Jenny Lewis looked around Room D of the storied Village Recording Studios taking it all in, as she and Jason Bentley reminisced on its rock & roll lore. “Tusk” by Fleetwood Mac was recorded right in that same room, as was “Angie” by the Rolling Stones… and on and on.
For Jenny Lewis to record a live session behind her fourth solo album “On the Line” here made great sense. Her status in LA music history has certainly solidified, as she’s crafted an adored catalogue of music (both solo and work with her former band Rilo Kiley), while carrying the banner of Laurel Canyon artists before her. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, CSN and others would be proud.
Further cementing her place within the hierarchy of the LA music scene, the players on her new album probably only answer the phone for a select few who call. Ringo Starr, Benmont Tench (founding member of the Heartbreakers), Beck, Don Was, and THE session drummer of all drummers Jim Keltner all contributed their talents for the recording of “On the Line”. The new album definitely has a pedigree that shines, and that magic transcended to her performance in the legendary studio.
On the Line was recorded over a couple years, with the beginning stages going down at another LA music landmark: Capitol Studios. Beck helped out, and producer-of-the-moment Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, The War on Drugs, Kacey Musgraves) also put his golden touch to it. The result is a big, warm rock album. Lewis’ signature wit and thoughtful songwriting about love and excess is sharp throughout, and perfectly exemplified in the catchy, confident chill of “Wasted Youth.” A song that carefully balances pop against a backdrop of heavy themes.
Though her illustrious pals didn’t join her at the Village, her band elevated every track, sounding wire tight and ready for the road. Speaking of, they’ll be touring for the next few months, including a sold out stop at the Hollywood Palladium, May 11th. She told Jason that the Palladium is the last original LA room she has yet to play (her excitement is beyond), continuing in a pattern of performing at LA staples, like the Fonda and Echo. Just another well deserved accomplishment for one of our local indie-rock heroes.
Jenny Lewis‘ voice is as alluring as her lyrics. At times punchy and defiant, but always warm and honest. On her new album “On The Line”, she delivers piano-driven songs with hints of country under tones.
Shana Cleveland has long been beguiling listeners as the front-woman for elastic surf rockers La Luz. Inspired in part by one of her musical idols, the Afro-futurist visionary Sun Ra (the album’s title is a tip of the hat to his 1970 release Night of the Purple Moon), Night of the Worm Moon blends pastoral folk with cosmic concerns, including alternate realities to divine celestial bodies. Cleveland first came up through the Seattle music scene as the front woman of surf-rock quartet La Luz. This isn’t her first solo project, but so far, it feels like her most daring. She concocted Night of the Worm Moon while living in Los Angeles,
Shana Cleveland will be hitting the road in support of the new solo record on April 5th, headlining in the west and supporting the Mountain Goats in the east!! These’ll be real special spacey sets and I can’t wait to share this record with y’all!
“Night of the Worm Moon” is the title track from the new solo album by La Luz’s Shana Cleveland, out 4/5/19
“Dreaming The Dark”; the long anticipated follow up to 2017’s “Cranekiss” isn’t exactly what I thought it would be, but that might be a good thing. Tamaryn has continued to change her sound throughout her career, exploring new territory as she goes; which has made her an artist to stay connected with and to watch. I tend to get bored with artists who don’t somehow grow and change. Some listeners want that “standard” band sound, but I appreciate never quite knowing what to expect.
This album is even more firmly synthpop than “Cranekiss” was; which teetered on the genre as well as dreampop. There are still many dreamy elements presents in “Dreaming The Dark” but it has an overall more 80’s throwback and dance vibe. This album also seems much more personal, delving into Tamaryn’s psyche with different topics for each song. “Cranekiss” seemed to be a sexy, romantic album overall; at times seeming like a very steamy love letter. “Dreaming The Dark” covers more territory and is done in a very calculated way, making those different threads still weave themselves into a cohesive complete set; a solid album in it’s entirety.
The early released singles, “Fits of Rage” and “Angels of Sweat” seem to have lots of nods to strong female indie rock vocalists who came before. I got impressions of Tori Amos, Kate Bush, and even Bjork upon listening, given the certain ways in which Tamaryn chose to deliver her vocals. Regardless of if you hear those echoes or not, there is a fierceness and tenacity that has not been as present in Tamaryn’s prior work. There are some great collaborative moments here as well, as The Horrors worked with her on “Path to Love”; as well as provided a remix to that song, and Jorge Elbrecht is still very much involved and helped to produce the album.
Other stand-out tracks include “You’re Adored” which Tamaryn shared via her Instagram page is an ode to her beloved dog, Tennessee; who had been struggling with cancer and sadly now has passed away. It’s a forelorn lovesong asking someone to stay when you know that they are fading away. The closing title track also stands strong and is the perfect summary of “Dreaming The Dark” as a whole.
As I mentioned above, this album wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be, and upon initial listening, didn’t strike me a hard as “Cranekiss” did. However, I am finding the more time I spent listening, the more I appreciate it and it’s absolutely growing on me. Maybe I’m not quite ready to move away from those beautiful, yet frivolous love songs and dig a little deeper.
A swirly cocktail of new wave and dreampop. Tamaryn’s new album pushes her into the kinds of territory I’d like to hear more artists exploring. A perfect album to kick off spring! Love the New Wave vibe it’s got. Catchy songs, crafty songwriting with hypnotic vocals.
One of our top acts at this year’s SXSW, Washington D.C.’s Priests are making socially conscious music that’s nothing short of essential. We need bands like Priests right now, who question the American establishment from a well-read and pointed perspective, in tightly wrapped rock songs that both sear and satisfy. Led by herculean singer Katie Alice Greer, The Seduction of Kansas arrives on the band’s own Sister Polygon Records label (and is produced by John Congleton, no less).
The title track “The Seduction of Kansas,” as well as second single, “Good Time Charlie,” sound incredibly different from each other, but much like on their debut LP, Nothing Feels Natural,Priests is a band that always keeps you guessing. It’s much appreciated.
The long-awaited sophomore album from Washington D.C. rock outfit Priests is finally here. The Seduction of Kansas is a gorgeously produced post-punk opus that’s as sharp as it is infectious. Vocalist Katie Alice Greer’s scathing political jabs are in full force here, and not a moment too soon.
“In League With Dragons” is the upcoming seventeenth studio album by the Mountain Goats, scheduled to be released on April 26th, 2019, on Merge Records. Inspired by tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, the album has been described as a “partial rock opera” with influences from noir literature.
The album was announced on January 28th, 2019. The announcement was accompanied by a live streaming event on Facebook and Twitch.tv, hosted by Wizards of the Coast. The band also released the first single from the album, “Younger”.
“In League With Dragons“ surges with wild tales of revenge and redemption, heroes at a crossroads and great figures in decline” over its dozen new, John Darnielle-penned tracks, which “luxuriate in a wide swath of sounds, from shades of the ‘80s Athens scene to swathes of outlaw country and a few motorik meditations,” per a press release. “Younger” is telling evidence of the album’s eclectic genre-hopping, foregrounding the guitars that 2017’s Goths eschewed entirely and ending with a sax solo, of all things. The Mountain Goats frontman opined on the band’s latest in a characteristically sprawling statement, describing its rock opera-meets-high fantasy style as “dragon noir.”
The Mountain Goats are JOHN DARNIELLE, PETER HUGHES, JON WURSTER, and MATT DOUGLAS. They have been making music Together as a quartet for several years. Three of them live in North Carolina and one has moved to Rochester. Their songs often seek out dark lairs within which terrible monsters dwell, But thier mission to retrieve treasure from the dark lair and persuade the monsters inside to seek out the path to redemption. As Axl Rose once memorably asked in the son “Terrible Monster”: “Whats so terrible about monsters anyway” This is the question the Mountain Goats have been asking and pursuing since 1991.
Available as a limited edition 12″ vinyl featuring cover versions of a number of rain–themed songs by the likes of Eurythmics, Ann Peebles, Scott Walker and The Cure. a collection of covers of songs by some of my favourite artists……. and it’s all about the rain. Scott Walker’s ‘It’s Raining Today,’ which I hope will be a fitting tribute.
In 2017, Bella Union boss Simon Raymonde said this of Moss: “Outrageously talented as she is, I still think her best is yet to come.” Offering full affirmation on both fronts, My Name Is Safe in Your Mouth is a haunting snapshot of an intuitive artist seeking new ways to work without safety nets, a quest spurred forwards by her move to Somerset in 2014. As Moss puts it, “Whilst the tentacles of city started to loosen their grip, I began amassing vocals that I felt cut a stark silhouette, and I didn’t want to share with big drums and distorted guitars. I work on a few projects at a time, and the contrast of having disparate musical worlds to step into makes me feel more satisfied. But with this record, I’d gone way deeper than anything merely gratifying.
As well as my new EP, this beast came out on Friday. The new UNKLE album, The Road pt2, which I’m super excited to be a part of once again. It’s an epic listen, and some great collaborations. Particularly proud of Sun (The).
Kid Dakota is the musical moniker of Darren Jackson. Formed in 1999, Darren is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, engineer, teacher, and producer. He owns and operates Shortman Studio in Northeast Minneapolis. In addition to creating and recording music, he is currently a Ph.D. student in ASPECT (Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought) at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His areas of research are early twentieth-century avant-garde film, film theory, and philosophy.
Most alternative music lived underground. It made a lot of noise, but no-one in the mainstream could hear it…. The nineties would see it go so much further than many of us expected. It wasn’t just the popularity of alternative music which would change; the music was constantly reinventing itself too, sucking in influences from different genres and different eras.
And that brings us to this compilation…Create a compilation which tries to dig a little deeper; which attempts to give another side of the nineties, which wasn’t Cool Britannia, Laddism, and Blur Vs Oasis. What’s here represents, at least one version, of the evolution of guitar music through the nineties, as told, not by the big hits, but by the limited edition singles, The Evening Session cult favourites and the bands who maybe never made it, but in some cases never wanted to anyway. “ Curated by acclaimed BBC 6 Music radio DJ and former NME journalist, Steve Lamacq, This 4CD compilation. 71 tracks from the 1990’s chosen by the UK’s leading Indie tastemaker. This is a great compilation. If you were a gig-going regular seeing ‘new bands’ in the 1990’s you will find lots to love here.
It is a useful historical over-view which tries valiantly to present as much as possible of the music on offer over the decade in the indie/guitar sphere and create some sort of evolutionary narrative… but inevitably it fails to be all-inclusive and ends up being just one mans choices in vaguely chronological order.
Steve Lamacq, for a leading BBC6 purveyor of taste, is pretty much some-one you can trust though. He’s the same age as me, was a teenage Lurkers fan and we, I imagine, went through our teenage years listening to exactly the same music, diverging as we reached our twenties in the mid eighties.
Like with any boxed set or comp, every now and then you get a run of three songs in a row which are perfect; they run together beautifully and make you go ‘Yes!’ as each one starts and you recognise it within a second or two despite not having heard it for yonks.
Despite 71 tracks though, there are so many bands missing; And I don’t just mean The big guns like Oasis, Blur, Verve and Pulp -there was no necessity for them to be there, but something from the pre-Sony Manics should have opened proceedings if we’re honest. Lamacq will be forever indirectly associated with them due to the For Real blood-letting which was during an interview with him.
Huggy Bear I can only assume refused permission for Her Jazz to be included – leaving Voodoo Queens the sole representative of Riot Grrrl groups.
It is just guitar bands ( No Red Snapper, Fluke or Credit To The Nation) and apparently “nothing which has been included on a ‘Shine’ compilation”, The Bands which deserved to be on here, are Shed 7, the Headcoats, Mantaray, Flinch, Tindersticks, Baby Bird, Prolapse, Gretchen Hofner, Bandit Queen, Thrum, Breed, Compulsion, Five Thirty, David Devant & his Spirit Wife, A House, Into Paradise, Die Cheerleader, the Flaming Stars, Add N to X, Quickspace, Nubiles,,, to name a few and there is nothing from the Too Pure / Clawfist / Wiija labels -Stereolab Gallon Drunk…. but that at least means there is plenty of scope for a second volume.
There has been some comment about the ‘Lost’ part of the title. Suede, Charlatans etc are hardly ‘lost’. Even the more obscure acts are only a google and YouTube search away. Nothing is really ‘lost’ any more.
CD 1 Is a mix of Baggy Northern sounds and Thames Valley Shoegazing to start with. Ride sound tame and lame, Northside sound naive and fun, the New FAD’s are their generations A Certain Ratio. Curve sound class and ahead of the game. Kitchens of Distinction emerge as the band whose back catalogue needs to be tracked down. The Fraggle-Pop-Punk of the Family Cat, Senseless Things and MC4 somehow hasn’t aged well. particularly when they are followed by Teenage Fanclubs finest moment Everything Flows… which is certainly does with a final four of Silverfish / Daisy Chainsaw / Voodoo Queens and the noisy experimental wonkiness of Cornershop.
CD 2 Is, to my mind the best, – 14 really great tracks out of the 19 – the New Wave of New Wave and Brit-Pop Division 2. (and Premier division debuts by Suede, Auteurs & Elastica) all of which are classics – as are Tiny Monroe, Salad and Mansuns contributions.
CD 3 is more of a mixed bag, genre and quality-wise. The appalling, irritating Bis, the dull bluster of Travis and Marion, but then that classic Rialto song (Monday Morning 5:19) and superb examples of the work of Strangelove, Whipping Boy and Scarfo – seriously good bands who should have been more than contenders. Kenickie and Catatonia both sound excellent, now as then – and both frontwomen have gone on to deserved success, Cerys as Greatest Living Welshwoman and broadcaster and Lauren Laverne -purveyor of some terrible unbearable dance-music on 6-Music -but a superb Desert Island Discs host.
CD 4 Starts with Arab Strap and Mogwai so with Delgados has a strong Scottish flavour and marks a progression and seriousness as well as quality. The Beta Band make sense in such company, as do Clinic, but Ten Benson, Wubble U and Campag Velocet do nothing for me and only prove stoners don’t always make great music. Cay, Cable and Seafood are interesting but not a patch on some of the bands omitted.
The good stuff outweighs the iffy and it is a great, eminently listenable boxed set. An American equivalent culled from the Nineties US underground would be interesting to hear -but probably wouldn’t be as pop and would stick to even tighter generic parameters.
I feel sorry for Lammo, his hands tied by the BBC, in that he cannot ‘promote’ his ‘product’ on their airwaves, when, if he’s anything like me, he probably wants to shout ‘Listen To This! It’s fuckin’ ace!’ because if its on here, you can guarantee that he loves it, and he wants to share his love and have a wallow in the nostalgia of the nineties for a while.
Pale Moon is a band that can be described as psychedelic rock. They cite their influences as The Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac and The Doors. Although they draw inspiration from classic rock era musicians, they band has a modern dreamy indie-rock sound to them. Their debut song is titled “Exile” and features a tight sounding band and vocals that are coated in excellent sounding reverb. The guitars sound bright, the drums and bass carry the track, and the vocals fit perfectly on top of the track to really make the listener get carried into a psychedelic music trance. The song is chill in mood but also feels quite uplifting to the spirit. The music definitely is moving to all who listen. “Exile” is a very strong debut for Pale Moon and we cannot wait to hear what this duo has in store for us next. Pale Moon is made up of Árni Guðjónsson and Natalia Sushchenko.
This song is written by me, Árni and the core of the song, which is the guitar strumming was born while our month-long trip to Mexico. We live in cold Iceland ,so we were very high on vitamin D at that point and enjoyed just being outside. The choir element comes from my obsession of Gospel music while ago. I used to go to see Gospel in a small town in Iceland, Gardabaer and I loved the sound of it. Lyrics are a bit abstract, but there’s a line, “They called me Jesus”, that actually happened in Cuba, I guess because of my long mouse-gray hair. Hard it pinpoint all the influences, but I was listening a lot to Beach Boys at the time and read Keith Richards biography that summer and both things shaped the song a bit in its own way.” –Árni, Pale Moon
Ben Kweller Returns After Near-Death Experience, After five years of unintended “hibernation,” indie rock icon Ben Kweller returns with some of the strongest music of his career. He didn’t go away just to go away. Instead, Kweller went on hiatus after being fifteen minutes away from death. “We almost died,” Kweller says. “Me, Lizzy, our two boys. We wouldn’t be here if Liz hadn’t woken us up that night.” Kweller refers to a trip to the mountains of New Mexico in 2013 when his family went on what should have been a winter wonderland vacation and instead resulted in acute carbon monoxide poisoning.
Now at last, he has a new record, which in addition to his good health, comes as a relief to Ben Kweller fans, who, for over 15 years, have endlessly sung along to his anthems and cried to his ballads. They know his gift for jumping through genres while remaining heartfelt and authentic. They also know that nostalgia and optimism were his trademarks long before his run-in with mortality. Now, with the forthcoming release of Circuit Boredom, we are reminded that a light really is at the end of the tunnel, we just have to listen for it.
