Bon Iver (the project of Justin Vernon) shared two new songs, “Hey Ma” and “U (Man Like),” via lyric videos for each track. They also announced some new tour dates and launched a new website (www.icommai.com). The songs feature a slew of special guests, including Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak and Flock of Dimes, Moses Sumney, and Bruce Hornsby. We were torn between the two, but settled on “U (Man Like)” as our favorite of the two, with “Hey Ma” an honorable mention below.
Vernon had this to say in a press release: “This project began with a single person, but throughout the last 11 years, the identity of Bon Iver has bloomed and can only be defined by the faces in the ever growing family we are.”
The official musician credits on “Hey Ma” are: Ben Lester – CP-70 Electric Piano. Psymun – Sampling. Justin Vernon – Matrix 6, Guitar. Brian Moen – Drums. Jenn Wasner – Voice, Guitar. Jake Luppen – Guitar. Buddy Ross – Synth. Rob Moose – Violin, Viola, String Arrangement, Worm Crew Arrangement, Conductor. Brad Cook – Basses. Worm Crew – Horns.
The official musician credits on “U (Man Like)” are: “Justin Vernon – Bass + Voice. Bruce Hornsby – Piano, Voice. Phil Cook – Piano and B3, Voice. Elsa Jensen – Voice. Moses Sumney – Voice. Jenn Wasner – Voice. Rob Moose – Violin, Viola, Octave Viola, String Arrangement, Worm Crew Arrangement. Worm Crew – Horns. Brooklyn Youth Chorus + Bryce Dessner – Choral.”
Carla Geneve’s self-titled debut album is a delightful listen. Introspective and clear, the songs on Geneve’s debut serve as an introduction to her honest and direct songwriting and grunge-influenced rock sound. The songs on this album deal mostly with love and identity. Geneve’s voice radiates over the guitar riffs. Carla explains the meaning behind latest single, ‘Yesterday’s Clothes’ is about falling out of love with someone and feeling guilty about it. I wrote it at time when I was burning the candle at both ends and had no energy left to try to deal with the end of a relationship. Most of the words came when I was doing a long drive back from some gig or another in regional WA. I’d been up all night and had to be somewhere the next day, so I hadn’t had a shower or changed clothes. When you’re on your own driving for hours and hours it’s hard to avoid thinking about stuff that you don’t want to, so I guess I wrote the song to try to come to terms with my thoughts and situation.”
On “2001,” Geneve sings, “I am not in touch with my emotions, I am a little kid going through the motions,” over a steady guitar melody in an ode to loneliness. On the pensive album closer, “I Hate You (For Making Me Not Want To Leave The City),” Geneve’s voice shines over the guitar ballad. Carla Geneve is a substantial debut from a singular voice.
With a captivating live show and relatable lyricism, Carla Geneve burst onto the WA scene in 2017. After being hailed by Pilerats as one of their ’18 Artists to Watch in 2018’, her debut single ‘Greg’s Discount Chemist’ was released to overwhelming support including love from triple j, triple j Unearthed and community radio.
Perth artist Carla Geneve released her debut self-titled EP on Friday 7th June via Dot Dash / Remote ControlRecords
This August, Texas bands’ Lomelda and Hovvdy head out on a U.S. tour together. Ahead of their trek, they’ve shared a new EP where they cover each other’s songs. “Covers” also includes a new collaboration called “🙂.”
A cassette edition of Covers is forthcoming (via Double Double Whammy). All proceeds from the cassette will go to RAICES, a nonprofit that provides low-cost legal services to immigrant children, families, and refugees.
Lomelda is the recording project of Silsbee, Texas musician Hannah Read. Her latest album, “M for Empathy”, came out this past winter.
Charlie Martin and Will Taylor comprise the Austin-based Hovvdy. They released their album “Cranberry” in February 2018.
The year is just halfway through, but 2019 has already been a big one for Alexandra Sauser-Monnig. The musician best known as one-third of Mountain Man, the folk trio who made their comeback with last year’s beautiful Magic Ship, announced earlier this year that her debut solo record was en route. Dawnbreaker arrives less than a year after Magic Ship, Mountain Man’s second album as a trio and their first after an eight-year hiatus. It’s a gentle 10-song collection of rustling folk-pop.
Dawnbreaker is the first album Alexandra Sauser-Monnig she has released under the name Daughter of Swords. To celebrate its release (it’s out today via Nonesuch Records) Sauser-Monnig broke the album down for us track-by-track.
“Fellows”
The guitar line of “Fellows” materialized while I was living in a beautiful, ramshackle old farmhouse in rural Virginia with a former partner, and the words later while camping high up a California mountain road on a break from touring with Feist many years ago. The writing of the song spanned the end of one relationship and the beginning of another, and it reflects on the futility of defining yourself through your relationship to a partner.
“Gem”
“Gem” was the first song that Nick Sanborn — who engineered, co-produced, mixed and played on the record — and I collaborated on arranging. He’s really good at following what’s fun, and pivoting to another song or idea or approach when the joy or the energy feels like it’s beginning to lag. After having recorded a couple of pretty spare demos and takes, this song ventured into new terrain and was the first time the breadth of the spectrum of sound and arrangement of the record became clear.
“Shining Woman”
I wrote this song when I was feeling wrapped up about what being an adult person with a womb means. Writing it felt like a reminder to myself that the world is full of inspiring people choosing to make their own paths through life liberated from the cultural and biological script. The main character of the song took up residence in my mind and served as a reminder to me that change is always possible.
“Fields of Gold”
Drummer Joe Westerlund, formerly of Megafaun and currently of Mandolin Orange, played a large role in shaping the feel of “Fields of Gold.” He is a wizard of aux percussion and has a library of things to make sounds with, from shakers and bells to custom made metal sculptures that you play with a bow to things nature made that happen to sound beautiful. He lived next door to the studio where Dawnbreaker was made, and for a couple of magical days made complicated, delicate percussive arrangements holding more percussion in his hands than seemed humanly possible before I saw him in action.
“Grasses”
“Grasses” is a meditation on acceptance. I wrote the words when I was sick with tick-borne illness. My body felt really wrong and I was having trouble getting any insight or advice, or even a diagnosis from doctors. So all I knew was that I felt terrible and that it wasn’t getting better. I sang “Grasses” to myself while lying in bed in an effort to comfort myself and to get down from the high ledges of fear and panic I was on in my mind.
“Easy is Hard”
Country was the first kind of music that made me feel something potent that I couldn’t name. It’s often where my songwriting begins, even if it doesn’t stay there. “Easy is Hard” follows its own logic, but feels like one of the songs on the record whose roots are most obviously in country.
“Rising Sun”
For a while I had an old worn out Sun Records tape of Billy Lee Riley songs in my car. I was in a very transitional phase of life and latched onto this tape and listened to it all the time in a way that gave me the tiniest sense of stability. I learned a blues shuffle off of it and wrote a different version of the song, which is “Rising Sun.” One of my favorite moments on the record is the end of this song — as the band fades out, the voices of Mountain Man fade in, humming like the highway and ending with all our voices and the sound of the room predominant in an unexpected way.
“Long Leaf Pine”
I had just moved to North Carolina and had been out blackberry picking and exploring the woods behind my house when I wrote “Long Leaf Pine.” I came back in and sat down and the song came out more or less complete. Recording it was equally magical — Nick Sanborn and I had been trying different arrangements of the song, and had started over again, making some kind of far out choices. It had started snowing outside when Amelia Meath and Molly Sarlé came over. They sang beautiful witchy harmonies while snow was falling outside the window and contextualized everything else beautifully within the realm of harmony.
“Human”
This was another song that appeared mostly formed very fast. I’ve had the possibly common but definitely surreal experience a few times of my subconscious delivering up verdicts on my life choices in song form before the rest of my mind is ready to acknowledge whatever it is, and that was the case with Human. We recorded the song, and then I left it alone for almost a year without even listening to it. There was a point that I didn’t want it on the record because it’s so raw. But now its presence feels crucial to me in the arc of the record.
“Dawnbreaker”
“Dawnbreaker” is a dive into the ways imagining possible transmogrification into a different life form sometimes feels preferable to facing the hard emotional truths of life with a human consciousness. This last track on the record was one of the first takes that we recorded, and it was recorded as a demo. For a while, I wanted to get a different take to use, but none of the subsequent takes had the same rawness and tentative energy that ultimately felt so right as a note to end on.
With the release of their self-titled debut album just over a week away (via Bella Union), The Soft Cavalry (the husband/wife duo of Steve Clarke and Rachel Goswell of Slowdive) have today shared a video for new single “Never Be Without You”, animated by James Bates.
Of the video Clarke comments: “I can’t quite remember how the idea for this one started but as it developed I could sense it was going to turn into something of a love song. I don’t really like writing love songs. I’ll leave that to the masters and the true romantics. All relationships are different and I therefore certainly don’t feel qualified to make blanket statements on the subject.The lyric had to be honest. About the importance of relationships as well as the struggles and responsibilities that are often created by other things in your lives. Rachel’s son Jesse downloaded an app (as he often does) on my phone. A game called Limbo. It’s pretty dark and depicts a little character making his way through a forest, coming up against all kinds of traps and weird creatures. This kind of kick started the idea for the video that James Bates has so brilliantly executed. We didn’t want the creatures to be too scary – hint at the idea of them as something to be concerned about… but equally playful in design.James drew every one of these characters by hand before animating them. A true labour of love.”
The self titled album from The Soft Cavalry is due 5th July on Bella Union Records
The Hold Steady have finally announced their long-awaited new album “Thrashing Thru The Passion”, which will be released on August 16th via Frenchkiss Records.
New York City based, The Hold Steady is fronted by singer/lyricist Craig Finn. The first single “Denver Haircut” immediately hits that ever-so-familiar The Hold Steady sound that has made us fall in love with them in the first place. Being their first new album in five years, this is the first album the current incarnation of the band that features both guitarist Steve Selvidge with returning keyboardist Franz Nicolay. The keys paired with that extra layer of guitar makes all the difference and the band sounds like they never ever left but also totally reinvigorated.
“Denver Haircut” is the first song taken from the upcoming album Thrashing Thru The Passion out on Frenchkiss Records,
We discovered the Frankie and The Witch Fingers at the Psych Fest in 2018 and they blew our brains out. They recently toured and left a good feeling with the presentation of their latest album ” ZAM “, a one-hour cucumber that combines many influences ranging from King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard to Psychedelic Porn Crumpets , but with that Californian drop of a first-timer Ty Segall or the always effective Thee Oh Sees .
The quartet formed by Dylan Sizemore (voice and guitar), Shaughnessy Starr (drums), Josh Menashe (guitar) and Alex Bulli (bass) combine all this and more, wrapping your skull with songs that drag you to an ambiguous feeling of psychodelia and intergalactic dance in equal parts. Their band recently released their fifth album..
The main attraction of Frankie and the Witch Fingers is their explosive performance. With their rowdy and visceral approach to live shows, each member brings their own devilry to induce an experience of bacchanal proportions.
Using absurd lyrical imagery—soaked in hallucination, paranoia, and lust—the band’s M.O. strikes into dark yet playful territory. This sense of radical duality is astir at every turn, in every time signature change. Airy vocal harmonies over heavily serrated riffs. Low-key shamanic roots under vivid high-strangeness. Rambling stretches and punctuated licks. Cutting heads and kissing lips. All this revealing a stereophonic schizophrenia that has flowed throughout their body of work: an ebb & flow of flowery-poppy horror. The band’s latest incarnation is primed to break new sonic ground, edging into the funky and preternatural. Just when you think the trip couldn’t get any weirder, Frankie and the Witch Fingers cranks up the dial, shatters the mundane, and
summons new visions.
A new PUP video is always an event. Over the past six years we’ve seen the Toronto punks impaled, demolished, and nearly killed; covered, 8-bitted, and animated and today, we get a stylish crossover of their two preferred genres.
The new clip for “Sibling Rivalry” blends the body horror imagery and cartoon aesthetic of previous videos to riff on the anxieties of travel, with exaggerated safety brochures and warning signage to complement Stef Babcock’s furious lyricism inspired by a camping trip gone awry.
Additionally, the video offers autobiographical insight into the essential track from one of thebest albums of the year (so far), contextualizing the lyrics as stemming from an actual series of camping trips Babcock has taken with his sister. Things end a little sweeter than they began when the video concludes with a dedication to the band’s siblings, before a brief stills montage of PUP on tour together.
Things end a little sweeter than they began when the video concludes with a dedication to the band’s siblings, before a brief stills montage of PUP on tour together.
Long before the epic anthems, platinum albums and sold-out concert tours — before the boas, guillotines and outrageous urban legends, Alice Cooper merely was a peculiar unknown band, peddling a peculiar debut record. That LP was released 50 years ago this week on Frank Zappa’sStraight Records label. American rock band Alice Cooper, released on June 25th, 1969 . At this time, the name “Alice Cooper” referred to the band and not its lead singer Vincent Furnier, although he was also known as Alice Cooper. The album has a psychedelic flavour to it; the group had yet to develop the more concise hard rock sound that they would become famous for. Most of the tracks feature unusual time signatures and arrangements, jarring syncopation, expressive dynamics, sound effects, and an eclectic range of music influences. A few songs, such as “Levity Ball”, show the influence of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, with whom the band hung out during the British group’s U.S. tour. Alice Cooper guitarist Glen Buxton stated he could listen to Barrett’s guitar playing for hours on end.
Formed during the mid-‘60s in Phoenix, Arizona, the Spiders later would change their name to Nazz. By 1968, the struggling combo now known as Alice Cooper, was residing in southern California, fighting for survival on the L.A. club scene, developing a reputation for being a “weird” band — a distinction that soon got them noticed by Zappa, as well as by their legendary manager, Shep Gordon.
From a distance, Alice Cooper’s musically meandering, psychedelic-sounding debut bared little resemblance to the rock-ribbed arena style that would define the band’s iconic latter work. However, upon examining the record’s 13 “tea leaves” a bit closer, the future could certainly be seen.
Despite the listed production team — Ian Underwood, Herb Cohen and Frank Zappa, manager Shep Gordon has stated that “Pretties for You” actually had no producer — and it shows. Gordon maintains further that the album merely was a hodgepodge of incomplete compositions recorded during the band’s in-studio rehearsal.
A commercial failure, Pretties for You barely grazed the bottom rung of the Billboard Top 200 — reaching only a disappointing #193. Additionally, none of the tracks ever have been performed by the band in concert since the release of their 1971 breakout album, Love It to Death.
The record opens with “Titanic Overture” a haunting, orchestrated, minute-long snippet that sinks abruptly and basically leads nowhere. Another brief interlude, “10 Minutes Before the Worm” is clunky and trippy. Possessing no real structure to speak of, it does provide a brief splash of melody, just before falling apart randomly. The coolest thing about “10 Minutes” is that it offers the first glimpse of the gloriously skitzo signature style of drummer Neal Smith — the musical force who would arguably deserve the MVP award on subsequent Cooper records.
Pretties for You soon erupts into a splendid dysfunctional fiesta in which several of the tracks often sound like songs. A stylistic collision between The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Idlewild South, “Swing Low, Sweet Cheerio” is an authentic, harmonica-driven classic rock stand-out. Other noteworthy numbers include the occasionally melodic, lo-fi live track “Levity Ball” and “Apple Bush” — a near-radio-friendly tune nailed to the floor by bassist Dennis Dunaway and accented by lead vocalist Alice Cooper’s legit harmonica work. While less than hooky, “Fields of Regret” bursts with ear-splitting urgency, courtesy of guitarists Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce. Combined with Cooper’s oft eerie vocal, “Fields” lights a path showing where the band would travel musically in the not so distant future.
Of the record’s super-highlights, “Living” is an irresistibly buzzy delight, while the lead-off single, “Reflected” serves an adequate demo for what would become, “Elected,” the monster Top 40 hit from the band’s 1973 album, Billion Dollar Babies. And although it certainly is catchy, “Changing Arranging” woulda, coulda, shoulda delivered even more, had celebrated producer Bob Ezrin arrived on the A.C. scene two records earlier.
The artwork for this album is a painting by Edward Beardsley. It was originally hanging on the wall of the living room in Frank Zappa’s house, and his wife Gail Zappa stated that it was later stolen from them.
In sum, Pretties for You is as “weird” now as when it first was released, half a century ago. And while it may not be the preferred “go-to” record that most Cooper fans pop in the deck, but it remains a much-loved and well-respected work among the band’s most fervent followers.
“Pretties for You” Track Listing:
Side One
01. Titanic Overture (1:12)
02. 10 Minutes Before the Worm (1:39)
03. Swing Low, Sweet Cheerio (5:42)
04. Today Mueller (1:48)
05. Living (3:12)
06. Fields of Regret (5:44)
Side Two
01. No Longer Umpire (2:02)
02. Levity Ball (4:39)
03. B.B. on Mars (1:17)
04. Reflected (3:17)
05. Apple Bush (3:08)
06. Earwigs to Eternity (1:19)
07. Changing Arranging (3:03)
With their sublime second album, Palace have pulled off a rare pop trick. Songs steeped in darkness emerge in to light, from bleak situations spring fresh starts. Bathed in the band’s atmospheric alt-rock, the future feels brighter and more optimistic. “Life After” is both an album about loss and a manual to moving on. “I’m writing this song, to help you breathe again,” sings Leo Wyndham on the opening title track, a shimmering ode to survival. By the epic, seven minute-plus closer Heaven Up There, the theme of Life After is obvious.
“Hope,” says Leo. “Hope and positivity – seeing the light at the end of a long tunnel. It’s about going through tough times and coming out the other side.”
Palace didn’t start their second album with any plans in place. Buoyed by the reception of their debut, 2016’s So Long Forever, and near two years of sold-out shows and festival slots that won them fans worldwide, the London-based trio of former Dorset school friends had a new-found confidence that they were keen to capture on record.
Our sole aim was to write better songs “Some songs have an all-enveloping wall of guitars, others are stripped right down. It was about finding the right mood for each song, not settling on one sound.”
Some of the songs had been written on the road, referencing both relationships that had broken down and new bonds that had been forged. Others took shape in the studio and captured events that were taking place in the trio’s lives, often only realised in retrospect.
“A lot of the songs suddenly made sense later down the line,” says Leo. “With a couple, I wrote the lyrics, then they came true. Back home, we were all making new connections and having conversations that filtered in to the songs. I was going through a tough time and writing became my coping mechanism. It became a way of really helping me by giving me an outlet.”
