This podcast is unpaid and survives on donations. You can donate here via paypal www.stephenmbland.com/olas-kool-kitchen Ola’s Kool Kitchen is a show on KCLA 99.3 FM in Los Angeles, 107.5 andhow.FM, Rock Velvet Radio, Maximum Threshold Radio, Rock Radio UK, Sword Radio UK, Jammerstream One, Kor Radio, Firebrand Radio, Bombshell Radio and Radio Wigwam and you can hear more shows here https://hearthis.at/olaskoolkitchen Show 410
1. The Stranglers-Golden Brown
2. The Stroppies-Holes In Everything
3. Black Tambourine – I Remember You
4. Pendant-Name Around My Neck
5. Low Fly-Sleepy Cat
6. Tablescraps-I Wanna Stay Home With U
7. Starcrawler-Hollywood Ending
8. Beck-Think I’m In Love
9. She Drew The Gun-Trouble Every Day
10. Shelly Y La Nueva Generación-Vestido Azul
11. Margo Guryan-Sun
12. Shuggie Otis – Aht Uh Mi Hed-single-Epic
13. Ghostpoet-Concrete Pony-I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep-Pias
14. Verlaines-Take Good Care of It-Bird Dog-Flying Nun Records
The Hold Steady were on a roll before quarantine, with a great new album and their sporadic weekend runs that are also always great, and since quarantine started, they’ve been releasing recordings from those weekend runs on Bandcamp and donating a portion of the proceeds to the venues they were recorded at. It’s a very cool thing they’re doing, and it reminds you how great of a live band The Hold Steady still are, but for today’s live video roundup we’re going back in time to when The Hold Steady were supporting “Boys and Girls in America”.
The Hold Steady are a band you really need to see live — they and frontman Craig Finn especially display a great deal of showmanship — and this pro-shot video really makes it feel like you’re right there with them, rocking out with all the enthusiastic fans in the crowd.
show from the Hovefestival in Norway June 26th 2007.
01 – Stuck Between Stations 0:59,
02 – The Swish – 04:50,
04 – Chips Ahoy! 09:03,
05 – Hot Soft Light 12:22,
06 – Cattle And The Creeping Things 16:25,
07 – Massive Nights – 20:14,
08 – Party Pit – 22:55,
09 – You Can Make Him Like You 26:51,
10 – Multitude of casualties 30:39,
11 – Stevie Nix – 34:03,
12 – Same Kooks – 39:10,
13 – Hornets! Hornets! – 42:12,
14 – Your Little Hoodrat Friend 46:50,
15 – Southtown Girls – 51:28,
16 – Killer Parties – 56:20,
John Peel‘s BBC 1 radio show was highly influential, giving so many bands their first radio exposure over the nearly 40 years he was on the air. His show also featured original studio sessions from artists, from Bowie, T-Rex and Nick Drake to Joy Division, The Smiths, The Cure and The Fall, to My Bloody Valentine, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey, Mogwai, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and more. Over the years over 4,000 sessions were recorded by over 2,000 artists.
Many of these ended up getting released as Peel Session EPs by Peel’s own Strange Fruit Records, which started in 1986 and carried on till Peel’s death in 2004. Some of these have now been released to streaming services, but even more have not, though people have uploaded them YouTube. Enter blogger Dave Strickson, who created an alphabetized roundup of all the Peel Sessions he found on YouTube. There’s nearly a thousand, including David Bowie and The Spiders From Mars, Roxy Music, Joy Division and New Order, The Cure, Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Smiths, The Fall, Echo & The Bunnymen, Nirvana, Hole, Jack White, Elvis Costello, Cocteau Twins, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Sonic Youth, The Wedding Present, The Raincoats, Nick Drake, T-Rex, Buzzcocks, Can, Billy Bragg, Fairport Convention, Pulp, The Breeders, The Fugees, The Kinks, The Specials, The Slits, Thin Lizzy, and tons more.
Find Sessions from artists ranging from A Guy Called Gerald to XTC.
For listeners seeking a break from Instagram Live streams for new takes on familiar tunes, a YouTube user has just what you need. Blogger David Strickland has scoured YouTube for as many classic Peel Sessions as he could find. He found a lot—almost a thousand, at last count. It’s a pretty good number, considering Peel captured more than four thousand recordings from over two thousand artists over the years.
Compiling the links into this handy index, it’s an exhaustive list that delivers Peel Sessions from a wide range of acts, many of whom are represented with multiple sessions recorded over the years. Siouxsie and the Banshees, for example, have five different sets recorded in the years 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981, and 1986. The Cure is represented with four sessions ranging from 1979 to 1985. David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars’ famous 1972 session is in there, as are two vital Nirvana performances from 1990 and 1991.
Cocteau Twins, Roxy Music, A Guy Called Gerald, Stereolab, Pavement, Thin Lizzy, The Specials, The Verve, and Bikini Kill are just a handful of the many other bands found on the list. Dig through the whole thing yourself right here.
Tanya Donelly covers some of her favorite songs by The Go Go’s, Leonard Cohen, Kirsty MacColl, Split Enz, Linda Ronstadt, The Pretenders, Wings, Echo & The Bunnymen, and Mary Margaret O’Hara on this outstanding new album.
“When Joe from American Laundromat asked if I’d be interested in doing a covers album, I was hesitant, mainly because most of the songs I truly love are already perfect in their original form. But then I had the idea to ask the brilliant Parkington Sisters to be the band for this project, to bring their gorgeous sound and spirit, and make it something cohesive and centered. Happily, they said Yes. So I chose a handful of songs that have been on heavy rotation in my head and heart from the first time I heard them, and the Sisters took over. They charted and plotted and arranged, and I joined Rose and Sarah and Ariel recording at Jon Evans’ Brick Hill Studio in Orleans MA, with guest players Matthias Bossi and Jon Evans (who also engineered). Lydia P put down some cello later, and I recorded additional vocals at Q Division Studios in Somerville MA, with James Bridges engineering. These are some of the most honest, moving, beautiful, unfiltered, true and cool songs that have ever been written, in my opinion. And those same adjectives apply to the Parkington Sisters as well.” -Tanya
The Colourfield were an English band formed in 1984 in Manchester, England, when former Specials and Fun Boy Three frontman Terry Hall joined up with ex-Swinging Cats members Toby Lyons and Karl Shale. Despite the fact that all three members originally were from Coventry, the band was based in Manchester.
“Virgins and Philistines” is the debut album by British band The Colourfield, released on April 26th, 1985.
Returning to records years after their release can sometimes reveal the weaknesses that we’d failed to notice at the time. What seemed refreshing or innovative can, further down the line, appear primitive or tiresome. But we can’t simply hold our nostalgia responsible for the fact that records from the past sometimes, upon reinvestigation, sound dated.
And so it is that the recollection of Virgin And Philistines’ singles – ‘Thinking Of You’, ‘Castles In The Air’ – and its other standout moments have cultivated its candid melancholy and perversely perky pop, while the reality of listening to it exposes the tricks that memory plays as much as how fashions have changed. At the time it seemed a breath of fresh air, a semi-acoustic pastoral antidote to the neon pop landscape that surrounded it. Retrospectively, however, it sounds mildly overpolished, You’ll find the same problem with Aztec Camera, or Prefab Sprout, or The Lilac Time. But those who can accept this will find within its pristine forty minutes some of Hall’s finest moments, lyrically and melodically.
Terry Hall seems to understand the way that familiarity can breed contempt. He’s spent his career moving from one project to another, restlessly shaking things up, never staying with collaborators long enough for things to become stale. Virgins and Philistines may sound archaic, Making allowances for its technical approach is imperative, especially since its intentions remain clear, and when he pursued the idea with its follow-up, Deception, he soon realised that he’d reached a creative brick wall and called it quits. In fact Hall has never made more than two albums under any of the many guises under which he has operated. He bailed from The Specials in 1981 as ‘Ghost Town’ sat atop the charts, taking Lynval Golding and Neville Staples with him to form Fun Boy Three. He called time on Fun Boy Three within two years, despite further hits, and The Colourfield were born, his collaborators this time Toby Lyons and Karl Shal (of Swinging Cats). They in turn dissolved during the recording of their second album, and Hall moved onto further experiments: two solo albums, collaboration with Dave Stewart under the name Vegas, further collaborations with (amongst others) Fundamental’s Mushtaq, Damon Albarn, Tricky, Dub Pistols, The Lightning Seeds, and the rather painfully named (and oft forgotten) Terry, Blair, and Anouchka.
It was on the latter’s ‘Lucky In Luv’ that he sang “If life was fair / I’d be a millionaire”, and, to be honest, given the affection in which he’s generally held – underlined by the recent Specials reunion – it’s a little surprising that he isn’t. (Perhaps he is and simply doesn’t flaunt it, in which case the man deserves even more respect.) But one of the reasons for the high regard people have for Terry Hall is precisely that he’s never allowed us to become bored of his work. Its only constant is his doleful voice, its shortcomings at the heart of its charm. As soon as there’s a danger that whatever he’s working on might become formulaic he’s taken another left turn, and with this has come the unspoken suggestion that we too should leave his previous activities behind.
The Colourfield were one of those left behind. Two albums, a handful of singles that grazed the charts and a bunch of fuzzy videos on youtube are all that remain of this briefly wonderful exercise. The second album, frankly, is a mess, a painfully overproduced synthetic nightmare that could almost pass as part of the PWL catalogue. It’s hardly surprising Hall left the project behind, and little wonder that he looks especially morose – even by his own standards – on its cover. But 1985’s Virgins And Philistines is something else, and its reissue by Cherry Red – making it available on CD for the first time – is good reason to revisit it.
Virgins And Philistines‘ overwhelming mood is, true to form, that of imminent regret, the foreshadowing of things going wrong or at the very least not working out as hoped if, indeed, it’s not already too late. For the most part it’s focussed on domestic affairs, as though Hall has just emerged from a series of painful failed relationships. At its most optimistic, “romance is a word that should be seen but not heard” consisting merely of “castles in the air”, and even that often seems a forlorn hope: Hall’s seen “the world about us / and the Disneyland dream’s a lie” (‘Cruel Circus’). Even the lovelorn sentiments of ‘Thinking Of You’ are undermined by the slowly dawning reality that the object of his desire is resistant to his sentiments, assuming they’ve not walked away previously anyway: “I could be the one thing there in your hour of need / So if you decide to change your views I’m thinking of you”. At times, however, it broadens its reach to address social affairs: ‘Cruel Circus” refers to “fur coats on ugly people expensively dressed up to kill / In a sport that’s legal within the minds of the mentally ill”, while on ‘Faint Hearts’ he asks, “Will all this wishful thinking save your ship from sinking?”
In fact the number of lines that bear repeating here confirm that this was Hall at his most articulate, his attention to details as striking as Morrissey’s, his ear for a wry observation never more finely tuned. “I was travelling to nowhere when I fell off the rails” (‘Sorry’), “You took the good from the bad like the 36 pieces of cheap cutlery” (‘Take’), “I really wanted her hair to touch her knees / I really wanted to share forgotten dreams” (‘Castles In The Air’), “You can take me for a ride / but only if I get the window seat” (‘Armchair Theatre’): the examples are legion.
But the music – for the most part – matches this eloquence. On occasions, in fact, it’s a masterclass in songwriting. ‘Thinking Of You’ recalls Bacharach and David’s ‘Do You Know The Way To San Jose’ in its use of Spanish influences, its seemingly upbeat, almost coquettish melody at odds with its despondent lyrical tone. ‘Faint Hearts’ has hints of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Carousel Waltz’, Hall’s voice at its most yearning as he reaches for the top notes, Toby Lyons’ organ wheezing much as Steve Winwood’s did on Talk Talk’s The Colour Of Spring. ‘Castles In The Air’, meanwhile sports castanets and flourishes of flamenco, an autumnal melody, dramatic cello strokes and a guitar solo that, under most circumstances, would drag a song to the depths of hell but which here lift it into that blue haze between bitter and sweet. ‘Take’ may seem a little clunky in comparison, but its awkwardness matches Hall’s mood as he battles blatant belligerence with brutal honesty, the tremor in his voice challenged by the defiant self-denial at the song’s heart (“Me and the cat own the lease on the flat / And nothing you do will ever change that… / You could say that we’re having the time of our lives.”) ‘Cruel Circus’ even breaks unexpectedly, delightfully, comically into a music hall bridge, the sampled sounds of ducks, chickens and horses interrupting his pleading “Isn’t it enough to eat them?” while ‘Yours Sincerely’ is a deftly tender tune with which one suspects Kings Of Convenience may be familiar, though whether they’re capable of lines like “I took the wrong decision / So you turned on your ignition” is open to question. And then there’s ‘Armchair Theatre’, which alternates between the sincere, the twee and a knowing banality, highlighted by the way Hall delivers the line “I’m getting very bored indeed”.
But it’s actually a cover of The Roches’ ‘Hammond Song’ that steals the show, still sounding as magnificently heartfelt today as it did 35 years ago. Against gently strummed steel guitar strings, Hall shifts his attention from his own relationships to the naïve love of one younger than him who’s leaving town for someone he considers unworthy, much as McCartney did on ‘She’s Leaving Home’. It’s gentle, poignant and exquisitely understated, not a million miles from Simon & Garfunkel’s gentler moments, while its lush harmonies recall another hit of the time, Godley and Creme’s ‘Cry’.
Winning new converts to Virgins And Philistines might be hard: quite apart from the production, its heart-on-the-sleeve sentimentality may be simply too saccharine in cynical times. But that’s the danger of baring your soul, and Terry Hall never did it quite so beautifully as he did here. Like “the ghost of your love (that) will never die” in ‘Yours Sincerely’, its memory and wistful thinking still haunt those who experienced it. What we remember may not be quite what we find, but since nostalgia lies at its heart, let nostalgia be its reward.
From their beginnings, Spiritualized and The Verve were celestial brethren. Both bands formed in 1990, undoubtedly with a mutual love for Pink Floyd’s The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and an appetite for drug-taking: Jason “J Spaceman” Pierce founded Spiritualized from the ashes of his previous band, heroin-championing trance rockers Spacemen 3, while Verve (then without a “The”), led by the charismatic Richard Ashcroft, was a gang of teenagers that enjoyed trippin’ balls on LSD. They each jammed eternal, though with distinct styles: Pierce favoured extended, pedal-heavy drones, while Verve conceived loose, reverb-soaked grooves. Following the release of Spiritualized’s debut album, Lazer Guided Melodies, and Verve’s debut single, “All In The Mind,” in 1992, the two bands toured the UK together. For the next couple of years, the bands seemed to follow a similar path, on course for cult worship. Spiritualized has always been and forever will be Jason Pierce. The gaunt, straggly-haired Spaceman as he was called, formed the band in 1990 as Spacemen 3 was crumbling from the result of his acrimonious relationship with paper-thin bandmate Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember, a 24/7 shades wearer with a bowl cut. A lot of it had to do with two songwriters going in different directions and likely drugs, but the presence of Pierce’s then-girlfriend, the Calvin Klein-modelesque Kate Radley, was also to blame. According to Kember, Radley put a strain on band relations by following the band around wherever they played, be it the studio, rehearsal, or gigs. Once the band imploded, Pierce recruited the remaining S3 members, sans Kember, for his new band, Spiritualized. After the release of their debut single, “Anyway That You Want Me,” Radley joined the band on keyboards, adding a face to Pierce’s muse for songs like “I Want You” and “If I Were With Her Now.” After joining in 1991, Radley became as synonymous with Spiritualized as Pierce, appearing in all press photos, sometimes just the two of them. They appeared as a match made in the heaven he so often referred to in his music.
In 1995, Spiritualized added “Electric Mainline” to their name for some reason and released the magnificent Pure Phase, an album of transcendental, cosmic R&B designed to “play loud ‘n’ drive fast.” Verve, meanwhile, was forced to add “The” to their name, thanks to a lawsuit by the record label of the same name. Unlike Spiritualized Electric Mainline, The Verve would stick. They too released an album, A Northern Soul, which followed up their 1993 debut, A Storm In Heaven. Moving on from their early cavernous psych-rock, A Northern Soul was a game-changer. Led by Ashcroft’s emotive voice, Nick McCabe’s virtuosic guitar work, and Oasis producer Owen Morris’ larger-than-life production, The Verve moved into a whole new stratosphere: the mainstream. Although the album is carried by a spirit that is equal parts Floyd and Zeppelin (see the rumbling low-end vibes of “Life’s An Ocean” or the ecstatic rave-up “This Is Music”), it was the ballads, “On Your Own” and “History,” that helped them crack the Top 30 and reveal Ashcroft, now referred to by Noel Gallagher as “Captain Rock,” as one of the UK’s most compelling songwriters.
The Verve had surpassed Spiritualized and entered the big time, but their success was not what caused a rift between the two bands. Instead, it was due to a personal matter. That same month, The Verve released A Northern Soul, Richard Ashcroft married Kate Radley in secret. Yeah, you read that right: Ashcroft, not Pierce, married Radley. This bombshell was kept under wraps until 1997, but for two more years, Radley was still an active member of Spiritualized. In fact, just days after the wedding, Spiritualized headlined above The Verve at the Phoenix Festival in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Neither camp has ever been forthcoming about whether Ashcroft was the cause of Pierce and Radley’s romance ending. Maybe that’s for the best, to let this dog lie and just enjoy all of the music that seemed to be a result of such an ordeal. But in these pre-social media times, this incredible love triangle story managed to transpire without details leaking to the press. Fifteen years after it happened, Ashcroft offered up a rare candid moment to Sirius XM, even accepting blame for her leaving Spiritualized. “I was supporting her band,” he said. “I saw this girl jump off the stage with these boots on, this beautiful little skirt. I’m like, ‘Wow! Who’s that? She’s gorgeous.’ And I’m just so lucky that she was intelligent as well. Such a bloody bonus, guys out there! You really should go for that. But I was very fortunate. People should check out her band, she doesn’t play with them anymore. I probably ruined that!”
The loss of Radley romantically seemed both devastating and inspirational for Pierce. Normally, he would let the songs just come to him, but when he sat down to begin writing Ladies and Gentleman in the summer of 1995, he amassed 14 songs in 11 days. According to then-bandmate Sean Cook, Pierce had been doing heroin, which he seems to corroborate on “Home Of The Brave”: “Sometimes I have my breakfast right off of a mirror.” Other lyrics like “There’s a hole in my arm where all the money goes” (“Cop Shoot Cop”) and “Just me, my spike in my arm, and my spoon” (“Think I’m In Love”) insinuate that he was consuming the brown stuff intravenously. Even for a guy who named an album, Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To , this seemed like a pretty shocking admission.
Of course, in hindsight, it’s Pierce’s romantic anguish and this supposed inability to carry on that makes the album such a gut-punch to hear. The first voice you hear on Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space isn’t his, but hers: Radley mutters the album’s titular words completely devoid of emotion. Rumour has it the line was left as a “kiss-off voicemail” for Pierce, though that has never been verified, and seems more like a thing of gossip. Lines like “I’m wasted all the time, I’ve got to drink you right out of my mind” (“Broken Heart”) and “All I want in life’s a little bit of love to take the pain away” (title track) painted a seemingly obvious picture of despair. But Pierce frequently denied that these songs were about his ex. He told MOJO, “If I hadn’t been doing interviews I wouldn’t even have come to that conclusion.” He also downplayed any kind of resentment over Radley leaving him for Ashcroft, telling NME, “I love her dearly and she loves me dearly. Simple fact.
Astonishingly, Radley was still in the band, and is credited with contributing organ, synths, and piano, as well as vocals to the album. However, when it came to gigs, Spiritualized’s PR team claimed she was suffering from a “mystery illness.”
Pierce has said that a lot of the album was recorded spontaneously, and most of what we hear are first takes. So the majority of his time was spent mixing the album, a total of 18 months all ce has said that a lot of the album was recorded spontaneously, and most of what we hear are first takes. So the majority of his time was spent mixing the album, a total of 18 months all together. Originally, he asked Brian Eno to take a crack at it, but he was too busy. And so Pierce began a quest on par with Kevin Shields‘ epic stab at refining My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, to achieve perfection. Some might say he achieved it. Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space might not receive the same godlike praise as Loveless, but it’s every bit warranted. This was one man’s singular vision: an orchestral space rock odyssey complete with blessed gospel choirs, bursts of free jazz noise, swampy blues, and garage rock freak-outs, divulging the pain he’s suffered.
When Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space was released, the press was still unaware of Radley’s marriage to Ashcroft. Pierce was subjected to questioning about their relationship, considering the lyrical content, but no one caught on. And why would they? He was admittedly still living with Radley’s parents at the time. Months later, when the press found out, Radley and Ashcroft became tabloid fodder and their lives became a soap opera.
Pierce did everything he could to deflect any such attention in order to push his masterpiece. Despite no real hit single to boost it, the album was a commercial success, charting at number four in the UK and achieving a considerable breakthrough in the US. The novelty of packaging the CD in prescription pill form complete with a foil blister pack and dosage advice also helped shift a few copies. So did a performance 114 stories high at the top of Toronto’s CN Tower, which was recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest gig ever played.
The Verve, meanwhile, was on the verge of Oasis-level fame. After breaking up (for the first time) in 1995, Ashcroft began working on music he felt would be for his solo album. Instead, The Verve reformed and released the mammoth hit “Bitter Sweet Symphony” in June 1997. (To Pierce’s probable liking, the band was forced to pay 100 percent of the song’s royalties to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for sampling an orchestral version of the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time.”) These new, uplifting anthems – perhaps a sign of his domestic bliss with Radley – formed their third album, Urban Hymns.
The Verve may not have survived (they would reform again in 2007 to make a spectacularly shit fourth album, then break up for a third time), but Ashcroft ended up with both the girl and the glory. The drugs may not have worked for him, but selling out sure did. By appealing to the common denominator – which at this time was deemed Noelrock – rather than continue with their cathartic space rock, Urban Hymns became a number one album, selling over ten million copies worldwide and making Ashcroft a rock star in the process.
For the most part, Urban Hymns is still lauded as a modern day classic, but in retrospect, it likely should have been credited to “Richard Ashcroft & The Verve.” That’s certainly how the press treated it. Maybe in 1997, when Britpop was still being touted and Oasis was – in their words: the biggest band in the world – songs like “The Drugs Don’t Work” and “Lucky Man” were candidates for Single of the Week, but two decades later they sure don’t sound much different from this. Maybe finding true love wasn’t the best thing for Ashcroft’s songwriting after all, because things only got worse when The Verve returned in 2008 with Forth.
The same cannot be said about Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. What Pierce created was timeless; an engrossing, uncompromising, and outright masterpiece that critics have never needed to reassess. That might have something to do with the fact that Pierce, unlike Ashcroft, has never strayed far from his original template.
OK Computer that year may have won over the critics, and Urban Hymns may have sold a zillion copies, but Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space is 1997’s true magnum opus. It’s the sound of a man detailing how he lost his heart, body, and soul over the span of 69 spellbinding minutes.
Hayley Williams is an alternative American sweetheart, capturing the hearts of millions with her band Paramore. Her crossover appeal has made her a favourite among angsty teens and vaguely familiar amongst even the most culturally unaware. Williams’ striking voice and lyricism set them apart from their emo counterparts as they found the sweet spot between counterculture and pop stardom. Over the past decade, Williams has slowly forayed into a solo career with the occasional guest vocal spot, ultimately culminating with Petals for Armor, her solo debut. After her decade-long relationship and highly publicized divorce with New Found Glory guitarist Chad Gilbert, the now 31-year old Williams took to her solo work as a way to open up about her struggles with mental health and romance. While Williams used Paramore’s later efforts as an opportunity to express herself without the constraints of sticking to their original pop punk roots, Petals for Armor feels like a true liberation done not out of frustration, but out of realization.
–Hayley Williams signed to Atlantic Records as a teenage solo artist in 2003 before quickly pivoting to become the frontwoman of Paramore. Almost two decades later, Williams finally released a solo album with the label, the highly personal, funky, experimental pop record Petals For Amor. The album, made up of two previously released EPs plus five additional tracks, has a confessional tone, with Williams touching on depression and death on the gently swaying “Leave It Alone” but also self-love and rebuilding on the springy “Watch Me While I Bloom.” It may be a solo record, but her Paramore bandmates are close by, with Taylor York handling production, Zac Farro drumming on a couple of songs and touring bassist Joey Howard nabbing some song-writing credits — calming any fears that Williams’ stellar solo effort would mark the end of the band.
Music Written by Hayley Williams, Taylor York & Joey Howard
The Petals For Armor Tour is coming to North America, Europe & the UK this May-June.
Austin, Texas-based songwriter Christelle Bofale will be the first to tell you the importance of family roots and mental health, considering how much those things aided her own self-discovery. Being the first American born in her family, the rich heritage of the Congo is deeply rooted in her upbringing and relationship with sounds.From singing and dancing with her mother as a child, to praying to Congolese music with her grandmother, to her father, a soukous guitar player and musical director for the Congregation at his church, Bofale’s journey as a musician has been defined in tiny intervals throughout the course of her life. As a songwriter, she infuses hints of the Congo into various aspects of her music, bridging the musical influences of the diaspora with juxtaposed elements of indie rock, soul and jazz respectively.
Christelle Bofale grew up steeped in the music of her Congolese parents — influences that only deepen the languid textures of her lush, jazzy, deliberately paced folk songs. Bofale’s Swim Team EP unfurls gracefully, revealing a thoughtful set of ruminations on addressing mental health, moving past awful moments and clinging to sources of solace in a world that seems to be spinning out of control.
Hop Along‘s Painted Shut made many 2015 best-of lists and definitely made it into my personal top ten for the year. Now thankfully Saddle Creek Records is reissuing Hop Along’s 2012 debut full-length album “Get Disowned” for those of us who missed out on either of it’s previous pressings. This is also Get Disowned’s first ever colored vinyl pressing for those of us addicted to colored wax. With 2,000 pressed there will be plenty to go around, but preordering helps guarantee you’ll get the record about a month before it hits your local record store.
This band reminds me of Gang of Four. It has this strange indie-rock–meets-funk thing happening. The singer [Frances Quinlan] has this way of effortlessly taking it from this angular funk verse to this incredible melodic hooky thing. When she sings, she has this beautiful, breathy voice. But when she wants to hit something harsh, she pushes it so much you can feel her voice flaying under the pressure she’s putting into it. Her voice starts to whistle like it’s going to spray apart into pieces and shatter. It doesn’t ever, but it’s really cool
The 2012 debut full-length from Philadelphia’s Hop Along, Get Disowned. Featuring “Tibetan Pop Stars,” which Mark Hoppus of Blink 182 called “the most painfully beautiful song ever.”
“Their first album, 2012’s Get Disowned, is a messy world where people stomp on old floorboards for percussion and saw violins like they were made of something stronger than wood. Everything is governed by Quinlan, who sings in the wild voice of someone casting out demons (or having the demon cast out of them). Its second song, “Tibetan Pop Stars”, should be etched in titanium and shot into outer space for safekeeping.” – Pitchfork
“Hop Along’s first full-band full-length, Get Disowned was punk’s best kept secret. Critically overlooked but totally devastating, full of epic, unpredictably unfolding guitar songs with massive, quotable lyrics that wring you out emotionally and inspire the kind of furtive, conspiratorial devotion punks live for.” – Impose
“nearly perfect… The album is notable for its folk-gone-indie-punk approach, coupled with massive choruses and Quinlan’s personal, soul-crushing lyricism” – AV Club
“one of the most devastatingly honest records I’ve heard in years.” – Stereogum
Welcome to our new series, Document, where we aim to highlight artists and music scenes from around the world that we’ve fallen in love with, but aren’t necessarily already part of the Saddle Creek family. Our third release in the series is the “yr heart” 7-inch from Los Angeles’ Hand Habits.
Meg Duffy, aka Hand Habits, is a singer, songwriter and guitarist from Upstate New York. She has been putting her time in on the road and in the studio over the past two years with pacific northwest band Mega Bog, and the Kevin Morby Band, making an impression on everyone she comes across with her natural charisma and uncharted talent as a multi-instrumentalist.
