Montreal’s Yves Jarvis follows up of last year album with his first new release of 2020, in the breezy, softly lilting new track, “Victim“. Jarvis’ light touch belies the song’s heavier, more harrowing subject matter, which he says reflects negotiating “a tightrope walk between victor and victim”. Beautiful, affecting stuff, and hopefully a harbinger of a larger release from Yves Jarvis sometime in the near future. On the heels of his gorgeous new single from last month, Montreal’s Yves Jarvis shares another one from his just announced new full-length, coming this fall. Sundry Rock SongStock is out September 25th on ANTI- Records.
“Sundry Rock Song Stock’ is my upcoming album out on September 25th and on Vinyl November 13th.
Sima Cunnningham and Macie Stewart of Ohmme make average rock bands sound unimaginative and unremarkable—while most bands are happy just rolling a hoop with a stick, Ohmme are reinventing said hoops, but they have far too much humility to ever point out that discrepancy. The band’s new album “Fantasize Your Ghost” follows 2018’s Parts, and it shows off the Chicago duo’s strengths: writing fascinatingly experimental songs with surprising accessibility and braiding their voices to a staggering effect.
Both musicians are classically trained, and their live shows prominently feature their raucous violin and guitar slinging as well as their unique artistic vision. Their forthcoming album opens with the wonderfully puzzling riff of “Flood Your Gut,” followed by the seraphic vocal harmonies and guitar bleed of “Selling Candy,” and right away, you know you’re on a sonically and artistically fruitful path. Another highlight is “3 2 4 3,” where colossal strings meet their astounding vocal might and subtle yet effective guitar lines.
Official Video for “3 2 4 3” by Ohmme off the album ‘Fantasize Your Ghost’ out on Joyful Noise Recordings.
Songwriters Sima Cunnningham and Macie Stewart formed their unbreakable bond performing throughout the fringes of Chicago’s many interlocking communities, collaborating with titans from the city’s indie rock, hip-hop, and improvised worlds. but together, along with drummer Matt Carroll, they’ve stretched the boundaries of what guitar music can do starting with the band’s experimental 2016 self-titled EP and their adventurous debut 2018 LP parts. now their longstanding partnership culminates with the stunning and muscular follow-up fantasize your ghost.
Ohmme formed in 2014 as an outlet for Cunningham and Stewart to explore an unconventional approach to their instruments. “that’s the whole genesis of the band: us walking up to our guitars and saying, ‘how can we make this noisemaker do something different?'” says Cunningham. but as their musical collaboration strengthened, bringing parts and intensive tours with acts like Wilco, Iron & Wine, Twin Peaks, and more, the band’s scope and focus has also broadened. “grinding on tour last year for so long, it can alter your mental state where you have to think about your life in a different way than you would if you’re home. a lot of the songs stemmed from just thinking about all of the possibilities that life could be and could take,” says Stewart. the commanding single “3 2 4 3” tackles the terrifying realization of needing to make a change. their deft scene-setting and the way their disparate voices blend together heightens the song’s inherent anxiety.
These moments of emotional clarity fill fantasize your ghost. written across 2019, early sketches of the album’s tracklist were demoed at Sam Evian’s Flying Cloud studios in upstate New York. “that’s where we really started to see the record come together,” says Cunningham. the sessions were intensely collaborative and open, the product of long, existential conversations between Stewart and Cunningham in the van about their lives and how to channel the anger they were feeling about the state of the world. tracks like the driving opener “Flood Your Gut” underwent several revisions with Ohmme uncovering several new directions the song could go before finishing it. fantasize your ghost was recorded over a six day session in with indie rock journeyman producer Chris Cohen and captures the astounding magnetism and ferocity of their live show. Fantasize your ghost encapsulates the thrilling and sometimes terrifying joy of moving forward even if you don’t know where you’re going. it’s an album that asks necessary questions: when life demands a crossroads, what version of yourself are you going to pursue? what part of yourself will you feed and let flourish and what do you have to let go of? this is a record of strength, of best friends believing in each other. unapologetic and brave, Ohmme are ready to figure it all out together.
Ohmme off their album ‘Fantasize Your Ghost’ out on Joyful Noise Recordings.
For the past six years, Toronto’s experimental pop mutineers, Jaunt, have been working on and anticipating the release of their first album, All In One. The band, which features several of the city’s well-avowed musicians, created a richly imagined, fully developed project which is emblematic of Jaunt’s realized sound and spirit — a kind of bright generativeness, which came from a wide rolodex of influences, pleasantly ranging from hip-hop to new-age.
With two EPs under their belts over the past four years, Jaunt‘s “All In One” the Toronto experimental pop band’s first full-length — is the fruit of years of labour and it shows in the tightness and completeness of each track.
With the help of co-producer Alex Sowinski of BADBADNOTGOOD, the band are united in their ability to create so many moving parts and countermelodies while maintaining focus on one lead expression throughout each track. Jaunt’s ability to replace the hegemonic idea of lead guitar with a variety of acoustic piano licks is refreshing and allows the guitars to shine in a more rhythmic role.
This move can be tricky, but Jaunt introduce subtle hooks that keep the listener up to speed with the progressions of each composition, like in second track “Nostalgia for the Present Moment,” which features catchy, cutting piano melodies throughout the composition. The harsh upper register of an old piano dangles over the vocal melodies in contrast to the smoothly chorused synths that melt to fill the spaces in-between.
Our debut album ‘All in One’ is out everywhere today! We’re beyond thankful for everyone who helped shape the record in some way or another over the last few years. Despite the strange moment we’re currently collectively experiencing, it feels important for us to release this music now. It was a labour of love, and I feel the music reflects a sense of optimism and positivity that’s good for all of us!
Thanks for being here, The Band: Pat, Caitlin, Daniel, Duncan, Nick & Tom
Two dollars from each record purchased will be given to Black Women in Motion, a “Toronto-based, youth-led organization that empowers and supports the advancement of Black woman and survivors of sexual violence.” Jaunt will match all proceeds/gross sales up to $5000 CAD.
The Debut Full-Length Record from the Toronto Experimental Pop Group Jaunt. On Exclusive Light Blue Vinyl
Britains most well-loved new rising band has announced their biggest shows to date, spanning from Glasgow to London. The 13-date, nationwide run goes on sale to the band’s fervent, and growing, fanbase on Fri 31th July 2020 at 10am.
The emergence of the melodic indie band from Wigan has thrilled those waiting patiently for new heroes of emotive guitar music. An 18-month journey from playing bars to selling out their first headline tour in just one day, signing to Island Records on the way, made for a breathless first chapter.
The Lathums’ beg-for-a-ticket live shows have become legendary amongst those ‘in the know’ fans enjoying the ride as it has gathered pace. Delivering pure joy and tall tales, the four talented friends from the overlooked fringes of Greater Manchester netted streaming figures in their millions with a string of independent releases prior to signing their deal with Island.
Rushing into 2021 with a run of rescheduled support dates in the UK and Europe with Blossoms and domestic engagements with Paul Weller, and a full list of dates for The Lathums Spring Tour 2021. Having sold out previous hometown shows in 60 seconds, all tickets for upcoming dates are set to be snapped up just as quickly. The group are hitting up numerous iconic venues,
Angel Olsen has announced a new album called “Whole New Mess”, the first material she’s recorded and released without any bandmates since 2012’s Half Way Home. It’s out August 28th via Jagjaguwar Records. Watch a video for “Whole New Mess” below. The time had come, Angel Olsen realized in the fading summer of 2018, to take her new songs out of the house. Olsen’s 2016 marvel, My Woman, had been a career breakthrough, but it catalyzed a period of personal tumult, too: a painful breakup, an uneasy recovery, an inadequate reckoning. At home in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, Olsen penned songs that finally grappled with these troubles, particularly love—how forever is too much to promise, how relationships can lock us into static versions of ourselves, how you can go through hell just to make someone else happy.
Find physical editions of Angel Olsen’s Whole New Mess at Rough Trade. Olsen recorded Whole New Mess in October 2018 at The Unknown, the church-turned-studio run by Phil Elverum and Nicholas Wilbur in Anacortes, Washington. The album features more intimate versions of several songs that appeared on last year’s All Mirrors. Olsen explained her approach in a brief statement:
I had gone through this breakup, but it was so much bigger than that—I’d lost friendships, too. When you get out of a relationship, you have to examine who you are or were in all the relationships. I wanted to record when I was still processing these feelings. These are the personal takes, encapsulated in a moment.
At least nine of the eleven songs on Whole New Mess should sound familiar to anyone who has heard All Mirrors, Olsen’s grand 2019 masterpiece that earned high honours on prestigious year-end lists and glossy spreads in stylish magazines. “Lark,” “Summer,” “Chance”—they are all here, at least in some skeletal form and with slightly different titles. But these are not the demos for All Mirrors. Instead, Whole New Mess is its own record with its own immovable mood, with Olsen working through her open wounds and raw nerves with just a few guitars and some microphones, isolated in a century-old church in the Pacific Northwest. If the lavish orchestral arrangements and cinematic scope of All Mirrors are the sound of Olsen preparing her scars for the wider world to see, Whole New Mess is the sound of her first figuring out their shape, making sense for herself of these injuries.
For more than ten years now the name Laura Marling has stirred images of acoustic guitars, folksy ditties and gentle lullabies. By 2018, her project Lump with collaborator Mike Lindsay proved she was no one-trick pony. On Song For Our Daughter – released early as a quarantine gift – Laura Marling has presented a timeless record that sits her alongside the singer-songwriting greats.
One of very few artists to pull the release of their album forward instead of pushing it back to accommodate the pandemic, folk darling Laura Marling made one of the smartest decisions of 2020. Her stirring acoustic Song For Our Daughter – addressed to a non-existent child – presents a prolific artist at the height of her powers. Confessional, searing and unmistakably contemporary despite beautiful touches of the vintage, Marling’s seventh full-length places her in the canon of the world’s greatest singer-songwriters.
The decision to release this early, as the world felt like it was slowly imploding was smart but hardly surprising given the oracle-like understanding of the human spirit contained within all of Laura Marling’s work to date. She knew we needed it. It’s the insight of someone drawing on past lives that rides in the front seat of her seventh album. This knowledge feels simultaneously everyday and exhumed from lost civilisations. Like great literature, the lyrics feel like truths that are universal and timeless, which is perhaps befitting of a year when our individual and collective perception of time stretched and folded into a muddle of confusion like never before.
This record is the perfect companion for that moment when your heart becomes a blue wisp of smoke. It’s a collection of songs that leave you buoyant, floating, and lost at sea… It stares you in the eye, giving you bad news, but the way it’s done is so glorious that you don’t truly begin to process what’s being said.
Single ‘Held Down’ introduces a Laura Marling more relaxed in her writing than she has ever been: confessional, layered with her own ghostly vocals, laden with precisely-chosen strings. It is apparent almost at once that this is an artist at the top of their game.
Confessional and searing, her many ideas; her poetical lyrics unfurl petal by petal, paced to perfection. By the middle section of her LP, Marling seals the deal on the best singer-songwriter album of recent years, making one thing very clear – Song For Our Daughter will survive as a modern classic.
The title track does what it says on the tin, addressing the imaginary daughter she might one day have: “Lately I’ve been thinking of our daughter growing old/all of the bullshit that she might be told,” she sings. It is introspective and comforting, easy to receive as the listener in the absence of recipient offspring. It tracks, too, like a note to Marling’s own past, present and future self.
Highlight ‘Fortune’ sails onward on a distinctly vintage tide of strings and Joni-worthy acoustic riffs: a timeless, bittersweet ballad with roots in a great tradition of confessional writing –though still unmistakably contemporary. Marling does faster bpm’s justice too: album opener ‘Alexandra’ trumps popular folk predecessors from Alas I Cannot Swim with restrained, delicate ease. Longtime fans never fear: ’For You’ proves lullabies are still a knack of Marling’s too.
Everything about Song For Our Daughter is extraordinary: the songwriting and Marling’s voice (still ponds filled with quivering swans), the delicious use of expletives, the reflections upon words unsent, the half-spoken moments leaning on the third wall, the mulch of memories… The one constant, the acoustic guitar, combines with the intricate nest of words in such a way that each strum begins to leave another paper cut reminder of lives unlived, of nullified agreements, village secrets, everlasting hope in early morning light, and too few promises kept.
Mostly, it’s a record of towering songs that are nourishing and restorative; an open sandwich in a land of soup.
Laura Marling has been releasing prolifically since 2007. Despite that, one of her most-streamed songs is not one of her own but a cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’. With Song For Our Daughter, she joins the ranks of the world’s most extraordinary singer-songwriters. Laura Marling has written her own Freewheelin’ classic: a Blue for the 21st Century.
Song For Our Daughter is out now via Chrysalis/Partisan.
“Home For Now” will be the name of the debut Babeheaven album. Announced this morning with a soft, beautiful 35mm music video of trippy dream ‘Cassette Beat’, it’s a very strong announcement for the West London pair.
Spinning out like a tendril of tape from a machine, ‘Cassette Beat’ luxuriates in gently glitching beats and langurous, smoky drums – all filled in with the sweet, clear vocals of Nancy Andersen.
It recalls Portishead in its woozy sensuality, though there’s an almost indie certainty to this longing narrator, On the lyrics, Andersen said: “I wanted to write a song about creation. Whenever we create we subsequently end up destroying something in a huge way or a small way. But there is always light behind the dark even when you can’t see it yet.”
It’ll be one of 14 songs to appear on the November’s release debut album Home For Now, also containing previous releases ‘November’, ‘Jalisco’ and ‘Human Nature.’
“Home For Now” album arrives 6th November via AWAL.
While we’re still processing the full impact of their immense 2019 debut ‘Dogrel’, this Dubliners weren’t resting on their laurels – they were off crafting their next masterpiece – & a masterpiece it is for sure. Their follow up album ‘A Hero’s Death’ is the kind of second offering that makes you desperately hope & pray that this is just the beginning of a generation definining catalogue. although it’s an intensely confident record, it is also much more subtle, patient & complex. it arrives battered, bruised & beautiful – a heady & philosophical take on the modern world, equally elating and heartbreaking – made all the more visecral & lucid once again by super producer Dan Carey.
Everyone has made no secret of our adoration of these young Dubliners. ‘A Hero’s Death’ sees them follow up the spellbinding ‘Dogrel’ without missing a beat – they’ve taken their cues from the cure again, and have added the mood setting of joy division and a touch of the rougher edges of early 4ad. they manage to tread that line that makes old heads reminisce and rejoice in new music and young fans fall in love with loud guitars and pummelling drums at that same time.
Live, they’re on another level. we’ve been watching them tear up stages since they first made their UK debut. They may have slowed things down on record with more complicated structures but at heart, these are 5 young punks and their live show will make sure you remember that. fast, loud and adrenaline filled – you’re guaranteed to be leaving chalk sweaty and grinning.
The band’s explosive rise to the top has been potent, instantaneous and eventful, and a journey so fuelled by action always seemed destined to influence what followed.
Reacting to the challenge of sustaining the self as much as the individual expression, ‘A Hero’s Death’ represents the band’s reaction to the intensity of life on the road and managing the expectations of others. The debut album ‘Dogrel’ echoes the energy of their early gigs coupled with descriptions of Dublin. Transporting the listener to specific places and sights, the inclusion of local reference points formed a poetic reportage of their hometown, while the usage of critical commentary tackled topics like capitalism and consumerism through lyrics.
The seductive opener ‘I Don’t Belong’ tackles isolation and lets persistent rhythms merge. A perfect initiation, it outlines the overall theme. ‘Love Is the Main Thing’ runs through similar veins, its pulsating, hypnotic intensity and distinct drumming meld with spoken word.
Euphonic bass lines and subtle guitar tones blend on ‘Televised Mind’ while surreal sonics take over ‘A Lucid Dream’, a track of volcanic force. The sentiment of ‘You Said’ offers an alluring instant before the nostalgic, idealised imagery and Johnny Marr-resembling guitar lines of ‘Oh Such A Spring’ begin.
With an energy reminiscent of ‘Hurricane Laughter’ and ‘Boys In the Better Land’, ‘A Hero’s Death’ bestows a vibrant moment, dishing out dos and don’ts mingled with hints of sarcasm. But “You need not be/Born wealthy/If you care/You’re the heir” is a lyric from ‘Living In America’ where the vibe changes as industrial Suicide-like bleakness lingers and creates powerful sonics.
Elsewhere, the melodic Beach Boys-like moment of ‘I Was Not Born’ furnishes a contrast of sorts. “I was not born/into this world/to do another man’s bidding”, insists frontman Grian Chatten before the hazy, subdued mood of ‘Sunny’ becomes pleasantly disorientating.
Subversive, non-conformist and melodious, this record has the credentials of a classic rock and roll album. The decision to take a radical approach only works for the few, the possession of ammunition that’s needed to master such a challenge is not for anyone. Fontaines D.C. have it, and it seems as though they are only just scratching the surface of what’s to come…
Filmed by CollectiveDublin & captured within 2fm radio’s studio in Montrose, Dublin – a sweeping space usually the reserve of orchestra performances – “A Night at Montrose, Dublin” will air on Monday 3rd august at 8pm. this is a global event and open to all ages.
“amazing!! how do we get to see this performance?”, let’s get the beers in & all virtually hang out together on the evening of 3rd august to celebrate the new album. it’s one hell of a record – trust us!.
The Flaming Lips have released another single from their forthcoming album, in the form of a new track and video for ‘You n Me Sellin’ Weed’. With their next record American Head due out in September, the band have unveiled the new single with its own video clip. The hazy effort pairs well with the sun-soaked music video, following the blurry journey of Wayne Coyne in a car.
It’s far from the up-tempo track you might associate with a name like ‘You n Me Sellin’ Weed’, and instead, The Flaming Lips have given us a mellow, slow-burner which begins to gather momentum, and is full of psychedelic moments. American Head, the follow-up to 2019’s Kings Mouth, is due to be released on Friday, September 11th. So far we’ve been gifted four singles ahead of its release, including ‘Flowers Of Neptune 9’ featuring Kasey Musgraves.
Since then we’ve head ‘My Religion Is You’, while the first single to be unveiled was titled ‘Dinosaurs On The Mountain’. The forthcoming record is their 21st album, but the band have arguably released only 15 if you don’t include collaborative LPs and limited-release collections. The Flaming Lips made headlines in June when they played a social distancing gig with both crowd and band situated in giant plastic bubbles. The gig was organised by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, with each band member in their own plastic bubble while the live audience members watched from inside their own plastic bubbles.
It wasn’t the first time the Oklahoman band have utilised these props, as the giant plastic bubbles were often used by frontman Wayne Coyne’s at gigs in the past.
‘You n Me Sellin’ Weed’ from the upcoming album ‘American Head’ Out 9/11:
On her third album for both Fat Possum and Loose Records, Courtney Marie Andrews has pulled in to one package all the song-writing skill, vocal prowess, and musicianship displayed on previous albums, into one career defining statement. A break-up record for sure, though due to Courtney’s extraordinary storytelling gifts, more of a modern day
coming-of-age tale of love won, love sustained, and unfortunately, love’s inevitable dissolution.
To celebrate, I’d like to share some personal sentiments regarding these songs…on ‘Old Flowers’:
You can’t water old flowers. Yes, you fall in love, you make mistakes, and so do they. You run through blackberry fields in the summer of your youth, dream in passenger seats gazing past towns and fields, imagining a future life where everything works out. I fell head over heels in love at nineteen. The kind of love where you call up your best friend and say, “I think I’ve found my soulmate.” The pull towards that first true love is strong. It consumes you, makes you question your own dreams.
We taught each other, grew up together, we were family. We fit just right, for a time. Then one day, after a long and rocky nine-year road, life changed and became a complicated mess too hard to untangle. We couldn’t get our love back, no matter how many dreams that shadowed this hard truth. We grew resentful, selfish, harbouring past mistakes and holding them up like armour from every blow. We grew up and our paths diverted.
On New Year’s Day, 2018, a great horned owl dropped dead at my exes’ feet in my mother’s yard. It felt like a daunting omen, ushering on change for the both of us. We were distraught. We couldn’t afford the taxidermy, so we placed it in a big blue plastic garbage bin. Now it felt so cheap, that mystic creature in a plastic coffin. That’s how love feels sometimes – like we don’t serve it the ending it deserves.
The omen was true. That year, I started to see the woman I could be, the woman I wasn’t yet. Anytime I felt like myself, I was alone and wandering, and I knew that was a sign that it was time for change. New Year’s Day 2019, I said goodbye to my first true love and moved across the country. Losing someone you spend every day for nearly a decade with is intense. We talked in our dreams. I knew where he was, even before I entered a place. He’d always be there if I had a feeling. Humans are connected in unexplainable ways.
I was writing a lot after we broke up as a healing technique, preserving each memory like an emotional archaeologist. Late one night, I woke up from a dream where I was searching for him, my ex, at a carnival. It was so vivid. I woke myself up to write a song on my piano. The next morning, he reached out to me for the first time in months. We went out, had a drink, caught up, and he told me that the hardest part about our separation was a reoccurring nightmare where he searched for me at a carnival. In that moment, I knew, humans have ways of connecting beyond words and touch. I truly believe that. We had the same dream, without seeing each other for months.
Even with all the mystic symbolism that year presented, this is an age-old story I can’t make up. We fall in love, we grow up, we change, and they don’t change with us. ‘Old Flowers’ is about heartbreak. There are a million records and songs about that, but I did not lie when writing these songs. This album is about loving and caring for the person you know you can’t be with. It’s about being afraid to be vulnerable after you’ve been hurt. It’s about a woman who is alone, but okay with that, if it means truth.
This was my truth this year – my nine year relationship ended, and I’m a woman alone in the world, but happy to know herself.
These songs came to me alone, late nights in Bisbee, Lisbon, Nashville, and London. Sometimes I’d just cry and sing, and a song would come out. I drank too much wine while writing this record, lit too many candles. You could say this was my attempt to summon the muse, but that’s bullshit, because she was just standing there naked looking me in the eyes. So I told her the truth.
This is my story of the most heart-breaking, but soul-revealing, year of my life. I drove myself mad. I drove to the smoky mountains just to drive back. I danced with a Portuguese boxer and cried on his shoulder in a Fado cafe. I did everything an artist is “supposed to do.” But at the end of the day, beyond all the romance, these songs are my truth. I think they might be yours too.
