UK band Penelope Isles released their terrific debut album, “Until the Tide Creeps In”, back in July. Led by siblings Jack and Lily Wolter, they make jazzy, shoegazy indie rock that is at times complex but feels effortless, aided by lush harmonies and swelling arrangements.
The band have now made a video for “Round,” which was directed by Jack (who wrote the song, too) and features a tour through Penelope Isles’ hometown of Brighton via a blobby alien. “‘Round’ was the first song I wrote when I moved to Brighton a few years ago,” says Jack. “I wrote it on a Danelectro 12-string, which I had to sell to pay the rent. We played the song constantly when we first started gigging and ended up leaving it out of the set for a while. We revisited it, as it felt weird to not include it on this record. We made the video in Brighton on one of the hottest days of the year. It consists of footage of Lily, dressed in a large round blow-up suit that pulsates with bright psychedelic colors and floating images of the band. We had a laugh making this one!”
Penelope Isles will soon be on their first-ever North American tour.
The band also have their own web series, Penny Isles TV, that features life on tour, and other behind-the-scenes fun.
Iconic alternative rock band R.E.M. has shared a previously unreleased song, “Fascinating,” an unreleased song from R.E.M. out with all proceeds going benefit global organization Mercy Corps’ Hurricane Dorian relief and recovery efforts in the Bahamas. Band members Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe recorded “Fascinating” in 2004 at Nassau’s Compass Point Studios
“Fascinating” was originally recorded for the 2001 album “Reveal”, but “it made the record too long… and something had to go,” Mike Mills says. This 2004 version — an ornate ballad with twinkly electronics, an oboe and flute arrangement and a psychedelic climax — was made at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas.
In fact, was singer Michael Stipe’s favorite song from the Reveal sessions (according to guitarist Peter Buck’s recollection, as chronicled in David Buckley’s R.E.M. biography, Fiction). The song was produced by Pat McCarthy and engineered by Jamie Candiloro. “It’s really beautiful,” bassist/keyboardist Mike Mills told Buckley. “It has a flute, oboe arrangement, but it made the record too long… and something had to go.” R.E.M. rerecorded the track in Nassau for 2004’s Around the Sun, but the lush ballad ultimately didn’t jibe with that spare, atmospheric album. Now this poignant outtake finally finds its fitting moment, as a means to aid the country where R.E.M. enjoyed over two months of creative retreat.
“We first became aware of Mercy Corps around the time of Hurricane Katrina, and we supported their efforts to help in that situation,” says Mills . “I spend a lot of time every year in the Abaco Islands, which was literally ground zero for this disaster. I know a lot of people who lost everything — their homes, their businesses, literally everything they own is gone.”
“I have been fortunate to spend many weeks working and playing in the Bahamas, making friends and lots of music there,” Mills continues. “It breaks my heart to see the damage wrought by Hurricane Dorian. Please help us and Mercy Corps do what we can to alleviate the suffering caused by this catastrophe.”
Rainbow Kitten Surprise and all five of its members hail from the mountains of Boone, North Carolina. With chilling harmonies, dynamic instrumentation, and introspective lyrics, their genre-defying sound takes influence from artists like Modest Mouse and Kings of Leon as much as Frank Ocean and Schoolboy Q. Independently, they have over 75 million streams across digital platforms, and notched over 45 sold out shows on their first U.S. headline tour. Their engaging and distinct live performances have led to stand out sets at festivals such as Bonnaroo, Firefly, Shaky Knees, Hangout, Sasquatch, and Austin City Limits among others. The band worked with GRAMMY award-winning producer Jay Joyce (Cage The Elephant, Sleeper Agent) on their Elektra debut, How to: Friend, Love, Freefall, available everywhere now.
Available now are two old songs we hold near and dear to us. You may have heard us play many different versions of Heart and No Vacancy through the years at our live shows. Written before many of the songs you now know by RKS, these tracks never made it on our original EPs “Mary” or “Seven” for various reasons, but today is the day. May we present: Mary (B-Sides).
Band Members:
Sam Melo – Lead Vocals
Ethan Goodpaster – Lead Guitar and Backing Vocals
Darrick “Bozzy” Keller – Rhythm Guitar and Backing Vocals
Charlie Holt – Bass and Backing Vocals
Jess Haney – Drums
A new album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is coming soon, really soon. Entitled “Ghosteen, it’s due out next week. Cave announced the release on his website The Red Hand Files, where he answers fan-submitted questions. In response to a fan who asked about a timetable for the band’s next album, Cave responded, “You can expect a new album next week.”
He went on to reveal that Ghosteen will be a double album consisting of 10 songs. Part one comprises eight songs about “children”. The second part is about “their parents” and consists of “two long songs linked by a spoken word piece.” “Ghosteen is a migrating spirit,” Cave added. The Bad Seeds have been hard at work on the follow-up to their acclaimed 2016 album ‘Skeleton Tree’ for some time now. During an event in Melbourne earlier this year, the frontman gave fans an update on their progress, saying he was “very, very excited about it” and that the band would soon be wrapping up the record.
In 2015, Cave’s 15-year-old son, Arthur, died after falling from a cliff in Brighton, UK. The band’s ensuing album, 2016’s Skeleton Tree, was heavily inspired by Arthur’s death, and it appears the same can be said about Ghosteen.
Cave’s wife, Susie Bick, previously said her husband’s new album were “his Fever Songs.” She explained that the songs stemmed from “an autumn flu” which produced “lucid fever dreams.”For the last year, The Bad Seeds‘ frontman has shunned conventional media interviews and focussed instead on answering questions from fans via his website The Red Hand Files. Responding to all manner of matters concerning the death of his son Arthur, inspiration, morality in rock, the “cultural sea change” facing women and his stance on the cultural boycott against Israel, Cave has been disarmingly open and honest with fans and their questions.
Nick Cave – vocals, piano, synthesizer, backing vocal
The Talkies is Girl Band’s follow-up album to their ground breaking 2015 debut “Holding Hands with Jamie”. The Talkies is living, breathing, in a continual state of metamorphosis. It encompasses everything there is to love about Girl Band while simultaneously causing an exciting level of discomfort. The moaning and sawing guitars, atonal blankets of sound, abstractive lyrical repetition, chugging snare and ascending / descending snakes and ladders noise-rock guitar deliver something that is so distinctively Girl Band. The album opens to unsteady breathing. Slow at first, unwanted and out of time. Breathing shallows and discomfort deepens over the sustained heartbeat of a soon to be familiar A chord. This is Dara’s breath, this is his panic, a momentary, one-off lapse of control recorded and transmuted into a rhythmic, off-beat moment of disquiet to unlock Girl Band’s crucial yet quietly anticipated second album: The Talkies.
Following arguably the sweetest vocal melody lead singer Dara Kiely has ever sung on record, his voice momentarily offers an ominous hint before sharply metamorphosing into a feral and incomprehensible bark at the climax of “Laggard”. His distressed calls of “What a total cod” are the brutal culmination of a track that feverishly toys with volume, and turbulently snakes through wailing, siren-like guitars; piercing rimshot rhythms; and furious blasts of percussion and bass.
The impact of these sudden sonic shifts are greatly enhanced by Girl Band’s emphasis on groove, atmosphere and patience on The Talkies. It allows the four-piece to consistently beguile and wrong-foot their audience. Consequently, it makes The Talkies a rather disconcerting listen, as one never truly knows what to expect next from the four-piece. “Salmon of Knowledge”, for example, swells with noise and pained screams before reverting back to a soft groove. Lead single, “Shoulderblades” contorts itself through varying passages of tumultuous noise, as Kiely’s barbed howls are later framed by disquieting demands for silence.
Whilst several tracks tease the listener and build tension without ever truly releasing the pressure valve, others viciously combust. “Prefab Castle” gently builds with a glitched riff before fracturing itself into multiple nightmarish motifs. Technically reminiscent of a cinematic fast-cut, these motifs rapidly cycle and then reconstitute themselves into a devastating techno—inspired groove. Similarly, “Going Norway”, spontaneously accelerates with a vocal melody akin to “Pears For Lunch” from Girl Band’s debut, Holding Hands with Jamie.The humorous “Couch Combover” also finds Kiely manically erupting, declaring that a figure “Gave birth to a fax machine” amongst chaotic guitars.
The production greatly adds to the atmosphere conjured on the The Talkies. Inspired by Beastie Boys’ “Paul Revere” and the backwards dialogue of Twin Peaks’ infamous red-room sequences, “Aibohphobia” constructs a dense soundscape of palindromes and reversed instrumentation, which later obliterates itself with coarse rumbling bass.
Furthermore, the splicing of multiple recordings from the different rooms of Ballintubbert House, where Girl Band recorded the majority of their second record, thrusts the listener within the heart of the stately home. The sonics allow the listener to metaphorically voyage through its corridors, while the band perform the record as if they were performance artists within an exhibition. Instruments and vocals organically move from striking intimacy to distant and ambient, creating a unique world for the listener to explore.
For example, the excellent “Caveat” initially finds Kiely’s vocals up-close and clear. There is an intense sense of intimacy and one can imagine standing directly in front of Kiely and feeling his breath as he drawls, “Scale electric/Vampyroteuthis”. As we then explore the bowels of Ballintubbert House, Kiely’s vocals become distant and almost lost within the mix. His screams repurpose themselves as haunting reverberations through the corridors of the stately home, as we reposition ourselves to witness drummer Adam Faulkner furiously striking hi-hats to piercing effect.
There is a juxtaposition to be found within The Talkies, which makes it a fascinating listen. Thematically and sonically, the Irish quartet’s second record is a coherent record, but it is also persistently engulfed by the psychopathology and sequelae of psychosis – a state where one can (dependent on the severity of the psychosis) present as entirely incoherent.
With pronouns purposefully avoided, Kiely placed emphasis on the weight of words and sounds, when assembling the lyrics for the twelve tracks found on The Talkies. This device warps words to the point of unfamiliarity and language to the point of abstraction. Yet, whether intentional or not, Kiely’s lyrics mirror the psychiatric phenomenon of formal thought disorder. The words when visualised resemble word salad and over the course of the record there is evidence of neologisms (“guilloti-eenager” in “Laggard”); clang associations (“Mechanical Boil, Ball, Boil, Bull, Ball” in “Going Norway”); and perseveration of language (the repeated “Y in the Byrds” found in “Salmon of Knowledge”).
Additionally, the drum-rolls and abrasive screams of “Amygdala” feel apt for a track named after the area of the brain key in the processing of emotion (in particular, fear). Likewise, “Akineton” is the trade-name of Biperiden, a medication used to treat a side-effect commonly associated with anti-psychotics – akathisia (the subjective feeling of inner restlessness). Its racing guitars and fidgeting electronics mimic that restlessness. These shorter tracks therefore are not just filler and augment the possible narrative woven throughout the record.
The Talkies is a devastating and jaw-dropping record that provokes awe and anxiety in equal measure. Although there are elements throughout the record that are ‘quintessentially’ Girl Band, The Talkies builds upon these elements and makes a vast leap sonically and narratively with the aid of unrestrained experimentation. There is a definitive artistic expression found on The Talkies and frankly it should be a late contender for any albums of the decade list.
*blue vinyl available the Rough Trade Records webstore and indie retailers. Numbered and signed postcards, documenting our time recording the album, come free with pre-orders exclusively from the Rough Trade Records webstore
Los Angeles punk outfit Starcrawler’s remarkable sophomore album “Devour You” is a record that dynamically captures the essence and aggression of their gloriously unhinged live shows. Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, L7) at Sunset Studios, Devour You takes the feral intensity of their 2018 self-titled debut and twists it into something grander and more gracefully composed.
‘Bet My Brains’ is the lead single from Starcrawler’s forthcoming album Devour You, released on Oct 11th on Rough Trade Records. Blood, sweat and bruises, indeed—when Starcrawler first stepped out of Echo Park obscurity in 2017, the band quickly gained notoriety for their batshit and dynamic stage presence, which often involved frontwoman Arrow de Wilde spitting blood and snot-rocketing into the audience.
The band’s bizarro magnetism is carried over to the album’s newly debuted first single “Bet My Brains,” an anthemic cut with scuzzy, stadium-rock guitars, deadpan vocals and a riff reminiscent of a college football fight song.
“That song came from thinking about the tunnel people in New York and Vegas and the Catacombs in France, and the underground village of people who live in the sewers of the L.A. River,” frontwoman de Wilde said in a statement. “I was fascinated with the fact that there is a whole other world happening right under our feet.”
With its more elaborate and nuanced yet harder-hitting sonic palette, the result is a selection of songs radiating both raw sensitivity and untamable power, and a record that the band’s Arrow de Wilde says, “encapsulates all the blood, sweat, bruised knees, and broken fingers of a Starcrawler show.”
Release Date: 11th October 2019
‘She Gets Around’ is the latest single from Starcrawler, out now on Rough Trade Records.
Freya Josephine Hollick has just dropped “Nobody’s No Better Than No One”, the first taste from her upcoming 2020 album The Real World. The track features Hollick confidently swaggering her way through a bluesy, country-rock piece of art that feels like it could have been ripped from the 70s or 80s. Freya Josephine Hollick’s is absolutely on point and her ability to leave space for the driving melody is inspired. Great stuff.
Shot in Ballarat, Australia The latest clip from Freya Josephine Hollick for her new single Nobody’s No Better Than No One is a menacing testament to female strength. Directed and filmed by Gareth Harrison, the clip is Hollick at her most raw and honest yet. Shot in the freezing cold, she huffs out breaths from the shadows, alone. “We just wanted to make something dark, that wouldn’t distract from the message of the song. And man, I was mad as hell when I wrote that song, and I think the clip is mad as hell”
Twin Peaks blend 60’s garage rock swagger with something of the skater slacker cool added to it. Their live performances reveal the band’s staggering amounts of energy. The rock band from Chicago, Illinois, is comprised of guitarists and vocalists Clay Frankel and Caiden Lake James, drummer Connor Brodner, backing vocalist Colin Croom on keys and Jack Dolan providing vocals and bass.
The band formed whilst all the members were still in high school during 2009. They recorded their debut album in James; basement during 2012. The stunning scuzzy album thriller named Sunken was released the following year through the independent label Autumn Tone Records. their fourth album, Lookout Low, Twin Peaks sound like they’re having a ball. The Chicago quintet formed in the early 2010’s as a precocious group of teenage garage-rock disciples, and their first few records fit snugly alongside the San Francisco garage revival of the time.
Their second album Wild Onion was released in 2014. Recorded in their hometown of Chicago, the album features the song Making Breakfast which has had well over 300,000 hits on YouTube.
Their new album Down In Heaven is out now. Wowing audiences around the world, this band certainly has a bright future ahead of it. Recorded in Massachusetts, the record contains the singles Walk To The One You Love, Butterfly and Holding Roses.
The Chicago-based indie-rock outfit Twin Peaks have unveiled the details of their newest studio effort Lookout Low. Described as their most deliberate and seamless record yet, the follow-up to 2016’s Down In Heaven was pieced together with the intent of capturing the raucous energy of the band’s live shows. Prolific alternative producer Ethan Johns helmed the project to help refine and solidify the band’s live recordings. The announcement arrived with the album’s first cut, and the band’s first track since wrapping their Sweet ‘17 Singles series in 2018: a lounge-lizardy groove set ablaze by heavy bass, swelling horns and warm organ tones titled “Dance Through It.” “Writing and arranging ‘Dance Through It’ felt like a dive into and embrace of experimenting with a new palette for us,” guitarist Cadien Lake James said in a statement. “After having been directly involved in the creation and direction of all of our videos, it felt fitting to allow this song the breath of collaboration in having Ariel Fisher take the helm and run with it.”
Standouts like the breezy “Better Than Stoned” and the funky “Dance Through It” lock into grooves that gradually crescendo into hearty group choruses, surrounded by plunky keyboard solos and warm trumpet gusts, respectively. “Ferry Song” recalls the uplifting tempo and sweet melody of Hall and Oates’ “Rich Girl,” and co-vocalist Colin Croom pays obvious homage to The Band in the folk-rockin’ “Laid In Gold.” But Twin Peaks sound the most comfortable and the most themselves on the album’s title track, a bombastic sing-along that’s speckled with Clay Frankel’s charming “oh’s” and “ow’s” during the song’s generous climax.
This latest iteration of the band sounds virtually unrecognizable from their early work, and that may be a turn-off for longtime fans. But Twin Peaks have never sounded as joyfully in the moment as they do on Lookout Low, and hearing them let it rip in real-time almost makes you feel like you’re up there with them.
“Acts like Twin Peaks are a revelation … an outfit in it for all the right reasons. ” – NME
“A delight … A prime contender for mainstream success. ” – The Independent
“Twin Peaks are masters of their craft. ” – DIY
“… their best LP to date. ” – The 405
“ Twin Peaks have become not just one of the most exciting young bands in the Chicago music scene, but in the entire rock landscape. ” – The Line of Best Fit
Enamored with both shoegazers of the ’90s and new wave revivalists from the ’00s, Crescendo are perhaps best described as a cross between Lush and The Strokes. Their second album, 2016’s Unless, is shimmery and upbeat, yet it’s also somewhat soporific, driven by the subtle push-pull of jabbing guitars and chiming riffs atop a bed of insistent, electronic drums, galactic keyboards and understated male/female vocals. “Being labeled ‘dreamgaze’ has been consistent,” frontman Gregory Cole told the music blog When the Sun Hits. “However, based on the beats per minute in our songs, including the drum parts, we certainly make it a goal to inspire listeners to dance and disappear from reality via space travel.” While Crescendo continue to generate a buzz in the indie community, members Olive Kimoto and Jess Rojas split their time between the group and their electronic-based project Unbloom.
Crescendo’s music grows with intensity: the sounds swell, the emphasis moves to the heart, and then resonates throughout the rest of the body. It feels unstoppable, endless. Crescendo is a young quintet from Los Angeles: their sound is bright, clear shoegaze. To be more precise—it’s the most dreamy and ethereal of this genre. The most striking thing about the band’s second work, “Unless,” is the seamless collide of heavenly melodies and tight rhythm: an urgency that pervades every song on the album. The guitars are crisp, the drums are pushed to the max, the synths are engulfed in layers, and the voices of Gregory Cole and Olive Kimoto explode in some distant galaxy. The quintet declares bands like the Radio Dept. and Smiths as their inspirations, but it’s easy to find affinities with bands like DIIV, Craft Spells, and Wild Nothing as well. Definitely the feature that most distinguishes Crescendo is their brightness, an idea of music that travels beyond light, fast and relaxed, while explosions and flashes rumble and shudder all around it. The center of this album can be found in the title: “Unless”—a word which sums up the band’s attitude about this project: “Unless is the word you use to start the conversations that change obstacles or impossible feats, and that word connects sci-fi space romance and our music together.”
The newly released “Cigarette Hills” is a rousing success from San Diego act The Strawberry Moons. An initial arsenal of playful organs and escalating vocals becomes accompanied by sweltering guitars past the one-minute mark. The organ/guitar interplay thereafter is engaging alongside the vocal presence, which impresses with the “soul” enunciation leading into the thunderous guitars at the two-minute mark. “Cigarette Hills” is a great introduction to The Strawberry Moons, whose debut full-length album (produced and engineered by Ben Moore) is out on September 24th
Aimee Jacobs, Will A Lerner, John Falk, Jason Areford, Dustin Schemensky. Things change, John has left and now there is Hector. Elements of indie pop, psychedelic and ’60s rock with an emphasis on strong melodies, strong words, strong coffee, and guy-girl vocals.
