Midnight Manor, the much anticipated sophomore album of the six-piece rock outfit The Nude Party is released via New West Records. This is the good time album of 2020 that has energy, passion and instant pop nuggets. It takes bits of early 70’s Rolling Stones, The Modern Lovers, The Velvet Underground and classic Southern rock, and makes something you can’t help but put on repeat.
Following two years of non-stop touring in support of their eponymous debut release, the band returned to their farmhouse in New York’s Catskill Mountains to record the follow up to their acclaimed 2018 self-titled debut. Like The Band’s sacred home-recording habitat The Big Pink, The Nude Party’s communal dwelling provided the landscape and proximity to focus on deepening their bonds through music. It was at the Manor that the band of childhood friends could shift their energies from the archetypical emotional journeys of mid-twenty-somethings towards rebuilding their road-worn relationships with one another, leading them to write Midnight Manor – an album that lead singer Patton Magee describes as “a stone skipping over troubled waters”. With Midnight Manor, The Nude Party shine a light on their past while at the same time moving towards a brighter future.
We’re excited to announce the new album from The Nude Party, Midnight Manor –– due out October 2nd. The first single from the LP, “Shine Your Light” was released this week .
The world was very different in 1992, Dry is the debut studio album by PJ Harvey, originally released on Too Pure Records on 30 March 1992. The album was recorded at The Icehouse, a local studio in Yeovil. Critically lauded both on release and retrospectively, the album contains the singles Dress and Sheela-Na-Gig. Back in print for the first time in almost 20 years. but some of the greatest musical moments from that year stand the test of time. Just take Polly Jean Harvey’s staggering debut – the making of a musical icon and one of the era’s finest examples of song writing.
It still sounds exceptional and its messages still resonate, lifting the woke-washed veil of our age in one fell swoop, laying bare the fact that many toxic attitudes prevail. It’s rock music, but that’s hardly the point. What matters isn’t so much what’s being played, but how and what’s being said. Delivered with an air of Pixies and nod to Patti Smith, written in the wake of a relationship imploding, our introduction to Harvey remains vital as ever. A refusal to accept simplistic, patriarchal views of womanhood and femininity, or indeed simplistic patriarchal views of anything, the record’s razor sharp observations, cunning wit and deft ability to reference but feel original is remarkable.
Plus the Archive collection containing demos of PJ Harvey’s seminal 1992 debut album. Dry features the singles “Dress” and “Sheela-Na-Gig” which heralded Harvey’s burst onto the global stage. The Los Angeles Times’ Robert Hilburn described the record as “… a seductive calling card that signals the arrival of an extraordinary new artist.” NME wrote, “Polly dredges these sounds from the pit of her dissected soul and drags them out of her mouth with clenched fists,” while Pitchfork said, “On her debut, Polly Jean Harvey matched Patti Smith’s incandescence with Bessie Smith’s lasciviousness, outplayed everyone on the British indie circuit, and became an instant star.”
The debut single and a track from the debut album “Dry”, released in 1992.
After her first band Automatic Dlamini, Harvey continued with band mates Rob Ellis and Ian Oliver and formed her own band PJ Harvey. Her first gig was almost her last, given the experience she later described:
“We started playing and I suppose there was about fifty people there, and during the first song we cleared the hall. There was only about two people left. And a woman came up to us, came up to my drummer, it was only a three piece, while we were playing and shouted at him ‘Don’t you realize nobody likes you! We’ll pay you, you can stop playing, we’ll still pay you!'”.
She did no give up and her solo debut was one of that year’s best received albums.
PJ Harvey doesn’t talk about individual songs and never included a lyric sheet with her albums: “It seems silly to me, ‘cos they’re not poetry, they’re not meant to be read. They’re meant to be heard with the music. If I buy an album with a lyric sheet, I always end up reading it the first few times I listen, and you don’t even listen to the music properly. A song is a song, not a poem or a play.”
The Chicago euphoric country soul outfit return to pay homage to Labi Siffre, Brian Eno, John Denver, Kelela & others. Whitney was born from a series of laidback early-morning song-writing sessions during one of the harshest winters in Chicagohistory, after Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek (former members of Smith Westerns) reconnected – first as roommates splitting rent in a small Chicago apartment and later as musical collaborators passing the guitar and the lyrics sheet back and forth.
Back in February we got the whole band together in Chicago with the idea of recording 2-3 covers to share throughout 2020. Those 2-3 tracks turned into a 10 song cover album called “Candid” out August 14th. Along with this announcement we’re releasing our cover of “Hammond Song” By The Roches. We hope you enjoy it. Stay safe and please continue to remain active and committed to the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Covers have long been an integral part of Whitney’s ethos. Ever since the band first formed in 2014, tackling songs by the Everly Brothers, Allen Toussaint, and more played an important part in the breakthrough 2016 debut Light Upon The Lake. Since then, their takes on NRBQ’s Magnet and Neil Young’s On the Way Home have become live staples, an essential and communal part of their sets. Their love for the music that makes up their deepest influences has always been genuine and tangible.
Following their acclaimed sophomore 2019 album Forever Turned Around, Whitney have decided to return with a loving tribute to songs that have been formative and lasting to the entire band. Candidis a 10-song collection boasting covers of artists like Kelela, David Byrne, John Denver, SWV, and others but it’s also a band challenging themselves to explore more than their musical comfort zone. Recorded in January and February of 2020 over multiple sessions at Treehouse Studios in Chicago and Flora Recording and Playback in Portland, ”Candid” finally sees the full touring band in a recording studio together. Whitney has brought their cinematic sound to The Roches’ “Hammond Song.” Whitney’s sound can best be described by the feeling of nostalgia. It makes you long for that one summer and for a sun-drenched drive. If you haven’t had the pleasure of hearing the beautiful harmonies of the original song, be sure to check it out as well!/
Their chemistry exudes throughout the tracklist but it’s especially apparent when they open up the dynamic to their friends, like Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee joining John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads. On the cover of the classic, Ehrlich and Crutchfield’s voices merge for a joyous harmony over the chorus. Over eight days at Treehouse Studios, the band would show up in the morning, learn a song together, and choose an instrument, leading to a freewheeling and adventurous atmosphere. Their renditions of SWV’s ’90s R&B heater Rain or David Byrne and Brian Eno’s 2008 track Strange Overtones prove this, as they stretch Whitney into new musical directions.
At its core, Candid is a celebration of both the songs Whitney has adored throughout its formation and the band’s evolving bond through years of relentless touring and an enduring friendship.
Ren, whose beloved “blue album” dropped eight years before she was born. “Weezer is iconic for me,” she says. That this young musician, born and raised in central Toronto, is that versed in the ’90s is part of why she is the newest act signed to the storied Geffen Records label . Ren, short for her less rock ’n’ roll birth name Lauren Isenberg, knew that her debut single “waves,” a haunting electro slow jam, was something special when she posted it in February.
“It’s like posting a picture of yourself that you know is really, really good,” she says. “And having the response be really, really good.”
How good? The buzz quickly led to a meeting with Geffen in Los Angeles in March. The label announced this month that they’d signed the young Canadian, whose electropop-spiked-with-rock sound is similar to that of the game-changing Eilish (both artists are under the Universal umbrella). Taking a meeting with the label, she says, was surreal. She respected that Geffen had worked with so many artists — among them Guns N‘ Roses, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and Solange — that retained their unique voices.
“They give you the freedom to do what you want (creatively),” she says. “That was one thing that I need. That is why I wanted to be an artist.” Plus, there was that other big artist that shook things up on Geffen in the ’90s. “I had Nirvana played for me a lot,” she says, admitting her dad, a stockbroker, raised her on the label’s grunge poster band.
Especially at a time where everyone’s feeling isolated and a little alone, it’s so important to have good friends who you can talk to. On “fuck, i luv my friends,” renforshort expresses her appreciation for her pals and lets them know that she’s excited to see them again.
A songwriter who plays guitar, piano and bass, Ren is nowadays as likely to be inspired by something from her own life as by a conversation with friends. Her new single “idc,” a blistering response to noncommittal attitudes toward dating in the Tinder age, channels one of her friend’s experiences. (How does the friend feel about that? “She loves it!” Ren says.) While she doesn’t love juggling class and homework with rehearsal and travel, one upside is getting to see her close-knit group of friends. “They are actually proud of me,” she says. “They think it’s so crazy. To look at it from their perspective, it’s like, ‘holy s–t, this is crazy!’. ” Her debut EP, to be released in 2020, will feature songs about body image, anxiety and growing up as a teenager. The sound, she says, is consistent with current alternative pop with some ’90s-inspired production in keeping with “idc,” which uses what Ren calls the “Nirvana pedal” for the chorus’s guitar riff.
renforshort’s single “fuck I luv my friends” is out now!
The Archive collection containing demo’s of PJ Harvey’s seminal 1992 debut album. “Dry” features the singles “Dress” and “Sheela-Na-Gig” which heralded Harvey’s burst onto the global stage. The Los Angeles Times’ Robert Hilburn described the record as “… a seductive calling card that signals the arrival of an extraordinary new artist.” NME wrote, “Polly dredges these sounds from the pit of her dissected soul and drags them out of her mouth with clenched fists,” while Pitchfork said, “On her debut, Polly Jean Harvey matched Patti Smith’s incandescence with Bessie Smith’s lasciviousness, outplayed everyone on the British indie circuit, and became an instant star.” [Dry has also been reissued this week on 180gm vinyl.
The 11 track collection of demo’s of all songs from the debut studio album “Dry” by PJ Harvey, available for the first time since 1992, and previously unreleased as a standalone album. PJ Harvey‘s demos for her 1992 debut album Dry will be issued for the first time as a standalone album in July.
The news that Island Records would be reissuing PJ Harvey’s discography on vinyl—along with accompanying LPs of the demos she recorded for each album—was exactly the ray of light music fans needed in this dreary year. And the release schedule is following the timeline of Harvey’s impeccable career, which meant starting with her 1992 debut Dry and Dry Demos, a collection of home recordings originally included with the first UK pressings of Dry. 28 years after the fact, the music still has the power to startle and electrify. While the rhythm section of drummer Rob Ellis and Steve Vaughn cartwheel and trundle and wrestle, Harvey holds firm with choppy downward strums and a voice that could crack concrete. Remastered with care by original co-producer Head, Dry is hackles-raising, mouth-watering post-punk perfection. Even in its more stripped down form on Dry Demos, the music still electrifies—and provides a testament to just how clear Harvey’s vision was for these songs. You can spot the little changes and adjustments she and her backing band made getting the songs to the finish line, but otherwise the framework for her explosive opening salvo remains solid and commanding.
Initial quantities of both the CD and vinyl versions of Dry came with a bonus disc of demos and it is those 11 tracks that are being made available here, for the first time in almost 30 years.
The album is newly art-worked to reflect the ‘demos’ nature of this edition of Dry and uses previously unseen photos by Maria Mochnacz. The vinyl is black and comes with CD quality (16 bit / 44.1kHz) WAV file downloads. It was cut by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering under the guidance of producer Head. Good to see the label not only ensure that this is released on CD too, but do a decent job of it. As can be seen above, it comes as gatefold card wallet with printed inner sleeve for the CD itself. This is the start of a new reissue campaign from UMC/Island and Beggars which will see all PJ Harvey’s albums reissued and on each occasion the demos will be issued on vinyl and CD!
Dry – Demos was released on 24th July 2020 via UMC/Island. A remastered version of the actual studio album Dry is also being reissued on vinyl on the same day (but not CD).
Tracklisting:
Oh My Lover (Demo)
O Stella (Demo)
Dress (Demo)
Victory (Demo)
Happy And Bleeding (Demo)
Sheela-Na-Gig (Demo)
Hair (Demo)
Joe (Demo)
Plants And Rags (Demo)
Fountain (Demo)
Water (Demo)
“On Heart’s Ease”, Shirley delivers a record even stronger than Lodestar having completely regained her confidence, and singing so well that you can’t believe she was away for so long. As Shirley put it, “Lodestar wasn’t too bad, was it? But when I listen to it, it does sometimes sound rather tentative. I had to record it at home because I was just too nervous to sing in front of somebody I didn’t know. This time I was far more relaxed – even though I went into a studio.” Recorded at Metway in Brighton, Heart’s Ease is as compelling and original as Shirley’s great albums from the Sixties and Seventies. There are traditional songs, of course, from England and the USA, but there are also more new songs than in the past (four non-traditional tracks) and there’s even a burst of experimentation that hints at possible new directions to come.
Shirley Collins – “Sweet Greens and Blues”, from ‘Heart’s Ease’, released 24th July 2020 on Domino Recordings.
Where to start is out today, crazy to finally be putting out the first single of the third record after three years of work. It feels insensitive to be releasing music at a time like this as I don’t want to take up space from everybody sharing important information on how to stay active and informed on racial inequality. I’ve pushed the release back as far as I could and for many reasons I’ve gotta bite the bullet and put it out into the world. With touring not being an option for the foreseeable future, all musicians have right now to keep their jobs going is social media to promote music. I’ll continue to post ways to stay active alongside posts about the single and record to come, as we all should keep doing. Injustice for people of colour has been an ongoing issue since day one and all of us that have never experienced the pain and prejudice that happens daily in the black community need to make not a week or a month, but a lifelong commitment to stay active and work towards equality.
Yes indeed, you read that headline right. Bully will release “Sugaregg”, her third album, worldwide on August 21st through Sub Pop Records. The 12-track effort was produced and mixed by John Congleton and Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, with additional production and mixing by Graham Walsh, recorded at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, and Palace Sound in Toronto, Ontario, and mastered by Heba Kadry. You can now watch the official video for the cathartic lead single “Where to Start” right here. The visual is directed by Alan Del Rio Ortiz and Bognanno.
The single, “’Where to Start’ boasts Bully’s characteristic high-energy snarl, as growling guitars lead into Bognanno’s raspy-throated condemnation: “I don’t know where to start/I don’t know where to start with you.” Decidedly more jangly guitars then usher us all the way into the guts of the song — a mixture of sweet and sour, soft and frustrated,
Preorders of “SUGAREGG” are now available from Sub Pop. The limited Loser edition on a translucent blue w/white “smoke” colored vinyl. Meanwhile, preorders in the U.K. and Europe through select independent retailers will receive the Loser edition on transparent red vinyl. There will also be a new t-shirt design available.
About Bully’s “SUGAREGG” A very old saying goes that no one saves us but ourselves. Recognizing and breaking free from the patterns impeding our forward progress can be transformative — just ask Bully’s Alicia Bognanno. Indeed, the third Bully album, SUGAREGG, may not ever have come to fruition had Bognanno not navigated every kind of upheaval imaginable and completely overhauled her working process along the way.
“There was change that needed to happen and it happened on this record,” she says. “Derailing my ego and insecurities allowed me to give these songs the attention they deserved.”
“SUGAREGG” roars from the speakers and jumpstarts both heart and mind. Like My Bloody Valentine after three double espressos, opener “Add It On” zooms heavenward within seconds, epitomizing Bognanno’s newfound clarity of purpose, while the bass-driven melodies and propulsive beats of “Where to Start” and “Let You” are the musical equivalents of the sun piercing through a perpetually cloudy sky.
On songs like the strident “Every Tradition” and “Not Ashamed,” Bognanno doesn’t shy away from addressing “how I feel as a human holds up against what society expects or assumes of me as a woman, and what it feels like to naturally challenge those expectations.”
But amongst the more dense topics, there’s also a light-heartedness that was lacking on Bully’s last album, 2017’s Losing. Pointing to “Where to Start,” “You” and “Let You,” Bognanno says “there are more songs about erratic, dysfunctional love in an upbeat way, like, ‘I’m going down and that’s the only way I want to go because the momentary joy is worth it.’”
The artist admits that finding the proper treatment for bipolar 2 disorder radically altered her mindset, freeing her from a cycle of paranoia and insecurity about her work. “Being able to finally navigate that opened the door for me to write about it,” she says, pointing to the sweet, swirly “Like Fire” and slower, more contemplative songs such as “Prism” and “Come Down” as having been born of this new headspace. Even small changes like listening to music instead of the news first thing in the morning “made me want to write and bring that pleasure to other people.”
An unexpected foray into the film world also helped set the table for Sugaregg when Bognanno was asked to write songs for the 2019 movie Her Smell, starring Elisabeth Moss as the frontwoman of the fictional rock band Something She. “It got me motivated to play music again after the last album,” she says. “I loved reading the script and trying to think, what music would the character write? People asked if I’d play those songs with Bully but the whole point was for them to not be Bully songs. It was nice to get my head out of my own ass for a second and work on a project for someone else,” she says with a laugh.
A highly accomplished engineer who ran the boards herself on the first two Bully albums, Bognanno was ready to be free “from the weight of feeling like I had to prove to the world I was capable of engineering a record, and wanted to be content knowing for myself what I can do without needing the approval of others to validate that.”
So for SUGAREGG, she yielded recording and mixing responsibilities to outside collaborators for the first time and trekked to the remote Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minn., an unexpected return to her home state. Behind the console was John Congleton, a Grammy-winner who has worked with everyone from St. Vincent and Sleater-Kinney to The War on Drugs and Modest Mouse. “Naturally, I still had reservations, but John was sensitive to where I was coming from,” Bognanno says. “He was very respectful that I’d never worked with a producer before.”
The studio’s rich history (classics such as Nirvana’s In Utero, PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me and Superchunk’s Foolish were recorded there) and woodsy setting quickly put Bognanno’s mind at ease. Being able to bring her dog Mezzi along for the trip didn’t hurt either. “I had never tracked a record in the summer, so waking up and going outside with her before we started each day was a great way to refresh,” she says.
SUGAREGG features additional contributions from long time touring drummer Wesley Mitchell and bassist Zach Dawes, renowned for his work on recent albums by Sharon Van Etten and Lana Del Rey. Dawes and Bognanno met at Pachyderm to work on parts just two days before tracking, “but it ended up being so much less stressful than I had expected and I loved it,” she says. “Zach wanted to be there to help and make my vision happen.”
With 14 songs on tape, Bognanno and friends left Pachyderm thinking SUGAREGG was done. But once back home in Nashville, she realized there was more to be written, and spent the next five months doing exactly that. Moving to Palace Studios in Toronto with Graham Walsh (Alvvays, METZ, !!!), Bognanno and Mitchell recorded “Where to Start” and “Let You,” which proved to be two of the new album’s key tracks.
Ultimately, SUGAREGG is a testament that profound change can yield profound results — in this case, the most expressive and powerful music of Bognanno’s career. “This is me longing to see the bigger picture, motivated and eager for contentment in the best way,” she says. “I hope the happy go lucky / fuck-it-all attitude shines through some of these songs because I really did feel like I was reentering a place I hadn’t been to in a while and was excited to be back there.”
Bully from their album “SUGAREGG” (Release Date: 21st August 2020 on Sub Pop Records.
At the time of it’s release, this album was under apprciated. They were part of a group of bands in the really early ’90s—My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride, Moose—and those first Slowdive records were right in the wheelhouse. Reverbed-out, cascading guitars and distant, female-male voices, in kinship with what My Bloody Valentine were doing. Even though it was airy and ethereal, it was also still very loud. In England, Slowdive were successful somewhat, but in America they started gaining cult status even through the late ’90s. There was definitely a time when this stuff was happening, There was something about their music that struck a bigger chord with me than some of the other bands from around that time. Something about the way Neil and Rachel’s vocals blended that drew me in more, something more personal about the song writing and singing that made them my favourite noisy guitar band around that time.
“Pygmalion” now it’s become heralded as a masterpiece. And it is. When Slowdive disbanded in 1995 music fans widely associated it with the demise of the shoegaze genre. Their last sign of life was “Pygmalion” (before they reunited in 2014) and it was, after “Just For A Day” and “Souvlaki” a totally different and more abstract album. Where the band attempted to put more song structures in place on “Souvlaki“, they began to incorporate more elements of ambient electronica on “Pygmalion” .
This majestic record became a cult touchstone for its ambient detours and post-rock experiments. Nothing else sounds quite like it, and Slowdive themselves fell silent for years afterward, save for side projects, only to finally re-emerge with 2017’s triumphant, self-titled reunion album.
Tracks like “Blue Skied An’ Clear” and “Crazy For You” demonstrate that the songs are still there, somewhere – they’re just buried under more abstract sounds than before.
Fuzzy Sun have used their lockdown time for introspection and reflection, resulting in a seven-track acoustic EP: Stories Retold. Here, they reimagine seven tracks of their previously released material in a new light.
Acoustic music is something close to Fuzzy Sun – an integral part of their musical maturation – with the band frequently citing the work of artists like John Martyn, Nick
Drake and Joni Mitchell as some of their key influences. Consequently, it is unsurprising that the EP is a thing of such brilliance. ‘Want Love’ is unrecognizable in the best possible way. Exuberant vocals have been replaced by a relaxed, easy-going tone, bringing the perhaps previously under-appreciated lyrics into stark light. The track takes an entirely new tone, reminiscent of Bon Iver or Tom Odell.
However, the core sound is entirely still that of Fuzzy Sun. ‘Eve’ beautifully layers vocals to create a lightly-fluttering style that gently tugs the reader into a sun-spangled field; a musical experience soaked in effervescence. The chorus is rendered brilliant in an entirely new way, with irresistible melodies recapturing fans’ hearts anew.
‘Gentleman’s Touch’ puts an oceans worth of emotion into just a few minutes, with a brief saxophone interlude that shows they hope to expose existing listeners to other musical directions. ‘A Modern Kind of Blue’ takes almost a country, western tint, with the acoustic guitar cutting through at key moments to give us a warm, nostalgic track. Recording the album away from one another in lockdown, the group demonstrate their ingenuity and hunger to make music as well as showing their refusal to let the pandemic put a stop to their periodic release schedule.
‘We’ve had a lot of fun with this one’ remarks frontman, Kyle Ross. ‘Although it was weird making it apart from one another, I think it’s been an incredibly valuable process being able to revisit our previous work and push the boundaries of it creatively. It’s given us the opportunity to pay homage to some influences that you might not guess from our usual creative direction as well as create our proudest work yet’. Above all, Fuzzy Sun value storytelling. Now, they bring that penchant for storytelling to the fore. To that end, the band urge listeners to enjoy Stories Retold in a single sitting. ‘It’s how we built it and how we think it’s best heard’ says Kyle. ‘We value albums and the experience that comes with listening to them. We’ve tried that concept a bit before but with Stories Retold I think we’ve really refined it and we hope people can embrace it in the way we’ve intended.’.
