After four years away The Wytches return with new single Cowboy, Recorded with Luke Oldfield at Tile House Studios, the track has been released today on their own label Cable Code Records . Cowboy is The Wytches‘ first single to be heard from their new line-up.
The band’s first two albums, Annabel Dream Reader and All Your Happy Life were released in quick succession, both coming out in the space of two years. Quickly gaining attention as as one of the country’s most exciting new bands, The Wytches bagged festival slots at SXSW, Reading & Leeds and Glastonbury, and toured with bands METZ, Fat White Family and Death Grips across the US and Europe.
Following the departure of their drummer and the band coming close to ‘burning out and imploding’, front man Kristian Bell explained: “We were disheartened by the whole thing.
“All the work that goes into getting a band off its feet and into the public felt like something we’d have to try all over again.” Luckily, after a few years away, Bell, alongside bassist Dan Rumsey and guitarist Mark Breed, began demoing together again.
He added: “We’ve come back feeling re-energised and rejuvenated. We were going through the motions but now things feel right again.” Speaking of their new track, Bell says: “It’s a song about attempting to return to a better state of mind. Cowboy was a holding place title as it seemed like a riff that a cowboy would enjoy.
“It had 4 or 5 different verses and structures before the final recorded version and by then the name had stuck.”
“My new song is an ode to melody, saxophones, King Curtis and Sam Cooke, unqualified joy, positivity, singing a simple song and being a fool,” says Steve Marion aka Delicate Steve. “It’s about an optimism and about our place within the human pageant.” There’s a little bit of a Ratatat vibe with this one.
This is Steve, Delicate Steve’s first new record in 4 years, and first for the ANTI– imprint, is an articulation of this spirit. Joy. Love. Positivity. Perseverance. Meditation. A general communion with the people and world around him. Easy to call such things hackneyed in this cynical time, but in Steve’s case, it’s very hard to separate the person from the art. It’s real. It’s pure. This, is Steve.
Melody begins with the needle drop on This is Steve, and it’s this hallmark as a songwriter on display in tune after tune that has defined all of Delicate Steve’s work. It’s his incredible capacity to write wordless songs that are impossible not to sing along to. He works in no genre, there are no words, but there is never a question as to what he is saying. Tunes like “Animals,” “Help,” and “Nightlife,” establish their hooks immediately, and drop you with Steve as he runs alongside leopards, scales a Western peak, nurses a boozy Kingston come-down, before clocking out at under three minutes and depositing you somewhere else on a technicolor continuum. Throughout the set, Steve’s guitar melodies rise and crest, unguarded expressions of wonderment and positivity.
Steve produced and played all the instruments on this record. He created it as an introduction from himself to you, and named it appropriately. If there is a question as to who This is Steve’s creator is, you’ll find it imbued in these ten songs. As he has done from the start, Steve lets the music speak for itself. Without a word.
Margo Price has set a new release date for That’s How Rumors Get Started, her new Sturgill Simpson produced album, which will be out July 10th via Loma Vista. (It was originally set for a May release.) “Take me back to the day I started trying to paint my masterpiece so I could warn myself of what was ahead,” she says, referencing the many world-changing events of the last three months. “Time has rearranged, it has slowed down, it has manipulated things like it always does…the words to some of these songs have changed meaning, they now carry heavier weight.”
She continues: “I’ve seen the streets set ablaze, the sky set on fire. I’ve been manic, heartbroken for the world, heartbroken for the country, heartbroken from being heartbroken again and again. This album is a postcard of a landscape of a moment in time. It’s not political but maybe it will provide an escape or relief to someone who needs it. Sending love to everyone out there and hope I see you down the highway.”
With the news comes a new single, “Letting Me Down” and a video that was shot during lockdown in an old RV and at an abandoned hospital. “We bought a cheap ’80s travel trailer with a bathroom, kitchen, and a propane powered refrigerator, so we wouldn’t have to go inside anywhere for food or bathrooms,” says director Kimberly Stuckwisch. “We were able to abide by the 6-feet social distance CDC recommendation as we set up a remote head for the camera that we operated from a closet outside of the room. We wore masks the entire time and Margo supplied us with multiple bottles of hand sanitizer and spiked seltzers. We parked our RV in her driveway and worked solely out of there and the room we were filming in. We wanted to speak to what was going on at that moment, to a world that was/is shut down, to the fear we all feel, and to the hope of breaking free.” It’s a nice video, which also features choreography by Margo’s sister KyliePrice.
Margo is part of this Thursday’s John Prine livestream tribute that is also set to feature Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile, Bonnie Raitt, Kacey Musgraves, Bill Murray, Sturgill Simpson, Iris DeMent, Jim James, Kurt Vile, Dan Auerbach, and more.
Need more? Margo recently released live album Perfectly Imperfect at The Ryman which features Sturgill, Jack White, and Emmylou Harris.
The Turning? A bit of a disappointment as a movie. But Its original soundtrack? A pleasant surprise. Then again, perhaps its quality should have been expected; after all, a guestlist that includes Courtney Love, Girl in Red, Mitski, Soccer Mommy and many more is bound to please. Of particular note, Mitski’s ominous, brooding “Cop Car” is a dastardly effective horror movie scene-setter, and the return of St. Louis punk rockers Living Things on the Sunflower Bean-assisted “Take No Prisoners,” their first release in over a decade, is a howling good time.
Music used in the movie The Turning, not featured on the Original Soundtrack and includes a brand new, unreleased song by David Bowie: American Landfill feat. Kristeen Young, and an acoustic version of Mother by Courtney Love, and also includes a song by The Aubreys, featuring Stranger Things actor Finn Wolfhard.
The official audio of “Cop Car” by Mitski from “The Turning (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)”
Living Things- Take No Prisoners Feat Sunflower Bean from “The Turning” OST out now on KRO/Sony Masterworks Official audio
The official soundtrack for the Floria Sigismondi (The Runaways, Handmaid’s Tale) directed film The Turning. Produced by Los Angeles singer / songwriter Lawrence Rothman and producer Yves Rothman, the soundtrack features a dumb founding amount of revered artists, including Courtney Love, Mitski, Soccer Mommy, Empress Of, Vagabon, Warpaint, Cherry Glazerr, Kali Uchis, Alice Glass, Girl in Red, Muna, The Aubreys etc.
Tame Impala graced us with three new songs and two remixes. for their Currents album
The unreleased B-Sides,Currents B-Sides & Remixes dropped with the Perth psych big-guns doubling up and gifting us an early release of the expanded collector’s edition of their 2015 album Currents. Here we have a collection of all the tracks .
The release features three unreleased tracks (including the instrumental ‘Powerlines’, (heard in this teaser) and two remixes (one by GUM aka Tame bandmate Jay Watson, and Soulwax’s funked-up take on ‘Let It Happen’). The track ‘List Of People (To try And Forget About)’ was originally written in the gap between 2012’s Lonerism and starting sessions for Currents, as Kevin Parker tells Beats 1 host Zane Lowe.
“I guess maybe one of the reasons it didn’t end up on [Currents] was that it was started on so early and I was so over it by the time I was finishing the album.”
It took Kevin Parker five years to perfect Tame Impala’s follow-up to the massively-successful Currents. Listening to this collection it’s easy to see where that time went — on his project’s fourth studio album, Parker played the part of perfectionist, with every synth note, guitar riff and drum beat intricately placed to be as sonically pristine as possible. This collection gives Currents fans plenty of the danceable prog-rock music they’ve come to love while also expanding outward into smooth, groovy new territory . Parker’s pure musicianship shines through with his latest offering, proving once again why the superstar likes of Travis Scott, Lady Gaga, Kanye West and more are clamouring to work with him.
This is a really good compilation and rarities of an artist are always something love to look for.
It’s 2020 and The Strokes are good again. Even Howard Ratner wouldn’t have taken that bet.
People asked for a new The Strokes record – and get a retro overdose. For the video of “Fast Times” guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. unpacks the old VHS recorder, lets some choppers roar over the Sunset Boulevard of Los Angeles and gambles all his money at the Pacman machine in the disco. The guitars don’t care. They sound like they did at the awesome festival gig of 2005 anyway. If there’s anything from The Strokes next year, we’ve warned you.
The ’80s bands, where did they go?” frontman Julian Casablancas ponders in “Brooklyn Bridge to Chorus,” a retro-tinged (and arguably at least slightly sarcastic) yearning for the good old days that spans throughout The Strokes’ first album in seven years. With a title like The New Abnormal feeling more relevant than usual given the global pandemic, nostalgia for a simpler time is higher than ever — and almost 20 years since their debut album, which arrived in the United States just weeks after 9/11, the NYC band’s signature melodies always strike the right chord, while Casablancas’ breezy falsetto still proves to be a much-needed exhale amid dark times
On his first album in almost four years, New York singer/songwriter Ben Seretan makes stirring folk-rock with an impressive level of dynamism. The album highlight, “Am I Doing Right By You?” features layers of clamorous guitars and busy horns, but there are also bare passages that give way to Seretan’s hushed, introspective vocals. It’s an unpredictable thunderstorm—complete serenity one minute and ground-shaking bluster the next. With each listen, another sprinkle of intriguing, atmospheric sounds pours out, but its vast emotional capacity remains a constant.
“Am I Doing Right by You?” Ben Seretan Whatever’s Clever
Released on: 2020-02-11
“Somewhere” merges ’90s noise rock and twee pop, and it will give you that same euphoric tingle you felt after falling in love with your first underground jangle pop band. Nimble guitar riffs swarm around Garvin’s subtle, sweet vocals, and it captures everything great about fuzzy rock and good-natured, classic indie-pop. The scratchy footage of the band in a warehouse only further emphasizes their grunge-y, throwback glory as it looks like a Breeders or Sonic Youth video you would’ve seen endlessly on MTV back in the day.
Originally from Canada, and now based out of Los Angeles, Gum Country are the duo of Courtney Garvin (aka Courtney from acclaimed indie-band The Courtneys) and multi-instrumentalist Connor Mayer. The pair have been making music for a number of years, starting with a four-track in their bedroom, the recordings of which they later released via Lollipop Records. After moving to LA, Gum Country went into Studio 22 with Joo-Joo Ashworth, and,“this time at full volume”, they produced their debut album proper, Somewhere, out next month.
Gum Country describe their own sound as, “harsh twee”, a blending of the jangle-pop sounds of British-indie in the 1980’s, with the more swirling, distorted tones of shoegaze. Playing all the instruments between them, to use an old cliché, Gum Country make an awful lot of noise for a two piece, with dense layers of sounds produced via fuzzy guitar tones, driving drums and lush, swirling keyboard tones. Somewhere is a record that sounds like escapism, a moment to step back from the world around us, yet lyrically it does touch on the everyday, from love and loss, through to tennis and gardening. Listening to Gum Country, this project feels like one that comes from a place of real love for what they do, a love for creativity, a love for music’s history, and from the listeners point of view a record to fall head-over-heels in love with.
Philly-born, now Nashville-based artist Ron Gallo has just dropped new single called “You Are Enough,” as well as a video montage on YouTube. Gallo tells us he wrote and recorded the track during a three-month period of self-isolation last summer when immigration forced him back to America from Italy. He had planned to stay there with his now-wife, and collaborator, Chiara.
“It’s an affirmation for anyone feeling down on themself or inferior in a world that encourages it. Originally written as a song for my partner – but it’s really universal and something I need to hear myself especially from time to time. I want people to get ready in the morning to this (even to go nowhere), cook to this, do small life things to this – it can be foreground or background music, and build people up,” Gallo says about the song.
Gallo also says he dedicates the to “anyone feeling beat down and inferior, especially those made to feel this way by an entire system.” As for the video, Gallo says, “it’s me 3 months into quarantine, staring out the window reliving the last year in my head via a phone video dump of the last captured moments I have of the ‘old world.’ Scenes from my time in Italy with Chiara, recording, dealing with immigration issues, and ending with the Nashville tornado and protest aftermath.”
Ironically, Gallo finished recording the song in the same room he started in, due to COVID-19 self-isolation. The track was produced and mixed with the remote help of Ben H. Allen, a record producer known for his work with Gnarls Barkley and Animal Collective.
“Now and then feel oddly similar. No one knows where anything is going or anything in general. I want to be one of the people at least trying to make others happy as the world goes through some major growing pains,” Gallo says.
Gallo describes making the track to be like the fashion term “color-blocking,” when one mashes multiple elements that may not traditionally go together. For Gallo, this meant mashing together all the stuff he likes and not limiting himself to anything in order to create his own idea of “pop” music. According to the statement, examples of elements Gallo “mashed” together include 90’s hip-hop beats, jazz chords, idiosyncratic guitar playing, as well as his singular perspective and lyricism.
“Making this new stuff felt like color-blocking, like if it was a shirt it would have a yellow left sleeve, orange right sleeve, green mid-section, pink pockets and a white-collar, no metaphor. Might not make sense, but that’s a shirt I want to wear right now.”
Gallo describes his colorful aesthetic displayed in the single’s sound from a period of self-embrace with “tastes, colors, joy, the ugly shit, growing up outside of Philly on 90’s hip-hop, top 40, candy, skateboarding and video games” at the forefront.
Gallo says that a full album should be out by the fall but a release date has yet to be announced. Aside from music, Gallo started REALLYNICE.world, a blog described to be “a creative outlet that started as a place for him to just share thoughts and whatever he was into and has since morphed into a digital festival and a clothes line.”I’m back baby! and I dedicate track 1 to anyone feeling beat down and inferior, especially those made to feel this way by an entire system. It is called “YOU ARE ENOUGH” and I want people to get ready in the morning to this song and then go dismantle shit (safely) or just kick back and enjoy being themself.
It started as an affirmation for my love, Chiara, but has evolved into a much more universal song. It’s a strange time to release music but I chose to stay on track because this is just as much about Now as it was when I wrote it. I want to do whatever I can to balance out the heaviness and evil in the world and build the people up that need to be reminded of their power right now.
Mike Polizze, Fishtown resident and frontman of Purling Hiss and Birds of Maya, has announced his debut solo album, Long Lost Solace Find. According to Polizze’s hand-written announcement, the album is “largely acoustic, mellow, and almost without electric guitar.” In other words, it’s a complete left turn from his previous work as Purling Hiss, which features harsh walls of lo-fi noise rock.
Along with the announcement came the upcoming record’s lead single, “Revelation.” This warm, acoustic guitar-driven track features Polizze’s longtime Philly friend Kurt Vile contributing backing vocals and a gorgeous trumpet countermelody. “You came to me like a revelation,” Polizze declares, sweetly. “Revelation” features catchy, pop hooks, while the twangy guitar riffs keep it firmly rooted in the Philly folk tradition.
Mike’s debut solo album—and his first release for Paradise of Bachelors.—finds the erstwhile Purling Hiss frontman and Birds of Maya shredder stepping out from behind the wall of guitar noise into the bright sunshine. Performed entirely by Polizze with longtime friend Kurt Vile (largely live and acoustic) and recorded by The War On Drugs engineer Jeff Zeigler, this intimate Philadelphia affair clarifies the bittersweet earworm melodicism of Dizzy Polizzy’s songwriting, revealing bona fide folk-pop chops. #LongLostSolaceFind finally harvests the wild local honey from the buzzing hive of Hiss.
Check out “Revelation” and order Long Lost Solace Find here, out July 31st on Paradise of Bachelors.
