• A DELUXE 4 DISC CLAMSHELL BOXED SET FEATURING ALL OF JIM CAPALDI’S SOLO RECORDINGS FOR ISLAND RECORDS ISSUED BETWEEN 1972 & 1976
• NEWLY REMASTERED FROM THE ORIGINAL MASTER TAPES
• MATERIAL FEATURES GUEST APPEARANCES BY STEVE WINWOOD, CHRIS WOOD, DAVE MASON, PAUL KOSSOFF & THE MUSCLE SHOALS RHYTHM SECTION
• WITH 6 BONUS TRACKS DRAWN FROM SINGLES & A DVD FEATURING JIM CAPALDI’S APPEARANCES ON BBC TV OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST FROM NOVEMBER 1975 (featuring STEVE WINWOOD) AND A 50 MINUTE OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST TV CONCERT FROM MARCH 1976 – All Previously Unreleased.
Esoteric Recordings is pleased to announce the release of Open Your Heart – The Island Recordings 1972 – 1976, a new re-mastered four-disc clamshell boxed set (comprising 3 CDs and a DVD) by the legendary Jim Capaldi.
Aside from his work as a founder member with the acclaimed band Traffic (a group for which Jim co-wrote most of their classic songs with Steve Winwood), Jim Capaldi was also a successful solo artist, enjoying a series of hit albums and singles in his own right. His solo career began with the album Oh How We Danced, recorded whilst Traffic was on hiatus whilst Steve Winwood was recovering from peritonitis. Mainly recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, the album featured the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section of Roger Hawkins (drums), David Hood (bass) and Barry Beckett (keyboards), along with a host of guests such as Steve Winwood, Chris Wood, Paul Kossoff, Dave Mason, Ric Grech, Jim Gordon, Mike Kellie (Spooky Tooth) & TrevorBurton (The Move / Steve Gibbons Band). Featuring tracks such as Eve, Don’t Be A Hero and Open Your Heart, Oh How We Danced was a superb debut solo release.
Jim’s second solo album was the 1974 release Whale Meat Again, an album that tackled a variety of lyrical subjects, including environmental issues. Once more he utilised the services of Roger Hawkins, David Hood and Barry Beckett, along with Steve Winwood. Featuring tracks such as It’s Alright, Whale Meat Again and Summer is Fading, the album was another classic.
With the disbanding of Traffic in 1974, following a troubled US tour, Jim embarked on his next solo project (and final album for Island Records of the 1970s), Short Cut Draw Blood. The album would prove to be one of his most successful, featuring the singles It’s All Up to You and Love Hurts (a cover of the Everly Brothers hit), both of which enjoyed chart success. Aside from these tracks the album also featured the emotive Boy with a Problem, featuring Paul Kossoff on guitar, and other classics such as the album title track, Goodbye Love and Seagull. Once again Jim Capaldi assembled a stellar cast of musicians to contribute to the album such as Steve Winwood, Chris Spedding, Roger Hawkins, David Hood and Barry Beckett and Chris Wood.
This boxed set has been newly re-mastered from the original master tapes and features an additional 6 bonus tracks, (four previously unreleased on CD), all drawn from single releases and also includes a bonus DVD (NTSTC / Region Free) featuring previously unreleased live appearances by Jim Capaldi on BBC TV’s “Old Grey Whistle Test”; a session from November 1975 (featuring Steve Winwood on piano) and a 50 minute concert by Jim Capaldi & the Space Cadets at the BBC TV Theatre in March 1976. The boxed set also includes an illustrated booklet with a new essay. Open Your Heart – The Island Recordings 1972 – 1976 is a fitting tribute to a fine and much missed musician.
Out In The World conveys a specific feeling for me, like thinking everyone’s having fun without you,” explains Gum’s Jay Watson of his latest single. The deep diving and soaring pop track from the POND and Tame Impala multi-instrumentalist is an ode to getting out there and living, no matter the associated anxieties (whatever that means to you this week).
“It was one of the easiest songs to write and record on the [upcoming] record. I’m not sure if that makes it good or not but we’ll see!”
We attest, it does. And the associated video, featuring Watson wandering the streets of L.A. in a very good trench coat makes us feel all kinds of sweet melancholy. Watson’s notes on mental health, living in the moment and playing keyboard underwater. And be the first to watch Out In The World.
Official video for new single Out In The World by GUM. Released 13 March 2020
I’m so excited to announce my third full length album ‘That’s How Rumors Get Started’ will be out May 8th. It was produced by my friend Sturgill Simpson and recorded in Los Angeles. I feel like it’s been a long time coming… I had a baby and felt like I fell off the face of the earth for a while. We live in strange times but I hope this brings a little light to the dark corners of the world. Watch the new music video for my new single “Twinkle Twinkle”. That’s How Rumors Get Started sees Nashville icon and 2019 Best New Artist Grammy nominee Margo Price commit her genre-bending rock-and-roll show to record for the first time, stretching out her emotive twang over sky-high soft-rock, burning psychedelic rock ballads, stomping road songs, and sprinkles of pop. With production from her friend and longtime collaborator Sturgill Simpson, it shows both of them pushing into unexpected directions.
Tim Burgess is back with a further new single “The Mall”, a second taster of his forthcoming album I Love The New Sky.
“The Mall” arrives after last month’s lead single and album opener “Empathy For The Devil”. Burgess says of his new single, “The mall is like a state of mind – everything and nothing is there. It induces a kind of torpor. Even the process of going between floors is assisted by moving staircases. Shop windows are hypnotic but you don’t have to take part in anything. Malls are a great leveller – class and status disappear. They are like a waking dream, an altered state. A kind of limbo. Plus they are handy if you need new shoes or a doughnut.”
I Love The New Sky marks a different chapter for Burgess, who wrote all 12 tracks on the album himself. He says, “In the past, I’ve written collaboratively. (2012’s) Oh No I Love You was written with Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner in Nashville, and then Same Language, Different Worlds was a collaboration with Peter Gordon who had worked extensively with Arthur Russell.”
Burgess adds that he wrote the tracks “in Norfolk, in the middle of the countryside, with the nearest shop eight miles away. There are no distractions, and I guess that way things happen. I wrote everything on acoustic guitar, and the chords were really considered. The guitar lines would lead the melody, and the melody would inform the lyrics – just dreaming away with music.”
Tim Burgess’ I Love The New Sky album lands via Bella Union Records on 22nd May,
Protomartyr are back with news of their fifth album Ultimate Success Today, and have shared the lead single “Processed By The Boys”. the first single from Protomartyr since re-releasing their debut LP No Passion All Techniquelast year.
Ultimate Success Today will be Protomartyr’s first set of new songs since 2017’s Relatives in Descent. They recorded it at Dreamland Recording Studios in upstate New York. It’s co-produced by the band and David Tolomei (Dirty Projectors, Beach House), Guest contributions on the record include Nandi Rose, aka Half Waif (vocals), Jemeel Moondoc (alto sax), Izaak Mills (bass clarinet, sax, flute), and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello).
Lead vocalist Joe Casey says of their forthcoming album, “The re-release of our first album had me thinking about the passage of time and its ultimate conclusion. Listening to No Passion All Technique again, I could hear myself hoping for an introduction and a long future, but also being cognizant that it could be ‘one and done’ for us. So, when it came time to write Ultimate Success Today, I was reminded of that first urgency and how it was an inverse of my current grapple with how terribly ill I’ve been feeling lately. Was that sick feeling colouring how I felt about the state of the world or was it the other way around?” . Casey adds, “This panic was freeing in a way. It allowed me to see our fifth album as a possible valediction of some confusingly loud five-act play. In the same light I see it as an interesting mile marker of our first decade of being a band – a crest of the hill along a long highway. Although just to cover my bases, I made sure to get my last words in while I still had the breath to say them.
The new single arrives with a video directed by David Allen, and is inspired by a clip of a Brazillian TV presenter being trolled by a puppet.
Protomartyr – “Processed By The Boys”, taken from ‘Ultimate Success Today’, out May 29th, 2020.
Heavy psych-rockers Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have previewed their forthcoming Viscerals album with second single “Rubbernecker”.
Discussing the new single, singer Matt Baty says “The lyrics of “Rubbernecker” explore feelings of desperation and eroding senses of community in a world that’s seemingly gone completely mad. The central character is the clown, who attempts to detach himself from the world he observes as chaotic and unruly. The more he isolates himself, the more he yearns for kinship but the ever growing forces that reinforce his terror of the outside keep him rooted in his confinement. It’s a sad song really.”
Viscerals will be Pigs first LP since their 2018 album King of Cowards.
“Rubbernecker” lands after January’s lead offering “Reducer”, and arrives with a clay stop-motion visual created by Rafael Bonilla Jr.
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Rubbernecker Taken from the album ‘Viscerals ‘ (Launch184) on Rocket Recordings
It would be exaggerating to say that Orange Juice singlehandedly invented what came to be known as “indie” music, but only slightly: for decades, the term was virtually defined by the influence of their trebly guitars, their defiantly anti-rock and un-macho stance, even their haircuts. Frontman Edwyn Collins often professed to be horrified by what they inadvertently spawned, and you can see why. As much in love with disco and soul as the Velvet Underground, Orange Juice were richer, wittier and more daring than any of their imitators: their records – whether the chaotic, life-affirming rush of 1980’s Blueboy, their sparkling hit Rip It Up or 1984’s gorgeous ballad A Sad Lament – are still as fresh as new paint.
Alan Horne was a nineteen-year old botany student with Malcolm McLaren aspirations, was struck not only by the breadth and dexterity of Orange Juice’s reference points, but also by EdwynCollins’ unique ear for an infectious pop melody. Horne immediately set up Postcard Records with co-funding from Collins and bassist David McClymont, and in April 1980 the single ‘Falling and Laughing’ was released . ‘Falling and Laughing’ began a stream of unfathomably perfect singles across 1980 and 1981, giving Orange Juice nationwide indie success and a music press that almost took for granted that Orange Juice would become massive.
As one of four Orange Juice singles released on Glasgow’s legendary and legendarily dysfunctional Postcard Records, August 1980’s “Blue Boy” was atypical of their early tangled jangle of a sound, but it packed a powerful wallop. It’s a blistering, Buzzcocks-indebted flash of excitable energy beginning with seven seconds of speed-fuelled martial drumming and an opening line that leaves you in no doubt you’re listening to a lyricist of real fluency and wit (“When he spoke, she smiled in all the right places”). Culminating in some fantastically cack-handed and out-of-tune guitar soloing, it’s an indecently exciting piece of punky guitar pop, and as apt a place as any to begin a root through some of the best bits of h Orange Juice.
A debut album for Postcard Records would be recorded (‘Ostrich Churchyard’) and then scrapped, and by the time Orange Juice finally released their debut ‘You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever’ on Polydor in 1982, the indie world was already moving on, Orange Juice’s sound had already moved on.
With one stroke of his pen, Collins practically gave indie pop music its entire faux-naive raison d’être. “Worldliness must keep apart from me,” runs the chorus clincher to Simply Thrilled Honey. Rarely has a more eloquent statement been made about music as a harbour from the harshness, the impurities, the compromises of the grownup world. “It’s about a girl who tried to seduce me, but I didn’t want to go to bed with her,” Collins said: “I find going to bed with someone you don’t love disorientating.” Dating back to Orange Juice’s earliest days, when they were still the Nu-Sonics, Simply Thrilled Honey is packed with disco-fresh chords and the kind of starchy guitar top lines the Jesus and Mary Chain would later hotwire.
You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever
After leaving Postcard Records and convincing Rough Trade to finance the sessions,Orange Juice ended up signing to Polydor for their 1982 debut album, “You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever”. Made up of a couple re-recordings of brilliant songs from early singles (“Falling and Laughing,” “Felicity”), cleaned-up versions of songs from the demo, and a few new tracks, the album is a slick, tuneful slice of early-’80s pop that’s catchy and bright, and only slightly overcooked. Both Edwyn Collins and James Kirk could have retired after this album and been secure in the history books as two of the finest songwriters of the era. Kirk‘s “Three Cheers for Our Side” and “Felicity” are brilliantly odd and hooky songs that sound unlike anything anyone else was doing at the time; Collins‘ songs are reliably witty, cutting, and romantic with lovely choruses. “Falling and Laughing” is timeless pop, “Tender Object” is rippingly good dance-punk, his ballads are heartbreaking (“Untitled Melody,” “In a Nutshell”), and “Consolation Prize” takes the prize for hilarity (“I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn‘s/I was hoping to impress/So frightfully camp it made you laugh/Tomorrow I’ll buy myself a dress”).
Not too many other folks were writing songs like these, either. Add some excellent guitar interplay between Kirk and Collinsand a strong rhythm section to the mix and you’ve got something that seems hard to mess up. Unfortunately, some of the production choices come close to wrecking things, as the tinkling pianos and backing vocalist can come on a little strong at times. The glossy finish given to the album is also a giant leap from the scrappiness of their early sound, though its effects are lessened by the exuberant energy the band plays and sings with at all times. These criticisms aside, once one accepts that the arty punks Orange Juice started off having fully embraced the sophisticated pop side of the world, then it’s easy to see that You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever is one of the best examples of early-’80s pop there is. That it’s the one and only album the team ofCollinsand Kirk made before splitting only makes it all the more essential to own. For many, the album failed to live up to the expectations of the early Postcard singles, and amidst accusations of selling out by signing to a major label there were criticisms of the glossier elements of the album’s production.
It was the year that ‘You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever’ was released that a young Johnny Marr would knock on the Stretford door of one Steven Morrissey, and the Smiths would go onto claim the success that many had assumed for Orange Juice with a not dissimilar guitar sensibility or approach to lyricism. Scores of Postcard Records impersonators would spring up across the K in the wake of Orange Juice’s success.
Rip It Up
By the release of ‘You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever’, Collins had culled head-in-the-clouds guitarist James Kirk and drummer Stephen Daly from the line up, Kirk having been responsible for three of ‘You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever’s most intoxicating moments (‘Wan Light’, ‘ThreeCheers for Our Side’ and ‘Felicity). Luckily for Collins and his new line-up, a bona fide hit single would follow the next year in the form of ‘Rip It Up’, but the album of the same name was too inconsistent and unsure of itself to capitalise on the single’s top 10 success.
After releasing their first album in February of 1982,Orange Juice were struck with their usual batch of bad luck. James Kirk, whose songwriting efforts were crucial to the band had left; then the label pressed them to follow up with a new album as soon as possible in order to cash in on their fading buzz. After adding ex-Josef KguitaristMalcolm Ross and drummerZeke Manyika, they headed back to the studio and Rip It Up was released a mere ten months later. The album reflected the lineup change and quick turnaround quite a bit. In the search for material, Manyika contributed two songs with an Afro-pop influence (“A Million Pleading Faces” and “Hokoyo”) and Ross brought a sprightly song he wrote while inJosef K (“Turn Away”), and while they are all good efforts, they don’t measure up to Kirk‘s contributions. Edwyn Collins went back to a couple old songs and revamped them for the album, turning “Breakfast Time” into a weirdly reggae-influenced ballad and “Louise Louise”
For this crumpled Velvetsy ballad, Collins goes full caramel-voiced crooner, as he variously woos and taunts the titular Louise – who seems to be having none of it to a backing of knitted trebly guitars, barbershop harmonies, a shuffling beat and a fabulously fuzzed-out guitar solo. “I’m doubled up on bended knees / Tell me darling tell me please” he begs, despite acknowledging that his melodramatics aren’t clever, nor likely to make her change her mind. “Have a wonderful birthday, dear,” he mopes sarcastically. He also took a song from the very earliest incarnation of the band as the Nu-Sonics and stretched it out into the overly long “Tenterhook.” So far not the makings of a great album, but the rest of the songs turn the tables almost completely. “Mud in Your Eye” is a sweet little soul crooner with heartfelt guest vocals from Paul Quinn, “Flesh of My Flesh” is a bouncy tropical pop song that shows Haircut 100 how it really should be done, and “I Can’t Help Myself” gives the Four Tops a run for their money in the hooks department.
Best of all is the title track, a timeless indie dance classic that rode an impossibly catchy synth bassline, infectious handclaps, and one ofCollins‘ best lyric/melody combos right to the top of the charts. Despite these moments of genius, the album is an uneven and frustrating listen that proves you can’t rush a band into making great art. And despite the frustrating nature of the album, Rip It Up is definitely still worth checking out for the moments of brilliance and the overall sound Orange Juice deliver even in their weakest moments.
After the group splintered yet again during the recording of what turned out to be the Texas Fever EP, Orange Juice returned as the duo of Edwyn Collins and Zeke Manyika to craft maybe the most satisfying album of their too-short career. Working with producer Dennis Bovell for the most part, the record sounds great from start to finish. Highly polished mid-’80s pop with plenty of dubby bass (provided by Clare Kenny), inventive rhythms, and some of Collins‘ best vocal work, the record is a sophisticated, diverse, and mature work that easily stands the test of time, even if it was somewhat dismissed at the time of release. Collinsalso managed to craft an incredible batch of songs that range from the laid-back grooves of tracks like the self-effacing “I Guess I’m Just a Little Too Sensitive” and the guitar-heavy and determined-sounding “What Presence?!” to charging rockers like “The Artisans” and “Salmon Fishing in New York,” with plenty of introspective ballads that suggest Collins was doing a bit of soul-searching at the time.
Indeed, his decision to pack up the band and head out as a solo act soon after the album’s less-than-heralded release seems to bear this out. Titles like “Lean Period” and “Get While the Gettings Good” make it clear, so does the elegiac “All That Ever Mattered,” which sounds like nothing less than a lovesick ode to bandmembers come and gone. Orange Juice may be the group’s swan song that came too soon; it’s also an excellent example of why people still care about the band years later.
Edwyn Collins’ talent has endured the split of Orange Juice and he found another ‘Rip It Up’ on a global scale with 1994 hit ‘A Girl Like You’.
The Albums
You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever Rip It Up Texas Fever
The Who were scheduled as the second to last act (before Jefferson Airplane) to play on Saturday, August 16th. When they actually started playing it was already Sunday morning around 5:00. They played their exceptional Tommy album, a Rock Opera dealing with the struggle of a deaf, dumb and blind boy who later finds a cure and gains stardom with his messianic movement. The finale of this performance took place during sunrise which occured at 6:05 am, The story of a deaf, dumb, and blind boy who is cured of his ailments and gains stardom became a legendary performance. Although not an apex performance in the Who’s career, Woodstock helped solidify the band’s place in rock history.
In 1969 The Who performed most of the songs from “Tommy” with some modifications due to time constraints. During the set Abbie Hoffman took the stage and protested the imprisonment of MC5 member and White Panther leader John Sinclair on charges of marijuana possession. Hoffman was met with a few unfriendly words from Townshend as well as a guitar to the head. A clip of this can be heard the Who compilation “Thirty Years of Maximum R&B”. While Townshend has some rather strong words expressing dissatisfaction with the performance, it is still seen as a historical in the rock and roll world. Townshend, angry that someone took the stage, yelled: “Fuck off! Fuck off my fucking stage!”, hit him with his guitar and sending him off stage again. Townshend then added: “I can dig it!”; And after the song “Do You Think It’s Alright?”: “The next fuckin’ person that walks across this stage is gonna get fuckin’ killed! [crowd cheers] You can laugh, I mean it!” A 16 second sound bite of the incident can be heard on The Who compilation set entitled Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (Disc 2, Track 20, “Abbie Hoffman Incident”).
The lone highway that led to Woodstock was jammed with traffic, so the Who left the hotel early to play its Saturday night show. When the group arrived, word was out that bands weren’t getting paid; the promoters had decreed it a free show and stopped trying to collect tickets because so many people had turned up. The Who refused to go on until it received a cashier’s check, but all the banks were closed.
The Who have long expressed disdain for their Woodstock performance, and in a new interview, singer Roger Daltrey noted that a series of delays and equipment problems prevented them from playing until 5AM.
“You’ve got to remember, by the time we went onstage, we’d been standing in the mud for hours,” he told The New York Times. “Or laying in it, or doing whatever in it. It wasn’t actually that muddy backstage, but it wasn’t comfort, let’s put it that way. … That’s all you could do. Waiting, waiting, waiting. We were young, and life is a lot easier when you’re young. I wouldn’t do that show now. Sod that. I’d walk away from it. I’m joking. No, I’d walk away and come back 10 hours later.”
Daltrey said he has never listened to the Who’s set to reassess it with years of detachment. But, after noting it was the band’s worst gig, he still has vivid memories of what went wrong.
“It was a particularly hard one for me, because of the state of the equipment,” he said. “It was all breaking down. I’m standing in the middle of the stage with enormous Marshall 100-watt amps blasting my ears behind me. [Keith] Moon on the drums in the middle. I could barely hear what I was singing.”
While promoters scrambled to find money and the wait stretched out, the band found trouble, as it often did. The drummer Keith Moon and the bassist John Entwistle dropped acid and partied in the back of a station wagon with a pair of young female fans. The guitarist and chief songwriter Pete Townshend drank a cup of coffee backstage, and realized it was spiked with acid. When the singer Roger Daltrey took a break from his bottle of Southern Comfort to drink some tea, he, too, began to hallucinate.
Finally, after a wait that totaled 14 hours, the Who went on early Sunday morning and played its new album, the epochal rock opera “Tommy.” Moments after the set finished, the activist-prankster Abbie Hoffman, also high on LSD, crashed the stage, and said, into Townshend’s microphone, that the focus shouldn’t be on music, but on the MC5 manager John Sinclair, who was in prison on a minor marijuana charge. Townshend, according to his memoir, “Who I Am,” “knocked Abbie aside” with his guitar. The crowd roared at Townshend’s act of non-nonviolence. After years of struggling commercially in the United States, the Who had found a way to establish who it was.
The Who have long expressed disdain for their Woodstock performance, and in a new interview, singer Roger Daltrey noted that a series of delays and equipment problems prevented them from playing until 5AM.
Still, Daltrey has a few positive memories of the weekend, like noting Creedence Clearwater Revival were “fantastic,” as well as the vibe coming from the audience.
“They were the stars,” he explained. “That half a million people put up with that crap for three days. That coming together of that community was, I think, the key to getting America out of Vietnam. That’s when politicians actually started to take notice.”
The Who were touring in support of their Rock Opera album Tommy which was released the same year. The Woodstock performance is not as long as others during this period but powerful and insane given the time The Who were performing. Songs not played from the album are: “Overture”, “Cousin Kevin”, “Underture”, “Tommy, Can You Hear Me?”, “Miracle Cure”, “Sensation”, “Sally Simpson”, “Welcome”.
The setlist is a pretty standard example of their 1969 tour program, just a little shortened at times. For instance they didn’t play “A Quick One While He’s Away”,“Magic Bus” or a longer medley around “My Generation” which sometimes reached a length of 15 minutes. Nevertheless the presentation of the chosen songs was impressive and the magic and spirit of the music grew as Tommy reached its grande final with “See Me, Feel Me”. The dawn was coming up and the first daylight hit the stage. The Who closed with “My Generation”, an old hit dating back to the year 1965, and “Naked Eye”. There were only a few sleepless people in the audience left who finally witnessed the ritual guitar smashing of Pete Townshend pointing out that the gig has really come to an end.
At the end of their set, Pete Townshend tossed his banged-up Gibson SG guitar into the crowd, but according to The Kids Are Alright DVD liner notes the guitar was promptly retrieved by one of the band’s roadies. Close inspection of film from both the Woodstock movie and the bonus DVD from the 40th anniversary issue confirms this.
Like a few other artists performing at Woodstock, The Who had played two years earlier at the Monterey Pop Festival.
The Who experienced success after Woodstock 1969 with releases such as “Who’s Next” which became their best selling and most acclaimed album and “Quadrophenia”, but were both overshadowed by the death of Keith Moon from an overdose of Heminervin, a drug prescribed to fight alcohol withdrawal.
The Who broke up in 1982 after replacing Moon, but never captivated fans and they once had. The Who reunited in 1989 and partook in a few partial reunions between then and the death of John Entwistle in 2002 from a heart attack in which cocaine was said to be a factor.
Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell of Overcoats have always made songs with a decidedly sororal harmony; theirs is music of empowerment through thick and thin. But where the folksy electro of 2017’s “Young” proved to be deft art-pop, The Fight looks to be the moment where the New York born and bred duo unfurls into a full-blown pop sensation. With the help of producers Justin Raisen (Angel Olsen, Kim Gordon) and Yves Rothman (Miya Folick, Freya Ridings), Overcoats have crafted singles like the layered, decadent and choral “The Fool” and the absolutely explosive, guitar-heavy “Keep The Faith.” “We realized the thing to do is not to wait for life to get easier, but to start fighting harder,” the pair said in a release, and I’ll be damned if this maxim isn’t bursting through all of Overcoats’ new material.
Our new album draws on the concept of fighting – whether it’s a fight with a significant other, a fight for rights & representation in politics, or a fight against inner demons. with this album, we want people to feel like things they thought were futile are possible, to feel excited for the future. even in these apocalyptic times, we have to keep trying. in trying, we want people to feel powerful in who they are and what they can achieve.
We have a very special dynamic. It’s give and take – when one of us is feeling stressed, the other acts as the calming force. If one of us is nervous before a show, the other brings the excitement. We switch off roles, but we always try to work as a team. We also get to be good cop, bad cop – which is helpful in sticky situations. The best thing about Overcoats’ partnership is the thing that got us started on this journey – the feeling of singing together. That magic feeling, of feeling like everything is perfect just for a moment, that is what keeps us going. It feels like the world isn’t broken, just for a second.
