Ruler is the new project of Matt Batey (Rocky Votolato, Cataldo), recently signed with Barsuk Records. Built on the principle coming from poet Robert Frost that the best way out is through, Ruler’s musicis a deeply personal. Batey relaocated from Montana to Seattle twelve years ago and wrote numerous songs for bands, songs he says that nobody heard. But his creative drive could not be squelched and now Batey emerges on his own with music that will surely will be heard. The new song “Not Your Friend” one that beautifully captures the emotive current of the pacific northwest indie sound.
“I wanted to shoot something where the majority of the frame was out of focus.” says Batey about the video. “I like the idea of making things that leave a lot of space for the viewer’s mind to fill in their own details. Originally this shot was a test to see how that idea worked. When I watched it back I felt that it held the song well, so decided to leave it without edits or alterations.”
We were excited when we hear new music from this act. You might remember their surprisingly theological release “Astrovan”, which racked up over 5 million streams as well as captured our collective attention. Now with “DirtyLove”, the band’s sixth single, they are further cementing the anticipation for their debut self-titled album due in March on Dualtone Records. They have garnered comparisons to Fleet Foxes and The Head and the Heart,but their talent goes beyond popular comparisons. The band has something special here, and you can assume their band exposure will only increase with their next release. Their strong songwriting and melodies are a talent to be reckoned with.
One for sorrow and two for joy. PicaPica features the vocal interplay of Josienne Clarke and Samantha Whates, dual front women who create powerful harmonies atop layers of texture created by Adam Beattie & Sonny Johns, a tiding of magpies picking shiny moments of tone and timbre from 60s west coast, sunshine pop and indie folk.
Josienne and Samantha met on the London acoustic music scene several years ago and immediately shared a love of singing and writing. They have been unofficially collaborating for years, often singing backing vocals for each other’s projects or just singing harmonies together for the pure enjoyment of it. PicaPica represents a long-held ambition to write, record and perform new material together and to join with like-minded musicians to explore what it’s like to be in a band. When writing, Josienne and Samantha (AKA “Pica One” & Pica Two”) take two versions of the same idea and the songs are built around that concept in various ways, they sometimes even have two titles for each song, one by Josienne, one by Samantha. Good music loves a contrast. Spring and shade, harmony and melody, brightness and deadpan… So do PicaPica. As writers, they compose songs that hold the sadness closer, yet let the joy fly higher.
“Pica Three”, aka Adam Beattie, Scotland’s king of soft-spoken chanson, brings gently morphing textures and detailed guitar playing to every bar, while “Pica Four” is Sonny Johns – a Grammy, Mercury and MOBO-nominated producer/engineer. Sonny’s bass playing and production give PicaPica’s otherworldly compositions a seriously grounded sound.
Their first EP, “Spring & Shade” contains four songs freely- designed to bewitch the listener until its fifteen minutes are over. This is music for memories that creep in under the door. Songs that wear their cares lightly, shining in the dark. Simply, beautiful, beguiling, elegant sounds.
Mush are an artrock band from Leeds, for fans of Pavement, Parquet Courts, Television, The Fall, & The Clean. Their debut single ‘Alternative Facts’ and follow up ‘Luxury Animals’ got regular plays on BBC6 in 2017 and saw them do two live session for Marc Riley in the space of a few months. The band have also been touring with The Wytches, British Sea Power, and Ulrika Spacek.
A few years ago, Black Moth Super Rainbow, were the trippy, hallucinatory psych outfit led by producer Tobacco, dropped SeeFu Lilac, a surprise album said to be “neon flavored outtakes from a 6th album that doesn’t yet exist.” Well, good news: It does now, because the band just announced Panic Blooms, its first proper LP since 2012’s Cobra Juicy. Expect it on May 4th .
A press release announcing the album describes it as an “f-ed up and bleeding account of depression and the shadow side of human frailty,” saying that “never before has Tobacco been so raw or direct in his lyrics.” You can hear it in Panic Blooms‘ lead single and closer, “Mr No One”, a hypnotic, synth-driven track that yearns for sunshine and simplicity. It’s a cut that wouldn’t have been out of place in Twin Peaks‘ roadhouse; no amount of vocoder can hide the yearning in Tobacco’s dreamy vocals
Black Moth Super Rainbow will also release the song as a 7-inch single on March 16th. You’ll find “Mr No One” on side A and two collaborative tracks between Tobacco and Ariel Pink—”Willing & Able” and “Bogalusa”—on side B. It won’t be sold online, and only 1,000 copies are being farmed out to record stores
from the upcoming album “Panic Blooms” out May 4 on Rad Cult
The debut album due out on March 30th, 2018 On Infectious Music containing the singles ‘CELEBRATION OF A DISEASE’ & ‘GIBRALTAR APE’ plus new single ‘ARMS OF PLEONEXIA’
The new single ‘Arms Of Pleonexia’, was premiered on Radio 1 by Huw Stephens, ‘Nihilistic Glamour Shots’ is the debut album from Manchester band Cabbage, released 30th March 2018 on Infectious Music. Produced by James Skelly and Rich Turvey (Blossoms, The Coral, She Drew The Gun) at Parr Street Studios in Liverpool, ‘Nihilistic Glamour Shots’ is an album that confirms Cabbage as one of the most nuanced bands in years. Equally drawn to socialist politics and mucking about, they’re devotees of both big choruses and anarchic totems like GG Allin, Genesis P Orridge and Butthole Surfers. It’s a mixture writ large throughout ‘Nihilistic Glamour Shots’, from the frenetic opening salvo of ‘Preach To The Converted’, ‘Arms Of Pleonexia’ and ‘Molotov Alcopop’, via ‘Perdurabo’s swampy blues and wild funk of ‘Exhibit A’ to the devastating seven-minute finale ‘Subhuman 2.0’. It’s hard to think of another band who could write a magnificently infectious two-minute frantic anthem and then call it ‘Obligatory Castration’. Only two album tracks have been heard before, the BBC6 Music playlisted singles ‘Celebration Of A Disease’ and ‘Gibraltar Ape’. Indeed, the savagely brilliant ‘Postmodernist Caligula’ was written and recorded in a matter of days at the end of the album recording sessions.
While it broadens Cabbage’s sound further still from their already eclectic previous five EPs, ‘Nihilistic Glamour Shots’ also does a superb job of capturing the raw energy of their freewheeling live shows. The band have kept the gigs fresh partly by theming each tour, with autumn’s Healing Brexit Towns Experiment living up to its name.
“The video is an opportunist representation of how our simplistic, questionable minds view the odious backdrop of the arms trade and the delicate situation of political control that arises tensions all over the world. Catch 22 in layman’s terms. The tensions not only exist in public safety and international bravado but is increasingly called upon in culture which reflects in our song and video. Lee and Joe, although their hairlines and blemishes are in high definition, are metaphorical states. With such institutions controlled by excessive greed, this inevitably leads to decisions that have huge detrimental effect. There are no winners in the arms trade. There are no winners in the video.”
Colorado based Gasoline Lollipops released their latest album title “Soul Mine”at the very back end of last year. The band effortlessly manage to meld the sincerity of dirt-floor folk with the energy and rebelliousness of punk It’s an all-new incarnation of alt-country that’s both high-energy and heartfelt, like the American highway’s soundtrack. “One part rockabilly and one part alternative rock, the Gasoline Lollipops have carved out a space for themselves in the Boulder music scene with a sound and feel that is all their own”
“Montreal” is the single release taken from the Gasoline Lollipops album “Soul Mine,” available everywhere Released December 15th, 2017
Band Members;
Clay Rose (vocals & acoustic guitar), Donny Ambory (electric guitar), Brad Morse (upright bass), Adam Perry (drums)
The Vacant Smiles is a band from Melbourne (Australia), The group became known to us in 2013 with a first album, Stupid Music, whose name already said all the good that we should think of them. The band have since released their new single, “Stones”.The Vacant Smiles, are a pop garage band that, inspired by the psychic scene, could be attached to the sixties. Their thing is the slacker pop that, without overplaying the genre, tells us that the cool was never on the cold side. Link to all slacker group articles Obviously, there is surfing in this Australian pop. Without evidence, there is also pop jangle, to believe that the Vacant Smiles have also listened to the Replacements, check out their bandcamp page for more goodies .
Oneohtrix Point Never’s ‘The Pure and the Damned’ video, starring Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie, and Iggy Pop. Directed By The Safdie Brothers and taken from Oneohtrix Point Never’s Cannes 2017 award winning ‘Good Time Original Motion Picture Soundtrack’, out now via Warp Records.
A computer-animated Iggy Pop stars alongside Robert Pattinson in the strange new video for Oneohtrix PointNever’s “The Pure and the Damned.” Oneohtrix Point Never and Iggy Pop collaborated on the song as part of the former’s soundtrack for Good Time, the Safdie Brothers’ while Benny Safdie appears in the clip as well.
The clip opens with CGI Iggy Pop standing shirtless – of course – outside a house in the woods, singing the haunting piano ballad. Eventually the animated punk star appears inside the house, sitting on Pattinson’s bed and watching as the actor tries to force Safdie’s character to eat something. “The Pure and the Damned” takes an eerie, synth-heavy turn as Pattinson’s character walks outside and follows a trail of detritus to a strange wolf-like creature feasting on the innards of another animal. Wielding a sword, Pattinson engages the beast in a stare down that’s tense yet tinged with a sense of camp and melodrama.
Totally Mild’s second album, Her, is a shiny, perfect slab of indie pop, with the self-confessional lyrics and vocals of lead singer Elizabeth Mitchell. Here’s what Mitchell said about the album:
“Her is a record of failure and victory, new desire, stale romance, queer domesticity and what comes when the party is over. I was torn between a new domestic life and the impulse to tear it all away with bad choices. I fell in love, but I wrestled for independence. I was always trying to prove that I didn’t need anyone; my wife, my friends, my band. Her is a document of a woman struggling with the idea of potential. We are told that we could be limitless, but we wrestle with unseen personal and structural walls.”
recorded Live in the studio performance of the new Totally Mild single “Lucky Stars”. The new Totally Mild album Her is out February 23rd on pink or black vinyl,
We have it on a translucent green vinyl, and it’s among our favorite albums of 2018 so far.
