Josiah Johnson, co-founding member of the Billboard chart-topping band The Head and the Heart, has begun a new musicaljourney in 2020. And he does so with new collaborative tools and creative blueprints in tow, buoyed by a single idea: no matter what happens, the world will still turn and you’re still here.
Since breaking with The Head and the Heart a few years ago, it was his first time playing new music in front of a crowd. “I got together with friends in New York and we arranged all the songs.” The reception was warm and enthusiastic. “People were definitely grooving. You don’t always see that in a seated venue, people getting out of their seats. I was like, ‘Oh, okay, alright!’”
Johnson’s latest tour will see nine dates, eight states, and a full band of friends and talented musicians backing his solo effort. “I have no excuses this time around. I can afford to have a full band on the road with me and it feels exciting and meaningful to learn and grow with this crew.” Growth is a recurring theme throughout our conversation. Johnson joins a long canon of artists who’ve taken the ambitious and slightly terrifying leap from band to solo artist.
He’s signed to a record label last September while his album release is looking toward spring. Having complete control over the creative parts of releasing his music, Johnson states he is the “decider of things now.” The colours and design of the album art, creating a music video, the logistics of putting a tour together — all the working parts of things are solely of his own accord.
On her third album for both Fat Possum and Loose Records, Courtney Marie Andrews has pulled in to one package all the songwriting skill, vocal prowess, and musicianship displayed on previous albums, into one career defining statement. A break-up record for sure, though due to Courtney’s extraordinary storytelling gifts, more of a modern day
coming-of-age tale of love won, love sustained, and unfortunately, love’s inevitable dissolution.
You can’t water old flowers. Yes, you fall in love, you make mistakes, and so do they. You run through blackberry fields in the summer of your youth, dream in passenger seats gazing past towns and fields, imagining a future life where everything works out. I fell head over heels in love at nineteen. The kind of love where you call up your best friend and say, “I think I’ve found my soulmate.” The pull towards that first true love is strong. It consumes you, makes you question your own dreams.
We taught each other, grew up together, we were family. We fit just right, for a time. Then one day, after a long and rocky nine year road, life changed and became a complicated mess too hard to untangle. We couldn’t get our love back, no matter how many dreams that shadowed this hard truth. We grew resentful, selfish, harbouring past mistakes and holding them up like armour from every blow. We grew up and our paths diverted.
On New Year’s Day, 2018, a great horned owl dropped dead at my exes’ feet in my mother’s yard. It felt like a daunting omen, ushering on change for the both of us. We were distraught. We couldn’t afford the taxidermy, so we placed it in a big blue plastic garbage bin. Now it felt so cheap, that mystic creature in a plastic coffin. That’s how love feels sometimes – like we don’t serve it the ending it deserves.
The omen was true. That year, I started to see the woman I could be, the woman I wasn’t yet. Anytime I felt like myself, I was alone and wandering, and I knew that was a sign that it was time for change. New Year’s Day 2019, I said goodbye to my first true love and moved across the country. Losing someone you spend every day for nearly a decade with is intense. We talked in our dreams. I knew where he was, even before I entered a place. He’d always be there if I had a feeling. Humans are connected in unexplainable ways.
I was writing a lot after we broke up as a healing technique, preserving each memory like an emotional archaeologist. Late one night, I woke up from a dream where I was searching for him, my ex, at a carnival. It was so vivid. I woke myself up to write a song on my piano. The next morning, he reached out to me for the first time in months. We went out, had a drink, caught up, and he told me that the hardest part about our separation was a reoccurring nightmare where he searched for me at a carnival. In that moment, I knew, humans have ways of connecting beyond words and touch. I truly believe that. We had the same dream, without seeing each other for months.
Even with all the mystic symbolism that year presented, this is an age-old story I can’t make up. We fall in love, we grow up, we change, and they don’t change with us. ‘Old Flowers’ is about heartbreak. There are a million records and songs about that, but I did not lie when writing these songs. This album is about loving and caring for the person you know you can’t be with. It’s about being afraid to be vulnerable after you’ve been hurt. It’s about a woman who is alone, but okay with that, if it means truth.
This was my truth this year – my nine year relationship ended, and I’m a woman alone in the world, but happy to know herself.
These songs came to me alone, late nights in Bisbee, Lisbon, Nashville, and London. Sometimes I’d just cry and sing, and a song would come out. I drank too much wine while writing this record, lit too many candles. You could say this was my attempt to summon the muse, but that’s bullshit, because she was just standing there naked looking me in the eyes. So I told her the truth.
This is my story of the most heartbreaking, but soul-revealing, year of my life. I drove myself mad. I drove to the smoky mountains just to drive back. I danced with a Portuguese boxer and cried on his shoulder in a Fado cafe. I did everything an artist is “supposed to do.” But at the end of the day, beyond all the romance, these songs are my truth. I think they might be yours too.
With influences of bossa nova and oldies, we create the perfect soundtrack for chillaxin’ by the pool, The group was originally formed around the talents of Matthew Terry (vocalist/guitarist) and Eugene Chung (drummer) during their senior year of high school. Before moving to Austin, Matt and Eugene enjoyed playing intimate shows at small coffee shops, friends living rooms, and local venues around the Dallas and Denton area where they began to work on and craft the musical nature of what is now Summer Salt.
Driving to Hawaii (2014), contains the essence of a never-ending vacation and is rich in guitar pop and silky harmonies that is reminiscent of the Beach Boys. The EP features fan favourites such as Sweet to Me, Rockaway, and of course their title track, Driving to Hawaii, which has iconically represented the basis of all Summer Salt lyrics: trying to slow down and enjoy the ride of chasing what appears to be an unattainable pipe dream.
Their next release, Going Native (2015), was inspired by a trip abroad where Terry began diving into artists such as Joao Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Gilberto Gil which lead to a new writing direction using Latin elements. Succeeding the energetic and live sounds of Going Native, So Polite (2017), was the perfect appetizer for the bands’ debut full-length album, the wildly colorful, Happy Camper (2018) which features a more polished production quality from Sub-Pop stalwart Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, The Shins).
The infectiously melodic ensemble has cultivated a loyal following with their endless summer, ocean dream music that can be heard in influences such as the Lovin’ Spoonful, Donovan, Frankie Valli, the lovely Lady Day or other musical genres of 1960’s Rocksteady or African Highlife. Moving forward, with the anticipation of their forthcoming release Honeyweed, Summer Salt maintains phonetic components of Brazilian tropicalia and 60’s folk pop while drawing inspiration from seasoned topics of loss and renewal.
Summer Salt’s building success on the road lead to a 31-date sold out North American tour in the Summer of 2018. Featuring the recent addition of guitarist/vocalist, Anthony Barnett, and bassist, Elliot Edmonds, the group is now preparing to embark on their second headlining US tour.
Here’s a small EP of old demos we’ve put together for your listening pleasure. The EP will be up for a limited time only.
All money received from “Woh Nelly Demo” purchases will go to The Irish Cancer Society, who had to make the difficult decision to cancel all Daffodil Day events for 2020 amid the coronavirus outbreak.
Bandcamp are doing a great thing in supporting independent artists and musicians and we’re big fans of everything they do. Please go support your local bands and artists in this difficult time for everyone.
Lincolnshire indie rockers have been impressing listeners with the strength of the singles which are loaded with hook and are just so damn addictive. The fresh faced fourpiece can often be heard on BBC Radio 1 and they have now just dropped their ‘Under Exit Lights’ EP that reveals a band eager to thrill the new generation across six tracks highly polished to pop precision.
“We’ve worked so hard to get here. We’re so clear-headed about where we want to go, where we want to be and what we want to say. I don’t want to let anything knock us off track. 2020 is going to be massive for us. Bring it on.”
Sea Girls have a sound that is unforgettable and upbeat. They have already built a massive worldwide following and are nearing 800,000 monthly Spotify listeners. Their debut album is coming this summer and they are already the staple on several official Spotify playlists. Sea Girls have just released an EP called “Under Exit Lights” which contains 6 tracks, some full band and some acoustic, which shows a different side of the band. The EP starts off with their last released banger-of-a-single “Ready for More“, which is still stuck in our heads from the first time we heard it. Another great track on this EP to zone in on is called “Why Won’t You Admit.” Another synth-heavy pop-rock smash, Sea Girls are really showing that they know how to pen catchy hooks and feel-good jams.
Sea Girls are: Henry Camamile (vocals/guitar), Rory Young (guitar), Andrew Dawson (bass) and Oli Khan (drums)
As you wait for their debut LP, dive into this 20-minute collection of music: ‘Under Exit Lights’ is out on Polydor Records
Canadian songwriting legend Ron Sexsmith’s 2020 album “Hermitage”. Producer Don Kerr. Released via Cooking Vinyl Limited. Recorded in Ron’s living room where Ron played all the instruments for the album, with the exception of the drums. “When Love Pans Out” from Ron Sexsmith’s upcoming April 17th album “Hermitage”
Canadian songwriting hero Ron Sexsmith comes back into our lives with a new album on Cooking Vinyl. Ron worked with producer Don Kerr to create this album; the two set up in Ron’s living room to record where Ron played all the instruments for the album, with the exception of the drums. The result is the songwriter’s most self-assured collection, still charmingly subtle yet increasingly full of musical vigor, as onChateau Mermaid an ode to his own Stratford Graceland, or the surprisingly hopefulmall Minded World in which Sexsmith croons, “Oh now don’t feel blue ‘cos they don’t get you, you’ll win this small minded world”. This new zen can be heard from the first moments of Kinks-esque album opener, Spring of the Following Year as the serene sound of birds situate the listener into Sexsmith’s state of grace.
To go along with it, we’ve just got the first single “You Don’t Wanna Hear It.”
Describing the new song, Sexsmith said in a statement, “It’s a song about someone who has their nose all out of joint about something and are not in the mood to hear the truth.”
Mush are from Leeds. They play a kind of slacked out art-rock. The songs are melodic and highly music -orientated but weirdly catchy and infectious. Their early single Alternative Facts was a ten minute critique of the increasingly familiar phenomenon of fake news and the movement toward soundbite-orietntated politics. Set to a backdrop of a driving repetitive rhythms, weaving guitar textures and off the cuff a-tonal vocal style,Alternative Factsis a catchy and refreshing single choice. due to the sheer length. Live performances have prompted the expected ‘guitar band’comparisons to the likes of Pavement, Television, Velvet underground etc. Mush, however, play with an unhinged and experimental energy and purist intentionality that means they are ones to watch in their own right.
Mush performing live at the La Chapelle by le Studio in Rennes, France, during Trans Musicales 2019. Recorded December 8, 2019.
Songs: Eat The Etiquette Revising My Fee Gig Economy 3D Routine Alternative Facts
Emma Charles back when she was still taking classes at Berklee College of Music. She has since relocated to Los Angeles, and now shares her endearing style of folk pop with a gorgeous, nostalgia-inflected video for new single “Connecticut.”
This is the title track from a 4-song EP that came out last month, produced by Doug Schadt, who has worked with both Shaed and Maggie Rogers. Emma delivers a heartfelt performance that maps out an emotional journey from her hometown on the East Coast to a new life in California. A hushed, guitar-based melody provides an evocative backdrop for Emma’s riveting vocal performance and a wistful exploration of the connection between memory and regret. At the intersection of self-examination and roots-Americana the organic sound of Emma Charles never fails to captivate, as we collectively stand witness to an emergent star who surrenders her full heart with every passionate song.
Big sounding acoustic guitars, and a soft emotional vocal is the sound of “Connecticut” by Emma Charles. This ambient track is the closing song of Emma Charles’ new EP released in late February. The song has a calming energy and feels like the soundtrack of a long drive, of traveling thousands of miles on a long highway. The lyrics dive into the emotions of leaving a small Connecticut hometown for something much bigger. It’s about self-discovery and exploration. It’s hard to ignore Emma Charles’ poetic lyrics and imagery. This sound is truly a gem in today’s music industry!
Emma Charles sets the mood for driving across America in her new song “Connecticut.” Song written by Emma Charles and Doug Schadt
The London five-piece Tom Dougall, Dominic O’Dair, Maxim Barron, Charlie Salvidge and Max Oscarnold release their first album on Tough Love and their fourth for the world. It’s recorded in home studios, mixed at Studio B in South London and completely self-produced. This extra material recorded and commisioned around the same time the original album was made. The deluxe version of Toy’s fourth album, “Happy In the Hollow”, is now available online. It includes the original album alongside new artwork and four rare or previously unavailable songs, as below.
Happy in the Hollow
The Willo (Sonic Boom remix)
Strangulation Day (Cosey Fanni Tutti remix)
Move Through the Dark (Daniel Melero & Yuliano Acri remix)
Father John Misty has surprise-dropped a new live album on Bandcamp, titled “Off-Key in Hamburg”. The singer-songwriter, born as Joshua Michael Tillman, will donate all proceeds from the album to MusiCares‘ COVID-19 Relief Fund, which benefits the musicians and music industry professionals who have been most impacted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Off-Key in Hamburg sees FJM and his band joined by the Neue Philharmonie Frankfurt Orchestra during their August 8th, 2019 performance at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonieon in Hamburg, Germany. Though the album does not contain any new material, it marks Father John Misty’s first release since 2018’s God’s Favorite Customer.
The album contains tracks from the 2018 release, as well as older tracks as well. “Nancy From Now On”, for example, appears on the first Father John Misty release, 2012’s “Fear Fun”. Listen to the entire album below and click here to purchase directly from the Father John Misty Bandcamp page.
