Marti West sent us his latest song and we were instantly struck by how powerful and close to our own life stories it was. We’re incredibly grateful for the awesome people that joined us, such kind, giving, energetic souls that just went for all our ideas and provided their own amazing creativity. Enjoy ‘Give Me Light’!
Marti West is often on the move. Born in Massa Marittima, near Siena in Tuscany, the Italian-English songwriter spent his early years living in Italy where he was first exposed to music through local opera performances in the town piazza. Musical masterpieces by Verdi, Donizetti and Puccini were often heard through an open window and instilled a love of melody and storytelling at a young age.
Since then, he has lived in London, Oxford and Bristol studying music and always releasing songs along the way, before finding his current home in Gothenburg, Sweden. The sparse northern landscapes and minimalist aesthetic of the Scandinavian lifestyle have affected his work, and his mini-album “VIII” to shows a more textured nuance to the writing.
His latest single “Give Me Light” continues this artistic trajectory, placing ethereal vocals in an atmospheric setting drawing comparisons to Elliott Smith, Dustin Tebbutt and Bon Iver.
A few months ago I visited my good friend James at his sister Emma’s new house. They had recently bought this incredible house and had only done work to about half of it, the rest being stuck in this beautiful state of ‘faded grandeur’ as they called it. The week before the visit I had written ‘Footsteps’ about missing someone for both the right and wrong reasons, about the anxiety of being separated from someone you care about and all the crazy things your mind will have you believe if you let it. The song’s foundation is in a particular evening, when I was home alone waiting for my wife to come back from somewhere. When I saw Emma’s house I instantly knew that the portions that hadn’t been renovated were the perfect visual representation of the song, as if they were emotional soul mates. So I asked James if we could shoot a video there. Emma and family very kindly let us use the house and James, my other friend Robin and myself returned a few weeks later to shoot the video. I really hope you like it as much as we do.
S. T.
S.T. Manville grew up playing in punk bands. After tiring of the non stop DIY touring he went on to write both platinum and gold selling records, working with artists such as Mø, Biffy Clyro, Digital Farm Animals, Little Mix and Becky Hill. Records he has worked on have been streamed over 50 Million times. However, disenchanted with the pop world, towards the end of 2018 Manville picked up a guitar and started writing for himself. What came next was a flood of highly personal songs full of regret, awe, sorrow and hope. His debut release was an album of punk covers called ‘Somebody Else’s Songs’. Featuring songs by Green Day, Blink 182, The Offspring, Weezer, plus other lesser known bands such as ALL and Owls. Presented in his own emotional folk/country style, Manville delicately shone a new light on the pop-punk genre. Recording and playing everything himself, his hushed vocals, intimate guitar playing and rustic accompaniments on banjo, violin and accordion bring a sentimental gravitas to songs you may not have thought it possible to. With appearances at Dot to Dot and Handmade festival already this year and picking up praise from i-d magazine, BBC introducing, Kerrang! Radio and numerous blogs he is quickly making a name for himself as one of the most promising new indie folk artists around.
WILDES, real name project of Ella Walker, is a British multi-instrumentalist & singer-songwriter from London. Born to an Irish mother and British father her music lends itself to her mixed heritage upbringing. An undeniable passion for creating vast soundscapes, Ella’s music is both dramatic and beautiful, reflective of her childhood summers spent running wild in the Irish countryside and echoes the expansive sound like that of Florence and The Machine or The XX.
After putting up her first song ‘Bare’, Wildes garnered overwhelming support online, shooting to #6 in the Spotify Global viral chart and subsequently grabbing the attention of BBC Radio 1 DJ Phil Taggart and Grammy Award-winning producer Brian Burton (Danger Mouse). Danger Mouse went onto sign her, becoming Ella’s publisher and mentor. The song has since featured on multiple soundtracks and generated millions of streams worldwide. Since then Wildes has been refining her sound, working closely with award winning producer Catherine Marks (Foals, Wolf Alice, Manchester Orchestra, The Killers), fusing her indie-folk songwriting with bold cinematic soundscapes.
Hozac Books is proud to present our third art book, I’m Just The Drummer the Bob Bert artist compendium of photography and interviews, establishing his irreplaceable link between the 1970s No Wave movement and contemporary noise rock. Although Bert’s immediate work is best known drumming in his wide array of musical projects he’s been involved with (such as SONIC YOUTH, PUSSY GALORE, CHROME CRANKS, LYDIA LUNCH, and many more) since the early 1980s, the focus of his book isn’t drum-centric as it is an encapsulation of the artistic world he’s developed within. It’s not a drumming instructional guide, or a critical assessment of how the drummers in bands are treated, but a 200+ page guide through Bob’s musically adventurous life, and what a ride! Starting out with his teenage love of photography and his process of capturing the underground downtown figureheads as well as the emerging unknown No Wave bands, Bob was just as much of an enthusiastic fan of music as he was a fixture in some of the most crucial music of the 1980s, 90s, and beyond. And that’s what’s really important in the long run, as his excitement for music bursts from each page, providing the springboard to his long-running life in bands on the fringe of the mainstream.
Tegan and Sara have returned with the lead single “I’ll Be Back Someday” from their forthcoming album, Hey, I’m Just Like You, The infectious track is a reinvented version of what the sisters found on their old cassettes when they were digging through inspiration for their first memoir, High School . The cassettes were from the 1990s, recorded the two were between the ages of 15 and 17. That nostalgic, punk rock energy is definitely apparent on the catchy track.
“To the end my friend, oh what a lie/ If I could pretend, if I could lie,” they sing, emitting pure teenage angst on top of fiery electric guitars.
““We had been begging for an electric guitar, and on our 16th birthday, we got one,” Sara Quin said in a release of the time period “I’ll Be Back” dates to. “Of course, we had to share it, so it became a weapon that we stole from each other’s rooms, barricading ourselves behind locked doors with guitar in hand. Screaming over the small amplifier, we tested our voices by writing punk songs, shredding our thumbs on the strings.”
The rest of the album, which was recorded in Vancouver, BC earlier this year with an all-female team including producer Alex Hope, will consist of more reinventions of those ’90s tapes, showcasing the remarkable talent the “Closer” artists had even at such a young age.
Tegan and Sara also recently announced an acoustic, interactive North American tour that will pair with the album. For the first time in decades, the duo will play by themselves, and will hit more intimate venues, reading excerpts from High School.The Quins will play songs from the new album as well as catalog classics, and share video footage from their teenage years.
Hey, I’m Just Like You is set for release on September. 27th via Sire Records. Just a few days before that, High School will be published on September. 24th by MCD X FSG (USA) in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.
I’ll Be Back Someday – the first single from our new album Hey, I’m Just Like You – out Sept 27.
Opening their album with more fuzz than an exploded dustbuster, Bloomington, Indiana’s Frankie and the Witch Fingers are riding high on the hallmarks of the 2010’s pantheon of garage rock heroes. Adding to the sonic soup a heavy dose of witchy vibes, psychedelic shake and an incessant grind that makes it feel vital and raw as skin peeled back, their sophomore album for Chicago’s chief gutwrenchers, Permanent Records, is fueled by more than just paint by numbers rock. The band knows when to ride the tide of fuzz-addled freakout, knows when to break in the shake n’ shimmy and knows just when to tear all the good times down for a good old fashioned dark horse that draws the shades and draws a little blood in the process. A solid offering from this band, reportedly uprooting from the doldrums of the Corn Belt to LA. It’ll be interesting to see how the move affects their sound in the future, but for now these nuggets are more than worth the price of admission.”
Frankie and the Witch Fingers are a garage rock outfit and with one song, they’ve made their forthcoming self-titled album on Permanent a hot album to pine for in 2015. Aside from the “True Detective” vibes, I’m not sure what exactly is going on in the “sexy and dangerous witchcraft” video for “Vibrations” which is puzzling, creepy and yet, sustains fascination. Regardless, this song is at the top of the heap when it comes to garage pop tunes that could’ve thrived in the 1960s. You just don’t hear organ work like that anymore.
Frankie and the Witch Finger’s track “Vibrations” off their self-titled album.
This week sees the 10th anniversary of the release of Magnolia Electric Co’s ‘Josephine’. To mark this, Jason Evans Groth has kindly shared some of his thoughts and memories of creating the album:
Magnolia Electric Co’s‘Josephine’ was released ten years ago today on the 21st July 2009. Continuing the band’s collaboration with producer Steve Albini, the album was dedicated to bassist Evan Farrell who passed away in December 2007.
To mark the 10th anniversary of the album, Magnolia Electric Co’s guitarist Jason Evans Groth shared some of his memories of recording the album. “Josephine was cathartic for all of us, was a truly full-band record, was weirder in a lot ways and more accessible in a lot ways than other stuff we’d been doing, and is a testament to what a family can do if they stick together through the tragedies.”
Josephine, to me, sounds like a family celebrating and mourning something that had been loved and had been lost, and doing it together, all as one. Jason dedicated the album to and even said in interviews that it was about our dear friend and one-time bandmate Evan Farrell, who had perished in a fire in December of 2007, just a few months after the one tour he did with us. At the time I was a little uneasy about that dedication, probably because I knew many of those songs had been written before Evan, some had even been played with him. But Jason was right – songs change, feelings about their meaning change, and I was caught up in facts to help suppress the feelings I had about the tragedy. We made a shrine to Evan in the studio. We talked and thought a lot about him. Jason had taken it hard. In the three years prior to this, death had become a tragically common occurrence. In 2005 we were in the studio recording Nashville Moon with Steve Albini when Michael Dahlquist – Silkworm’s drummer and a dear friend of Steve’s – was killed in an incredibly tragic car accident; Jason lost his mother; our then-new European booking agent, Jens Pape, also died suddenly and unexpectedly; and Heath Ledger, who had been working with Jason on a documentary project, died. I know Jason was thinking about all of it – he told me he was – those few years. He told me he thought he was cursed, and cursing other people.
And then it was the fall of 2008, and it was time to make a new record. Jason and Mikey went to Denton, TX to make the Molina and Johnson record (where the original “Josephine” was recorded) and we hadn’t toured since Evan died, which was weird for us; more than a whole year off the road. Jason had played a smattering of European solo shows, some with another band. Around April Jason started emailing me with ideas. On tour, he said, he wanted to do anything we wanted to play – “the ancient stuff.” He was concerned about tunings but asked me to come up with versions we could use on the road. Tour would happen in the fall, and then we would make the record. Looking back through emails, we talked about tuning a lot. The tour was booked for mid-late October/early November, with recording starting on November 6th and going through the 20th.
Up until sequencing we all worked on it together. We brought the songs to life and we hung out and worked together and loved being around one another. I still get chills thinking about the hug Jason gave me after the saxophone solo I played for “O! Grace.” I’m really glad a lot of the session is captured, expertly, in Ben Schreiner’s Recording Josephine documentary.
Josephine was cathartic for all of us, was a truly full-band record, was weirder in a lot ways and more accessible in a lot ways than other stuff we’d been doing, and is a testament to what a family can do if they stick together through the tragedies. I love my Magnolia Electric Co family so much, and I miss Jason more than I can express. I especially miss him when I think about this session and this record, and how much we all felt like one making it.
We had heard nothing about songs. Eventually, the last week of September, Jason wrote and said he had been “pulling my teeth out here” to get us some demos. Those eventually came, early in October, and were ethereal, haunting versions of the songs that would show up on Josephine (and some that wouldn’t). And they were in weird tunings, just like Jason’s old days. I felt that he had been collaborating with me without me knowing it, using me as a way to summon up the courage to do things like he used to, things that he did out of necessity then and which seemed mysterious to him now. He told us “I’m not ignoring ELO type arrangements on this record.” He told me he wanted to make his version of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. He told me he wanted it to be “less Crazy Horse and more crazy.” And what we made probably had a little of all of that. We were working out songs together in the studio, recording them in one or two takes live, with the vocals being monitored through an amp in the room where we all were (which is why they have an extra-ghosty quality to them, I think). And then we were overdubbing like crazy, too.
My favorite dubs are the tambourine part in “Rock of Ages” (just describing what I wanted to SteveAlbini is a pleasant memory), watching Pete do amazing hand percussion, and seeing Mark play vibes. The “Whip-poor-will” recording – just thinking about it – brings tears to my eyes. Jason and me playing guitar on stools in the drum room at Electrical, with Mikey sitting next to us so we could do those live three-part harmonies, which sounded tighter at that recording than I thought they ever could. My Tele Deluxe – the guitar I played at 99% of the Songs: Ohia/MECo shows – had gotten really sick, and was getting a fret job in Chicago, so I was put in the position of using guitars I didn’t understand, and that made me play in a more wild, quiet, and careful way all at once. My favorite guitar tones on the record came out of my wife’s telecaster, including maybe my favorite recorded thing I’ve ever done, the guitar solo in “Shenandoah.”
Philadelphia-based indie quartet Strange Ranger’s lush-sounding third album, Remembering The Rockets, is pockmarked by the apocalypse; anxious moments poke through in the middle of lead vocalist Isaac Eiger’s verses, then recede from view. “I think he’s evil privately / Hold my tongue and do the dishes,” he sings over the summery pop-rock of “Sunday.” The breezy humming on “Pete’s Hill” is preceded by two troubled hypotheticals: “If I tried my best but killed again / If I hit your chest with gold cement.” On the fluidly synthetic “Living Free,” he thinks about a planet on fire and asks: “What if I just want a family?”
“It’s hard for me to write a song that’s about one event,” Eiger says over the phone from his girlfriend’s house in Philadelphia. “There are explicit references to wanting to have a family in a world that is not guaranteed to be the same, and latching onto that as a narrative is totally natural. But there are tons of lyrics on the album that are just about my relationships with the people in my life, just looking at the world. Climate change politics are a part of that.”
Recorded mostly at an ad hoc studio Eiger’s parents’ home in Montana, Remembering The Rockets — premiering in full below — upends the occasionally scuzzy and almost always fraught guitar rock that the band put out on their last two LPs, 2016’s Rot Forever (as Sioux Falls) and 2017’s Daymoon. A Korg M1 synthesizer finds its way onto most of the songs here, usually to warm the mix on instrumentals like “athens, ga” and “rockets” or to provide a dreamlike backdrop for the already uncanny lyrics. Bassist, keyboardist, and singer Fred Nixon creates drummer Nathan Tucker, and occasional vocalist Fiona Woodman distort, harmonize, and augment around Eiger’s guitar, turning most of these songs into delicate, miniature hallucinations.
That often beautiful detachment from reality fits with Eiger’s perception of reality — half rooted in the day-to-day, half off in metaphor. “Planes move through the sky / I walk to work in fading light,” he sings over the hum of “Planes in Front of The Sun” before again projecting forwards and scaring himself out of it: “Daddies with their kids / I still want that / I still feel sick.”
Listen to Remembering The Rockets below ahead of its release this Friday, July 26, via Tiny Engines
As sad it was to hear about the demise of The Jeanies, by far NYC’s most addictive power pop band of the last half decade, we’re happy to announce their re-emergence as Velveteen Rabbit, now with far more polish and panache and pushing the boundaries of glam pop to unimaginable levels of euphoria. Whereas The Jeanies had a more ragged American pop feel like early Tom Petty meets Gentleman Jesse, Velveteen Rabbit are pure gloss & glam and far more fey, yet no less ferocious. Far less flavor of The Fevers here and more aligned with the breathy pop syrup of the gone-too-soon Brett Smiley, Velveteen Rabbit are one of the finest examples of modern glam, a genre soaked in 1970s over-production that’s virtually impossible to pull off in most cases. But sure enough, these two incredible songs are proof positive that it can be done, both massive tracks with deep, cavernous production and the impossibly great songwriting you’ve come to love seeping out of every pore.
Hopefully this smash hit single is the first in a long line of many more hypno-boogie hits from Velveteen Rabbit, a band that truly understands how the craftsmanship of impossibly great pop isn’t an easy job to pull off, and definitely a shot in the arm to glum-glam/lazy-pop psych-a-like crowd. Everything is mastered to maximum thickness and pristine, glistening tonality, with both tracks instantly competing to be your favourite.
After FIVE solid years of painstaking research and hard work, Rich Tupica’s epic tome on the deep end of the BIG STAR story is ready.
THERE WAS A LIGHT is an oral history containing new and archival interviews with those closest to Chris Bell and the Big Star circle: their friends, family, former bandmates—even some fans, exes, classmates and co-workers.
The varied cast of voices, many from the band’s hometown of Memphis, comprises all the members of Big Star, including: Chris Bell, the iconic Alex Chilton, Andy Hummel and Jody Stephens. In the following decades after its 1975 breakup, the obscure group somehow reached and inspired some of rock’s most important bands, including R.E.M., the Replacements, Yo La Tengo, Teenage Fanclub, Beck, and Wilco.
With Chris Bell at the center of the Big Star universe, this book carefully reveals the production of Big Star’s masterful 1972 debut LP, #1 Record, for Ardent/Stax Records. Despite stellar reviews in music magazines, the record saw abysmal sales. Soon after, toxic personality conflicts and turmoil tore Big Star apart while Bell battled drug abuse and clinical depression.
There Was A Light then delves into Big Star’s second and third albums, while recounting Bell’s second act as a struggling solo musician and devout born-again Christian. During several trips to Europe, he ambitiously recorded songs and pitched to record labels—even crossing paths with Paul McCartney. From this productive era arose Bell’s lone solo album, the posthumously released I Am the Cosmos LP—his swan song and masterpiece.
There Was A Light details the pop culture phenomenon that made Big Star legends and divulges how its staunch fanbase saved the band from obscurity.
