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Posted: January 25, 2020 in FESTIVALS, MUSIC
Tags: 110 Above Festival, Gospall Hall Farm, Leicestershire
ROB GROTE The DISTRICTS – ” Original Tracks “
Posted: January 25, 2020 in MUSICTags: Rob Grote, The Districts
Early one morning back in August, while he was in Chicago for Lollapalooza, Rob Grote from The Districts woke up early, shook off the cobwebs, and made his way to the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel. While the city woke up and began to stir below, Grote tooled around with an acoustic guitar, working his way through a couple of tracks from Popular Manipulations, the Philly group’s third LP, for the latest installment in Original Tracks, our video series in partnership with Original Penguin. The latest installment is from The Districts, performing tracks from their Fat Possum debut, “Popular Manipulations.”
While that record is firmly rooted in the brand of local-hero power-pop perfected by Big Star, in the gloam of the Chicago summer morning, Grote’s voice shifts into a high-lonesome wail, imbuing his songs with an added level of sweet sadness. That’s the case in “Violet,” and it’s true of Popular Manipulations’s “Ordinary Day,” too. FLOOD magazine, in partnership with Original Penguin, have created Original Tracks: a special video series showcasing performances from some of the most original up-and-comers in the music world. The latest installment is from The Districts, performing a cover of Neil Young’s “Tell Me Why,” from “After the Gold Rush.”
Of course, anything high and lonesome automatically makes us think of After the Gold Rush, and as a nice little bonus, Grote also gave us a cover of Neil Young’s “Tell Me Why,” that album’s opener. Both it and “Ordinary Day”
BON IVER – ” Blood Bank ” Reissue
Posted: January 25, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: 10th Anniversary Edition, Blood Bank), Bon Iver, Bon Iver Announce, Jagjaguwar Recordings., Reissue
Bon Iver’s “Blood Bank” is “arguably the most consequential EP of the 2000s” and now, the group announces its 10th Anniversary reissue. Released 11 years ago yesterday (we know), and coming March 27th on Jagjaguwar, the package pairs each of the original four songs with brand new live renditions recorded during shows in Stockholm, Dallas, London, and Paris.
Similar to how the first Blood Bank followed For Emma, Forever Ago, the reissue forecasts the evolution of Bon Iver as the project expands to new breadths of sound and community. In its new liner notes, Wisconsinite Ryan Matteson reflects on the mantras of Blood Bank and the growth of Bon Iver, writing how songs like “Woods” heralded “not just a new direction but a new beginning entirely. A place where boundaries don’t exist. It was a signal change of things to come, laying the groundwork for new collaborations.”
Bon Iver performed music from Blood Bank throughout their 2019 arena tour supporting new album i,i. That tour will extend through November 2020 with a series of just-added European dates
The reissue will feature new artwork by Eric Timothy Carlson, both original and brand new live renditions of each track, and an in-depth essay written by longtime Bon Iver friend Ryan Matteson.
Side A:
01 – Blood Bank
02 – Beach Baby
03 – Babys
04 – Woods
Side B:
05 – Blood Bank (Live from Ericsson Globe, Stockholm SE, Oct 31 2018)
06 – Beach Baby (Live from The Bomb Factory, Dallas TX, Jan 23 2018)
07 – Babys (Live from Eventim Apollo Hammersmith, London UK, Mar 4 2018)
08 – Woods (Live from Pitchfork Paris Presented by La Blogothèque, Nov 3 2018)
Blood Bank (10th Anniversary Edition) – out March 27, 2020 via Jagjaguwar Recordings.
ELLIS – ” The Fuzz ” EP
Posted: January 25, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Ellis, Fat Possum Records, Linnea Siggelkow, The Fuzz EP
A faint voice and a fervent guitar make their match in a cluttered bedroom, each song finding itself in a growing folder of recordings stamped by initials “L.S”. Ellis is the music project of Linnea Siggelkow.
Linnea Siggelkow named her debut EP “The Fuzz” after the static on a TV screen between channels, and that hazy liminal space is exactly where her music resides. She makes dream-pop songs born of sadness and ambivalence that envelop you like a cool gray fog, unfolding patiently but with all the force of a gathering squall. And now that she’s signed to Fat Possum Records and reissued her EP on her new label, all we have to wait for is more lightning on the horizon.
Having already made her mark as a solo performer in the Toronto DIY scene, the project has evolved into a 4-piece band, inspiring a grittier take on the same solemn refrain.
She released her anticipated debut EP, The Fuzz. The EP arrived following several months of excitement building behind Ellis, who, after generating buzz in her local scene
JUDEE SILL – ” Judee Sill – Heartfood ” Reissues
Posted: January 24, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Intervention Records, Judee Sill, Reissues, singer songwriter
Intervention Records have announced that Judee Sill’s classic 1971 debut, Judee Sill (Cat# IR-016), and her stellar followup Heart Food (Cat# IR-017) have both been re-issued. Each album is cut as a double-45RPM LP set and pressed on dead-quiet 180-gram vinyl. Both LPs are anticipated to street in June 2017 and are available for pre-order now. Sill’s rising stardom was one of misfortune and adversity that culminated in her death at the age of 35.
Judee Sill’s career had all the makings of a great singer-songwriter story. She was at the center of the 1970s folk-rock scene in California, alongside contemporaries like Jackson Browne and J.D. Souther. she toured with major musicians like Graham Nash and David Crosby, who both contributed to her debut album.
In a sea of male singers and songwriters, Sill emerged, along with Joni Mitchell and a handful of others, as one of the few women who wrote and sang their own songs.
The astonishing Judee Sill was the first artist signed to David Geffen’s Asylum Records, and Judee Sill the first album released on the label. Sill’s music is intensely spiritual, redolent of mystical and divine imagery, yet grounded by great songwriting and a pure but powerful singing talent. Her songs impart incredible intimacy that is enhanced by her sometimes complex string arrangements (remarkably Sill arranged and conducted the strings/orchestra on these albums!).
Sill’s life was tragic personally and professionally. Her father and brother were killed when Sill was young, and her tempestuous relationship with her alcoholic (and remarried) mother resulted in her leaving home at 15. She committed robberies and began a battle she was destined to lose against drug addiction. When stardom didn’t follow the critical acclaim of these two albums her career never recovered. Sill was dead from a drug overdose in 1979 at just 35. Judee Sill was working on songs for her third album when she died.
To escape her fractured family, Sill made decisions that would land her in reform school and later, in jail.
After her first marriage, right out of high school, was quickly annulled, Sill sought a way to deflect from her unhappiness. An acquaintance introduced her to a man who was experienced in armed robbery, who brought her along on his excursions to liquor stores and gas stations. By the time she was 20, she had been caught and sent to reform school. Her second marriage, in her early 20s, was to a man she met while attending Los Angeles Valley Junior College. He introduced her to heroin. “I knew I was gonna become a junkie, and I did,” Sill told Rolling Stone. At one point she turned to prostitution to fund their habit.
Through it all, she dabbled in music. In each of the chapters that form her life — from spending time in her father’s bar, where, as a young girl, she “started playin’ piano and found out I could harmonize with myself,” to reform school, where she worked as the church organist, finding early inspiration from gospel music
It was during a stint in jail, having been caught for forgery and narcotics possession, that she started fantasizing about writing her own songs. After she was released, she immersed herself in the practice. Music became the central force in her life, and she found inspiration for her songs in books about religion and the occult. “I could see that I was gonna have to write songs that were about those things,” she told Rolling Stone. “I came to some important inner realizations, tryin’ to make the laws of nature work for me instead of against me. I felt instinctively that it was my duty to throw myself into it all the way, so I did.”
She sold one of her songs, “Lady-O,” to the rock band the Turtles, which released it as a single that made it onto the Billboard pop chart in 1969. She would record the song for her first album, two years later. Her debut album, called simply “Judee Sill.” From the first song, “Crayon Angels,” to the last, “Abracadabra,” her lyrics addressed the metaphysical.
“Jesus Was a Cross Maker,” the only song on the album produced by Graham Nash, was released as a single. (The rest of the album was produced by Henry Lewy.) After a devastating breakup with a fellow songwriter, Sill read Nikos Kazantzakis’s 1952 novel, “The Last Temptation of Christ,” as a salve, which led her to the seeds of the song.
“I was so excited when I was writing’ that song because it was not only the best thing I’d ever written, and I knew it, but it took the weight off my heart and turned it into somethin’ else, and I was able to forgive the guy for the horrible romantic bummer he’d put me on,” she said. “And I gained a new kind of strength from it, from that combination of forgiveness and creation.”
The brevity of Judee’s musical legacy is outweighed by the emotional power and weight of these two extraordinary albums. “Judee Sill” and “Heart Food” were AAA mastered directly from the original analog master tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio. The master tapes are in beautiful shape, and listeners will be blown away by the revelatory inner detail and three-dimensionality retrieved from these achingly gorgeous recordings. These new Intervention reissues represent THE definitive listening experience for these classic LPs! The original LP art has been beautifully restored by IR’s Tom Vadakan and the old-style, “tip-on, brown-in” gatefold jackets are printed by Stoughton.
Warren Zevon, Shawn Colvin and others have covered her songs; the multi-hyphenate Greta Gerwig sang one, “Rugged Road,” in a scene in the 2010 film “Greenberg.” Every decade or so her music is reissued. Intervention Records obtained the rights to her albums in 2017.
In 1974 Judee Sill recorded material for a third album at the studio of Michael Nesmith, best known as a member of the Monkees. Those songs were released in 2005 as “Dreams Come True,” a double CD, by Water Records.
WILD NOTHING – ” Laughing Gas ” EP
Posted: January 23, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Blacksburg, Jack Tatum, Laughing Gas, Virginia, Wild Nothing
Ask Jack Tatum what ‘Wild Nothing’ means and he’ll answer: ‘a contradiction’. In 2010, 21 year old Tatum released one of the finest cult pop records of the summer whilst ensconced in his senior year of college in Blacksburg, VA, a small mid-atlantic town better known for producing football fans and engineers than musicians. Tatum lives in contradictions.
On Laughing Gas, the third EP from Wild Nothing, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jack Tatum delves deeper into the territory where he thrives: namely, the synth and sophisti-pop of the 1980s. Working within a more mechanical and synthetic framework than his previous releases, Wild Nothing continues to delicately toe the line between the organic and the unnatural. These are still pop songs, but there’s an underlying sense of uneasiness that threads the music together.
Recorded in Los Angeles, CA and Richmond, VA with the help of Jorge Elbrecht, these five songs were originally imagined alongside last year’s Indigo and were written and tracked simultaneously with the album. When work on the full-length was nearing completion, Tatum set these ideas aside; they seemed to fit better on their own. In spare moments between tours, Tatum began to look back and piece the songs together at his home studio in Richmond, reconnecting with Elbrecht to mix the EP. With Elbrecht in Denver and Tatum in Richmond, the two went back and forth on the final touches, molding a common thread from the Lô Borges inspired new wave of “Sleight Of Hand” to the propulsive, icy synth funk of “Foyer”.
Often considered a secondary or transitional format, Wild Nothing has always used the EP to further explore new ideas and influences. Laughing Gas is no exception.
Releases January 31st, 2020
MITSKI – ” Cop Car “
Posted: January 23, 2020 in MUSICTags: Dead Oceans Records, Mitski, The Turming
Mitski has shared a new song from the soundtrack to Floria Sigismondi’s horror movie “The Turning”. Her contribution is titled “Cop Car.” Sinister and piercing, with a heavy lilt of Puberty 2 grunge — if you need a “guitar-based but cinematic” song about the unraveling of a woman’s mind, who else are you going to call?
“Cop Car” is Mitski’s first release of new music since her critically acclaimed album, Be The Cowboy, In June 2019, Mitski announced on Twitter that she would be taking a break from touring indefinitely after wrapping up her final scheduled concert date that September.
“Cop Car” is the sixth single released from a stacked soundtrack to the upcoming horror film The Turning, based on the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw. Lawrence Rothman, along with collaborator Yves Rothman, co-produced the soundtrack. Previous releases include singles from Soccer Mommy and Courtney Love, as well as Empress Of and the goth par excellence team-up of Lawrence Rothman and Pale Waves.
The album and movie are out this Friday, January 24th.
Dead Oceans, exclusively licensed to KRO Records
PORCHES – ” Do U Wanna “
Posted: January 23, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Aaron Maine, Domino Record Co., Porches, Ricky Music
Porches–the music-making moniker of Aaron Maine—has announced his next album, “Ricky Music”. The follow-up to 2018’s The House arrives March 13th via Domino Recordings. Porches has shared a new song called “Do U Wanna,” along with an accompanying music video directed by frequent collaborator Nick Harwood. Find the visual, along with a statement from Aaron Maine,
In another statement, Maine said, “‘Do U Wanna’ is a song about looking at yourself and realizing the disparity between how you’d like to act and how you actually act.” He added, “The fun you vs. the isolated you. I feel like with the refrain I’m almost taunting myself to get up and do something.”
Porches – “Do U Wanna”, from ‘Ricky Music’, out 13th March 2020 on Domino Record Co.
WHITE TAIL FALLS – ” Disintegrate “
Posted: January 23, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Age Of Entitlement, Irwin Sparkes, Physical Education Records., The Hoosiers, White Tail Falls
Irwin Sparkes (The Hoosiers) has recently emerged as White Tail Falls, using the moniker to create a truly novel and unique ethereal take on folk. They now release their exquisite new single ‘Disintegrate’.
Produced by Erland Cooper, ‘Disintegrate’ joins luscious string work, sparse percussion, gentle guitar and piano layered into an ambient fusion whilst
“I was thinking about bloodlines and procreation and how we think we’ve got power over it when the decision is ultimately out of our hands. Over-thinking about the family I’m from and the family I hadn’t started and the implications of having kids or not and remembering the love I do have in my life, to go skipping into the apocalypse with. It became a bit of an existential love song.”
‘Disintegrate’ will appear on their inaugural LP ‘Age Of Entitlement’, which is out March 6th via Physical Education Records.
LANTERNS ON THE LAKE – ” Baddies “
Posted: January 23, 2020 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSICTags: Hazel Wilde, Lanterns On the Lake, Newcastle, Spook The Herd
Atmospheric Newcastle based indie rock band Lanterns On The Lake already had everyone eagerly awaiting fourth album ‘Spook the Herd’ with beautifully stark song ‘Every Atom’. Now that first taste is followed by powerful second single ‘Baddies’ which unveils frontwoman Hazel Wilde’s frustration with the domination of the rich and powerful, maintaining their control stoking up prejudice.
“Baddies is a song about the rising tide of anger and hate in the world that seems to have been unleashed over the last few years, with those in positions of power and influence actively encouraging it for their own ends, and the polarisation of society as a result. It is about the need for the individual, the underdog, to stand up to it, but the fact that in doing so we become part of it. We become someone else’s baddie.”
Baddies is the new single taken from our upcoming album ‘Spook The Herd’ out on 21st February 2020
