Katie Crutchfield’s Waxahatchee project has varied in style since her first album under the handle, 2012’s American Weekend. On that record and her sophomore effort, Cerulean Salt, she leaned wholly into a soft, acoustic bent, focusing on lyrics rather than guitar hoopla and production. Then, she changed direction again on last year’s Out in the Storm, a punk-fueled indie-rock machine. But she toured Out in the Storm as if it were her older, softer material, and her live show proved to be a haunting and intimate affair because of that. For her most recent North American leg, Crutchfield toured with two artists who also released excellent debut full-lengths this year, Anna St. Louis and Night Shop. They each performed an opening set, then St. Louis and Night Shop’s JustinSullivan stepped in to play bass and drums, respectively, serving as Crutchfield’s backing band.
It was a very cool display of musical collaboration and something that doesn’t happen too often on an indie stalwart’s headlining tour. The three artists played some of the louder tunes from Out in the Storm, like “8 Ball” and rocking album opener “Never Been Wrong.” But Crutchfield finished out the show alone, seated at the piano with sheet music laid out before her, or at the mic with a guitar, playing acoustic versions of Out in the Storm tracks or true-to-recording renditions of songs from her excellent 2018 EP Great Thunder, which features songs she wrote while fronting an experimental-folk project of the same name.
From the album Out in the Storm, out now on Merge Records.
Waxahatchee “Out In The Storm” is a rock record wrought in, wrapped up and cathartically released by a relationship that fell apart. In an album that leans on the heavily riffed indie-rock of the ’90s, “Never Been Wrong” is the headbanger, with fists clenched tight and hearts wide. But it’s just like Katie Crutchfield, in the throes of crushing pain, to drop the song out and take a moment — to underscore the moment.
“And everyone,” she harmonizes a cappella, “will hear me complain / And everyone will pity my pain” — as we yell and whisper along.
Out In The Storm comes out July 14th on Merge Records .
Natalie Prass’The Future And The Past show at the Rescue Rooms recently was the concert we needed in 2018. On the record, Prass combats political polarization, a bleak national mood and whatever else is bringing you down with R&B-infused beats, delirious love songs and pure, danceable joy. She brings the same strategy to her live show, a positive-vibes-only, smiley hoopla. Backed by a troupe of dude musicians (including her fiance and Dr. Dogdrummer Eric Slick), Prass is the lone front woman. Her band mates wear blue jumpsuits. Prass delivered a party as opposed to a set, treating her tiny but enthused audience to all The Future And The Past’s dance hits as well as standouts from her self-titled first album, like “Bird of Prey” and “Your Fool.” As the show neared its end, elation, or maybe exhaustion, consumed the band ,
Natalie Prass performing live in the KEXP studio. Recorded September 24th, 2018.
Songs: Never Too Late Ship Go Down Lost Short Court Style
Miya Folick may be a relative newbie, dropping her first album Premonitions this year, but she shouldn’t be discounted. Following the release of two previous EPs, Premonitions is a record marked by her at times angelic and other times burly vocals and a lyrical voice that’s emotionally nuanced, purposeful and accessible. After watching her at last years Dot to Dot weekend, my immediate thought was that any headliner would be doomed to follow that performance. Her bubbly energy and impassioned, unusually operatic pop vocals clearly set her apart from the typical carefree indie-rock opener.
The audience, who had largely never heard her music before, was hanging on her every word in a way that many headliners would be jealous of—let alone a support act. If the crowd wasn’t already convinced she was something special, her fiery closing performance of “Give It To Me” certainly made that obvious.
Since she appeared on our list last year, the O.C. native has done nothing to diminish her standing as somebody we can’t wait to get an album from. A fierce talent.
written by miya folick
produced by david tolomei and miya folick miya folick – vocals, synth, programming josh menashe – guitar bryant fox – bass garet powell – drums
derrick baseck – additional synth
Ex:Re, the Solo Recordings of Elena Tonra. from Daughter.
Elena’s debut solo album – released under the alias Ex:Re – is available digitally now!
The 10-track album was recorded this autumn in South London and is co-produced by Elena & FabianPrynn. What a coincidence that I was wondering this morning, if Daughter is ever coming back with some new music. And then I check Twitter and see that “Romance” is released. Even though it’s not a new Daughter song or album, it’s still a pleasant surprise!
Physical copies of ‘Ex:Re’ are also now available for pre-order worldwide (12″ vinyl & CD) with a release date of the 1st February 2019. ‘Romance’ was the first single to be taken from ‘Ex:Re’. Watch the track’s accompanying video – directed by Antonia Luxem .
‘Romance’ is the first single taken from Ex:Re’s self titled debut album, digitally out on 4AD Records & Glassnote Records on November 30th.
Going to see Bristol-based band Idles is just like going to a good therapy session. Sure, the show is louder than a traditional therapy session may be, but it’s probably just as inspiring, if not more so. Singer Joe Talbot leads the band in what has become their signature sound: seemingly angry yet incredibly uplifting punk rock. It’s not just a show, it’s an experience. Idles invite audience members on stage to sing, dance and even play instruments. They lead stage dives and give little nuggets of wisdom, all while playing music full of social and political commentary. The smaller the venue, the better for an Idles show—the intimacy makes you feel like not just a fan, but also a friend.
IDLES performing live in the KEXP studio. Recorded October 4th, 2018.
Songs: Colossus Never Fight A Man With A Perm Television Danny Nedelko
Love Is… is the third album by Eric Burdon and The Animals. It was released in 1968 as a double album. Released to pretty much general apathy in 1968 the original Animals final album, ‘Love Is’, is packed with ace covers of some of their contemporaries recent(ish) tracks. Stand out tune for me is the cover of Traffic’s ‘Coloured Rain’ complete with awesome lengthy guitar solo by future Police-man Andy Summers.
Eric Burdon & company’s “Love Is . . . “ is probably one of their most polarizing albums. On the one hand, it is probably their slickest production and most coherent “concept album” statement — on the other hand it is a ridiculously overproduced piece of hippy silliness with some surprisingly sloppy moments in the playing and singing. “Love Is . . . “ is a double album with 8 tracks, nearly all of which are covers. The “New Animals” who play on the LP include Zoot Money and Andy Summers, later of The Police (these two had previously recorded an interesting psychedelic single together as Dantalion’s Chariot, more on that below.)
Track 1 is “River Deep, Mountain High” the Phil Spector tune which was a hit for Ike & Tina Turner. It kicks things off in a rousing fashion, Burdon doing his best white-man-soul vocalizing plus groovy wish-I-was-Black adlibs like “I love you baby like a flower loves the spring / I love you baby like Aretha Franklin needs to sing.” Supremely over-arranged in high sixties style, the song climaxes with a wonderful psych-out bridge section where a platoon of acid munchkins chant “tina tina tina tina-nee-na-na” (as in Tina Turner of course.)
Track 2 is a Sly Stone cover, “I’m An Animal”, chosen for obvious reasons (Burdon being the Animal”, ?) IMHO, one of the least interesting Sly tunes which gains little by this remake, the only twist being a floaty electronic piano & gentle wah guitar extended bridge with Eric jiving something about “creation! creature! animalism! brute!”
Track 3 is one of the originals “I’m Dying, Or Am I?” with Zoot doing the call-and-response thing with Eric. More high sixties sub Cream wah guitar dueling with psuedo-spanish acoustic guitars and lots keyboard overdubbage and some extremely out-of-tune background harmonies, plus ye oldest 60’s trick in the book: verses in 4/4 time and choruses in 3/4 for that carnival effect. “God knows I’m dying / my body can’t keep up with my mind.”
Track 4 is a bonafide kitsch classic rock’n’roll massacre with Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” it’s given the all-out syke-ee-delick treatment. Martial snare rolls, superquiet to superloud dynamics-via-overdubs, unnecessary acid guitar licks, the MOST out-of tune (and echo-drenched) harmonizing on an album that is chock full of tuneless harmonizing (all the Animals are credited with vocals — bless Eric for his democratic leanings in this respect — how punk!) Plus Eric gives a wonderfully overdramatic reading of what are essentially very corny lyrics. He goes back and forth between a hoarse whisper during the verses and a full-throated roar on the chorus.
Track 5 is nearly as wonderful Traffic’s “Coloured Rain” extended to nearly ten minutes. Where the original was light and hippy-dippy, Eric’s reading is again hilariously over-serious. Extended grooovy raga guitar solo in the middle complete with riffing horn section, and more of that outasite, outatune backup harmonizing (is all that echo supposed to hide whoever it is that’s always a little flat??)
Track 6 is “Too Love Somebody” by the Gibbs, here sounding a bit like Vanilla Fudge (slow with droney organ.) Points off for hiring a blackgirl soulchorus — I dig it more when the guys in the band sing!
Track 7 is a ten minute blues opus “As The Years Go Passing By” — lougey piano jazz plus sub-Hendrix acid blues guitar with Eric at his gauche best/worst, sing-speaking in a ridiculous “black accent.”
The climactic two-part 17-minute-plus monster that took up all of side 4 of the original LP is comprised of a medley of covers: first, “Gemini” originally by QuatermassEric and Zoot call-and-response again, the lyrics describing the contradictory nature of guess which zodiac sign: “I am black and I am white” etc. Highlight is the overblown (even by the standards of this record) bridge where Eric uses the duality of stereo to schizo-whisper stuff to himself like “there is only one side” — “no there are two sides” — back and forth from left & right speakers. Eventually it transitions into the poppier “The Madman” (a remake of “The Madman Running Through The Fields”, the aforementioned Dantalion’s Chariot single), which is about how the “straights” are like, crazy, man, and features some cool backwards cymbals and a delightful Barrett-Floydish bridge: “isn’t that the madman running through the fields? / isn’t that the madman, wonder how he feels?”
The band fell apart after disastrous tour of Japan and threats from the Yakuza. Eric declared War, John Weider joined Family, Zoot Money and Andy Summers worked with many people including Kevin Coyne and of course in 1977, Andy Summers joined The Police.
Eric Burdon — lead vocals, spoken word
Zoot Money — bass, backing and co-lead (3, 8a) vocals, organ, piano, spoken word
Andy Summers — guitar, backing vocals
John Weider — guitar, violin, backing vocals
Barry Jenkins — drums, percussion, backing vocals
Robert Wyatt – backing vocals
This album is both a classic of the high-sixties groovy style and a hilariously dated campy relic right down to the silly photomontage cover art (the band in negative, giant size towering over the grand canyon with an oversize moon in the background.)
Eric Burdon “Rarities” – #12: “Gemini”. Another great track on Eric and The Animals’ 1968 LP “Love Is”, this one takes psychedelic rock to a new level (as the album cover suggests (with The Animals on Cloud 9?). Keyboard player Zoot Money gets some singing time here with Eric and the interplay between them is a marvel. And new New Animal, future Police-man Andy Summers is on guitar here as well! The song was written by Money’s friend, guitarist Steve Hammond, and while it is likely that Money’s previous group, Dantalion’s Chariot, played the song in concert, this track by Eric Burdon is probably the very first recorded version. Great song on a great album!
Sunflower Bean move fast. Two years ago, the New York trio turned heads with their sleek, dreamy debut, Human Ceremony. On this past spring’s Twentytwo in Blue, they sounded even cooler and more confident. Now, less than a year later, they’re leaping forward yet again with King of the Dudes, their fantastic new four-track EP, due out January 25th on Mom + Pop Records.
“Over time, we really just give less of a fuck,” says singer and bassist Julia Cumming. “That’s what rock needs in 2018, and that’s what the EP is saying. We’re free to be aggressive and fun and weird.”
King of the Dudes is all black-leather-jacket strut and New Wave sneer, as heard on “Come for Me,” the EP’s first single. “Do you really wanna come for me?/You know I got all night,” Cumming taunts. “Do you really wanna waste my time?/If you do, then do it right.”
“It’s about having my fists up — intellectually, proverbially, ready for anything,” Cumming says of the song. “Women are fed up. The public is fed up. Shit’s really bad, and we needed a way to express that. And, obviously, there are some sexual undertones.”
Sunflower Bean were on tour this past June — “driving around the United States, where we do most of our thinking,” Cumming says — when they first considered a swerve in direction. She had been texting with producer Justin Raisen, whose work on Angel Olsen’s My Woman(2016) and Sky Ferreira’s Night Time, My Time (2013) had piqued the band’s interest, and later in the summer, Cumming, singer-guitarist Nick Kivlen and drummer Jacob Faber paid a visit to Raisen’s Los Angeles studio.
They didn’t have much of a plan beyond capturing the spark they were all feeling, but that was enough. “[Raisen’s] energy was really different from a lot of other indie rock producers,” Kivlen says. “Much more savage and vital. We were very measured with our last record, and we took a lot of time looking at each detail through a magnifying glass. Then we went to L.A. and just steamrolled right through this, working more on instinct.”
They knocked out the EP over a quick week in Raisen’s studio-converted garage. “We rented all these crazy amps, and tracked with about four amps going at the same time, with all these different aesthetics,” Kivlen says. “It’s the most happy I’ve ever been with my guitar sound on a record.”
“You could hear it down the block,” Cumming adds. “It shows that you don’t need a big studio with a bunch of isolation chambers to make something real.
As if Field Music weren’t prolific enough creators in their own right, the Brewis brothers have also created a litany of excellent solo and side-projects as well. The latest one comes in the form of You Tell Me, a collaboration between Peter Brewis and Admiral Fallow member, Sarah Hayes. The pair met at a Kate Bush celebration concert, bonded over a shared love for Rufus Wainwright, The Blue Nile and Tortoise, and set about writing the songs that make up their debut album, out early next year on Memphis Industries.
This week ahead of the release, You Tell Me have shared their new single, Water Cooler, a track that, as Peter explains, is fairly self-explanatory, “it was intended to be a look at an inept office romance. I was literally imagining two office workers failing to talk to each other at the water cooler. No metaphors here”. Musically, the trademark Brewis rhythmic angularity is all present and correct, although it’s a more organic, less polished take on the sound. Much of You Tell Me’s debut album, and even their name, seems to deal with the idea of communication; conversations new and old, misunderstandings and shared moments of clarity. Now go make sure you stay hydrated, and if you happen to bump into your colleague on the way, you could try saying hello, if you want to, you tell us?
Brand new single from You Tell Me, taken from their self-titled debut album which is out 11th January via Memphis Industries.
Frances Cone is an American indie pop band started in Brooklyn, New York and currently based in Nashville, TN. The band consists of Christina Cone, Andrew Doherty, Adam Melchor, and Aaron Hamel. They are named after Christina’s father and great-grandfather, both musicians themselves in South Carolina and both born on September 11. Frances Cone began in 2013 with the release of their first full-length album titled Come Back. In 2014, Frances Cone released a self-titled EP that streamed on Paste Magazine, which subsequently featured them in their “Best of What’s Next” series stating, “You’ll hear everything from folk-inspired harmonies, to driving bass drums, to grungy synths, all culminating in an arena anthem, where Cone’s roof-lifting vocals shine.”
When I listened blindly to nearly a thousand songs while attempting to make my schedule of bands to see at this year’s SXSW music festival, one of the few tracks that leapt to the top was “Arizona” by Frances Cone. I wasn’t alone. NPR Music’s Stephen Thompson also singled out this now Brooklyn-based band for the way it wraps its storytelling in a catchy, pop parcel. But it’s so nice to say that they have an album out on January 18th via Thirty Tigers. The first single, Wide Awake, is out now and is streaming on all of the platforms there are. It is also not a Katy Perry cover.
Songwriter Christina Cone says ,We invested so much of our lives into these songs and we sure did take our time. So much has changed over the course of these 3 years. It sometimes feels like music can’t possibly live in the realm of top priority and then it also feels like it’s the only thing, at least part of an indescribable remedy to all the things that ail us. I’m so happy to be here, at this time, in this moment, and I hope these songs become yours in whatever way you need.
Led by singer and songwriter Christina Cone, the band is set to release Late Riser, its second full-length album this year. The first track the group performed for thier Tiny Desk concert is its just-released single, “Unraveling,” a tale of falling apart, of life becoming so overwhelming that the song’s character simply stops and lets go. With each verse of “Unraveling” the saga builds to a climax and then a calm. It’s this sort of craft that makes Frances Cone stand out. Think Lucius, another band that captured my attention years ago for similar reasons. In fact, Dan Molad, the drummer and producer for Lucius, mixed that first Frances Cone song that originally grabbed my attention, “Arizona.” This is wonderfully literate pop that won’t hit you over the head, but might gently find a home in your heart.
Musicians Christina Cone (keys, vocals); Andrew Doherty (electric bass, electric guitar, vocals); Adam Melchor (electric guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals); Alex Baron (drums)
To many, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper (aka Aly Spaltro) is an enigma. Her songs are at once intimate and unbridled- both deeply personal and existentially contemplative. Spaltro is a fearless performer who can command a pitch-black stage with nothing more than her voice. Yet, when the band bursts in and the lights come up, what began as a demonstration of restraint shifts seamlessly into an emphatic snarl.
It was in Spaltro’s home state of Maine that she first found her voice among thousands of films in the independent rental store where she worked the closing shift. After hours, Spaltro would create songs completely uninhibited by musical conventions, learning to play and sing as she hit record.
10 Years of Mom + Pop: Covers – Lady Lamb – “Come Save Me” (Jagwar Ma Cover).
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