While you might know John Ross as the frontman of the band Wild Pink, he’s also got quite an impressive body of solo work under the moniker Eerie Gaits. After releasing two EPs, his dreamy full-length debut, 2017’s Bridge Music, floored us. He turned back to Wild Pink for a while afterwards, for the stunning Yolk In The Fur album in 2018 — one of the best albums of that year — and the 5 Songs EP last March. But now, Ross is ready to delve back into his solo territory. Today, he is announcing the latest Eerie Gaits album, which is called “Holopaw”. The name is taken from a town that Ross grew up near, and it’s expected for release in mid-April.
To sweeten the announcement, Ross is sharing the album’s excellent lead single. “What’s Eating You” falls in the same ambient indie rock vibe that much of his work has traversed. It’s a bit more Wild Pink-like than anything else we’ve heard from Ross’s solo endeavors. Grounded by a plucky bassline and glimmering guitars but incorporating some roomy drums and zig-zagging synths, everything comes together here for a blissful effect. The track concludes with some atmospheric crickets and birds as the synth melody evaporates into a warbling ruckus.
Eerie Gaits ‘Holopaw’ out April 2020 on sound as language records
You can only guess who that might be about,” Lucinda Williams said after a scorching performance of her new song “Man Without a Soul” aboard the fifth annual Outlaw Country Cruise last week. A droning, guitar-driven track, the song doesn’t mention its subject directly, but as Williams alluded, it’s impossible to not pin the lyrics to the impeached President Trump.
“You bring nothing good to this world, beyond a web of cheating and stealing/you hide behind your wall of lies, but it’s coming down/yeah, it’s coming down,” she sings in her idiosyncratic drawl, promising that the story, the presidency, or perhaps the life itself of the man in question won’t conclude in any positive way.
“How do you think this story ends? It’s not a matter of how, it’s just a matter of when,” she intones. “‘Cause it’s coming down/yeah, it’s coming down.”
“Man Without a Soul” announces Williams’ latest album, Good Souls Better Angels. Due April 24th via Highway 20/Thirty Tigers, the LP is the follow-up to 2017’s This Sweet Old World (a re-recorded version of Williams’ 1992 album Sweet Old World) and finds the Americana songwriter addressing an array of cultural and political issues, from social media persecution to a nonviable leader. Williams and her husband Tom Overby produced the album with Ray Kennedy, who engineered her 1998 breakout album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
“Ray was getting these great sounds. He has all this vintage equipment,” Williams told Rolling Stone of the Nashville sessions for the album last year. “It really rocks … a lot of stuff that is blues-rocky, edgy, grungy, and political.”
The first single off Good Souls Better Angels is “Man Without a Soul,” In fact, it’s an undeniable rock record, shot through with elements of the blues and the crunchy guitar work of Stuart Mathis. Drummer Butch Norton and bassist David Sutton, who make up Williams’ band Buick 6 with Mathis, also play on the album.
During the Outlaw Country Cruise, Williams played two full concerts, peppering her sets with new songs off Good Souls Better Angels and staples like 1989’s “Changed the Locks” and Car Wheels‘ “Joy,” along with the brooding “West Memphis,” from 2014’s Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone. She also shared the stage with Steve Earle, Raul Malo, and Jay Farrar for an intimate guitar pull that will be broadcast later on Sirius XM’s Outlaw Country.
Williams is currently on the road and will play a string of dates in Florida this week with Jesse Malin opening. Williams and Overby produced Malin’s latest album Sunset Kids.
Lucinda Williams will release her new album ‘Good Souls Better Angels’ on April 24th.
Just announced! The Blinders return with their second album, “Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath, due May! Pleased to announce we have this super limited Dinked Edition pressed on deep red vinyl, with a signed and numbered print, limited to only 500.
The Blinders have announced their new album, Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath, will be out on May 8th via Modern Sky UK. The band have also shared ‘Circle Song’, the first single to be taken from the album, as well as a run of live dates throughout May. In the shadow of Brexit and the climate crisis, The Blinders return with their unique brand of outspoken anthemicism and a sensational album to rouse awareness and inject vital energy into a bleak 2020. Combined with their blistering live energy, get ready for The Blinders to accelerate furiously into the limelight.
A dark blues-waltz underpinned by propulsive bass and evocatively prosaic lyricism, the track straddles the lines between ode and lament while addressing life’s confusing crossroads. The track is accompanied by an arresting video, which cuts between the band performing and wandering the atmospherically bleak landscape of the Peak District.
The track is the first to be taken from their album which was recorded at Manchester’s Eve Studios alongside producer Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey, Anna Calvi), and mixed by Adrian Bushby (Foo Fighters, Muse). The follow-up to their critically acclaimed debut album, Columbia, released in 2018, the album explores existential despair, mental health and society’s ills in a time of planetary crisis, and is both a riposte to, and commentary on, the rise of populist ideology. Delivering a blistering collection of powerful tracks, Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath is imbued with the visceral energy of IDLES, the twisted melodies of solo-era Lennon and the darkness of the Bad Seeds.
Following the album’s release, the band will head out on a run of intimate dates, with shows in Edinburgh, Hull, London and Southampton, between slots at festivals including Live At Leeds, Sound City, Hit The North and Sonic Wave, with much more to be announced.
Tim Burgess has announced that his fifth solo album “I Love The New Sky” will be available from 22nd May via Bella Union Records, celebrating the news with the release of its new lead track Empathy For The Devil. He’s also revealed a whole slew of live shows to take place across the UK and US between March and July.
Solo artist, singer, label boss, DJ and author, Burgess hasn’t let his role as The Charlatans frontman define him. Each of the tracks on the new album are self-penned. On his writing process, Burgess said that most of the creative process took place “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.”
Burgess worked with Grumbling Fur’s Daniel O’Sullivan—whose solo albums came out on Burgess’ label, O Genesis—to arrange and produce the new album, as well as help record the bass, drums and piano for all twelve of the new tracks.
I Love The New Sky will be available from 22nd May via Bella Union Records.
Like a lot of people, Ezra Furman has been alarmed by the “broken world,” as he calls it, that has emerged over the past few years. It shows in his music. Though the Oakland singer has long channeled his disaffection into his songs, he’s never done it with as much immediacy as on Twelve Nudes. Furman’s latest is the rapid-fire follow-up to his 2018 album, Transangelic Exodus, and in many ways, it’s the jagged flip-side. Though Transangelic Exodus was also a reaction to the regressive shitstorm swirling outward from Washington D.C., the album had a certain polish. By contrast, Twelve Nudes has a punk edge that is chaotic and raw, made in a hurry with a first-thought, best-thought sensibility that sprays psychic shrapnel in every direction. It’s also catchy as hell.
Though Twelve Nudes is certainly a political album, it’s rooted in Furman’s emotional reaction to politics, which makes these 11 songs more personal than polemical. It’s a brash come-on from a singer with enough confidence to say what’s on his mind, and the talent to express it in songs you want to listen to over and over. Twelve Nudes is loud, sometimes sarcastic, often pointed and invariably entertaining. The album is the work of an artist with a keen sense of his own capabilities, and it’s a fitting soundtrack to a world in turmoil.
‘Twelve Nudes’ by Ezra Furman, released 30th August 2019 via Bella Union
If alt-country seems inaccessible, let Faye Webster ease you into the genre with an R&B saxophone yawn or rap verse courtesy of Father. The Atlanta singer-songwriter didn’t turn alt-country on its head with Atlanta Millionaires Club, but she did dress it up enough to give folk-pop and soft-rock fans a natural in to the genre. Maybe it’s her breathy lilt. Maybe it’s the moderation of slide guitar. Whatever the trick is, Webster knows it makes her songs irresistibly coquettish.
It’s hard to believe musician and photographer Faye Webster is only 21 years old and has released her third album and one that just drips with a pensiveness of someone twice that age. The singer does have a way of writing serene indie folk that is perfectly balanced for any time of day. She immediately throws you into her world and it’s one that is fully realized and achingly alluring.
It’s worth asking Faye Webster about the origins of her song, “Pigeon.” In addition to being a musician, Atlanta-based Faye Webster is a photographer and a yo-yo whiz, even going so far as to craft her own custom yo-yo that she dubbed “The Pigeon.” But there’s something else.
“I sent this dude in Australia a pigeon with a note on its leg, a carrier pigeon, because I liked him,” Webster explains. “I sent him a note. It was the first time I ever sent somebody a pigeon, so I had to write a song about it.”
Before their show at the 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis, Faye Webster and her band stopped in The Current studio to talk to host Jade and to play songs from Webster’s album, Atlanta Millionaires Club.
Faye Webster performs ‘Room Temperature’ from her 2019 album, ‘Atlanta Millionaires Club,’ live in The Current studio.Webster’s songs have a warm, dreamy and nostalgic quality, the origins of which aren’t quite so enigmatic. “I listened to a lot of Western swing and old country music just because my mom’s from Texas and her whole family is musical,” Webster says. “So I grew up around that a lot, just that [music] playing in the car or in the house. And then I guess I found my own music that I liked when I grew up, but I think that [influence has] always kind of been there.”
Songs Performed:
“Room Temperature”
“Pigeon”
“Kingston”
All songs from Faye Webster’s 2019 album, Atlanta Millionaires Club, available on Secretly Canadian.
Penelope Isles have released a video for “Underwater Record Store,” the track is off the UK band’s debut album “Until The Tide Creeps In”, out now via Bella Union Records. Led by brother and sister Jack and Lily Wolter, the band are about to embark on a American tour. Additionally, Penelope Isles have launched Penny Isles TV, a new way for fans to keep up to date with the band while they are on the road.
Speaking on the inspiration behind the video, the band’s Jack Wolter had the following to say: “I came across this beautiful underwater footage of sea creatures while looking for visuals for our live show. It was made by some science school in San Francisco I think. I’m pretty sure it’s filmed in an aquarium, but made to look like it’s under the sea. The textures and colours feel really grainy and weird and move with the song perfectly. It was so much fun to make and was pretty nostalgic putting it together on an old train journey route I haven’t done in years; a six-hour trip to Cornwall along the coast line.
We were potentially going to work on video release with a ‘real life’ film maker we had been chatting with, but it felt right to do our last video for this record ourselves, just like all the others we put out. Finishing this chapter ‘in keeping’ with the other visuals we have released. We wanted to share the lyrics to the song within the video too, something we haven’t done before. Some parts and ideas were inspired by Deerhunter’s ‘Helicopter’ and Tweedy’s ‘I Know What It’s Like.”
Of the song itself, Lily Wolter says: “It was only a dream! Well a few combined actually… But the main one is from when I was a young girl. A great battle. Dad and I fought against a herd of great white sharks, that had infested a moat around a big sand castle, which I had proudly made. We won, of course. I have had the same dream a few times in my life, and since have added several quirks to the castle. One being an underwater record store.”
‘Underwater Record Store’ is taken from the debut album by Penelope Isles.
