Fizzy Blood have released their new single ‘Pink Magic’.The track is taken from their forthcoming track-titled EP ‘Pink Magic’, due later this year via Killing Moon.
The release comes ahead of the band’s packed summer schedule including festival appearances at Live at Leeds, Hit The North, Dot to Dot and Long Division.
Speaking of the single, guitarist Paul Howells explained: “’Pink Magic’ is probably the easiest song we’ve ever written. It kind of just fell into our laps when together we were messing around with a korg, we got a bit of a trance-like groove going and just decided to see how far we could take that before it became boring We never found the answer, instead we got ‘Pink Magic’.”
Band Members
Paul, Benji, Jake, Ciaran & Tim
An instantly addictive release, ‘Pink Magic’ is a swagger-fuelled single that’ll leave you eagerly waiting for their forthcoming EP
You may now listen to “Perfume”, the latest single off our “Perfume EP”. Perhaps you’ve heard us play it live the last couple of tours and been like “what the heck iz that song?” well now you know!
Smells like 30 new minutes of new music via seven new electric hues, shocks of light that flagrantly provoke the dark, a posy’s clutch of purple, fuchsia, green and snowy white that curl against the stench of plague. With “Perfume”, Wand presents olfactory events that recall futures and pasts.
False Advertising present ‘Belligerent’, a new album collating tracks the band has recorded over the last two years. Due for exclusive release this April via 2670records.
Over the course of 10 years, Dan Mangan has gone from a bearded 20-something troubadour playing coffee shop open mics to earning top ten radio hits, scoring Hollywood films, and winning multiple JUNO Awards. Today, the acclaimed songwriter returns to the rich, earnest, sentimental songwriting that he started with as a bright-eyed singer/songwriter in Vancouver.
A new video for Fool For Waiting. You can watch me croon under the spotlight like they do on teevee. Big thanks to Aaron A for directing and putting this together.
From my perspective, this video isn’t meant to be revolutionary or shocking. It’s meant to subtlely convey how far we’ve come as a society in the last several decades. When I was fifteen, my mom took me out for dinner and informed me that our good family friend Liz would be moving in. I was raised in a very open-minded household and had never for a moment considered myself homophobic, but I completely freaked out. I was terrified of being the kid in high school with the “gay mom”. I stopped inviting people over. It took ages to tell my closest friends – to which (of course) they responded, “Obviously, we figured it out. Who cares?”. My mom’s partner, whom she has since married and is still with, has become such a crucial part of my life that it’s pretty much impossible to imagine our family without her. Love is love, and sexuality is not binary. World goings-on are currently worrisome, and we have a long way to go, but we are moving forward. This video celebrates these steps forward amidst the chaos. It’s about celebrating the normalization of a more diverse understanding of love.
If there’s anybody in your life that this message might resonate with, please do share this with them.
“Fool For Waiting” is about “finding someone who makes you feel less crazy, or at least someone who finds your craziness endearing because it’s real and honest,” says Mangan. “And that real, imperfect love is not always as fantastical or magical as a wild romance, but that it’s worth waiting for.”
Produced by Simone Felice (Lumineers, Bat For Lashes) and engineered/mixed by Ryan Hewitt (Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers), the song’s vocals, piano, and drums were recorded live off the floor as a duo with Mangan and Matt Johnson (Jeff Buckley, St. Vincent). “The take feels a bit imperfect in a nice way,” says Mangan. “There’s a moment at the end where I chuckled on the line ‘Oh, and they tell me’. Simone liked it because he couldn’t tell if I was laughing or crying. And ain’t that just life…
Florence and the Machine released a sweeping, string-laden ballad, “Sky Full of Song,” last week . The track will be available on April 21st, Record Store Day, as part of a 7″ single. It’s the first new track from Florence Welch’s band since 2016.
“Sky Full of Song” centers on Welch’s robust vocals. She sings almost a capella; when strings and piano enter, it’s with a soft throb so as not to detract from her vocals. Welch’s aggression and complex desires fill a space. “I was screaming at my father, and you were screaming at me/ I can feel your anger from way across the sea,” she sings. Then, on the bridge, she’s swallowed by ambivalence: “I thought that I was flying/ But maybe I’m dying tonight.”
In a statement, Welch said “Sky Full of Song” came to her “fully formed.” “Sometimes when you are performing you get so high, it’s hard to know how to come down,” she said. “There is this feeling of being cracked open, rushing endlessly outwards and upwards, and wanting somebody to hold you still, bring you back to yourself. It’s an incredible, celestial, but somehow lonely feeling.”
In the video for the song, directed by AG Rojas, Welch spends most of her time lying on the floor with her right hand outstretched. When not horizontal, she sits on her knees as if about to pray, singing as she gazes upwards.
Florence and the Machine’s last album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, came out in 2015.
The Blind Owls are a 4-piece Rock n’ Roll band from Corpus Christi, Texas formed in 2012. After nearly three years spent of constant performances around Texas and festivals around the country ferociously banging out an authentic Rock n’ Roll repertoire with passion and fury each performance, 2015 saw the release of their first EP ‘The Blind Owls Say Goodbye,’ followed by their debut album ‘All Day & Night’ from Soundflat Records in 2017. The Blind Owls embarked on their first tour to the West Coast in 2017 where they performed in 6 different states and performed for 3 weeks straight. The Blind Owls continue their momentum into 2018, where they plan on making it another successful and exciting year for their music and performances.
“Their debut LP, All Day and Night, echoes Merseybeat and early Rock n’ Roll with a hint of US garage, played with verve and vigor and a musicality beyond their tender years.” Shindig Magazine (UK)
The Thermals are breaking up. Hutch Harris, Kathy Foster, and Westin Glass have decided to call it a day, issuing the following statement:
We are officially disbanding. After 15 years and 7 records, we feel our band has reached far beyond our initial expectations and goals, and are stepping away from it while we still cherish it. We traveled further, soared higher and played louder than we ever dreamed, and we now look forward to a new chapter in our lives, our art, and our friendship. We would like to thank all the great labels who have released our records, all the amazing people who have worked so hard for us, and most importantly our fans, who we consider to be some of the smartest, sweetest and most compassionate people in the world. We love you, and we hope to see you again some day.
Originally formed in 2002 by Harris and Foster following early folk recordings as the duo Hutch and Kathy, the band’s first album “More Parts per Million” was released on Sub Pop Records in 2003. The band rotated through several percussion players, ultimately recruiting Glass in 2008. The Thermals’ last album “We Disappear” came out in 2016. That same year, the group performed in support of then-Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at a rally in Portland.
The Portland trio called it quits this week, but for many, they leave behind a fiery legacy that can’t be put out.
The Thermals wrote one Perfect Record and like one thousand other great songs, all before the pop-punk revival was a socially acceptable thing, The Body, The Blood, The Machineby The Thermals. its orange and red cover, all thanks to an incendiary anthem I’d heard called “Here’s Your Future.”
The first time I heard “Here’s Your Future” was quickly followed by the twentieth time I heard “Here’s Your Future.” It’s a short tune, In it, frontman Hutch Harris climbs an apocalyptic pulpit to act as the voice of a tyrannical, punishing Christian God who floods the world before lighting it aflame with a sneering indictment: “Here’s your future. It’s gonna rain.”
Legend has it, Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard heard The Thermals’ demo and got them in touch with SubPop. There, they released the scrappy statement of purpose More Parts Per Million (2003), the gut punching Fuckin’ A (2004) and immortal hellraiser The Body, The Blood, The Machine (2006). They then jumped to Kill Rock Stars, recruited Westin as their permanent drummer, and released their deepest, most existential record Now We Can See(2009) and the intimate, slightly experimental Personal Life (2010). They made their final home with Saddle Creek and released the lean Desperate Ground (2013), and, as their surprise finale, the suspiciously titled We Disappear (2016). It’s a shame. The Thermals are a hell of a band to lose at a time whenrighteous indignation from a young generation is offering the greatest push toward progress.
In between records, they toured the world and led sweaty crowds in clubs to scream back several memorable lines of righteous indignation and political outrage, including:
– “They can tell me what to read / They can tell me what to eat / They can beat me and send me the bill / But they tell me what to feel?/ I might need you to kill!”
– “Our enemies lie dead on the ground and still we kick”– “Pray for a new age / Pray for information / I can hope, see? / Even if I don’t believe”
Their main and best mode was loud and fast, but their lyrics—even at their most blunt—kept a sense of nuance: The Body, The Blood is most definitely a middle-finger to theocratic political tendencies, but it’s also a healthy dose of bloodied and bruised hope. It’s the same case forNow We Can See—maybe Harris’s highest lyrical accomplishment to date.
That album is, squarely, all about death, dying, and being dead. But a few spins reveals clever takes on the pitfalls of routine existence (“Liquid In, Liquid Out,”“When We Were Alive”), the clarity of hindsight (“We Were Sick,” “Now We Can See”), and the grace found in accepting our inevitable, eventual demise (“When I Died,”“You Dissolve”). This is the album they wrote nearly ten years before their breakup, mind you. It stands to reason that The Thermals were well prepared for their last hurrah long before we were.
“Eventually,” Harris explained during a live episode of the podcast Song Exploder in 2014, “what represented the Thermals the best was: Everything is kind of falling apart, and everything is just madness, but it’s more of a celebration of it as opposed to letting it get you down.” Given that quote, it makes complete that sense that, after releasing a generous and thankful joint statement announcing their end, Rather than let the world and its growing list of troubles burn them out, the trio is fading away, happy and celebrating, on their own terms. Here’s to your future, Thermals
This June will see the release of a five-disc Kirsty MacColl box set that summarises her time with Virgin Records titled Days (1988 – 1991) .
This 4CD+DVD set effectively brings together new double-disc deluxe editions of Kite(1989) and Electric Landlady (1991). These are similar – but not identical – to the previous 2012 reissues and in total, Days delivers 33 non-album b-sides and 12-inch mixes. Both albums were produced by her husband Steve Lillywhite and delivered many great singles, although only Days from the former and Walking Down Madison from the latter were proper hits.
Kirsty MacColl always attracted great musicians and during this period she worked with the likes of Johnny Marr, David Gilmour, Mark Nevin, Pete Glenister, Elliott Randall and some great Latin musicians from New York.
A DVD completes this new set and includes the seven promo videos Kirsty made for the albums and an 18-minute EPK (electronic press kit) for the Electric Landlady album. This set is presented as a ‘media book’ package which includes credits, lyrics and biographical information by Alan Robinson.
Additionally, Kite will be issued as a clear vinyl pressing and Electric Landlady as a PINK vinyl LP, All three physical releases are due to be released on 15th June 2018, via Edsel.
Jack White made his third appearance on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, performing two standout tracks from his recently released solo album “Boarding House Reach” and even making a cameo in a sketch.
White brought two songs from his latest to life on the Studio 8H stage, “Over and Over and Over” and “Connected by Love” White’s the performance was a true team effort, as he’s joined by four back-up singers (one of whom plays a mean tambourine), two keyboard players, his longtime bassist and a kickass drummer. The band’s take on “Over and Over and Over” is a rollicking rave-up that stops and starts on a dime, while their rendition of “Connected by Love” develops gradually, building to dueling organ and guitar solos that shred the song into tatters before Jack White and co. bring it all back home.
The former White Stripe and his band kick off their tour in support of Boarding House Reach this coming week, in White’s hometown of Detroit. White recently described their sound as “very heavy,” adding, “I’ve never been in a band this loud before.” If that (and their SNL set) sounds like your cup of tea, you can find their full tour might be coming near you.
We weren’t the only ones who enjoyed White’s performances Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent got a kick out of his “Connected by Love” track with White playing a guitar designed by Vincent-and-ernie-ball announced in-2017-line-of Annie Clark’s signature Ernie Ball line guitars.
As White briefly discussed with Jimmy Fallon during a recent Tonight Show interview, the musician also popped up in a sketch: the cut-for-time “Wedding Toast,” in which White played a wedding guitarist who happens to be sleeping with John Mulaney’s wife. Though White does little more than play guitar (i.e., himself) in the sketch, it’s fun to see him flex his comedic muscles, however gently—he’s rarely done so since his scene-stealing turn as in 2007’s Walk Hard.
“Connected By Love” from Jack White’s new album Boarding House Reach available now.
