If you’ve been fanging for some Middle Kids action then crave no more because the band have gone and unleashed a ripper live video for their tune “Mistake”.
Filmed at Sydney’s Golden Retriever Studio, the video shows the trio in their element with lead singer Hannah Joy tearing the track apart as emotion floods her face.
Mistake is the first taste fans have copped from the group’s highly anticipated debut albumLost Friends, which is due to drop on 4th May. The band are currently in the UK, smashing out some London gigs, but will return for a huge Australian tour that kicks off in May and culminates in a massive show at Sydney’s VIVID LIVE festival.
Dawes are excited to announce their sixth studio album “Passwords” will be released on June 22nd via HUB Records.
Hi folks. Taylor here.
As you’re probably aware, it’s a wild time to be alive. There are a lot of thoughts and feelings we feel less inclined to share than we ever have before. At least in my lifetime. A lot of controversial conversations that feel like they only serve as something for the next person to crumple up and toss aside.
So it’s with all that in mind that we are proud to announce our new album ‘Passwords.’ In this rapidly approaching age of transparency, passwords can feel like this last vestige of a wall between a world we can see and one we can’t. Having a password allows you gain access to some information or perspective that you didn’t have before. In that sense, I like the idea of looking at a song as a password – an opportunity for some sort of insight that had previously been unavailable to you. And that goes for the singer as much as the potential listener, I promise. 🙂 These songs are about everything to the extent that any Dawes record has been…but in this case there is more of an objective…at least for us – to think a little harder about not just how but WHY we (not just ‘you’ or ‘I’ but ‘we’) feel the ways that we do. What small steps can be taken to revisit these old ideas of empathy? How can we develop a form of communication that goes beyond making sure you’ve said your piece and accurately aims at being heard?
Joseph Arthur and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck will release their debut LP, Arthur Buck, on June 15th via New West Records. The duo previewed the album with upbeat lead single “I Am The Moment”
“Becoming free/ It’s not as easy as I’d like it to be,” Arthur sings over a lush arrangement that builds with a raw blend of percussion, vocal samples and strings.
The Arthur Buck collaboration originated toward the end of 2017, when the pair rain into each other during respective visits to Todos Santos, Mexico. They wound up pooling their material and crafted eight songs in three days; on the fourth, they performed a show for a small group of locals near Buck’s home. “It was really spontaneous and kind of magical in its own way, as [being in Mexico] we were kind of disconnected from everything,” said Buck
In an interview with NPR, Arthur recalls writing “I Am the Moment” “within the first 10 minutes of seeing each other.” He continued, “Same way as we wrote our other songs. He had the chords and arrangement and I did the top line except when I sang, ‘I am the moment ,’ he sang back, ‘Waiting for you.’ Peter said, ‘Okay, finish the lyrics so we can play that tonight.’ And I did, and we did. And the crowd completely sang along to it.” Arthur said that the song arose through his ritual of listening to inspirational YouTube clips.
From the album ‘Arthur Buck,’ available June 15th . Arthur Buck is Peter Buck and Joseph Arthur Animation/painting by Joseph Arthur
The New York Dolls – were David Johansen, Johnny Thunders, Sylvain Sylvain, Billy Murcia, and Arthur Kane Jr. A band that kept the erection but deflated the egos. The Dolls “single handedly lowered the standards of an entire industry.” They came on like a prima ballerina on a spring afternoon wearing a rag-tag concoction of Thrift Store and Salvation Army toss offs. the band’s first two albums New York Dolls (1973) and Too Much Too Soon (1974) became among the most popular cult records in rock.
From fashion sense alone, the New York Dolls set a unique tone, inspiring glam rock and hair metal artists alike. On stage, they donned an androgynous wardrobe, wearing high heels, eccentric hats, and satin. However, their influence doesn’t just end at their choice of women’s attire and big-screen drama. Their sharp-tongued alienation and jigsaw guitars get at the wild energy and “anything goes” intensity of kids escaping their family lives and finding freedom in the big city. That could mean pushing deeper into hard rock or embracing pop, as long as it was done with the smirking power of David Johansen. The opener to the Dolls’ self-titled debut has been covered by everyone from Sonic Youth to Scott Weiland, Teenage Fanclub to Todd Rundgren, showing their ability to appeal to anyone, even though they refused to play by anyone’s rules.
The band had a glammed up look and pared down sound. They were funny. They were rude. They covered classic rock and roll hits like “Stranded in the Jungle” by The Cadets under a red communist flag.
The New York Dolls won Best New Band and Worst New Band in Creem Magazine’s Readers Poll in 1973. Music aficionados complained that the New York Dolls couldn’t play. So what? Whoever said Bob Dylan could sing? Robert Christgau called them “the best hard-rock band since the Rolling Stones.”
The New York Dolls predated punk and glam metal. They influenced rock groups like the Sex Pistols, The Damned, Kiss, the Ramones, Guns N’ Roses, W.A.S.P (whose leader, Blackie Lawless, replaced guitarist Johnny Thunders after he left the group in 1975, playing guitar in the last New York Dolls performances, and also played guitar and sang in bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane’s only EP, Mr. Cool, When the Dolls started, Patti Smith did poetry readings before their shows. Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine caught the Dolls right before they formed the Neon Boys, which became Television.
The New York Dolls can be traced to the 1967 band The Pox, which included Sylvain Sylvain and Billy Murcia, who were friends since a schoolyard fight at Van Wyck Junior High in Jamaica, Queens. Sylvain crossed the Suez Canal from Cairo to be a New York Doll and the first words of English he learned were “fuck you.” Murcia came from Bogota, Colombia, not Jersey, and the two were finally able to finish sentences, according to the book Too Much Too Soon: The New York Dolls. They met Johnny Genzale at New Town High. The Italian bassist was thunder on a basketball court or a baseball diamond, but wound up being just a Jaywalker. Arthur Kane came down from the Bronx with a thick Irish accent.
The Pox were recorded by Harry Lookofsky, the same guy who produced “Walk Away Rene.” When the Pox broke up, the two friends got into fashion, opening Truth and Soul. Sylvain also worked at men’s boutique, A Different Drummer that was across the street a doll repair shop called the New York Doll Hospital. Sylvain said that the shop inspired the name for their future band. They also sold “keef,” which was really good hash. By the early seventies they were playing with Rick Rivets. Thunder rechristened himself after the hero of DC Comics’ All-Star Westernafter he turned down the Volume. Thunders played lead guitar and sang for the band, called Actress during practice but named Dawn of the Dolls on an October 1971 rehearsal tape release.
David Johansen was living on East 6th Street when he got the call because he looked like a cross between Mick Jagger and French actress Simone Signoret. Thunders decided that he no longer wanted to be the front man, David Johansen joined the band. Johansen had started singing in the late 1960s in the local Staten Island band the Vagabond Missionaries before hitting Café Wha with Fast Freddie and The Electric Japs. He was a stud on Main Street and maybe some other porn movies. David Jo looked 16 and bored shitless. Rick Rivets was replaced by Sylvain Sylvain and the bottom was held together by bass guitarist Arthur “Killer” Kane and drummer Billy Murcia.
The Bowery butterflies wore Spandex and platform boots at their debut first performance at homeless shelter The Endicott Hotel on Christmas Eve 1971. They caught the eye of Andy Warhol who helped them get a gig on Broadway, lower Broadway. Ex-Paramount Records exec Marty Thau saw a sign outside the Mercer Center advertising: “NEW YORK DOLLS: 2 SETS $3.” For six bucks he and his wife caught “five guys dressed as women in horrible makeup and jewelry” and became the band’s manager, arranging a residency at the Center.
Bands did New York City residencies at theaters in the early seventies. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention played Wednesday afternoons at the Garrick Theater on Bleecker St. The Fugs played seven nights a week at the Players Theater on MacDougal Street. The Velvet Underground played around the block twice a night, five days a week at Max’s Kansas City. The New York Dolls had a regular Tuesday-night gig in the Oscar Wilde Room of the Mercer Arts Center.
The New York Dolls were plastic dolls with a fresh coat of paint . Who was gonna sit through the madness and still act quaint? They mixed drag queens with glam rock to lead an assault on what was happening on the radio. “Is it a crime for you to fall in love with Frankenstein?” asked David Johansen, Johansen began a solo career who would go on to become BusterPoindexter .before learning intricate blues guitar and go back to being David Jo. Johansen only wore a dress one time onstage at Club 82, though he rocked the Capri pant.
Mercer Arts Center kicked The New York Dolls out in 1972 because they wanted neither rock nor roll in the theaters. The center came crawling back after they saw the diminished bar tabs. The Center’s Blue Room theater also hosted the Modern Lovers and Suicide. Rod Stewart invited the Dolls to open for him at a London concert. The Mercer Arts Center was buried in the Grand Hotel collapse just after five p.m. on Friday August 9, 1973.
Well if you don’t like it, go ahead, find yourself a saint. Billy Murcia would be dead of “misadventure” before the New York Dolls even signed a record contract. While on a brief tour of England in 1972, Murcia passed out from an accidental overdose at a party. He was put in a bathtub and force-fed coffee to bring him around but wound up choking on it, dying of asphyxiation. Murcia was found dead on the morning of November 6th, 1972, at the age of 21, David Bowie, who proclaimed The New York Dolls as a major influence, immortalized Murcia when he sang “Billy Dolls and other friends of mine” in the song “Time” which opened side two of his 1973 album Aladdin Sane.
Once back in New York, the Dolls auditioned drummers, including Marc Bell (who was to go on to play with Richard Hell, and with the Ramones under the stage name “Marky Ramone”), Peter Criscuola (better known as Peter Criss, former drummer of Kiss and Jerry Nolan, a friend of the band. They selected Nolan.
The Dolls were signed by Mercury Records‘ A&R man Paul Nelson. Their debut album was produced by Todd Rundgren. Stereo Review magazine said they sounded like lawnmowers. How she ever gonna love you when she can’t parlez vous your Francais?They topped from the bottom in Creem magazine and lit out for Europe, where Bob Harris called them “mock rock” on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test.
The New York Dolls’ second album, Too Much Too Soon, was produced by George “Shadow” Morton. He made his bones recording morbid motorcycle death hits like “Leader of the Pack” and “Out on the Street” for girl groups like the Shangri-Las and helping Janis Ian bridge the racial divide in “Society’s Child.” There’s gonna be a showdown don’t you worry. Mercury Records let them go shortly after the album also failed to do much on the charts.
By 1975 the Dolls were playing smaller venues than they had been previously. Drug and alcohol abuse by Thunders, Nolan and Kane as well as artistic differences added to the tensions among members , Future Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren managed to split the band up by 1975. He put the band in front of a communist flag for a 5-concert-five-borough tour of New York. Television opened for them. Their last show in New York State was at The Shoram, in Quogue, New York. Thunders and Nolan left while on tour in Florida in 1975. Blackie Lawless sat in on guitar for the rest of the Florida tour. The New York Dolls played at the Beacon Theater on New Year’s Eve, 1975 and a follow-up show at Max’s Kansas City. The group played its final shows in 1977.
Sylvain formed The Criminals. Johansen got funky, but chic and by the late 1980s he rechristened himself Buster Poindexter for Saturday Night Live, kept it through Sunday morning, made some movies, had some laughs. Thunders and Nolan formed The Heartbreakers with bassist Richard Hell.
A rock n roll nurse went into my head. In 1991, Johnny Thunders died in New Orleans. It was originally believed he overdosed on heroin and methadone but it later came out that he had t-cell leukemia. Nolan died in 1992 following a stroke brought about by bacterial meningitis.
Early New York Dolls demo tapes were released on cassette as Lipstick Killers on ROIR Records in 1981. Sylvain’sThe Criminals, cut a solo album for RCA and drove a cab. He recorded the album Sleep Baby Doll for Fishhead Records in the early 1990s.
The Smiths’ Morrissey reunited Johansen, Sylvain and Kane for the Meltdown Festival in London in 2004. Morrissey’s Attack label released a live album. A film called New York Doll came out and it looked like the Dolls could be back. But Arthur Kane died of leukemia on July 13, 2004. After reuniting, they recorded and released three more albums One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This (2006), Cause I Sez So (2009) and Dancing Backward in High Heels (2011)
All dressed up, I got nowhere to go. In November 2006, the Dolls headlined “Little Steven’s Underground Garage Presents the Rolling Rock and Roll Show” about 20 times and the former new Dead End Kids played in Australia and New Zealand. On September 22, 2007, the Dolls were then dropped by Roadrunner Records
The current lineup is David Johansen on vocals and harmonica; Sylvain Sylvain on guitar, bass and piano; Brian Delaney on drums, and Claton Pitcher on guitar and vocals.
A lot of the information for this article was retrieved from the book Too Much Too Soon: The New York Dollsby Nina Antonia
Singer-songwriter Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville is about to turn 25, and Matador Records is making sure that anniversary doesn’t go unnoticed. On May 4th, the label will issue Girly-Sound to Guyville: The 25th Anniversary Boxset, a 7-LP or 3-CD (or digital) collection tracing her artistic evolution from her three pre-Matador demo cassettes (originally released under the name of Girly-Sound) to her acclaimed debut album.
Girly-Sound to Guyville kicks off with each of the three privately-pressed cassettes remastered and restored on vinyl, and now titled Yo Yo Buddy Yup Yup Word to Ya Mutha (Girly-Sound 1), Girls Girls Girls (Girly-Sound 2), and Sooty (Girly-Sound 3). Volumes 1 and 2 are pressed on two vinyl LPs, while Volume 3 takes up one LP. The box is rounded out, on two LPs, with a remastered version of Exile in Guyville.
Additionally, the box set will feature a book with an oral history by Jason Cohen, drawing on interviews with Chris Brokaw, Gerard Cosloy, John Henderson, Chris Holmes, Tutti Jackson, Nash Kato, Mark Ohe, Casey Rice, Brad Wood, Tae Won Yu, and of course, Phair. Essays by Phair (“You Might Be a Lucky Star”) and Ann Powers (“Talking Back in Guyville”) are also included, along with rare photographs and memorabilia. For her June tour, Phair will exclusively perform material from the Girly-Sound tapes.
For those interested in having the Girly-Sound tapes in their original cassette format, a bundle of three cassettes can be ordered directly from Matador to add to a box set pre-order. Lastly, the original Exile in Guyville album will be reissued on double-vinyl or single CD, also on May 4. Amazon links are currently available below for the vinyl and CD editions of the box set; the standard reissue isn’t yet available for preorder at Amazon.
Originally released in 1993, Exile In Guyville is a seminal album and a feminist landmark. Its legendary status has only grown over the years. It’s continually included in countless lists…Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest albums of all time + 100 best albums of the 90s, Pitchfork’s Top 100 albums of the 90s, etc. Numerous essays and think pieces have been written about it and the number of accolades piled on is endless. Since the release of Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair has continued to defy expectation and break barriers. She has released five albums, and is currently working on a new one with Ryan Adams. She has also composed music for television shows and received awards for that work. In November, it was announced that she would be fulfilling a longtime dream to be an author, and she received a two-book deal with Random House. Her first book will be called Horror Stories which focuses on “heartbreak, motherhood, and everything in between.” “A landmark of foul-mouthed, compromised intimacy, a tortured confessional, a workout in female braggadocio, and a wellspring of penetrating self-analysis and audacity.” – The New Yorker “Maybe the greatest work of traditional American indie rock that anyone has ever made. It’s also probably the best road-trip album of its generation and the signal of a rare talent’s arrival. It deserves to be celebrated. Let’s do that.”
Liz Phair, Girly-Sound To Guyville: The 25th Anniversary Box Set(Matador, 2018)
Wild Animals must have fans all over the world. No less than seven record labels spread across the U.S., Spain, Italy, Chile and Japan are co-releasing The Hoax; a lot of people really want you to hear the Madrid trio’s new album, which recalls little bits of Superchunk’s crunchy pop-punk or Bob Mould’s triumphant, post-Hüsker Dü jangle with Sugar. But where Wild Animals‘ debut kept everything fast and distorted, these new songs punch out raucous melodies like boxing gloves made from marshmallows.
“Science-Fiction,” the album’s first single, is a solid case in point. At once nostalgic for technology of yesteryear that brought quiet nerds together (“We spent our time in the arcade / Our second home back in sixth grade / Playing Tetris, Double Dragon / But Street Fighter was our favorite one”) and critical of modern convenience that keeps us at arm’s length, it’s a power-pop song with fuzzy power chords, ringing guitar riffs and a big dang heart.
Texas singer-songwriter Alejandro Rose-Garcia, Aka Shakey Graves, is known for twangy, blues-rooted Americana that charms your socks off, the kind fit for dancing barefoot on a back porch in the southern heat. On Can’t Wake Up, his fifth album, he gambles with the very formula that brought him fame. Armed with new instruments and a lifetime of dreams, he forgoes his boot-stomping, cheeky folk for a sound that fluctuates between finely-tuned rock and full-band pop. Alejandro Rose-Garcia pulls it off in large part due to his storytelling prowess; these songs would be welcoming, even enthralling, in any style.
Last December, Rose-Garcia took to Twitter to hint at the change: “Next album. New sound. Sell your suspenders.” While the message is apt in that straightforward folk is nowhere to be found on Can’t Wake Up, it’s best to keep the suspenders on for support given the amount of trekking through new soundscapes. It’s a dense listen Shakey Graves describes life lessons he’s learned over the years . He says: I honestly don’t want to blab too much about it outside of saying that I couldn’t be more proud of every aspect of this record. It is vast in sonic range but was built at home the same way I’ve always done it. some of the songs where it sounds like a small confused symphony is merely one excited boy and a tape machine.
The album’s dioramic artwork depicts Shakey Graves in a ghost town, enrobed in purple and a dazed expression, walking between vibrant violet and magenta plexiglass plates. Above, a human face peers through the clouds, curious as to what could happen next.
As a freshly minted 30-year-old, Rose-Garcia has accumulated a surplus of memories; he dug as far back as high school to pen those that appear on the album. He’s mining for moods and moments, not people or particulars. By utilizing this open-ended storytelling, Shakey taps into powerful feelings: the specific aching brought on by sleepless nights of love-sickness, the stubborn denial of continuing to use selfish excuses, the humanitarian curiosity that arises when comparing your neighbor’s lifestyle to your own. In the album’s most despondent number, “Tin Man,” his final words hang with the asteism of someone who missed the chance to advise his younger self: “Day by day, if the posted limit you obey / Then the biggest shot in your life / Will be dressed with salt and lime.”
It’s the way Shakey Graves delivers these sentiments that illuminates Can’t Wake Up.He’s evolved from a campfire storyteller into a songwriter armed with a full band, and the rich instrumentation clouds around his lyrics like Broadway set designs: “Aibohphobia” walks through a kitschy, old-timey cartoon thanks to a Mellotron; the use of a retro Optigan makes “Climb on the Cross” sound like it’s playing through a boombox on the beach; “Dining Alone” dances through the countryside with slide guitar and backup vocals by alt-country fellow musician Rayland Baxter (he also joins on guitar elsewhere). Perhaps the biggest trick is how Shakey Graves vocals use slightly out-of-sync double tracking for a dreamy, disillusioned feeling.
Listen closely to the one-two punch of kick drum-heavy “Cops and Robbers” and 1990s ode “Mansion Door.” Though they’re dazzled up in dreams and electric guitar, this is the same Shakey Graves that captured hearts with his debut seven years ago. When creativity and charm are ingrained in your DNA, everything else is malleable.
Can’t Wake Up comes out NEXT FRIDAY, MAY 4th, on Dualtone Records
The post-punk trio Control Top is a tribute to persistence and evolving through doing. Amid periods of dormancy, stylistic forays and lineup changes, singer/bassist and founding member Ali Carter was determined to keep the project going after the release of the band’s demo tape. In 2017, she recruited drummer Alex Licktenhour (HIRS, Get Better Records) and guitarist Al Creedon (Bleeding Rainbow, I IM EYE MY). Licktenhour was searching for a new project to get involved in, while Creedon was rediscovering electric guitar after years of playing noise and electronic music. Together, they forged a clear identity, blending diverse tastes to create music for a time beyond despair and naïveté.
“Your false authority is dreadfully boring me,” howls Ali Carter, leader of the Philladelphian trio Control Top, her voice dripping with sneery contempt. “Type A” is a part of a proud punk tradition: songs that rip the shit out of acquaintances for being assholes. In this case, the asshole in particular is someone who feel the need to control every possible situation: “Static vision! Cold precision! Manic control! Hands off my soul!” The irony is that “Type A” is a ferociously controlled song. Control Top play fast and hard, and there’s wildness in Carter’s voice, so it’s almost like they’re a runaway train of a band. But there’s no chaos in the way they play. Instead, their sound is tight and crispy and impeccably constructed. It’s tension and release all at once.
“Control Top play fast and hard, and there’s wildness in Carter’s voice, so it’s almost like they’re a runaway train of a band. But there’s no chaos in the way they play.
Each new song Iceage have released ahead of Beyondless has revealed it’s an album to get excited for, but this one just might be the most intriguing of the bunch. Surrounded by haggard, chain-smoking rockers and arid, brooding slow-burners, “Take It All” instead conjures up the just-left-of-reality experiences of dream states. Iceage have never recorded a song so elusive yet so emotive.
“The Day the Music Dies” combines raunchy brass, frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s sassy lead vocals and driving keyboards into a theatrical, Rolling Stones-esque stomper with Rønnenfelt drowning in anxiety (“How can one kill an impulsion / When it’s still kicking and breathing”) and restlessness (“The future’s never starting / The present never ends”).
From the new album ‘Beyondless’ out May 4th on Matador Records.
I keep telling everyone check out Snail Mail, along a few others, She will shape the future of the best indie/alt rock to come, and every song they release becomes further proof of this. Lush will be a little gem of a record.
Last month, Snail Mail announced their debut album, Lush, with the track “Pristine,” which became one of the best songs of the week back when it came out. Today, Lindsey Jordan is sharing the LP’s second single, “Heat Wave,” and it’s sticky and humid, much like the unbearable situation that Jordan finds herself wrapped up in.
“Heat wave, nothing to do/ Woke up in my clothes having dreamt of you,” she sings in the first verse, trying to move on from a love that didn’t want to commit long-term. Part of it is genuine remorse at the loss of a relationship, but it’s also partially the boredom that comes with a day where it’s too hot to do anything, when you let your imagination run wild.
Her feelings on the relationship shimmer and shift, caught up in the exhaust of a sweaty summer day stuck inside. Jordan plays the part of bitterly defiant, and she gets her licks in with style: “I hope the love that you find/ Swallows you whole-ly/ Like you said it might,” goes one of the best lines, wishing the same wrenching fate upon whoever the former partner picks up next. For Jordan’s part, she’s ready to find something a little more reliable: “I’m feeling low/ I’m not into sometimes.”
The song comes attached to an excellent video, which was directed by Brandon Herman and finds Jordan revisiting the (not too long ago) time when she played on her high school’s men’s ice hockey team. She starts off by just playing simple air hockey though, sullen and alone, before getting sucked through the board, where she has to fend off a team of men, getting bloodied and battered throughout. It’s the Mighty Ducks continuation you didn’t know you needed.
From Snail Mail’s debut album ‘Lush’ out June 8th on Matador Records.
