At age 18, Brooklyn-based Baltimore kid Lindsey Jordan has already been through a whirlwind word-of-mouth rise through the underground, a round of breathless media exaltation, a SXSW star tour, and a label bidding war that landed her band Snail Mail on historical indie-rock pillar Matador Records. So what does everybody see in her? Debut EP Habit is pretty much all we have to go on so far, but it presents Jordan as a natural, a songwriter capable of spinning magic from a few guitar chords and howled phrases. Her lo-fi guitar ballads glimmer in their grime, wringing uncommon beauty from indie rock’s basic toolkit. Imagine Waxahatchee under the influence of both Sonic Youth and actual youth, and you’ll begin to understand what all the fuss is about.
The New Pornographers have always insisted that they aren’t a supergroup, but no one has ever believed them. Between A.C. Newman, Neko Case, Dan Bejar, and a stellar set of supporting players, the band includes some of the finest musical talent Canada has to offer. Their collective résumé is damn impressive, but their chemistry is even more so. Since their debut Mass Romantic, the New Pornographers have always sounded like natural collaborators, seamlessly integrating Newman’s natural ear for melody, Bejar’s quirks, and Case’s pathos and enchanting voice (and vocalist Kathryn Calder’s, for that matter). You can say they’re not a supergroup,
Whiteout Conditions, the New Pornographers’ seventh album, is the most compelling twist on the supergroup narrative in the band’s discography. Two of their main members aren’t on it. Dan Bejar was too busy working on Destroyer’s follow-up to Poison Season to participate, and Kurt Dahle, whose phenomenal drumming was essential to much of the band’s early work, has left for good. You can feel their absence, but it doesn’t slow this record down. Despite losing a part of their signature sound, the New Pornographers have made their best record since 2005’s Twin Cinema.
In Bejar’s absence, Newman takes on full songwriting duties and shines. He’s always been the principal songwriter in the New Pornographers, but on Whitehouse Conditions he outdoes himself with eleven tracks that put the power in power pop. The four opening tracks—“Play Money”, “Whiteout Conditions”, “High Ticket Attractions”, and “This is the World of the Theater”—stand among the band’s best ever songs.
Each one balances the talents of the band in intricate, infectious melodies. Voices are edited into fragments and rebuilt into complex and original frameworks. The synthesizer holds over from 2014’s Brill Bruisers, but it doesn’t dominate the record in the same way. The tempos are faster than they are on most New Pornographers records, especially the mellower Challengers and Together, but Whiteout Conditions manages its momentum so that its energy is never exhausting. Closing on album standout “Avalanche Alley”, you’re left with your blood pumping, ready to play it through again.
The New Pornographers have a knack for generating positivity from darker moods. In that regard, Whiteout Conditions is a welcome spring escape. The title track’s enchanting melody distracts from its somber lyrics about struggling to get through the day, but Newman’s refrain of “Such a waste of beautiful day” feels like an admonition to get outside and embrace whatever beauty you can find.
Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about Whiteout Conditions, however, is how well it meshes with the rest of the New Pornographers’ discography. Brill Bruisers was a solid record, but there was the sense of a band getting its bearings with updated tools. Here, the music feels more organic and in line with the songcraft that has formed the band’s backbone to date. True, Bejar, who traditionally wrote about a third of each record, is missed. The album sags slightly in the middle, and one wonders if his touch might have added an interesting surprise here and there. But the heart of the New Pornographers, an undeniable chemistry and pop sensibility, remains and thrives. They’re not just a supergroup, a collection of talented musicians. They’re a great band,
Held in the Dutch city of Groningen for the 32nd edition of Eurosonic Noorderslag. Rightly heralded as Europe’s most prestigious event for breaking new acts, this year’s festival will once again provide maximum exposure to around 400 artists from across the continent over the course of its four days. As with previous years, the festival will also host the European Border Breakers (EBBA) alongside the European Festival Awards. With so many acts to choose from, you are unsurprisingly spoiled for choice here’s the best acts you should be particularly excited about seeing.
HMLTD ( Thursday 18h January @ 23:45)
The six-piece HMLTD, whose origins lie somewhere between the UK, Greece and France, have arrived as one of the most confounding acts to appear on the London scene in recent memory. With equally galvanizing music and visuals, stories of chaotic and incendiary live shows to packs of mosh-pitting followers and compatriots, as well as art installations where the lines between performers and audience are ever-blurred, this is not ‘just another’ band.
Blackberries (Wednesday 17th, All Round Poolcentrum @ 20:45)
Hailing from the city of Solingen in Germany, Blackberries make elegant psychedelic rock that fluctuates between melodic pop and freeform jams, often in the same pieces of music. Second album Greenwich Mean Time came out in 2016 and despite forming in 2009, they’re still relatively unknown outside of their native city. We suspect that will change very soon.
Pale Waves (Friday 19th January ESNS PLAY 21:20)
Pale Waves from Manchester are Heather (vocals, guitar), Ciara (drums), Hugo (guitar) and Charlie (bass). After spending the last couple of years touring and writing, the band released their debut single ‘There’s a Honey’ in early 2017. The foursome followed up with two more singles, reflecting their ability to write well polished indie pop songs that have left fans begging for a debut LP. Pale Waves could be the biggest band of the year
Canshaker Pi (Thursday 18th, Heerenhuis @ 23:20)
This time last year Canshaker Pi proved to be one of the highlights of Eurosonic Noorderslag. Having already enraptured none other than Stephen Malkmus who produced their debut album, they’ve gradually established themselves as one of the most exciting bands to emerge from the Dutch underground in years.
Her self-released singles have notched up millions of streams and views, and she went on the road in the fall for her first headline tour as well as supporting Tash Sultana and Lewis Capaldi. 23-year-old Londoner Freya Ridings showcased her enchanting voice and unique talent on the piano with debut single ‘Blackout’. Follow-up ‘Maps,’ a spine-tingling cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs classic, earned her major support from Spotify through New Music Friday and other major playlist additions.
Hater (Thursday 18th, Huis De Beurs @ 20:00)
Malmö is becoming something of an indie rock hotbed having first unearthed Fews a couple of years ago. Following hot on their heels are Hater, a four-piece led by the inimitable Caroline Landahl whose vocal stylings fall somewhere in between Molly Rankin of Alvvays and Annelotte De Graaf, better known as the brains behind Amber Arcades. Their Red Blinders EP brightened up a somewhat cold December and we’re expecting the band’s live show here to make a similar impact.
Housewives (Thursday 18th, Vera @ 22:15)
Arguably one of the most left field bands to grace the Eurosonic Noorderslag bill in a long while, this SouthLondon outfit create music that’s beyond genre categorisation and as a result, stand out as one of this year’s unmissable acts. Last year’s FF061116 long player heralded them as uncompromising experimentalists in a similar vein to Steve Reich, Einsturzende Neubaten, or more recently, Factory Floor. Prepare to be mesmerized.
This London-based outfit have already appeared on the Jools Holland show, been compared to Gorillaz, and have acquired Frank Ocean and Vampire Weekend as fans. Which is pretty good going after just a couple of singles. Their self-titled debut album is out in March and while still early days in their fledgling career, it’s probably fair to say you’ll be hearing a lot more about this eight-piece as the year goes on.
Iceage (Wednesday 17th, Vera @ 23:45)
This Copenhagen four-piece should need no introduction having released two of the decade’s finest long players in 2011’s debut New Brigade and 2014’s third offering Plowing Into The Field Of Love. With a new album said to be imminent, this opportunity to hear some of those songs alongside the older more familiar material of yore is not to be missed.
Žen (Thursday 18th, Huis De Beurs @ 21:25)
Žen are an all female band from Zagreb who make ethereal effects-laden sounds that recall the halcyon era of 4AD and Creation Records from back in the day. Their third and latest LP Suncani Ljudi came out last month and is well worth checking out. As is their live show which bears all the hallmarks of being one of Eurosonic’s main highlights this year.
Isaac Gracie (Friday 19th January LUTHERSE KERK 00:00)
Isaac Gracie rose to prominence when a demo of ‘Last Words’ was uploaded to Soundcloud. Dusty, careworn and distant, it was a quite beautiful introduction to this now fast-rising British talent. With two lo-fi, self-produced EP’s and a live recording out there and plenty more to come, the live shows are equally as stripped back and intimate. One electric guitar, and one untouchable vocal. It’s the antidote to a busy stable of peers, and the very essence of the modern man in one striking and poetic musical talent.
KEIR (Friday 19th January Stadsschouwburg 22:50)
Here is a refreshing new artist from Bristol who sounds like a seasoned performer. Keir is blessed with a powerhouse of a voice, a great sense for writing hooks and infectious pop rock songs, influenced by artists from Patti Smith, Gertrude Stein, Howlin’ Wolf and Edith Piaf to Aretha Franklin. Keir tries to keep it somewhat secretive but material like singles Squeeze Me and Probably and some rave live reviews will make it terribly hard to keep this huge talent from the spotlights.
They may hail from Atlanta, Georgia, but Manchester Orchestra’s British indie rock influences — certainly not limited to their band name — spill out all over their fifth full-length album. Their sound doesn’t derive from the airtight punk influences of decades past; rather, there’s an anthemic, widescreen feel to nearly every song on A Black Mile to the Surface.
Over a decade on from their debut, Manchester Orchestra still easily strike the fear of God into their listeners. The Andy Hull-led project has never been about quiet devastation – it’s about the extremities of the emotional spectrum and the internal conflicts that come with going there. “The Gold” immediately asserted itself as a career-best track for the band in the lead-up to the release of A Black Mile to the Surface. Indeed, as excellent as that record was, it never quite scaled the same heights elsewhere on its tracklisting. Heavenly harmonies, heart-on-sleeve lyrics and strikingly-beautiful arrangements: “The Gold,”
“The Gold” tumbles along with an intricate, syncopated beat, occasionally stopping dead in its tracks as Hull emotes the hook: “I believed you were crazy / You believe that you loved me.” Elsewhere a dark, almost apocalyptic feel invades songs like “The Moth”, where the intertwining guitar and drums loom over the vocals, creating an urgent texture. “There’s a way out / There’s a way in,” Hull repeats insistently.
Manchester Orchestra — singer/songwriter/guitarist Andy Hull, lead guitarist Robert McDowell, bassist Andy Prince, and drummer Tim Very — bring a great deal of skill and vitality to their rock formula.
The band occasionally dials down the dramatics in favor of more low-key arrangements, such as on “The Alien”, where the heavy surrealism of the lyrics is paired up with indie folk tropes like muted drums and a heavy acoustic vibe. The song wraps up with a dream-like coda that somehow evokes the hypnotic harmonies of Elliott Smith. Clearly, Manchester Orchestra have their influences cut out for them. “The Part”, one of the album’s eloquent highlights, is all heavily reverberated vocals accompanied by stark acoustic guitar. The song’s chorus (“I still want to know each part of you”) is simple and unadorned but underscores the deep level of emotion the band is working with.
A Black Mile to the Surface may get knocked for being a downer, an almost self-conscious one. But for all the melodrama, there’s plenty of smart arrangements and well-crafted musical ideas released on July 29th, 2017 through Loma Vista Recordings
What happens when an anti-social petty thief, a male hustler, and a delinquent runaway come together to join forces in the streets of NYC? One of two things, usually. Either the birth of a gang of misfit criminals, or a legendary rock & roll band. Luckily, for society’s sake, the latter has turned out to be true for Beechwood. This easy psychedelia and vintage sounding looseness puts Beechwood in a sonic world not too distant from the ones inhabited by modern classics like Foxygen and Tame Impala.
There’s a definite 60’s rock flair to the track, amidst a bit of garage-punk groundedness, sunny pop structure, and dreamy psychedelia. The effect is like sunshine in the midst of a bomb cyclone-ridden winter: euphoric and hard to get enough of.
The band are set to release their new studio album, “Songs From the Land Of Nod”, on January 26th 2018 via Alive Naturalsound Records, and the NYC street punks have now unveiled the video for their new single, I Don’t Wanna Be The One You Love.
The NYC pop-punk band has always had a talent for pulling back the curtain to reveal the dark underbelly of humanity, and their latest visual is no different.
Shot and Directed by Nika De Carlo and Gordon Lawrence. Taken from the album “Songs From The Land Of Nod” : http://www.alive-records.com
• They run a pretty wide gamut of scuzz from garage to glam to punk to indie that’s not that easy to date. – STEREOGUM
• Brings the late ’60s into the ’00s. – GRUNGECAKE
• Recalls the best moments of the Zombies and Beach Boys, adding elements of garage and light tinges of the psychedelic. – POPMATTERS
• It’s languid, drippy, like molasses spilling out of a jar, and the vocals do a subtle Kevin Shields thing in my brain. – WHAT YOUTH
Icelandic singer Rakel Mjöll fronts this British guitar band, her voice switching between Scandi-pop sweetness and a rip-roaring punk yowl. Dream Wife’s music simmers with lust and fury – on tracks such as Let’s Make Out and Fire they manage to strip the angular 00s indie sound of its dad-ish associations in the process.
The real band Dream Wife — a name taken from a ’50s film starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr — began as fake band in an art school project that was a This Is Spinal Tap-esque mockumentary. The project was created as a way for Rakel Mjoll to explore femininity and its tropes within pop music. Along with Isabella Podpadec and Alice Go, the trio put together the “fictional” Dream Wife, entered a film competition and won. The prize was performing at a Canadian Music Festival, after which they found themselves touring around that country. And so the art project Dream Wife became the real Dream Wife, creating songs dealing with femininity that look to subvert assumptions within the subject.
The trio wrote to tell me that they “wanted to make something direct and simple. The song ‘Somebody’ is a ballad about the experience of living with a female body … we focused on capturing a truthful performance that was both elegant and stripped back.
“We drew inspiration from the male-dominated iconography of ’70s glam rock, a time where men were able to explore their femininity. With the video, we are playing off this subversion with our own exploration of contemporary femininity.”
The video was produced and shot by John Podpadec — you may remember that name from the first paragraph of this article. John recalls being asked to shoot the video by his daughter, Dream Wife’s bassist.
“When my daughter Isabella asked if I’d be interested in shooting Dream Wife’s new promo for ‘Somebody’ I didn’t know how to respond,” he said. “Surely they had someone in London who could do this — they’re part of such a great creative collective. Although I’d worked as a photographer around the Bristol music scene in the mid-’80s, I’d never really involved myself with pop videos. I did shoot one promo for the Blue Aeroplanes – ‘Jacket Hangs’ — but I then went off to work for 30 years as a lighting camera person on broadcast documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4.
“They pointed me at David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ and some other videos. They wanted something clean and simple but with the ability to carry a strong message. What I really like about the film is that it’s got attitude and makes its point, but also captures the energy of Dream Wife’s stage performance.”
I heard a number of people talking about this band and their stage presence at SXSW just recently. I saw a show of theirs there and, though I think in order to do their talents justice some further development may lie ahead, DreamWife is a band worth watching — and their message deserves to be heard.
Pretty much all you need to know about Death Valley Girls can be summed up by the line from the 1975 sexploitation film Switchblade Sisters that became the band’s unofficial slogan: “Everybody’s gotta be in a gang.” All those images of leather-clad, grime-covered, rebellious fun that such a phrase evokes are just what the Los Angeles quartet personifies. It’s slightly crazy, completely sexy, and just frightening enough that you want nothing more than to be inducted into the club.
Luckily, Death Valley Girls are sending an open invitation with their sophomore record, Glow in the Dark. On Burger Records, the follow-up to 2014’s Street Venomplays like a beacon from space sent to incite a cultural mutiny. Tracks like “Love Spell” and “Disco” beckon the listener to shed the chains of repressive modesty in favor of letting loose in the neon light of the night. “Horror Movie” and “I’m a Man Too” strike out at the definitions laid down by a society enslaved to consumerism and clearly delineated classifications. All of it bursts out in surfy proto-punk layered with sugary shrill harmonies that cut through the garage door like so many steel studs.
If the message of the album isn’t clear enough, this band delivers “Join the experience that will cosmically unite the living and turn on the dead. The battle is now, Be part of the revolution. Glow in the dark.
Psychedelic- and jazz-tinted soul for anywhere the lights are low, the L.A. quintet fronted by chanteuse MariaZardoya released their debut EP, “Superclean Vol. 1” in November and have another on way. Allure alert.
Imagine walking into a 70s bar-lounge and sitting in a velvet booth, the air thick with a perfumed nostalgia and smokey intimacy, your head in a spin from the sultry voices and feverishly groovy notes being elicited from the small stage in front of you. Now close your eyes and press play on “I Don’t Know You,” the debut track from the LA-based band The Marías–let it transport you to someplace where sensuality and ecstasy drip from the lips of those around you. Comprised and led by couple María and Josh Conway, The Marías have no qualms about making music that is a sultry, midnight rendezvous of their many tastes, which include jazz, funk, psychedelia, and lounge. With only one song out but their debut EP titled Superclean Vol. I staged for release in the fall, the only real morsel one can get of the band right now is from the members themselves or those who’ve caught them live.
Viewers have described their sound to everything from having sex in the 70s to pouring cream into coffee, alone these might seem like arbitrary comparisons–but then you hit play on “I Don’t Know You” again, and it all just oozes out like a fever dream. Of course, a band that’s led by two lovers is bound to overflow with sensuous sentiments and The Marías essentially began with Conway and María’s relationship. María had just reluctantly left the Atlanta music scene behind and moved to LA, she was playing a solo acoustic set at the Kibitz Room where Conway was running sound. After the show, he came up to her to tell her he really liked her voice and had a studio he wanted to record her in.
“Superclean Vol. 1” is the debut EP by the Marias.
I Don’t Know You: (0:00) Basta Ya: (3:30) I Like It: (6:26) Only in My Dreams: (9:48) Superclean: (12:38) Déjate Llevar: (15:13)
The EP is truly a collection of the band’s personal experiences, distilled and reconfigured into a collective vision that Conway, as the sole producer, puts together. As a result, the band’s studio sound is just as raw, unfiltered, and true to their vision as it can be. Dreamily melodic and hypnotically sensual, there’s a timelessness to their sound that spurs a certain wistfulness–like they have one foot in the past, but are continuously wrestling out new ways to evoke the tiniest of intimacies from their music.
A Los Angeles /Santiago, Chile-based quartet lead by two sweet-singing girls who manage to combine the noisy darkness ofshoegaze with “scream-in-your-face” punk rock and ethereal-sounding pop – in a very original way.
We are Slowkiss – a 4-piece band – 2 girls and 2 dudes. We make alternative punk rock music, and we do our best to ‘bring it’ for our audience at every show we play and on every song we record. ULTRAVIOLET is our brand new EP – five explosive songs that will surprise you in the best of ways. Big drums, a wall of guitars, growling bass and aggressive-yet-sweet vocals that will melt your ears. The EP artwork was done on canvas by the great Chilean painter Juan Vade, and it turned out so beautiful and eye-catching that we feel it was meant to be printed.
Slowkiss has a series of tour dates in Southern California throughout October 2017!
Almost two months after they announced it via their website, the Manic Street Preachers have made their 13th studio album Resistance Is Futile available to pre-order via channels other than their own website.
The band have recorded the new album (their first in four years) at their new studio near Newport after they were forced to vacate their Faster studio, which had been a recording, rehearsal base and general ‘hangout’ since 2005.
The 12-track album is described by the band as “widescreen melancholia” and will be available in the now familiar two-CD deluxe hardcover bookset which includes a bonus disc of the entire album in demo form and two bonus tracks.
