Third Man Records is excited to announce Maggot Brain, a new, full-color quarterly edited by noted Detroit music scribe Mike McGonigal. Inside the Premiere Issue – Dec/Jan/Feb 2020.
Alice Coltrane, Swell Maps, Malls Across America, Mia Zapata, Dilla’s ‘Donuts’, Luc Sante, Vibrant Detroit Sign Painting, Mayakovsky, Index, Big Joanie, How To Resist Ice, Daniel Johnston, Les Filles Des Illeghidad, Swampfest, The KLF’s Greatest Pranks + More!
Catalogue number: MAGGOT001
In which indie rock’s king of sleaze drops the character of his two previous albums and makes an album devoted to his new girlfriend, delivering warped tales of love, ass-eating, and debauchery in Miami. It feels like the response to Miami Memory was muted, and that’s understandable: People are cynical toward other people’s new loves. But here Cameron takes great strides with his songwriting, delivering his best album yet.
This year Australia’s Alex Cameron shared a new song, “Miami Memory,” via a video for the track. The video stars actress Jemima Kirke (Girls) and sax player Roy Molloy. The song is his first new music since his 2017 album Forced Witness. Kirke is Cameron’s real life romantic partner and he has dedicated the song to her. Perhaps the explicit lyrics are about their sex life? “Eating your ass like an oyster/The way you came like a tsunami,” sings Cameron at one point. Earlier in the song he sings: “Making love in your momma’s bed/Making love on the floor/Making love in the hotel room/We forgot to shut the door.” If it is about Kirke, let’s hope her mom doesn’t hear it!
Cameron had this to say about the song in a press release: “‘Miami Memory’ is a story about how we audition in the present for our future selves to enjoy in retrospect. In that way, tender memories that we share together are captured in thought and stored with the same electricity that keeps our heart beating. It’s a gift for my girlfriend Jemima, and it is dedicated to the artist Greer Lankton and her partner Paul Monroe. I am lucky to have learned that a group of people can be a shining light.”
Alex Cameron new single titled “Miami Memory,” a steamy bit of baroque pop that explores Cameron’s relationship with the city of Miami and his girlfriend Jemima Kirke. It comes with a vibrant, lustful new video directed by Cameron himself that also stars Kirke and Cameron’s sax player Roy Molloy.
Alex Cameron new single titled “Miami Memory,” a steamy bit of baroque pop that explores Cameron’s relationship with the city of Miami and his girlfriend Jemima Kirke. It comes with a vibrant, lustful new video directed by Cameron himself that also stars Kirke and Cameron’s sax player Roy Molloy.
‘Miami Memory’ by Alex Cameron, out now on Secretly Canadian Records.
Within each of their records, the Australian duo creates a universe of its own. It has always been hard to pinpoint a word that describes the sound of Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang without losing their mysterious charm. Their fourth album “Venus in Leo” was inspired by the Melbourne indie scene and shows the duo in a better state of mind than 2014’s Psychic 9-5 Club, which was heavily marked by the suicide of original band member Sean Stewart. On Venus in Leo, HTRK approach the topics of our digitalized society. The lyrics focus on longing, intimacy and failed love within the age of social media. Similar to its predecessor, the interplay between Standish’s unique vocals and Yang’s guitar play is unlike any other electronic/ indie duo.
There’s a certain level of intimacy and warmth delivered in both lyrics and melody, that will draw the listener into the world of this album immediately. The duo discovers its underground rock past on the nine tracks of the album, delicately mixing electronic productions with post-punk references.
Even though you can sense a certain degree of romantic denial and shattered hopes, there’s a bit of hope peeping out of the overall melancholic atmosphere that lies within the tracks. In a wonderful and decelerated manner, Venus In Leo explores the abysses of desire, obsession and intimacy.
Undoubtedly the highlight on the “Tiny Changes” Frightened Rabbit tribute album—a record that was almost finished before lead singer Scott Hutchison’s tragic death and one that took on a completely different meaning by the time of its release about a year later—Julien Baker slows down the Midnight Organ Fight album opener, turning the upbeat rock song into something much more her own.
Beginning with the guitar atmospherics that dot the entirety of her own material, it proceeds to build to a huge crescendo, only to completely lose almost all the instrumentals for the final chorus. Where the original’s finale seems hopeful that maybe, just maybe, Hutchison’s ex will give him one more chance (“You should sit with me and we’ll start again / And you can tell me all about what you did today”),
Baker’s version knows the answer and you can hear it in her voice, distant and longing.
Every once in a while a new recording comes along with a line-up that makes your spine tingle, and here it is; “Attitude” by Lonerider. Not only does this quintet feature Steve Overland (FM, Solo, Shadowman), Steve Morris (Heartland, Shadowman) and Chris Childs (Thunder) but legendary drummer Simon Kirke of Free and Bad Company fame. With Brain J Anthony finishing the line-up we have a real force to be reckoned with. What are we to expect from this group of musicians? If you like Bad Company then this is going to be a treat for you. We have the feel of that classic Bad Company that we know and love, yet the songs are modern, fresh and vibrant. Simon has a drumming style that is unmistakeable and this shines through on all of the tracks (and an extra four on the LP version!).
Some old friends with a new band, Lonerider brings together FM vocalist Steve Overland, Heartland guitarist Steve Morris and Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke. The result, very much as you’d expect, sounds like a hybrid of FM and Bad Co, but a few cracking choruses really hit the mark, despite a predictable mood. Melodic rock and AOR has always remained an important backbone of Real Gone and this album was streets ahead of the competition
Lonerider with “Fast Train”.
The Band is: Steve Overland: All vocals (FM / Shadowman / Solo artist) Simon Kirke: Drums (Free / Bad Company) Steve Morris: All Guitars and keyboards (Ian Gillan / Heartland) Chris Childs: Bass (Thunder / Tyketto) Brian J Anthony: Acoustic Guitars, mandolin and percussions (Steve Walsh / Overland)
Next up in the Grapefruit psychedelia collection and due for release January 31st is ‘A Slight Disturbance In My Mind – The British Proto-Psychedelic Sounds of 1966’!
This 3CD collection features 84 tracks examining the ‘experimental pop’ element of the British music scene during that epochal year with a dazzling mix of nascent psychedelia, introspective pop & freakbeat!
Housed in a clamshell box containing a 52-page booklet crammed with biographical information and priceless period photos and memorabilia.
While the likes of “Rubber Soul”, ‘See My Friends’ and ‘Still I’m Sad’ had served notice in 1965 of British pop’s heightened level of ambition, 1966 would prove to be an even more tumultuous twelve-month period as experimentation and innovation grew to new levels.
• The release that August of “Revolver” – whose cataclysmic closing track ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ landed amongst the record-buying public like an impenetrable missile from outer space – brought the concept of psychedelic music out of the margins and into the mainstream.
• However, psychedelia – condemned by national newspaper The Sun as “the new and dangerous sound in pop music” – had been percolating throughout the year. The word was already in subterranean use in America, adapted by the likes of The 13th Floor Elevators and Hollywood hustler Kim Fowley, who in late 1965 had become the first person to promote a record with the term “psychedelic”.
• Arriving in London in March 1966, Fowley became a proselytising influence for the new sound, instructing bemused young British bands to “act psychedelically”. His sojourn coincided with the relocation of Californian band The Misunderstood, whose incendiary sound and stage act was a major influence on a new generation of British acts.
• Meanwhile, serial pioneers The Yardbirds were making increasingly audacious music, their new manager Simon Napier-Bell instructed the young John’s Children to become “the first psychedelic group”, while mod band The Creation developed an intriguing pop-art approach.
• Featuring 84 tracks, A Slight Disturbance In My Mind: The British Proto-Psychedelic Sounds Of 1966 examines the “experimental pop” element of the British music scene during that epochal twelve-month period with a dizzying, dazzling mix of nascent psychedelia, introspective pop and what’s been retrospectively labelled freakbeat.
• We feature vital contributions from some of the era’s biggest names (The Kinks, The Yardbirds, The Hollies, The Animals etc), a bunch of highly collectable cult classics, a huge stash of unissued-at-the-time nuggets and early outings for such future legends as Bowie, Bolan, Slade and The Bee Gees.
• Housed in a clamshell box containing a 52-page booklet crammed with biographical information and priceless period photos and memorabilia, A Slight Disturbance In My Mind is a glorious snapshot of British pop storming the gates of a new, strange and wonderful dawn.
DIIV have described their third album Deceiver as a “soundtrack to personal resurrection under the heavy weight of metallic catharsis.” And when listening to the album, there’s no doubt the pieces match the completed image. The band combines a standing appreciation for shoegaze and slowcore into a fully realized statement that twists and turns throughout every compelling movement.
Things have to get worse before they can get better” seems to be DIIV’s M.O. for the band’s third album (and first since 2016’s Is The Is Are), “Deceiver”. And the pre-release track “Skin Game” is an excellent first taste before the album’s October. 4th release via Captured Tracks Records, mixing weighty guitar riffs and a hook of slick vocals for a cathartic peek at personal pain.
There are many sonic homages to key influences throughout the record, whether it be the lulling stripped-back slowcore gaze of “Lorelei,” a strutting Sonic Youth inspired guitar in “Skin Game” and “Blankenship,” or the unleashing of distortion and sound throughout the record. There’s no doubt as to why the band recruited My Bloody Valentine and M83 engineer Sonny DiPerri to capture these epic movements of flight throughout Deceiver, which arguably showcases DIIV in their loudest, most inspired, and contemplative form. The band gives itself ample time to explore the full scope of every idea, all while balancing uncanny internal and external dread. “Stand down/ There’s oil in my name/ My tongue flickers like a wilting flame/ Lay it all out/ The path of wreckage that I cut/ All in want of what?”
Lyrically, Zachary Cole Smith weaves this resurrection and catharsis through incredibly poetic moments, capturing an aching sadness that runs concurrently with themes of loss and recovery. Those familiar with his personal story already know he has weathered his fair share of storms. Deceiver is a portrait of a protagonist looking back at the path through this trauma, now with the privilege of time and space to pick apart what it all meant, what it was for, and what it means now that the world’s on fire.
“Skin Game” is the first single from DIIV’s new album Deceiver, out October 4th, 2019.
The Mike Kinsella-led group’s third full-length album “American Football” (LP3) is a beautiful return to form, brimming with the band’s signature sonic elements while also shedding and reinventing so many aspects of their sound. It’s a wonderful step forward for them creatively.
By rights we should hate this album. It’s an incessant moan, flips the math-rock-lite thing which gotten boring last decade and is stuffed to the brim with whiny Yank vocals. But the songs are undeniable good. And it doesn’t stick around long enough for you to get pissed off yourself.
LP3’s most defining quality is how expansive it feels. On the sweeping seven-minute opener “Silhouettes,” gentle bells and chimes greet lush dueling guitars and pulsating drums as Kinsella’s voice floats into the track’s misty corners. Whispery reverb draws out each note as he ponders the “muscle memory” of love, and whether or not romantic strife is just the result of simply going through motions.
The swelling ballad “Every Wave To Ever Rise” is pensive and cavernous, contemplating love’s inevitable heartbreak over wandering guitars and longing atmospheres. “Love is the cross you bear/ You’re every wave to ever rise/ Your slow retreat is no surprise,” Kinsella croons poetically, full of bittersweet acceptance over love’s ebb-and-flow. Buoyed by a trifecta of stunning features from guest vocalists Hayley Williams, Rachel Goswell and Elizabeth Powell, American Football (LP3) is 2019’s most endearing journey of melancholy, and another high point in the Midwestern band’s dazzling career.
Not long after Polyvinyl Records released American Football’s self-titled debut album in 1999, the band called it quits, having only played a smattering of Champaign-Urbana college house parties and sets at small clubs like Chicago’s legendary Fireside Bowl. Such an inauspicious turn of events made what followed all the more incredible. Over time, the record went on to become one of Polyvinyl’s bestselling releases to date, and ended up serving as “one of the single most influential rock records of its time” according to Noisey and many others.
Album #2 from Melbourne surf, soul, garage punk rock band Money For Rope is called “Picture Us” and was recorded, produced, mixed and mastered by the band themselves in a house by the sea in Victoria, Australia over the summer of 2016. Spawned from the same fertile Melbourne music scene which has fostered not only Courtney Barnett, but also other friends including King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard, The Goon Sax and Rolling Coastal Blackouts Fever, Money For Rope released ‘Picture Us’ off the back of a dogged touring habit which has kept them on the road near constantly for the last four years.
The psych-tinged garage rock of Money For Rope is right up my alley and not only because the opening track of Picture Us sounds like the younger sibling of The Doors’ epic ‘The End’.
Hold’ might not be the song I would have chosen to open the LP because it feels more like a noisily melancholic show-closing track, however the ‘Actually’ seems the perfect single to set the tone for the following journey. ‘Have you ever slept this close to a killer?’ lead singer Jules McKenzie snarls with a mean grin before the untamed guitars crash down. It conveys the band’s signature wild and careless attitude towards songwriting (and their listener’s eardrums). This track, “Actually”, was the first track written for this record. We started it staying in a small Air BnB flat in Berlin owned by someone who worked for a music products company; there was an upright piano in a beautiful first floor apartment in an old building. We could spend our evenings in the middle of a hot summer heat wave playing battery amps and piano with the windows wide open listening to the sounds of Kruezberg below. We would wander around the city late at night, wondering how we became fortunate enough to be here, when the secret to ourselves was, just that we had always wanted to.”
‘Earl Grey’ is built on the mellower side of the river, while ‘Stretched my Neck’ beats down with more heavy guitar riffs.‘Trashtown ironically light mood and groovy riff reminds like something born by the Californian Coast line mid-sixties.
The fuzzy haze that draws itself through Picture Us should come as no surprise considering the band’s base in seaside town, Melbourne. While the instrumentation is beautifully noisy and untamed, the vocals form the epicenter of the compositions. Punchy lyrics and punky snarls remind of The Talking Head’s David Bryne and we all know they go just too well with groovy instrumentation.
The closing track might come as a surprise to many. Only voice and guitar it almost sounds like an intimate campfire setting with friends. Somewhere strolling along the beach that connects the present with the past are where Money For Rope’s winds blow from.
“Picture Us” is set to be released March 2019 on German label Haldern Pop Recordings and Australian label Cheersquad Records & Tapes, with distribution in the UK by Forte & in the US by Cobraside.
Elizabeth’s debut solo album, “The Wonderful World Of Nature”, is everything. It. Is. Everything. She sings of desire, infatuation, and heartache with unnerving honesty and openness. The language Elizabeth uses is straight-forward and unembellished, and it’s exactly this which makes her songs so poetic and affecting.
The first time I heard Elizabeth sing “I want you in every way. You don’t treat me nicely and I’m scared I’m gonna stay,” on “I Want You,” I doubled over, both physically and emotionally. In 2018, the frontwoman of Australian rock outlet Totally Mild released Her, an album that brilliantly unpacks the bittersweet, socially convoluted journey of domesticity and the lack of a blueprint for it within the context of queerness.
Her debut solo album, The Wonderful World of Nature, is its crushingly honest divorce counterpart. In a world that’s lacking many queer divorce albums at all, to hear one as honest and mind-bogglingly raw as this is a transformative treasure everyone should experience.
The Wonderful World Of Nature plays like a 11-stage gauntlet of post-breakup emotional grief; the path to moving on isn’t a straight line and might never end. Song-to-song, and often verse to verse, the winding line of grief makes its presence felt. “If not with you, then with who?” Elizabeth nearly howls on “Beautiful Baby,” the gently rocking first track, which gives way to “Parties,” a song about how distracting yourself with partying leads you to wondering if your ex is out doing the same, which, in turn, makes you miss them more. “Death Toll” is a slow march about the ways a break-up can leave you devastated, but also finds Elizabeth lamenting, “I will never be the same happy” after saying “It’s over baby, there’s nothing more to say.” The next track, “I Want You,” has Elizabeth softly singing over a piano, “You don’t treat me nicely, and I’m scared I’m gonna stay,” capturing layers of self-loathing, lust, and regret in a single line. The Wonderful World isn’t a bible for how to get over a breakup, but it feels more honest than breakup albums usually are; it’s never just a “fuck you” and it’s never just an “I wish we were still together.” When two people collide, they break up in unpredictable, awful, restorative ways.
The Wonderful World of Nature released Universal Music Australia
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