The “Dandelion” 7″ features solo acoustic performances from Big Thief frontwoman Adrianne Lenker recorded by Luke Temple of Here We Go Magic, all adorned with a cover painting by Temple.
Put to tape one wintry day in early 2016, the recordings find Temple capturing Lenker in a searching, intimate performance. They offer a first public hearing for “Dandelion”, a beguiling new song from Lenker’s visionary pen; while the version of “Masterpiece” contained here casts a new light on the title track of their acclaimed debut LP.
Explaining how the recordings came about, Lenker says: “On tour with Here We Go Magic, our van, Bonnie, broke down in the Rocky Mountains. We really didn’t want to miss any shows. Fortunately, Here We Go kindly offered me the empty seat in their truck, and I went ahead to play two solo shows while the rest of the band fixed Bonnie.
“After Luke saw the show, he had an idea to capture the simple raw form of the songs played solo. Several months later, I went out to Hudson, NY, and we filled eight cassette tapes, with one song played through a few times per 15-minute tape. It was a really relaxing way of recording. I thought we might just stuff the tapes in a shoebox in a closet and find them years later. It’s nice to record without the intention of releasing the thing you’re making.”
Alexandra Levy makes music for maximum intimacy: Augmented by acoustic guitars, she frequently sings in a weary, tortured whisper. But her deeply reflective breakup songs crackle with tension and life, thanks in part to arrangements that lean on found sounds and field recordings. All that quiet clatter helps lend a diaristic quality to songs that aren’t heard so much as listened in on. Appropriately enough, her debut album is titled What We Say In Private.
Less than a year after the release of her highly-acclaimed debut album, What We Say In Private, Montreal, Quebec-based musician Alexandra Levy – who records and performs as Ada Lea – returns in early 2020 with a new four-song EP which acts as a bridge between what’s come before and where she means to go next.
A mix of both the old and new, the woman, here EP takes its name from a brand new composition recorded recently in LA with Marshall Vore (Phoebe Bridgers, Better Oblivion Community Center). Perhaps her most direct work to-date, the new song offers a beautiful glimpse into the bold new chapter of Ada Lea. “I went to LA and recorded the song in a day and a half with Marshall,” Levy says of the song. “The writing and recording of this song happened like magic.”
Aside from the title-track, which is shared here alongside a raw and captivating demo version, the woman, here EP also offers two previously-unheard recordings from the What We Say In Private sessions, in the form of the reflective and melancholy ‘perfect world’, and the sparse and dream-like ‘jade’, which was inspired by a John Updike short story.
Ada Lea – perfect world from the EP woman, A fascinating glimpse behind the curtain, Levy says that the new EP should be seen as being “like a second cousin” to what we say in private. “We included the songs that we still felt close to,” she explains, “but didn’t seem to have a place on the album.”
Ada Lea – “Wild Heart”
from the album “What We Say In Private – Out 7/19/19!
“Thirty years? Fuck! Thirty years!” Jason Pierce, one half of the creative duo at the heart of Spacemen 3, is struggling to take in the fact that “Playing With Fire” is celebrating over thirty years since it’s release. And, it seems, he’s also struggling to remember events from 1989.
Pierce chuckles in response, “Playing With Fire” is that kind of an album. But that’s to damn the record with faint and superficial praise for in truth, it’s so much more than that: Playing With Fire is an extraordinary album and its ramifications and reverberations are still being felt to this very day. Not only was it the moment that Spacemen 3 found themselves reaching a wider audience after years of indifference, but it was also one that saw them create a contemporary form of psychedelia that was ripe for the time and beyond. And in fairness to Pierce, three decades is a considerable period of time, so a re-acquaintance with Spacemen 3’s third album and the times in which it was made is called for.
Looking back after three decades is to be reminded of a time characterised by huge social, political and cultural upheavals. The year leading up to the album’s release had been marred by shocking levels of violence in and around Northern Ireland. Margaret Thatcher became the 20th century’s longest-serving Prime Minister at the turn of the year. The Local Government Act – featuring the notorious Section 28 preventing local authorities from “promoting homosexuality” – became law. And in a grotesque full stop to the year, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie when a terrorist bomb went off on board, killing a total of 270 people.
Cultural changes were afoot. The first rumblings from the Pacific Northwest were beginning to make themselves felt, hip hop had taken bold steps forward thanks to ground breaking records by Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim and EPMD among others, while the likes of Sonic Youth, Pixies and R.E.M. were reaching far and wide. If you want to track the seed of the best of the 90s and what followed, this is when it was planted.
And it was against this backdrop that Spacemen 3 unshackled psychedelic rock from its origins in the 60s to give it an updated and modern vernacular.
Driven by the partnership of Pete ‘Sonic Boom’ Kember and Jason Pierce, Spacemen 3 had been ploughing their own unique and unfashionable furrow since their formation in 1982. From the fuzzed-up ramalama of their Stooges-indebted 1986 debut album, Sound Of Confusion, through to its follow-up a year later with the laid-back and medicated washes of The Perfect Prescription, Spacemen 3’s gradual reduction and minimalising of their sound would result in Playing With Fire. Opening a fresh chapter in the band’s evolution in the shape of new bassist Will Carruthers, the circumstances around the album’s creation helped precipitate the increasingly fractious relationship between Pete Kember and Jason Pierce.
From his Berlin home, Carruthers muses: “People always ask, ‘Why did the band split up?’ The more interesting question is, ‘Why did they stay together?’”
Carruthers has a point and the answer lies in the grooves contained within Playing With Fire. This is an album that’s defined as much by what’s not there as is there. The monolithic and overdriven onslaught of their debut is largely gone, and when it does re-appear on the hypno-monotony of the repetitive call-to-arms that is ‘Revolution’, the sound is more streamlined, focussed and attacking. Boiled down to a single E chord, its audacity is matched by its mesmeric qualities as it layers one guitar on top of another, before reducing the sound down again to the bare minimum of guitars and single, open strings.
Similarly, ‘Suicide’ strips away structures to just an isolated chord, and instead applies washes of tremolo, delay, echo and wah-wah on a circular guitar riff for dynamic effect. Its tempo is anchored by the beat of a single, programmed bass drum and a bass guitar that locks in on the groove. The end result is a relentless wall of sound that simultaneously disorientates yet welcomes the listener to an experience where time, space and structure become meaningless concepts.
Yet for all that, Spacemen 3 were creating even more space on the album. Opening with the beatific ‘Honey’, the band’s intentions become manifestly clear. This is to be a trip fuelled less by power and more by stealth, pace and room to roam. The sparseness at the heart of ‘How Does It Feel?’ – an eight-minute exercise in minimalism – is matched by the haunting yet oddly lachrymose ‘Let Me Down Gently’.
And among these stark excursions are songs of stunning beauty. ‘Come Down Softly To My Soul’ dances and shimmers, while ‘So Hot (Wash Away All Of My Tears)’ is a tender search for redemption and inner peace that’s underlined by the neo-gospel yearn of ‘Lord Can You Hear Me?’.
In short, Spacemen 3 were making the best music of their career. And in doing so, they were also laying down the groundwork for what was to come next as they gradually fell apart first into factions, and then two separate groups in the shape of Spectrum and Spiritualized. But how much of it was evolution or revolution?
“I don’t think there was ever a wilful decision that said we’re going to do something different than we had before, but there was always an assumption that it was going to be like that,” states Jason Pierce. “But what seems to be a giant leap for the listener isn’t such a big step for the musician. To my ears it doesn’t seem like a huge step. We were moving relatively fast anyway, and we had a huge amount of influences already involved ahead, even, of the first album.”
It’s a viewpoint shared by Pete Kember: “I would venture that Sound Of Confusion through to The Perfect Prescription was a night and day switch as well. My thing has always been that I’m not that interested in making the same record twice. I think most musicians feel like that and it’s an unfulfilling thing to repeat yourself. Most of the bands that I like, they like to keep themselves walking.”
He continues: “Speaking for myself, I’d call myself an untrained musician and we were very much experimenting with what we could do and how we could encapsulate what we were trying to present in sound, really. The Perfect Prescription was definitely an awakening for us. Initially we thought that there would be severe limitations to having these one and two-chord, very minimal song structures that would burn themselves out quickly, but they never did. I think we kept finding other ways that we could have these other avenues and branches where we could take music that were still part of the same tree. Playing With Fire was a slightly different direction.”
“There was also a certain musical inability that helped our sound,” elaborates Pierce. “We couldn’t do certain chord changes so we minimalised the whole thing through necessity. With Spacemen 3, it’s almost like you’re listening to people learning their instruments as they go along; there might be guitar bends here and there, but they’re not learned guitar bends. And you’ve also got the inherent stupidity of rock & roll, but that’s not to undermine anyone’s talent. The simplicity of language and notes makes things so exciting.”
“Well, the greatest effects came from the least effort. That’s one of my driving motivations!” laughs Kember. “I’ve always been in awe of people like Kraftwerk, who wouldn’t have more than three or four elements in their tracks; they would all own and occupy their own space, sonically. They’d keep clear of each other but would be awesome around each other. I think there was some influence from that.”
Work began on Playing With Fire in June 1988 when Kember and Pierce were persuaded to record at ARK Studios in Cornwall instead of VHF Studios near Rugby where they’d previously recorded.
“We got offered a cheap deal at a studio that didn’t turn out what it was meant to be,” recalls Kember. “We did, in fact, complete about half of the album back in Rugby at VHF. We had to re-record parts as stuff got wiped in Cornwall.”
Will Carruthers, who had never actually played with Spacemen 3 until he arrived for the sessions, is less flattering in his recollections of the Cornish studios. “We’re not talking about fucking Abbey Road,” he chuckles at the memory. “It was the corner of the living room in a hippy house. It was a really crusty, anarchist punk household.” “We liked the idea of not being on an industrial estate in Rugby in a closed box for another summer,” adds Kember. “The best summers of my youth were spent in a box with no windows! In Cornwall, we could actually set up outside and play there.” Indeed. While the inside of the studio may not have lived up to the band’s expectations, its surrounding areas had a more positive effect.
“It was very exciting making a record and being in a studio and playing those songs and working with Pete and Jason,” says Carruthers. “I remember sitting in the garden, playing music and smoking hash and being pretty much focussed on making that record. That was all that really mattered.” Carruthers had arrived in Cornwall to find the recording sessions in their infancy.
“There wasn’t very much down at that point,” he says. “Maybe the backing track for [the cover of Suicide’s] ‘Che’, a few little drones for ‘Let Me Down Gently’, and a lot of it was written as it went. But what there was sounded great.” An oddly compelling aspect to Playing With Fire is that for a largely beatless album, it’s driven by a palpable groove. Was this by accident or design?
“The drums went down in some kind of form in Cornwall, but not particularly well executed,” says Jason Pierce. “This French guy was drafted in to have a go but didn’t really nail it,” explains Carruthers. “They had to programme the drums but no one was really labouring over that for weeks to get it done.”
He continues: “But it was hard to play those Spacemen 3 songs with a drummer. They’re deceptively simple, but if you weren’t bang on when you played them, they sounded gash.”
“Well, the thing with Spacemen 3 were the very minimal or underplayed drums,” adds Kember. “I love rhythm and groove but I’m not particularly great at creating it. I tend towards the minimal and simplistic. I’m bound by limitations and Spacemen 3 were band whose limitations helped us become the band we were. We were trying to make something out of nothing and sometimes, when you do that, you get really good things out of it.”
The distance between Cornwall and Rugby gave the principal players time to soak up further influences. For Kember and Carruthers, who’d drive back to their hometown at the weekends, it was bootleg cassettes of The Beach Boys’ Smile sessions as well as illicit recordings of New York’s electronic pioneers Suicide, while Pierce, remaining in Cornwall, would immerse himself in live bootlegs of The MC5 in action. But inspiration was coming from other areas, too.
“Jason got into gospel around the time of Playing With Fire,” says Will Carruthers. “‘Lord Can You Hear Me?’ is a classic gospel soul tune. We listened to a lot of that stuff.” “I think gospel has always been there, even in the early days,” says Pierce. “And American soul. It’s there on ‘Lord Can You Hear Me’ but it’s evident on some of the others tracks, if you listen carefully enough.”
“That song is so good that it should be a gospel standard,” opines Kember.
“But I don’t think those influences are that disparate,” continues Pierce. “I didn’t think it was that odd to be listening to The MC5 and Kraftwerk and Otis Redding. Now, it’s not such a big deal because it’s all easily available and has some kind of reference point. It all seems to make more sense now because the world is a little smaller.” He adds: “It was very natural. As soon as we put those sounds together on the earliest recordings, it didn’t sound like anyone else. Of course, it was coming from our small world of music and it became bigger as we heard more music. But it wasn’t trying to copy those sounds. It was this thing that worked.”
“We were certainly a magpie band,” admits Kember. “We would delve into the past but we ended up with this weird mix. But all of those songs are from the same place, in a weird way. It’s just people meaning what they say and owning it when they say it. We were definitely listening to Kraftwerk and Laurie Anderson, plus there were the records that we found in the studio in Cornwall that we didn’t have. Penguin Café Orchestra were an influence around that time and elements of all of them found their way into “Playing With Fire.”
While Jason Pierce and Will Carruthers deny that the emerging popularity in MDMA had any direct impact on the music Spacemen 3 were making, Pete Kember remembers things a little differently. “‘Ecstasy Symphony’ from The Perfect Prescription from ’87 is entirely referencing the ecstasy scene. We were lucky to play some of the pre-rave ecstasy shows in Hackney. They were called ‘The X Parties’ and we played two of those that I remember. There were large amounts of people there taking ecstasy and other psychedelic drugs. The days of The Grateful Dead and all that nonsense were long gone.”
Pondering the cultural impact of ecstasy, Kember continues: “Ecstasy really changed British culture. If you were a kid then and into Spacemen 3 and you went out into your town or city on a Friday or Saturday night, then you’d better watch your back. “It was one of the more interesting cultural steps; maybe even the last truly interesting cultural movement to have happened.”
Less harmonious was what was to come. A perfect storm of Jason Pierce’s romance with future Spiritualized keyboard player Kate Radley, a new management contract with local businessman Gerald Palmer and Kember’s perception of an imbalance in songwriting duties was beginning to take its toll on the band’s two song writers.
“We were badly advised and badly managed,” sighs Kember. “We were kids learning and trying to figure shit out.” A tone of remorse enters his voice.
“If I had the chance to change things, there are many things that I would’ve done differently,” he admits. “You know, at that point we separated our song writing and there was a period when Jason stopped writing songs and we’d always split the credit. I was like, ‘Dude, you can’t just leave me floating here. Come on – you come up with totally different stuff and our stuff works really well together. I’m not going to split the credit with you, dude, if you’re not going to write anything’ and I regret that.”
He continues: “It was only a small and temporary period that Jason wasn’t writing, and I think I reacted badly to it. I wish we had worked closer together and many of the tracks on the record were done in isolation: ‘Lord Can You Hear Me’, that’s Jason and I don’t play on that track. ‘Honey’, that’s me but Jason doesn’t play on that track. It wasn’t a critically destructive thing but it wasn’t good vibes.
“I just wish that maybe we could have done it differently. But on the other hand, I feel that, as with the bands whose music I really love, that dysfunction can produce great music. Sometimes, that’s the way it goes.”
In some respects, Playing With Fire is an album that’s curated as much as it’s composed. This far down the line it’s easy to spot the ingredients that went into its making but this is to miss the point. The analogue world of 1988 – 89 didn’t offer the same off-the-peg musical choices that it does now. Influences, records, and their histories and significance had to be physically hunted down. Time, effort and money were spent to seek these materials, to make sense of them and to refine and streamline them into something new. Consequently, Playing With Fire not only comes at the listener from different directions, it also sends the curious on a journey that joins a lot of dots. But crucially, it holds it all together to create a satisfying journey from beginning to end – and one that has continued to do so over the last 30 years as it inspires subsequent generations of space cadets.
Says Will Carruthers: “It’s a peculiar album, especially when you think about the diversity – from ‘Suicide’ to ‘Let Me Down Gently’, ‘Lord Can You Hear Me’ to ‘How Does It Feel?’ and I don’t know how it works as an album. On paper, it shouldn’t fucking work. You’ve got Jason’s classic, poppy and gospel tunes. It’s interesting how it hangs together, given the peculiarity of the elements within it.”
As one of the album’s two chief architects, Pete Kember has a clearer idea of how those different elements coalesce into a coherent statement.
“It’s one of those weird things where sometimes you have a collection of songs that don’t appear to go together and then you find that actually, you find a way to thread them together, and so make them all stronger,” he explains. “You know, ‘Suicide’ next to ‘Revolution’? That’s not such a great mix, but when you put ‘Suicide’ next to ‘Honey’, then it makes both of the tracks more extreme. I really like that kind of journey.”
“It’s funny, there are a lot of people now who sound like Spacemen 3 but when we were kids, we didn’t want to make psychedelic music that sounded like psychedelic music,” adds Jason Pierce. “I don’t think we’d have been able even if we wanted to. There were bands at the time wearing paisley and playing music that was copied from West Coast psychedelia, but the music we played didn’t come from that. We weren’t constrained by style or form; we went for what sounded right.” Pete Kember agrees and it’s with no little pride that he states: “I’ve never wanted to make a lot of records, but I’ve always wanted to feel happy about the ones I have made.
“I could go a decade without listening to Spacemen 3, but when I hear that stuff I’m always psyched and I think to myself, Yeah, we fucking nailed it.”
Playing with Fire is the third studio album by, released in February 1989. The original CD version included two live bonus tracks recorded in the Netherlands, and an ensuing release included two more b-sides from the “Revolution” single. A reissued version from 2001 has an entire extra disc of demos and rarities. The album was featured in Robert Dimery’s 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die”.
In a similar musical borrowing to those on the band’s prior albums, the song “Revolution” bears more than a passing resemblance to “Black to Comm” by the “MC5”.
There’s no common sense in codependence,” Fraeya Evans sings in the quiet opening stretch of “Housewarming.” In a song about coming to terms with new love, those early moments register as melancholy whispers, but they’re just a stop en route to a raging cataclysm: The song ultimately winds up someplace grand and magnificent, as Fraeya (the band) envelops Fraeya (the singer) in majestic waves of distortion. It’s a gripping journey for a young band that already sounds boundlessly dynamic. sad folk with hopeful undertones.
Perth four piece powerhouse Fraeya releases debut single ‘Housewarming’. Expect honest, hard hitting lyrics and a strong performance fuelled by raw emotion. Fraeya wears her heart on her sleeve.
“When I wrote this song it just came out of me all at once, and since then we must have played it live 100 times. It’s evolved and grown with us and now it’s finally encapsulated into a 3 minute track, it’s our first ever recorded song and we can’t be happier with it. This song means a lot to me and I hope it gets to mean something to other people as well” – Fraeya
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, the fifth studio album by Perfume Genius, boasts the best album title of 2020. There’s a visceral quality to it that not only paints a picture, but beautifully marries the urgent earnestness and theatrical camp that has defined his decade-long career. The album contains some typically transcendent musings on love and self and acceptance, this time painted with colours of rock and country – two traditionally hyper-masculine genres, confidently embodied and beautifully muddied by one of the most enigmatic artists working right now.
Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas is one of modern pop’s true boundary-pushing juggernauts. Each of his four albums—but particularly the last two: 2014’s Too Bright and 2017’s No Shape—rattled with sonic magnificence and lyrics of deep trauma, the fierce reclamation of space and the transcendence of love and intimacy. Hadreas is fresh off a collaborative dance piece with choreographer Kate Wallich and The YC dance company, and he’s now poised to bring that vulnerable physicality to his first Perfume Genius album in three years: Set My Heart on Fire Immediately. While No Shape saw him lean into bold, adventurous art-pop, Set My Heart sees him embrace American rock ‘n’ roll glory. It still preserves his enthralling tenderness and idiosyncratic pop palette, but it adds torched guitars and classic rock melodies. Songs like “Describe” are led by a dreamy, prevailing calm while still shaking the ground with guitar distortion. It’s Hadreas at his most abstract and carefree.
From Perfume Genius’ new album ‘Set My Heart On Fire Immediately” released on May 15th, 2020 on Matador Records.
Genre traversing North London collective Sorry have been bubbling under the radar for a couple of years now. Centred around the creative nucleus of childhood friends Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Brien, the band’s ability to fuse apparently disparate musical elements into something cohesive and unique is just one of the reasons people are getting very excited about this band. They don’t play by the rules and mix lo-fi indie-pop with thumping electronica, hip hop beats and soaring distorted riffs. They take their influences from everywhere and anywhere rather than allowing themselves to be constrained by artistically reductive by ill-advised genre tagging. Since signing to Domino Records the band have shown no signs of playing it safe and continue to be as experimental and off the wall as ever.
Sorry, the north London band are centred around songwriting duo Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen. 925 is music for high-functioning depressives, combining the sly pop smarts of Blur at their smackiest with the post-grunge pop of Cat Power and the post-everything pop of Dean Blunt without bothering to paper over the cracks – in fact, the cracks are kind of the whole point.
But the whole is held together by a strange glue, finding beauty in a world their generation finds itself increasingly locked out from: on the tentatively anthemic “Ode to Boy”, Lorenz composes an “ode for joy ’cause there is no joy”, and on “As the Sun Sets”, she sounds aglow with longing, like she’s got her face pressed up against the glass of a happier existence. On “In Unison”, she spits a line that, just a few short weeks ago, must have seemed a bleak nod to the trials of atomised 21st century life – “Everybody dreams alone, on their own, privately / in unison.” Flip the line on its head, though, and you can hear a note of frustrated optimism struggling to get free: what if, from all this solitude, something shared might begin to emerge?
“ODE TO BOY”
Asha Lorenz: This song was off the first mixtape. We revamped it for the album; we wanted it to play on the fact that it’s a knock-off of “Ode to Joy”. It sounds like a churchy choir song that you might sing at school. The lyrics are quite paternal and religious and also about innocence and love – it’s about protecting, really. We recorded a children’s choir singing the song and Campbell (Baum, bassist) played the organ.
Louis O’Bryen: We recorded the choir in a school hall in Highgate and then finished in James (Dring, producer)’s studio where we tried a lot of different glitchy sounds and effects to add over Campbell’s organ and the choir. We wanted the choir and their voices to mimic the childlike lyrics and innocence of the song.
“AS THE SUN SETS”
Asha Lorenz: This was one of the first newer songs (we wrote) that we knew we wanted to put on the album. We started at Asha’s with Louis producing and it was an overwhelmingly sweaty day. The lyrics were more of a string-of-consciousness and Louis and I worked quite quickly. It all flowed naturally and made sense; it felt like a cathartic song quite early on. The build-up bit in the middle and other parts of the song that make it bigger were added by Campbell Baum and Lincoln Barrett when we started playing it as a live band. Once it had developed for a while as a live song we then went into the studio to record it live. Finally, we took it to James Dring and together we merged the live song with the more ‘samply’ sounds we had made at home.
Louis O’Bryen: It reminds me of a hot summer’s day coming to an end, this one. It’s one of my favourites from the album and some of my favourite lyrics by Asha – it always makes me feel a little sad, but content. The electronic snare in it is a fave of mine, and adds to the weird, slightly apocalyptic feel of the tune – it sounds like a crow’s squawk. We also added loads of ethereal drone sounds to add to that feeling. We started this song on my computer at Asha’s house, making the bare bones of the tune with the weird sounds and snare, building it one part at a time, then took it to James who brought it to life.
“HEATHER”
Asha Lorenz: This is one of the lighter songs on the album. It’s a love song that’s more inspired by old crooner-esque artists like Tony Bennett. At the same time, we also wanted to make a Beatles-like showtune arrangement. For some reason it took the longest to finish because there was always a drum-pattern or one note that we wanted to change to make it perfect.
Louis O’Bryen:“Heather” is another of my favourites, and also a newer song on the album. Asha came to my house after she’d been on holiday with the first idea, then we built it (up) a bit at mine on the computer, adding the chorus and the horns, and then we took it to James. The chorus was an extension of that first idea of an old crooner-y love song, with the horns adding to that idea. We were always proud of this song, as I think it’s put together well and this makes me happy. It always reminds me of “Michelle” by The Beatles, for some reason.
“PERFECT”
Louis O’Bryen: “Perfect” is a very old song, one that’s close to the band’s heart, and one we’ve fallen in and out of love with many times. I wrote that first guitar part trying to replicate something like “Nude as the News” by Cat Power. We recorded a very old version at Asha’s and then it became a faster, more rocky live song, so it’s been through many different forms. I like it on the album as it’s energetic and picks things up a bit.
“IN UNISON”
Louis O’Bryen: This our marching band song, and a nice song to get into the album with, after “Right Round the Clock”.
Asha Lorenz: It’s quite a weird song. I tried to write it as though it was from an otherworldly character perspective looking in on humans, or perhaps someone in your head. It’s more based around phrases we use; it’s about trying to translate an idea. The drop is apocalyptic and every turn in the song makes you sink a bit lower into it. It started as a demo that we tried out live as a band before recording it. We also got a violin player to play on it so it didn’t sound too programmed. When we were working on it at home Louis thought it would be cool to add the ‘this is a demo’ voice, like Radiohead. ‘This is a demo’ is just what it said on their website but we thought it was cool so used it.
Their debut album 925 will be out via Domino Recordings in 2020.
Earlier this year, American-born and British-based singer/songwriter Erin Moran released her first album as “A Girl Called Eddy” in 15 years. Her critically-acclaimed self-titled debut arrived in 2004, which was produced by Richard Hawley and released on ANTI- Records. Per a press release, in the years since then, “she disappeared, procrastinated, did a world of other things then found herself writing again at home in New York’s West Village.” Been Around was released via Elefant Records and co-produced by Daniel Tashian, who also helmed Kacey Musgraves’ Grammy-winning Golden Hour. The album is a rich blend of classic rock, soul and baroque pop, and its warm grace never ceases thanks to Moran’s stunning, nurturing vocals, which will leave you misty-eyed without fail. Carole King is one of those sacred cow comparisons that should only be used sparingly, but this one is absolutely justified. This is one of the most moving releases of 2020 so far and the perfect elegant evening listen.
Both the public’s and the critics’ reactions to “Been Around” make it clear that the return of A Girl Called Eddy to the current music scene has become one of the musical events worth taking note. The elegance, the arrangements, and the charisma of Erin Moran’s voice have been unquestionable secret weapons, and they are put into play again on this latest Digital Single, “Big Mouth”. It is a song full of silences, that opens marvelously with one of those choruses that link Erin Moran to Carole King or Joni Mitchell. Because her stuff smells like a classic, like music that will be untouched by the passing of time.
Song taken from A Girl Called Eddy “Been Around” LP
My new song, “Hey Moon,” is out everywhere now. I often find myself talking to the moon. Maybe it’s just my Cancerian nature or maybe it’s something everyone does. But it feels grounding to have that constant presence throughout life. In my years of traveling around and finding myself in strange or unknown places, it’s been a sort of anchor to look up at the familiar light. I wrote this song about looking inward through conversing with the moon, or the emotional self. Something that seems easy to forget to do in times like these.
Elizabeth Moen is a singer-songwriter and guitarist based out of Iowa City, Iowa. Her sophomore LP “A Million Miles Away” is out now!
Elizabeth Moen wraps “Headgear” in an arrangement that sparkles agreeably, but Moen herself is the song’s radiant star: She throws herself headlong into every word, letting her distinct and impeccable phrasing lead the way. Hers is a voice made to turn heads, and by the time she hits the song’s tidily conversational closing remark — “Well, how ’bout that” — you wouldn’t dream of turning away.
On “A Million Miles Away” her songs shift fluidly; Opener “Red” and “Best I Can Do” portray the soulful side of her voice while “Triple Scoop” and “Matilda” recall folky, summer pop. “Don’t Say I” and “Bad to Myself” pull in heavier tones, augmented by her 1968 Gibson ES-340, while the final tracks, “Time is a Shitty Friend” and “Planetarium,” act as closing arguments for the album. The two tracks encapsulate aspects of each preceding track, at times both heavy and soft – equal parts whimsy (“Cuz I’m high and I’m reading about stars and shit”) and sadness (“…and it’s feeding / My thoughts about us together in some other universe”), while the echo of a longing to be “a million miles away” plays out.
On her sophomore LP “A Million Miles Away,” Moen tackles the complexities that coincide with the basic need for growth. At points light-hearted and sombre, and even wry, her lyrics mirror what it’s like to be alive: to wake up each day and attempt to balance the myriad of emotions that go along with being human. In “Triple Scoop” this all perfectly comes together in relation to the age-old problem of sweet, melting ice cream meeting concrete (“Triple scoop sorbet splattered on the sidewalk / Bit of cherry pie hanging off your lip / Why wipe it away, it’s just you and me talking? You’re the cherry on top of my double chocolate chip”). Throughout the album’s eight songs, you are reminded that it’s possible (and ok!) to feel broken and carefree, nostalgic and hopeful, to be utterly content but still have an incredible sense of longing.
Written by: Elizabeth Moen
Performed by:
Elizabeth Moen – vocals, guitar
Caoimhe Barry- vocals, drums
Oisín Furlong- bass, synth
Alan Dooley- guitar
Over the last couple of years Fenne Lily has made a real name for herself as a songwriter, surpassing over 30 million streams for her five self-released singles and supporting the likes of Marlon Williams, Charlie Cunningham and many more across Europe. Despite the first song she wrote at the age of 15 proving an almost instant hit upon release, she’s not rushed into releasing her debut collection, instead taking time to perfect her songs and develop her sound while living in Bristol and continuing to perform around the continent. Deciding she wanted to get out of the city to record the album, Fenne travelled to see some musical friends on The Isle of Wight where she formed a band and recorded a number of tracks in a basement studio with upcoming producer James Thorpe. Returning to Bristol to finish the tracks with long-time collaborator Dave Dixon (Tamu Massif) and Ali Chant (Youth Lagoon, Perfume Genius, PJ Harvey) her debut album has taken shape and is now available.
Throughout 2018’s On Hold, Fenne Lily’s quaveringly intimate voice recalls the early works of Sharon Van Etten, particularly in the way she layers her own voice during choruses that ache and swoon. That almost jarringly beautiful effect jumps out in a minimalist mix that’s so stripped down, you can often hear fingers sweeping across guitar strings.
A record full of quiet strength, brightness, and yearning: The self-released debut “On Hold” establishes Fenne Lily’s ability to lean into emotion. “I’ve villainized my body for too long,” sings Fenne on the opening “Car Park.” Her writing is sharp and charged; the production is sparse and intimate. Track by track, the album maintains a cohesive narrative arch, following a heartbreak and resolving with self-acceptance – even self-love.
