There’s something special about the band Wild Pink and their new album. The Brooklyn indie rock trio’s 2017 debut paired insightful, wide-eyed lyrics with heavy chords and twinkly emo tunings, spilling out about frustrations familiar to any twenty-something urbanite struggling to find a place in this mixed-up world. Buried beneath lines about smartphones and the Redskins/Cowboys NFL rivalry, the album offered a glimmer of sprawling Americana, and considering what we heard with “Lake Erie,” the band appears to continue that pursuit on the upcoming Tiny Engines album.
The track “Jewels Drossed In The Runoff” evokes the rushing swell of the crusty industrial oceanside. With anthemic guitars and chilling, crystalline synth pads, the track channels some of the biggest moments of mid-’80s heartland rock, with chords and lyrics that feel like a dead match for Tom Petty. Frontman John Ross sings about a committed lover with an earnest falsetto that can’t seem to get past doubting himself. “I grew up removed / And you have a heart like a star, you give away your best,” he sings in the track’s final moments. It’s a planetarium of spirit delivered in the most honest form imaginable.
Band Members
John Ross,
TC Brownell,
Dan Keegan,
Wild Pink “Yolk In The Fur” out 7/20/2018 on Tiny Engines Records
Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner Detail New Album as Big Red Machine.
Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and the National’s Aaron Dessner have detailed their debut album as Big Red Machine. The self-titled LP is set to come out August 31st via their PEOPLE digital platform, as well as on vinyl, CD, and cassette in partnership with Jagjaguwar. Big Red Machine includes the four songs that Vernon and Dessner released last month (“Forest Green,” “Lyla,” “Gratitude,” and “Hymnostic”).
Vernon and Dessner developed Big Red Machine over the last two years. They produced the album together with frequent collaborator Brad Cook. Big Red Machine was recorded and mixed by Jonathan Low, mostly at Dessner’s Long Pond studio in upstate New York (where the National also recorded much of Sleep Well Beast).
In a press release, Dessner stated, “I don’t think the record would exist without the community that came together to make it.” He continued, “We took the music to a certain point, and then we reached out and sent it far and wide, inviting friends to contribute any and all ideas. We’ve viewed the record and the process from a community standpoint. We’re incredibly excited about it, as excited as we would be for any album we might make in another situation that’s more conventional. But this feels like something new the process felt different and the outcome felt different.”
The track “Long Song” is out Today on Wiaiwya Recordings,
We realise our band is generally synonymous with songs on the much shorter side, but we honestly loved making this long, messy, ever-morphing piece of music scattered with little bits of pop songs. In a way it’s the most proper album-like thing we’ve ever done. So if you like our music in general, do give this a go, and even if you’re not mad about us then definitely get it anyway for Médecins Sans Frontières, all proceeds from the release are going to them!
I’m All Ears, the stunning new album by 19-year-old experimental duo Let’s Eat Grandma, is full of loud moments; but one of its most impactful is actually its quietest. “Ava” is a slight three-minute ballad that takes the penultimate place on the tracklist. While elsewhere, Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton work with producers SOPHIE and The Horrors’ Faris Badwan to creating ground-shaking setpieces like “Hot Pink”, and while synths dazzle like disco lights on the euphoric dream “Falling Into Me”, “Ava” is a simple piano affair. It speaks softly, and plainly, on an experience that has rarely been articulated so well in song; the feeling of watching on the sidelines as a loved one battles mental health issues.
The Ava of the song’s title is depicted as a scarred, withdrawn, afraid individual, one who cries out, “What do you want from me?” The voice that answers her, in a call-and-response narrated in Rosa Walton’s gliding, robust vocal, is a gentle one, but one brimming with frustration and pain. “Why’d you take it as final, when you’re starting to spiral? / Girl, why can’t you see?”
The lyrics give voice to an ache that is so hard to articulate because it is, by nature, a secondary pain. It’s the feeling of being trapped on the sidelines of a catastrophe. “You know I know you can do it”, Walton urges, with a note of desperation. The inherent tragedy of loving someone with mental health issues is the powerlessness of it; you can tell someone you think the world of them, that they are special, that they are loved, but you can’t force them to believe it.
In a press release on the song’s release last month, Hollingworth elaborated on the story the duo are telling. She said “Ava” is about “the realisation as you get older that some things are more complicated, and from the outside looking at a person you can’t always see how difficult some problems are to solve.”
“‘Ava’ is a song about the reality of being someone who is there – someone who not only checks in, but promises an unwavering support – but somehow still can’t be enough”
Perhaps one of the reasons this song cuts so deep in this particular moment is the way in which the frantic public conversation around mental health, and particularly depression, has exploded in recent weeks. Following the tragic suicides of designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain in June, there was a wave of well-meaning, earnest discussion online about what can be done about an invisible epidemic. Per the New Yorker, suicide in the US has risen by 25% in the past two decades.
When news related to mental illness breaks, the trend is for many people to tweet and otherwise signal that those of us who are depressed should reach out for help, and the rest of us should “check in” on our loved ones. People reach for the right, reassuring words to say in a crisis – it’s only human. But it can also, sometimes, blur the issue. It’s comforting, but a sweeping oversimplification, to imagine that people suffer mental illness only because they don’t have people who “check in” on them; to assume they don’t have people who are actually desperate to help them. As one writer tweeted in June, “suicide is not simple, it can’t be solved by a lunch date.”
“Ava” is a song about the reality of being someone who is there – someone who not only checks in, but promises an unwavering support – but somehow still can’t be enough. It expresses a feeling of an overwhelming need to fix something that you can’t fix, to be let in when you’ve been shut out. This is a reality for a lot of people, but one that’s rarely been spoken to so cuttingly and directly in a pop song.
The lyrics of “Ava” show the kind of intense, loving bargaining that you go through when trying to help someone out of their own personal darkness. But Walton’s delivery also contains complexity. She’ll help Ava, she promises on the refrain, whether“this” happens “once, or twice, or… again…”. That ellipsis is felt. Her voice becomes much softer as she breathes through the word“again”, heavy with the weight of realisation that there is a mountain before her. Steeling herself, she takes an emotional run-up to her next repetition of the word: “againnnnn”, she intones over rising chords, her gentle voice made hard with determination.
On July 3rd, Neil Young live-streamed a solo acoustic show from the Fox Theatre in Detroit that didn’t go completely as planned. Audience members, perhaps fueled by 4th of July celebrations, disrupted the performance, shouting at the 72-year-old singer as he played and spoke from the stage.
Neil Young brought his brief six-date solo acoustic tour to Detroit’s Fox Theatre , choosing the venue in part because of his love for the city and the venue. He took the stage surrounded by a circle of guitars, a banjo, and a ukulele, and launched into a batch of primarily early ’70s chestnuts on string instruments. Then, atypically, he took a spin playing a number of songs on the three different pianos and pump organ on stage.
The Detroit News reported fans treated the “deeply personal and intimate” concert “like a rollicking Crazy Horse show in an arena or an amphitheater, yelling out for song titles … or just bellowing Young’s name so frequently that it ruined the vibe of the evening.” Fans, however kept yelling out song titles (“HARVEST MOOOOOOOON!”) or bellowing Young’s name (“NEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLL!”) so frequently that it ruined the vibe of the evening.
The show brings up questions of concert etiquette and what kind of behavior is expected of concert audiences.
When it comes to concert couth, it’s usually younger audiences that are accused of being bad fans. They won’t put their phones away, they’re more concerned with being seen by their peers than living in the moment, etc. But those moments, though they may affect an individual’s participation, rarely disrupt from the overall experience of a concert.
The Neil Young situation was different. Very early in the evening, amid a flurry of song titles being shouted in his direction, Young shot back, “I hope you know I’m not keeping track of those.” That didn’t stop the fans from peppering him with requests. “CINNAMON GIRL!” “ROCKIN’ IN THE FREE WORLD!”
“You can keep shouting them, but I’m never going to play any of them,” Young is reported to have replied.
The incident seemed to rattle the usually impervious Young, who took to his blog on the Neil Young Archives website to discuss what he termed a “rough night.”
“It was the 4th of July holiday and some folks were celebrating, already high when they arrived at the show,” he wrote. “Because it was a holiday, I could see it coming. They were focused on their celebration, kind of like a festival. Any subtle solo performance of songs is very challenged under those conditions.”
It’s apparent that Young believes those in the Detroit audience who came to actually listen got a subpar performance from him. “I could slip deeply into a song if not distracted,” he noted, “but I am just relegated to the surface while fighting off distraction, and so is the rest of the audience. Likewise, I may have told a story that sets up the experience of listening to the song, if I was not interrupted while trying.”
He did, according manage to speak about playing Detroit’s Chess Mate coffeehouse, and writing songs in the White Castle restaurant across the street. He also played Buffalo Springfield’s classic “Broken Arrow” on piano, as well as “After the Goldrush” on pump organ and “I Am a Child” on his Martin D45 guitar — what Young called “some very fine and engaged moments.”
“There were some songs that shone through in spite of the obstacles and I am very happy they did,” Young noted, adding that he hoped to one day return to Detroit to a more receptive, less disruptive audience and give them a more fully engaged performance.
“Every time I got through this type of experience, part of me does not ever want to go through it again,” he wrote, “yet it is a risk taken every time I walk out to a solo stage.”
The Tuesday Young show at the FoxTheatre had been billed as “Neil Young Solo,” and found the 72-year-old to be performing by himself, mostly acoustic, in a deeply personal and intimate setting.
Very simply, it wasn’t that kind of show. The concert was a journey through Young’s career, and he told stories about his early days in Detroit and his memories of performing and recording in the city. But several times he wasn’t able to get through stories because fans were shouting and acting like jackasses. “Just pretend like I just told a story,” he said at one point midway through the concert, because by then he’d been shouted over so often that it was no longer worth trying.
I can’t recall attending another concert where the rowdy, unruly behavior of the crowd affected a show quite like the Neil Young crowd did, quoted local newsman.
It’s not just Neil Young, the same situation when Jackson Browne played Freedom Hill earlier this summer, Is there a generation gap when it comes to concert norms that leads to a feeling of entitlement by concertgoers of a certain age? That they paid their money and they can yell out whatever they want, whenever they want? Or is the bad behavior symptomatic of a larger breakdown of respect for others in today’s America?
To be fair, at Neil Young it was a case of a few ruining it for everyone, which is often the case in many disturbances, be it at a concert or a public gathering of any sort. And those few are either too ignorant, too belligerent or too male to empathize with others or realize the effect they’re having on everyone else. And too often it’s the few who dictate things for the many.
Neil Young knows his name, yelling “NEIL!” or “UNCLE NEIL!” isn’t going to cause any grand epiphany for him. He knows you love him, that’s why you paid to come see the show. And he knows his songs, shouting “MY MY, HEY HEYYY!” isn’t going to remind him that he sings a song called “My My, Hey Hey” and get him to play it for you.
So once that is established, what is the point of continuing to yell out? Is it the thirst for a reply? And is getting some acknowledgment worth ruining the experience for so many concertgoers around you?
Neil Young
2018-07-03 Fox Theatre, Detroit, Michigan, USA
Solo
01. On The Way Home (acoustic guitar)
02. Homefires (acoustic guitar)
03. Only Love Can Break Your Heart (acoustic guitar)
04. Love Is A Rose (acoustic guitar)
05. Cowgirl In The Sand (acoustic guitar)
06. Mellow My Mind (banjo)
07. Ohio (electric guitar)
08. There’s A World (piano)
09. Broken Arrow (piano) [first solo piano version ever – stunning]
10. I Am A Child (acoustic guitar)
11. Are You Ready For The Country? (piano)
12. Tonight’s The Night (piano)
13. Speakin’ Out (piano)
14. After The Gold Rush (pump organ)
15. Angry World (electric guitar)
16. Love And War (acoustic guitar)
17. Peaceful Valley Boulevard (acoustic guitar)
18. Out On The Weekend (acoustic guitar)
19. The Needle And The Damage Done (acoustic guitar)
20. Heart Of Gold (acoustic guitar)
—
21. Tumbleweed (acoustic guitar)
By attending a concert, like any public gathering, you enter into a social contract. The same way you wouldn’t sit down at a restaurant and scream the chef’s name after biting into the pasta primavera, you shouldn’t shout out things at a concert if it’s not that kind of show. Read the room and act accordingly. At an arena rock concert, all bets are off, the louder you are the better. But if a concert is a quiet acoustic gathering, keep the loud comments to yourself for the sake of those around you.
In 2013, when last we heard from No Age, the duo were tearing down the mid-’00s drone-punk sound they helped define. Five years later drummer/vocalist Dean Allen Spunt and guitarist Randy Randall came back together to rebuild it into something even bigger and more self-assured. Snares Like A Haircut plays almost like a revue of the band’s career, with all-out punk stompers nestled next to shimmering instrumental meditations, shoegaze ballads, and combinations of the three. Most striking, though, is the poise with which the band has returned to this material, assembling this worthy comeback with even more confidence and musical depth than they showed off at their peak.
Track from LP/CS/CD “Snares Like a Haircut”, released January 26, 2018 on Drag City Records.
Florence and the Machine pay tribute to Fleetwood Mac, a crucial influence for her with a stripped-down cover of “Silver Springs” that was recorded during a special radio session for The Spectrum at the SiriusXM Studios.
Singer Florence Welch commands the track with her fluttering vibrato, occasionally adopting a light twang as she channels Stevie Nicks. The arrangement opens with subtle piano and acoustic guitar, building with layered backing vocals and a faint tambourine.
Welch spoke about Nicks as a creative inspiration “I’m pretty obsessed with Stevie Nicks, from her style to her voice,” she said. “I like watching her on YouTube and her old performances, the way she moves and everything.”
Florence Welch is in a totally new headspace for new album High as Hope, the follow up to Florence + The Machine‘s chart-topping How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful.
During the SiriusXM session, Florence and the Machine also performed three original tracks: 2009’s “CosmicLove” and recent singles “Hunger” and “Sky Full of Song,” both from the band’s fourth studio album, High as Hope.
Speaking to Jenny Eliscu ahead of her exclusive SiriusXM performance, Welch acknowledged that her life and the way she views the world has changed since her last record. This led to her single Hunger becoming a celebratory song about the human condition rather than something dark and dramatic. Along the way, she also learned that freedom can come from being disciplined and isn’t just a “let loose, smash everything to bits kind of thing.”
Florence + The Machine performs “Hunger” at SiriusXM Studios in New York City.
Elsewhere in the interview, she discussed the origins of the album title High as Hope, saying that it came out of a poem she wrote about New York, and she also clarified why her recent breakup wasn’t a focal point of the album.
“I didn’t feel like people needed to hear that any more, and I think, at that point, there were bigger heartbreaks going on than my own heartbreak,” she told Eliscu. “It somehow didn’t feel like that interesting to me. And maybe ‘How Big, How Blue’ had covered every nook and cranny of heartbreak that you possibly could. And also, I guess, in the journey that I had in the last couple of years, I understood that it wasn’t really about the other person, you know?”
Florence and the Machine, opened for the Rolling Stones in April,
Bruce Springsteen has ended up every performance of his Springsteen on Broadway with “Born To Run” since the show launched in October 2017, but on Tuesday night, he decided to deviate from the script. “You’re a beautiful audience,” he told the crowd after finishing “Born To Run.” “You’re so good, you get the first encore ever…Feel free to take a picture.”
He then launched into “This Hard Land,” a song he originally recorded during the Born in the USA sessions in 1983 but wouldn’t play in concert for a decade. Springsteen would eventually release “This Hard Land” in 1995 on his Greatest Hits LP and it’s since become a semi-regular part of his live show and a fan favorite.
The decision to add in an additional song to the tightly-scripted, 15-song Springsteen on Broadway set came from Patti Scialfa’s inability to perform her usual duets “Tougher From the Rest” and “Brilliant Disguise” with Springsteen. Springsteen has made extremely minor setlist variations to his Broadway show during its long run, most notably when Scialfia is absent and he removes their two duets in favor of “The Ghost of Tom Joad” and “Long Time Comin’.” But he recently added “Joad” into the main set regardless of if Scialfa appears or not. With one song to fill in, Springsteen added the “This Hard Land” encore to not short-change the crowd.
Springsteen on Broadway is slated to end on December 15th, but in a new interview , he hinted that it might continue after that in some form. “I’m here until December,” he said when asked about the possibility of taking the show on the road. “We’ll see, we’ll see, we’ll see.
The Essex Green are a neo-psychedelic pop outfit from Brooklyn, NY, via Burlington, VT. The band is primarily composed ofsongwriters Jeff Baron, Sasha Bell, and Chris Ziter and specializes in a classic sound inspired by 1960s–1970s pop and folk in the tradition of bands like The Left Banke and Fairport Convention.
