We could all use a little Jason Isbell right now. Thankfully, the Alabama-bred/Nashville-based country singer and beloved songwriter is right on time with a new album. His next project with his ace country-rock band the 400 Unit, “Reunions”, arrives next month, the follow-up to 2017’s critically adored The Nashville Sound. That album garnered them new attention in corners where they may have been previously unknown, but Isbell’s longtime fans have been lapping up his music for the better part of 20 years.
He’s never really made a bad album, either with his band or solo, so the bar is high for Reunions. So far, the singles have been both thoughtful and delicate (“Dreamsicle” and “Only Children” are introspective and nostalgic) as well as powerful and politically forthcoming in the vein of “White Man’s World” (“What’ve I Done To Help” and “Be Afraid” both examine our current moment with criticism and bite). Isbell is one of the most consistent songwriters of his day, and his music always has a lot of heart. Indeed, the hopes are high for this new album, but I have faith in Jason Isbell. He knows his way around a country song.
Southeastern Records. Released on: 27th March 2020.
Now a two-piece led by founding members Jonny Allan (vocals) and AshKenazi (drums), London outfit Happyness have shared their third album Floatr, which follows 2015’s Weird Little Birthday and 2017’s Write In. They describe the years since Write In as “the best and worst years of our lives,” which included the departure of original member Benji Compston and an unannounced hiatus. The band’s return was marked by Kenazi’s onstage emergence as a drag queen and a new five-piece lineup featuring Max Bloom (Yuck), Anna Vincent (Heavy Heart) and Scott Booker Roach (Social Contract). Floatr sees them rev up their slacker rock engines once more, but as usual, their idiosyncratic touches keep things fresh and their heartfelt yearning still cuts deep. “Bothsidesing” features Allan’s heavenly whispers, “Seeing Eye Dog” is powered by gorgeous guitar bluster and “Milk Float” melds snug lo-fi with a vague aura of mystery.
Hey everybody, it’s been a loooong time coming, but we are over the moon to share Floatr with you guys: We recorded it in a lot of random places over a few years when things seemed very crazy and unsure in our lives. It’s been our way of making sense of that feeling, so in a way it’s an appropriately messed up time for it to be coming out.
There are loads of people we want to thank, in particular a massive shout out to Richie Walsh and Nicky Ber2 for helping us kintsugi ourselves back together too many times to count. Also Max “Impact” Bloom, Anna “Bolic” Vincent and Scott “iesPanties” Roach for helping us realise the songs in real life and just generally being massive babes. And to all our friends who have supported us and made us feel hell yeah instead of hell no.
ALSO most of the album was mixed by the living legend that is Mark Nevers. We are massive fans of the Lambchop/Silver Jews/Vic Chesnutt records he’s made and we were super star-struck when we Skyped him (although maybe he won’t know that until he reads this) thank you Mark, big up! ALSO Max Bloom who mixed “Ouch (yup)” with us, double shoutout for you Max Bloom!
It’s weird to not be playing these songs to actual people in actual places, we can’t wait to see y’all later this year and do this thing properly. Ash Kenazi is hungry for fresh focus to pull, so prepare yourselves. Enjoy listening, keep sane, keep safe, love yourselves, support the NHS and each other
Originally starting as The DIY home recording project of Angus Lord and Claudia Serfaty, The Stroppies have now evolved into what some might call a “proper band”. Following on from their 2017 demo cassette and a sling of singles, 2019 saw the release of their debut LP Whoosh!, a studio-based affair that evolved The Stroppies sound, underpinned with a newly discovered melodic classicism. Look Alive!, their latest effort which was recorded only months after the bands return to Australia after their second European tour of 2019, represents a marriage of the two different styles of Stroppies recordings and rounds out an incredibly productive twelve months for the group.
Look Alive! Is the sound of The Stroppies honing their craft under new and unfamiliar conditions. Written mainly on the road then finished and recorded at home with whatever was on hand with only three of the four members present, it is according to the band’s singer/guitarist Angus Lord, “an EP forged in circumstance. A sum total of fleeting vignettes on scraps of paper, voice memos and iPhone notepads all collated between soundchecks and long stretches in a tour van pieced together over weekly jams. We didn’t want to waste much time when we got home so we opted to record it ourselves”. For a band who began with the initial idea to create “open-ended music, collaged quickly and pieced haphazardly together”, it is in some sense a return to their true self.
Lead single ‘Holes In Everything’ presents the band at its pop best: “If I could disappear into the atmosphere, I would be around you all the time” sings Lord, before swiftly throwing shade on the sentiment in the chorus, “It’s always frightening what I think”. It’s this penchant for push and pull of light and dark splashed against the backdrop of trepidation and humour that make The Stroppies records so endearing and open-ended. Though undeniably pop structure orientated, the bands propensity for re-inventing and re-appropriating their recording and writing process ensures that nothing starts to fossilize. Indeed, Look Alive! is that most intriguing of records precisely because it represents two ideas at the same time – the sound of a band in flux, but also the sound of a band becoming more sure footed as they walk their crooked line.
I kinda feel you’re either all in on Woods or you just don’t get it. I obviously fall in the first camp, and have loved everything they’re put out for many years at this point. This release sounds like it will be more great psych tinged garage folk which honestly there’s just not enough of. Take a listen to the first single down below, neat video as well.
“Dreaming doesn’t come easy these shadowed days, which is why Strange To Explain by Woods is such a welcome turning of new colors.
It presents an extended moment of sweet reflection for the 15-year-old band, bouncing back to earth as something hopeful and weird and resolute. Like everything else they’ve recorded, it sounds exactly like themselves, but with subtly different shades and breaths and rhythmic feels and everything else that changes, the natural march of time and the intentional decisions of the musicians moving in what feels like an uncommonly organic alignment.
Strange To Explain trades in a different kind of dependability, maintaining a steady connection to the voice on the other side of the record needle. After quickly recording and releasing 2017’s Love Is Love in response to the tumultuous events of their (and our) 2016, Jeremy Earl and company took their time with what came next. Parenthood arrived, as did a short songwriting pause. The band went bicoastal when Jarvis Taveniere headed west. And when they returned to their posts, there on the other side of this particular mirror, they made this, an album that not only catches and holds and shares the light in yet another new way, but recognizes that there’s still light to be caught, which is also no small thing.
A bend beyond the last bend beyond, Woods keep on changing, thoughtfully and beautifully. The colors were always there, like trees blossoming just slightly differently each season, a synesthetic message coded in slow-motion. Recorded in Stinson Beach, the kind of place that seems like an AI simulation of an idyllic northern California coastal escape, the familiar jangling guitars recede to the background. John Andrews’s warm keyboards and twining Mellotron rise around Earl’s songs and dance across the chord changes like warm sunlight off the Pacific. The music feels a karmic landmass away from the creepiness of the uncanny valley.
Just dig into “Can’t Get Out” or “Fell So Hard” and it’s easy to spot the affable hooks and fuzzed-out bass and third-eye winks and fun harmonies that Woods have produced reliably since way back ‘round 2004 (which, in the buzz-buzz world of psych-pop really is a grand achievement, too). But listen carefully, also, to the sound of our (and their) world in transition, the ambient humming of spring peepers behind “Where Do You Go When You Dream.” Especially sink into the intention-setting opening trio of songs, emerging from (and shimmering inside) an atmosphere that could only be made by musicians who’ve been working together for nearly 20 years, as Earl and Taveniere have. It’s hardly a secret language, but you try verbalizing it, let alone communicating in it.
“Where Do You Go When You Dream?” Woods singer Jermey Earl asks on the lead single of the Brooklyn folk band’s 11th LP. It’s a question we all seem to be asking ourselves a lot more these days, as our dreams have had to suffice as our only true journeys out of the house in the desperate times we’re living in. To record Strange To Explain, Woods headed to Marin County’s bucolic Panoramic House Studio. Depending on where in the time-track one stands, it’s their 11th full length (not counting collaborations, split LPs, EPs, and singles), and the 99th release on Earl’s Woodsist label. By any standards, Strange To Explain is the work of a mature band, capable of both heavy atmospheric declarations like “Just To Fall Asleep” and extended-form pieces like the album-closing “Weekend Wind,” unfolding in layers of trumpet and vibraphone and ambient guitars and stereoscopic percussion. There are backwards messages and forward ones, lyrical and otherwise. There are melodies that (at least to me) come back nonlinearly but happily throughout the day when I’m not listening to the music itself, finding some hidden perch and maybe soon transforming into the folk songs of the mind. Woods shared another song from it, “Can’t Get Out.” A press release says it’s “a track about fighting to move past the low points of depression.” The propulsive song is backed by synths and might be the yummiest taste we’ve gotten of Strange to Explain thus far.
For contemporary heads, it can be nearly a full-time job to filter out all the bad energy being blasted through nearly all media channels from every conceivable direction. But not all media channels. These benevolent, Mellotron-dabbed dream-sounds constitute some of the more welcome transmissions on these shores in a Venusian minute, just what my kosmik transom was designed to accept. They’re sure to brighten any desert solarium, LED-lit pod, portable Bucky-dome, eco-fit Airstream, or whatever other cozy dwelling your time-mind is currently occupying.
Katie Von Schleicher’s new album Consummation is due out May 22nd via Ba Da Bing Records, and she’s shared another new single, the upbeat “Wheel.” It’s accompanied by a video directed from isolation by V Haddad using self-shot footage from the artists who appear. “When I listened to Katie’s song ‘Wheel’ I immediately felt elated, connected and empowered,” Haddad writes. “Her lyrics lead me to imagine what those feelings could look like in this moment: we reached out and collaboratively made a music video with 25 people who created their own video-portraits of their life right now. They show personal and collective power, perseverance and joy in a time of isolation, uncertainty and hardship. Through this collaboration we found a really special sense of hope and possibility even while being apart.”
This Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Katie Von Schleicher was nominated the Best of What’s Next back in 2017 on the tail of her album Shitty Hits’ release. It’s a sturdy indie effort, full of bouncy melodies and Von Schleicher’s emotions laid bare. “Paranoia,” a ghostly glance inside the swirling unease of an anxious mind, is the stand-out track.
Since 2017, Von Schleicher has stayed busy playing in labelmate Lady Lamb’s touring band. On her next solo effort, Consummation, however, she seems to have settled into her own groove even more. These songs, while tricky to grasp at times, are much more assured. Lead single “Caged Sleep” is a blast sonically, while it taps into that same eerie underworld that “Paranoia” did back in 2017, diving deep into the vivid and frequently spooky land of dreams. “Wheel” is a lot spunkier, the kind of steady indie-rock jam you might sway along to at a festival (remember those?). The album itself has many different moods, but Von Schleicher masters them all with her keen rock sensibilities. While we had our eye on her back in 2017,Consummation could be Katie Von Schleicher’s biggest jumping-off point yet.
From the album Consummation, out May 22nd, 2020
on Ba Da Bing Records and Full Time Hobby Records
Sometimes a synth-pop song’s only purpose is to make you feel alive on the dance floor, and that’s fine. You can still feel a deep emotional connection as you latch onto its pulse and forget your worries. But the kind of life-affirming synth-pop that makes you cry—think giants like Robyn or LCD Soundsystem—are the artists that will ruin your life (in the best possible way). New York City’s Nation of Language have been releasing singles since 2016, and their lead singer and songwriter Ian Devaney recently collaborated with Strokes drummer Fab Moretti on a project called machinegum for an album last year.
It was obvious, even several years ago, that Devaney was an unusually consistent songwriter—every song was capable of making you pull over your car for a quick sob or triumphantly stick your head out of the sunroof with outstretched arms. His ’80s-indebted electro-pop meshed beautifully with the dance-punk sounds of the city’s yesteryear, and his songs had an emotional immediacy that was unrivaled. Now ready to unveil their debut full-length, which contains some of those incredible early singles, it feels like Nation of Language have more of a right to claim the “soaring synth-pop” mantle than anyone else right now.
Salt Lake City’s Choir Boy dropped their debut album Passive With Desire in 2016, and they’ve been honing their gothic new wave and synth-pop ever since, becoming a staple touring band with the likes of Cold Cave, Ceremony and Soft Kill. Lead singer Adam Klopp has a tender voice you won’t forget—when someone nails the poignant, melodramatic croon, you cling to them for life. On their second album Gathering Swans, Choir Boy sounds bigger, and it feels like Klopp has more room to roam free with his vocals more at the forefront of the mix. “Complainer” is possibly the best Choir Boy song to date. His voice flutters with heart-rendering Morrissey-isms, which is great because you don’t have to deal with the unnecessary guilt of listening to the Smiths leader. Another standout “Toxic Eye” is the kind of pensive, downtempo goth-pop to wind down an epic night out or a spectacularly dejected night in.
The first single from indie pop outfit Choir Boy’s second album, Gathering Swans. Out May 8th, 2020. “Complainer” is a sarcastic examination of self pity. The video reveals Choir Boy’s involvement in a seedy back alley fighting ring.
I’ve been giving my keyboard an extra thoughtful beating, now over 400 pages of and double spaced plus 8 hours ++ of audio versions posted up and available now. Master of maraca science. Writer at The New Cool School. Absurdist. Intoxicationist. Beatnik. Last of the bit time jingle janglers.
As the long term percussionist of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Joel Gion has helped pioneer the current Psychedelic Rock movement. Now as a songwriter, he steps up to the mic to deliver his own tunes
“Ouchi Time” means “time in the house.” It was a good challenge for us to do everything remotely. We had to learn how to let our mind escape to inner-galaxy, and secretly made strong connections with outer space”
Looking Glass is a new music moment focused on the human condition as reflected through remote connection. The singles series demonstrates discovery, diversity, and collaboration with artists both from and not far from Mexican Summer’s family tree. It was a good challenge for us to do everything remotely. We had to learn how to let our mind escape to inner-galaxy, and secretly made strong connections with outer space”.
We hope this song can help make the time spent in your house a bit more fun and adventurous
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“Ouchi Time” written for the Looking Glass Project by Mexican Summer
Released May 1st, 2020
Written and produced by Go Kurosawa. Recorded in our room in Tokyo and Amsterdam, March, 2020.
Magana creates haunted Alternative Pop, which is as emotional as it is atmospheric and as beautiful as it is beguiling. Golden Tongue is the debut EP but Jeni Magana has taken the long road to get here. Born in California, Magana was classically trained in her youth before attending Berklee College in Boston and moving once more to New York City where she found herself writing songs, working with a variety of bands (Oh Odessa, Annie & The Beekeepers), creating commercial jingles and even working as a studio and touring musician for artists as unexpected as the Dropkick Murphys. This bizarre musical education shines through on the masterfully eclectic Golden Tongue EP. Magana is a very whole artist but this debut sounds vital and energetic, full of microscopic melodies and shuddering instrumentation.
Sparse and haunting sounds made by electric guitar and voice. Haunted Alternative Pop from Brooklyn’s JeniMagana. “Golden Tongue” EP out now on Audio Antihero Records.
