it cleanly offers social criticism and satire without cynicism. Everything Now attempts grand critique of culture in the same way The Suburbs does, but only the latter really pulls it off. Arcade Fire take more chances on this ambitious concept album, but the payoff is enormous.
Anyone who has lived somewhere small will understand what The Suburbs is getting at. For frontman Win Butler and his brother Will, this album was inspired by their upbringing in The Woodlands, Texas, a suburb outside Houston. I grew up in a small sweaty town in Alabama, not some cookie-cutter community lingering in the shadow of Chicago or Orlando or New York, but I still understand American mundanity and what it feels like to be trapped. This Arcade Fire album approaches that feeling more than just a sketch of a certain kind of place. “The Suburbs” could be anywhere. As Eidlestein also wrote, “I want you to think of the suburbs, whatever they may mean for you.” And as Win himself said, the album is “Neither a love letter to, nor an indictment of, the suburbs – it’s a letter from the suburbs.” The Suburbs continues to outlast other concept albums from this time period because it can be about anywhere. There are certain moments on The Suburbs that capture that aforementioned restlessness. Some sound more like freedom. And others seem to reflect American culture on a larger scale. One does all three, and it’s therefore the high point of the album. Régine Chassagne takes the spotlight on the massive, disco-inspired second “Sprawl”—“Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”—and, like a great coming-of-age film, it somehow encapsulates everything about growing up, chasing dreams and the ache so many of us felt when we imagined a life somewhere beyond our seemingly small worlds. “These days, my life, I feel it has no purpose / But late at night the feelings swim to the surface,” Chassagne sings. “’Cause on the suburbs the city lights shine / They’re calling at me, come and find your kind.” It’s an invitation to make good on those dreams and aches.
Arcade Fire are fond of creating a specific atmosphere or universe with each record—even if that landscape is one already familiar to us. Other key tracks include “The Suburbs” itself, which introduces us to the metaphorical ‘Burbs where the next hour of music will take place. “The Suburbs,” which attempts to tear down some of the utopian-like notions about suburban communities, is the project’s thesis statement, one that addresses themes like uniformity and toxicity in Western culture that they had only touched on in previous albums. The next song, “Ready to Start,” is a fast forward to fresh beginnings, the sparkling “Rococo” observes bored trendy teens and “Month of May” describes the wild feelings that come around when the world finally starts to thaw out every year. Lyrically, it’s a picturesque and vivid record from start to finish, but The Suburbs is also just a really good indie rock album. “Modern Man” is a bouncy rock jam, “Half Light I” swells with experimental strings and “Deep Blue” sinks into a cool, dark escape from the miles and miles of concrete. The synths, guitars and drums on The Suburbs make it a delight to behold even if you’re ignoring the lyrics, which are—let me be clear—still of the utmost importance.
What it did: Stripped the sound back to something altogether more immediate – from the jaunty title track to the raw punk power of ‘Month Of May’ – and touched on the fear of growing up. Poor old Win – it comes to us all. Fun fact: The album was inspired by a letter Win received from a childhood friend back home in Houston, Texas.
The new album from Fontaines D.C.—‘A Hero’s Death’—arrives July 31st. Available on deluxe gatefold 2x 180g vinyl, limited edition stormy blue vinyl, standard black vinyl, two pocket wallet CD, limited edition cassette, and MP3, lossless or 24-bit WAV digital album. Each album purchase comes with an instant grat download of “A Hero’s Death” (the single), and the full digital album to be delivered on release day. Barely a year after the release of their acclaimed debut album Dogrel (which charted Top 10 in the UK, earned a Mercury Prize nomination, and No. 1 Album of the Year positions for BBC 6Music and Rough Trade), Dublin, Ireland post-punk outfit Fontaines D.C. return with an intensely confident, patient, and complex sophomore album. A Hero’s Death arrives battered and bruised, albeit beautiful – a heady and philosophical take on the modern world, and its great uncertainty.
Barely a year after the release of their hugely acclaimed debut album ‘Dogrel’, which earned a Mercury Prize nomination and Album of the Year 2019 , Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. have returned with an intensely confident, patient, and complex follow up album. ‘A Hero’s Death’ arrives battered and bruised, albeit beautiful – a heady and philosophical take on the modern world, and its great uncertainty.
Foxing has become one of indie-rock’s most juiced-up alpha-sluggers, calling its towering shots and clobbering homers into the Busch Stadium parking lot. The valiant six-piece led by singer Conor Murphy swung big with their soaring 2018 LP Nearer My God, which landed somewhere between American Football’s disconsolate debut and Radiohead’s blinking Hail to the Thief.
It’s a sincerely commanding effort; 90 seconds into the emphatic album opener “Grand Paradise,” as Murphy shrieks the unforgettable phrase “shock-collared at the gates of heaven!” and the full band kicks in, it’s an arena-worthy moment for a band that plays to hundreds, not thousands. Yet those live shows are teeming with the group’s unapologetic self-belief — Foxing plays like it wants to be the rock band that saves your life. If concerts ever return, you better believe those clubs will be full.
“Nearer My God,” the title track, in all its triumphant, anguished, soul-affirming glory — the Hotelier-worshipping Missouri grandson of Queen’s “I Want to Break Free.”
“We live in a punk-rock world / Oooh-oooh, oooh-oooh,” sings Peter Gill on 2020’s astounding Hit to Hit, which honours both sentiments by sounding like Big Star if Alex Chilton had Bob Pollard’s ADHD, across 24 tunes that only break the two-minute mark on a quarter of the record. Homemade-sounding music is often championed for its roughness-as-realism, but Gill’s band shows how gorgeous and pristine the DIY life can be, albeit by leading with the Beach Boys rockabilly of “W-2,” a tax-form lament for anyone just trying to get their fucking quarantine check. Treat their breakthrough album as a thought-experiment about what would happen if you straightened all the crooked lines in Wowee Zowee and marvel at how much fractured beauty is still there.
2nd Grade have shared the fourth and final single from their debut album Hit to Hit. It’s another short ‘n sweet taste of the humble power pop that defines the album.
“The record’s latest single “Boys in Heat” clocks in at just over a minute and is incredibly catchy, so it’s easy to find yourself on your fourth or fifth listen without noticing. It’s a confident indie rock jam that exudes carefree summer fun.”
“Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider” is their “September Gurls” for a generation that first experienced “Little Honda” via Yo La Tengo’s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. Philadelphia’s 2nd Grade has released the third track from their upcoming full-length Hit to Hit. According to the band, “Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider” is “a rip-roaring earworm about clueless machismo set in the world of the road dog.” It’s insanely catchy.
Second Grade is Peter Gill, Jon Samuels, Jack Washburn, Catherine Dwyer, and Will Kennedy.
Bad Moves’ brand of adolescent angst-fueled power-punk has gone to college, emerging older, wearier, and wiser, while retaining all of its rebellious energy. Aside from some inaudible vocals on the first few tracks, Untenable is a thoughtful, dystopian delight; though that’s no surprise from a band that writes and plays each song like it’s their last.
Bad Moves is four friends making upbeat power-pop about anxiety and identity, drawing on a sound that stretches from forbears like The Nerves and Cheap Trick to contemporary artists like Sheer Mag and Haim. After years knocking around the Washington, D.C. punk scene in bands of their own, guitarists Katie Park and David Combs, bassist Emma Cleveland and drummer Daoud Tyler-Ameen began playing together in 2015, with a few goals in mind: Songwriting would be collaborative, singing would be everyone’s job and arrangements would be generously staggered, blending voices and ideas to avoid centering any one member.
On its self titled 2016 EP, the band explored bleak adulthood, writing about bad jobs, corrupt leaders, frustrated dreams and gentrifying cities. Tours of the US and UK with friends Jeff Rosenstock, Martha, Nana Grizol and The Spook School brought a widening fanbase and a sharpening sound, with new material that dug into the wilderness of childhood and how its lessons ripple out later in life. As anticipation grew for a full-length album, the band made a breakthrough appearance on the Cartoon Network’s Craig of the Creek, voicing their animated selves in an episode about the show’s lead characters putting on their first DIY concert.
“Tell No One”, was released September. 21st, 2018 on Don Giovanni Records, was Bad Moves’ debut LP: 12 songs about confronting old secrets and stumbling into self-discovery, wrapped in a sound that hometown weekly Washington City Paper calls “exuberant catharsis, the type of pop that makes you breathe deep and shout.”
“Untenable”, released June 26th, 2020 on Don Giovanni Records, is the sophomore full-length by Washington, D.C.’s Bad Moves.
Spanish Love Songs, are a band much too sad to actually be from Los Angeles., has taken the Springsteemo cocktail mastered by Philly stalwarts the Wonder Years and the Menzingers and spiked it with more concentrated Hollywood angst, courtesy of tormented frontman Dylan Slocum. Ravaging tracks like “Routine Pain” and “Loser,” highlights from the band’s killer February LP “Brave FacesEveryone”, smack you square in the sternum — hurtling pop-punk riffs and tales of depression, addiction and existential crises, born from the band’s rigorous pre-pandemic touring schedule. But as with all good emo-punk, it’s only fun if there’s some catharsis tucked away, too. And deep within the bleak, there are glimmers of redemption. Maybe we’ll all be okay. Probably not.
The too-real opening verse of “Generation Loss,” where Slocum wails: “You 29-year-old panic attack / And not the fashionable kind / The kind where you wake up and say ‘Man, I just wanna survive.’”
Band Members
Dylan Slocum – Guitar and Vocals
Kyle McAulay – Guitar
Trevor Dietrich – Bass
Ruben Duarte – Drums
Meredith Van Woert – Keys
