After five years and a countless string of solo endeavors, a record label launch and some work on the animated Netflix show BoJack Horseman — The Black Keys has finally returned with “Lo/Hi.” The Akron, Ohio duo of Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach built its name off chugging, crunchy Southern rock like the type dispensed on “Lo/Hi,” so it’s a welcome return from the gentler sounds that colored the group’s last album, 2014’s Turn Blue.
“Nobody to love you / Nobody to care / Nobody to drug you / No one to hold back your hair,” sings Auerbach of a self-destructive person descending into the throes of rock bottom. There’s hand claps and rich, gospel-style backing vocals, further driving down the song’s moralizing intent.
Laura Stevenson’s last album, 2015’s Cocksure, found the singer beefing up her stripped-down sound with big guitars. A follow-up called The Big Freeze comes out at the end of March, and it heralds a return to Stevenson’s more finely detailed, wrenchingly intimate songwriting. The title refers to an eventual freezing of the universe which makes sense, given that she recorded it in the dead of winter — as well as to the ways relationships strain against emotional and physical distance. In first listen is the song “Living Room, NY,” she longs for a connection to the small details of everyday life with a long-distance partner, singing, “I want to see you stare at ceilings until you fall back to sleep.”
Recorded in her childhood home during the dead of winter, The Big Freeze represents a pivotal step for New York songwriter Laura Stevenson. Despite her pedigree in the punk and indie rock scenes, and the occasional inclusion of a backing band (like the sprightly, C86-inspired pop track “Dermatillomania”), for the first time on record Stevenson’s voice and guitar are in clear and highlighted focus. It is a natural aesthetic choice for the musician, who has often toured as a solo act and who pulls influence from the great American songbook, and a choice that plays to the core strength and organic beauty of her writing. And though it is easily the darkest and most emotionally-devastating album of Stevenson’s career, it is also without a doubt her most powerful.
Stevenson builds on her own private worlds with choruses of multi-tracked voices, swarms of cellos, French horns and violins; orchestration that blooms and swells throughout each intimate performance. Exploring thematic ideas of distance and misconnection; worlds pulling apart, aching loneliness, and attempts to drive out hibernating dormant demons.
In the opening track Stevenson’s voice insists the listener “lay back with arms out, all-in, unfeeling,” to allow themselves to sink into a flood of instrumental sound that thrums between dissonance and resolution. From waves crashing in an abandoned waterpark on the haunting “Value Inn”, to the last leaves trembling before winter sets in on “Rattle At Will”, a creeping sense of isolation and anxious beauty surrounds every song. And yet there is also warmth, and hope. The album’s third track “Living Room, NY” tells of an intercontinental love and longing which seems to have the strength to thrive despite even the most trying and impossible of circumstances. Across ten tracks, the listener will travel through the cold night, following after a small but powerful flame burning from the other side.
Adam Melchor graduated college with a degree in opera, but as a singer-songwriter, he specializes in dreamy, harmony-dense, Technicolor folk-pop songs like “Three Hours Ahead,” which celebrates a friendship that transcends time zones. Melchor, who recently moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles, sings about what he knows: the search for personal growth and connection, overcoming doubt and holding onto the slivers of the past worth keeping. The relocation proved to be fruitful and has since propelled the singer-songwriter’s career as an artist.
Acoustic singer/songwriter Adam Melchor is also streaming a new song titled “Plan On You.” The track is taken from Melchor’s new Plan On You EP set to arrive on March 20th. Check out the new song below.
With a soft instrumental introduction and Melchor’s delicate indie vocals, “Plan On You” brings us to a nostalgic place. Surrounded by unknown plans, the opera-singer-turned-bedroom-folk-artist sings of the one certainty in his life, crooning, “I don’t have a plan/ I just planned on you.” An ode to the modern love song, Melchor illustrates his brilliant ability to write simple and raw lyrics that resonate with you long after the song has reached its end.
written and performed by Adam Melchor drums by Jon Gilbert
There’s a low, gritty, bluesy rumble to Angie McMahon’s dramatic, poppy rock and roll — at times, she sounds like a one-woman reincarnation of Fleetwood Mac, which is a pretty lofty goal to set for yourself. In “Keeping Time,”McMahon has fun with sweeping shifts in volume, seemingly fading out until she hits a rousing chorus and unleashes a whoop worthy of her classic pop-rock forebears. At that point, the windswept drama of it all seems to transport her to another era entirely.
The Melbourne-born singer-songwriter is touring the United States for a run of shows that includes a date with Pixies in Tennessee, backed by a new two-track EP, A Couple of Songs, out March 7th on Dualtone Records. Videos for both of those songs — the already-released “Keeping Time” and the brand new “Pasta” — are premiering they make for a perfect showcase of McMahon’s gifts as a songwriter and vocalist.
“Pasta” is the standout though, an undulating rock song that McMahon says is “about feeling really tired, trying anyway, and wanting to rock out like Springsteen.”
That video has McMahon playing a show to (and sort of with) a pack of dogs. “When I needed to make merch for my first tour, I spent so long freaking out about it, worrying that it wouldn’t look cool and I wouldn’t be able to design something that felt genuine,” McMahon. has said “The day before it was due, I quickly scribbled this picture of some dogs lining up to go to a concert (dream come true). I got to the tipping point where I let go of the pressure and just did whatever felt good. This music video is a kind of adaptation of that. The gold star reminds me of being a kid and having encouragement, getting a tick of approval or whatever, but the adult version that I’m learning is that you just have to encourage yourself and not wait for other people to do it. And if you can’t make yourself feel awesome, dogs might make you feel awesome. It’s a reminder to go outside.”
Both of these songs will be on Salt, her debut full length, due out later this year.
Hannah Switzer’s band Labrador describes its songs as “wry and melancholy meditations on all the ways the Patriarchy creeps into relationships and ruins everything.” The group’s debut EP, Tell Me About Your Dad, pairs those meditations with brightly rendered, strangely moody, slightly countrified arrangements that meet somewhere between Neil Young and the stormier reflections of Big Thief. Switzer herself looms largest over the proceedings with a rangy and evocative voice that can haunt, lament and sneer, sometimes all at once.
Hypnotic vocal melodies, intricate undercurrents of drums and bass, and the unusual touch of finger-picking tenor guitar.
Labrador The Band
Vocals, Tenor Guitar – Hannah “Sundance Lass” Switzer
Drums – Lawrence “Casio Kid” Gann
Bass – Kent “2 Moist” Genis
Guitar Solo on “Dumb” – Grant Kempski
All songs by Hannah Switzer
Mike Krol writes crunchy, windows-open, garage-friendly power-pop songs that unfold with maximum efficiency: His last album, 2015’s Turkey, blew by in only 19 minutes. The new, appropriately titled Power Chords is nearly twice as long, but there’s still never a wasted moment. In “I Wonder,” Krol teams up with Allison Crutchfield for a fuzzed-out, wistful, impressively grown-up look back on a relationship that was never meant to be.
Power Chords, Mike Krol’s new Merge release, It traces Krol’s journey back to punk rock, harnessing both the guitar technique and the musical redemption referenced in its title. He’s wielding the same influences—Misfits, The Strokes, early Weezer, Ramones—but turning up the gravity and the gain. Indeed, Krol has gone somewhere new; yes, he bludgeoned himself with over-analysis and self-loathing, but along the way he stumbled upon a trove of intricate guitar lines and artfully mutating melodies.
Music ruined Krol’s life. And then saved it. In chronicling that process, Krol has made his best record—painful, voyeuristic, and angry, but ultimately transcendent and timeless. It is the sound of Krol giving in to a force greater than himself, as though the chords are playing him rather than the other way around.
From the album Power Chords, out January 25th, 2019 on Merge Records.
Sarah Tudzin has dubbed her band’s sound “tenderpunk,” which captures a fair bit of her modus operandi: Vibrant and aggressive, illuminati hotties‘ songs storm agreeably without obscuring the bleeding heart at their center. But that tenderpunk portmanteau still doesn’t quite convey the poppy, sunlit sound of Kiss Yr Frenemies and songs like “(You’re Better) Than Ever,” in which Tudzin craftily conveys a flood of mixed emotions: “Texted you a picture where you looked pretty,” she sings, adding, “and wondered if you saved the ones you had of me.”
On their Facebook page, Illuminati Hotties’ genre description reads “post-naptime burrito-core.” Jokes aside, the L.A. band’s jubilant rock would probably pair well with Mexican foods of all varieties, but not so much a midday nap. The group, whose only permanent member is longtime studio musician Sarah Tudzin, released Kiss Yr Frenemies, Tudzin’s first long player record under the moniker, in May. Tudzin, along with her band, stopped by Daytrotter to play a few songs from the record including ”(You’re Better) Than Ever,” “Shape Of My Hands,” “Cuff” and “Paying Off the Happiness.”
Illuminati Hotties – Paying Off The Happiness Recorded Live – Daytrotter Studios – Davenport, IA
To hear Blushh’s “I’m Over It” is to be transported directly to the ’90s in the span of less than 20 seconds. Shab Ferdowsi knows just how to rip into a fuzzy, rousing chorus with maximum efficiency and force — you can just imagine a stadium full of people rising up in unison to shout along while still conveying universal truths about emotional labor and frustration. “I’m Over It” is there to perfectly sum up your lousy day, while invariably improving it. Sometimes it doesn’t take 3:30. No chaff or endless repetition here. These songs are the perfect length and I wish all 2-minute tracks sounded like this.
Grian Chatten can’t help but spill words all over the place. His band, Fontaines D.C., blasts out hard-charging post-punk as he fills every available space with conversational blurts that lie somewhere between literary high-mindedness and the rants of a worked-up barfly. “Big,” from the group’s debut album Dogrel, takes less than two minutes to carve out a mantra (“My childhood was small / But I’m gonna be big!”) with a musical mission statement to match: It’s brash and forceful, but with a twinkle in its eye. Fontaines DC are undoubtedly the favourite discovery of 2018. For 2019 they are set to be the band to see at venues and festivals across the land. Taking the best bits of the bands like The Stooges, The Fall, Girl Band and Idles, we’ve already shared the outstanding Chequeless Reckless, and the other side to that single, Boys In The Better Land is another absolute crackerjack of a tune.
If you’re a rock star, porn star, superstar,
Doesn’t matter what you are
Get yourself a good car,
Get out of here
AA-Side ‘Boys In The Better Land / Chequeless Reckless’ via Rough Trade: released on Feb 23rd on 7″ vinyl and digital platforms. Audio Recorded and Mixed in Darklands Audio, Dublin by Daniel Doherty
The third 7″ Single from Dublin’s Fontaines who have now added DC to the end of their name. Chequeless Reckless is one half of a double A-Side single and is a mesmerising cut that’s built on a krautrock rock esque groove but played by punks. The vocals are spoken in a distinctive Irish drawl and sits in between Mark E Smith and Justin from the Vaccines. The other half of the single is Boys in the Better Land which is another golden nugget that has the sound of The Modern Lovers if they’d grown up in Dublin. this band just keep getting better and better.
Band Members
Grian Chatten,
Conor Deegan III,
Carlos O’Connell,
Conor Curley,
Tom Coll,
