David Byrne has announced a new solo album, “American Utopia”, set for release on March 9th via Todomundo/Nonesuch Records. The effort will mark the former Talking Heads frontman’s first full solo record since 2004’s Grown Backwards.
Byrne made the announcement in a presentation he gave today at New York’s New School, which was also broadcast live via his Facebook page and can be viewed below. The event came as part of Byrne’s Reasons to Be Cheerful series, in which he presents a number of optimistic findings he has uncovered over the past year.
“Is this meant ironically? Is it a joke?” Byrne writes in a press release of his new album’s title. “Do I mean this seriously? In what way? Am I referring to the past or the future? Is it personal or political? These songs don’t describe an imaginary or possibly impossible place but rather attempt to depict the world we live in now. Many of us, I suspect, are not satisfied with that world—the world we have made for ourselves. We look around and we ask ourselves—well, does it have to be like this? Is there another way? These songs are about that looking and that asking.”
Byrne has shared a track from American Utopia, “Everybody’s Coming to My House,” which was co-written with Brian Eno . Byrne will also set out on a number of live dates in support of the record, including a run of Northeast US shows in March, appearances at 2018 fests like Coachella, Shaky Knees and New Jersey’s XPoNential, and a European tour this summer.
Soccer Mommy is the stage name of Nashville native, 20 year-old Sophie Allison, and today as well as sharing her brand new track ‘Your Dog’ she’s also announced her new album Clean will be out on 2nd March.
We’ve featured Soccer Mommy for a while now and her ability to make relatable and challenging music that hinges on the melodrama of normality has made her one of our ‘ones to watch’ for 2018.
It seems we were right to be keeping an eye on her output as she’s given us a belter of a new track. ‘Your Dog’ has one key line that boils with tension and underlying fury, it’s this “I don’t want to be your fucking dog,” and it sets the tone for the whole track.
The song menaces and meanders across emotions, Allison says “The song comes from a feeling of being paralyzed in a relationship to the point where you feel like you are a pawn in someone else’s world. The song and the video are meant to show someone breaking away and taking action, but at the same time, it’s only a quick burst of motivation. It’s a moment of strength amidst a long period of weakness.”
Speaking of her first full length proper Allison said “I’d never made a full album before, just EPs and random tracks thrown together. I wanted it to be a lot more cohesive than the rest of the stuff that came before,” explains Allison. “I wanted to make something that was a full piece of my life, that addressed similar themes and held together as a whole.”
Sophie Allison – Guitar, vocals, bass
Julian Powell – Lead guitar
Nick Brown – Drums
Gabe Wax – Piano, synth, mellotron, bass, guitar, drum programming, percussion
The result is Clean, an album that presents Soccer Mommy as a singular artist, wise beyond her years, with an emotional authenticity of her own. Clean will be released on March 2nd via Fat Possum She’s also due out on a UK tour in the Spring, the dates of which are below.
But for now, take a moment to enjoy ‘Your Dog’
March
2nd – London, UK – Rough Trade East
3rd – Leeds, UK – Headrow House
4th – Manchester UK, The Castle Hotel
6th – London, UK – Moth Club
7th – Brighton, UK – The Hope
Drift is the seventh full-length by NYC rock polymaths The Men, and it marks their 10th anniversary as a band. The Men’s last album, the self-released Devil Music, was the sound of a band who had been through hell hitting reset and looking to their roots to rediscover themselves. On Drift, The Men return to their longtime label Sacred Bones Records and explore the openness that Devil Music helped them find.
The immediately evident result of that exploration is the experimental quality of much of the material on Drift. Songwriters Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi chase their muses down a few dozen thrilling rabbit-holes over the course of the album’s nine tracks. The songs on Drift veer in a number of directions, but notably, almost none of them feature a prominent electric guitar. The lone exception, “Killed Someone,” is a rowdy riff-rocker, worthy of the finest moments of the band’s now-classic Leave Home and Open Your Heart albums. The rest of the album drives down stranger highways. “Secret Light” is an improvisation based on an old piano riff of Perro’s. “MaybeI’m Crazy” is a synth-driven dancefloor stomper for long after last call. “Rose on Top of the World” and “When I Held You in My Arms” are paisley-hued, psyched-out jams with big, beating hearts.
We’re so stoked to announce that Brooklyn rock lifers The Men are back with their most eclectic and deeply satisfying collection of songs yet. Drift marks not only the 10th anniversary of the band, but their return to SacredBones following the self-released Devil Music. The songs on Drift veer in a number of directions, but notably, almost none of them feature a prominent electric guitar. Lead single “Maybe I’m Crazy” is a synth-driven dancefloor stomper to be played long after last call.
“I hated every single person I played with,” Lindsey Jordan I got treated pretty poorly. Everyone was nasty, everyone was alt-right. It was very frat-bro even when I was eight.”
Jordan, is the singer, guitarist and principle songwriter of Maryland indie rock trio Snail Mail, she is recalling her experiences playing on a boys’ ice hockey team. The sport is her other love besides music. It has become something of a litmus test for navigating a turbulent music industry, riddled as it is with sexism, greed and sexual misconduct . Despite no longer playing ice hockey, Jordan remains a fervent follower of the sport. She applies much of the discipline and determination learnt from her athletic years to her music career.
This resolute and precocious stance has served Jordan and her band members well. Snail Mail was formed in early 2015 off the back of an opportune moment to play a local festival. Jordan’s friend, Angie Swiecicki, from the post punk band Post Pink, was playing at Baltimore’s Unregistered Nurse. Swiecicki offered to help Jordan get a slot at the festival if she formed a band.
After quickly enlisting friends Ryan Vieira on bass and Shawn Durham on drums, Jordan just had two weeks to galvanise the group to play what was supposed to be a one-off show. She had been a guitarist since the age of five but this was her first band. “I didn’t really have any plans or desires to play anything after that,” she explains, “but then it just started going really well.”
Snail Mail played the festival alongside Priests, Sheer Mag, and Screaming Females. Washington DC punks Priests were so impressed with the band that they proposed releasing a cassette on their label, Sister Polygon.
The aptly titled Habit EP – a collection of Jordan’s bedroom songs written out of “old habit” during her high school years – was released in July 2016. The band (Brown and Russell having replaced Vieira and Durham) got to work, busying itself with gigs in DC and Baltimore.
Habit EP opener “Thinning” perfectly encapsulates the oft confused soul-searching of adolescence. A lo-fi lode of jangly, open-tuned guitars and scrubby drums sit behind Jordan’s mumblings of certain uncertainty. She darts between wanting to waste the entire year “just face down/and on my own time” and spending the rest of it asking herself “Is this who you are?” while feeling “gross” about it all anyway. One imagines that the restlessness in “Thinning” – its lyrics “hot head and dreamless sleep” – sprouts from suburban boredom. But the song’s propulsive rhythm and anthemic guitars exercise an opposing force: excitement and resolve.
A step beyond the cookie-cutter garage-rock or proto-punk bands populating the scene, the teenage trio of Isabelle Fields, Eva Chambers and Anastasia Sanchez released their four-song debut on Innovative Leisure in April. The have one hand in the past. The other they use to playfully thumb their nose at you. Sort of reminds me of Plumtree, another all-female indie rock band. I don’t know anything about Pinky Pinky, this EP appeared on my feed and now on my collections because it simply sounds great.
This sound pulls directly from the raw, nitty-gritty nature of 60’s psychedelic rock, a musical era that had its heyday nearly four decades before the girls were even born. However, this, along with their fully-realized aesthetic, may be precisely why Pinky Pinky could be the ones to put rock back at the forefront of cool.
Debut EP from Pinky Pinky, a 3-piece Proto-Prog inspired rock band out of Los Angeles featuring teenagers Isabelle Fields (17, Guitar), Eva Chambers (17, Bass) and Anastasia Sanchez (19, Vocals/Drums).
This exceptional Brighton slacker indie band are led by the magnetic Dana Margolin, who blends the freewheeling romance of Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell with ramshackle C86-style production and the darker, drowsier energy of PJ Harvey or Mark Lanegan. Even when they brood under a drizzly cloud, the surefire melodies can’t help but jangle
Led by the imperious Natalie Sharp, Lone Taxidermist’s 2017 album “Trifle” was a cult hit for its blend of post-punk and Peaches-style electro, along with the complete withholding of any fucks – and 2018 should see them build their reputation as the best live band you have yet to see. Imagine a fetish party in a bubble-wrap factory overseen by a pushy lollipop lady and you’re kind of getting near.
Along with Serafina Steer,Natalie Sharp aka Lone Taxidermist and Medea, created a visual spectacle taking in opera, theatrics, minimalist sounds and stage production. In her vocal gymnastics and theatrics, Natalie’s performance could only be compared to Kate Bush. Unbelievable.
I just can’t stop listening to this album. As far as genres go it’s pretty much unclassifiable but has a glistening pop sensibility throughout. It will take you on a slippery journey
As witnessed as Medua and the subsequent irreverent world of Lone Taxidermist, Sharp’s art and expression is firmly based in the ‘performance art’ side of things and her ‘performances’ so far can be equally compared to the afore mentioned Kate Bush, as easily as they could to Gilbert and George or Sarah Lucas. However, what Sharp has done with Trifle, is manage the precarious transition into accessible ‘popular’ music, but without losing any of the ‘high art’ performance or theatrics with it.
A product of their hometown’s DIY scene, this Los Angeles trio have spent the past couple of years creating moody guitar music that draws on shoegaze, slacker-rock and post-punk. They’ve already whetted appetites for their upcoming debut album with a series of driving, dirge-like, deadpan tunes.
Los Angeles band Moaning recently toured with Sub Pop labelmates Metz, though they’re a new enough band that they’re likely being introduced to most listeners with the release of their upcoming debut album. And though they certainly have the energy and intensity to fit in comfortably alongside an aggressive, intense band like Metz, there’s a sexier, darker undercurrent of vintage post-punk in what they do that sets them apart. Throttling intensity plus sinister grooves? Sounds like Moaning has some serious potential.
One of the most memorable moments on U.S. Girls‘ recent album, Half Free (4AD), isn’t a song but a short skit that interrupts the idiosyncratic outsider pop two tracks in. Illinois-born, Toronto-based Meghan Remy is one of our favourite breakout artists of 2015 and her 4AD debut is a magpie’s nest of mini treasures; part soul, part lo-fi rock and hugely rewarding. In an alternate universe Window Shades with it’s piano stabs would be the perfect Bond theme – seductive, cool and rather raunchy.
It begins with Meg Remy calling a friend to tell her about a creepy dream involving her father, then shifts to the two of them riffing on gender, ending with a canned laugh track that somehow strips all the comedy from the punchline.
“I decided to do a skit almost as a joke, but then it turned into something serious because I can’t really do anything as a joke,” Remy explains. “It’s a mostly improvised conversation between me and my sister-in-law, and it kind of ties the record together. It deals with almost all the themes on the record: family, violence and sex.”
U.S. Girls originally started as a solo noise-pop experiment but has evolved into something more overtly pop. On Half Free, Remy enlists an array of collaborators (including her husband, Slim Twig), which takes the collage concept she’s always worked with in a new direction.
Each song is a small story often focusing on the darkness in many women’s lives. She’s repeatedly cited Bruce Springsteen as an inspiration behind her character-driven storytelling, but she says another key influence is Toronto’s Simone Schmidt (of Hundred Dollars, Fiver and the Highest Order).
“Her bravery and her voice totally inspired this record and inspired me to write from the perspectives of characters that aren’t really being heard from. She’s also unapologetically political, and I think everyone should be in this fucking era we’re living in.”
It’s not surprising that she steers the conversation toward politics, since that seems to be how most of her interviews go. While other artists are often preoccupied with making the dialogue all about the music (or themselves), Remy has other priorities.
“I don’t want to talk about myself. Part of the reason I’m doing this is because I’m hoping to reach people and get them thinking about what’s happening in the world. We’re living in such a crazy time, and it’s getting crazier. Part of that is people’s laziness and inability to get active in what’s going on. Everyone is just staring at their phone all day.”
critics loved Meg Remy’s debut for 4AD. With Half Free, the Toronto-based American expat crafted a heady collage of sonic, political and narrative ideas into nine tracks that explore the lives and concerns of working-class women.
Her sixth album is essentially what a glossy major-label pop album might sound like if turned inside out: it runs a gamut of stylistic influences and is full of simple, affecting melodies and hooks, but the guts are on display in its scrappy samples, psychological complexity and unapologetic realism.
Remy writes and sings from the point of view of characters, but it’s her sonic details and vintage atmospherics that beautifully express how the struggle for freedom and equality spans time.
Half Free is one of those records that gets better the deeper you go with it. Easily the most ambitious album to come out of Toronto this year
