Nandi Rose Plunket teased the name of her second long-player as Half Waif back in June. “[The title] is the talisman we hold to heal ourselves and ward the night away,” she explained. Lavender – which follows the EP form/a on Cascine – was recorded over five months after moving to upstate New York: “I am exactly where I’m meant to be… it feels like an album I couldn’t have written before I was this age, and I wouldn’t have made the move up here before I was this age, so it’s a natural harmony of timing and need.”
She describes it as “elegy to time, the pilgrimages we take, and the ultimate slow plod towards aging. It takes place at dusk; its spirit animal is the heron, which I occasionally spied at the pond behind our summer house as the album gained shape. It’s an examination of the way we fracture over time, inside ourselves and inside our relationships – the fissures that creep along the structures we build, the tendency towards disintegration.”
The Grease Arrestor describe their second album, ‘Volume Two’ as a pastiche of different ideas and influences, including the 60s golden era and elements of 90s movements, blended with their signature drone and fuzz groove combination.Groove-drones and jangle freak-outs.
12 string guitars and 60s organs. Jiving rhythms and Shoe gazey fuzz-tones. The Grease Arrestor are the Sydney 5 piece dedicated to bringing you the very best of the sounds you know and L.O.V.E. please also check out these other favs of ours. The Citradels, The Babe Rainbow, Spirit Valley, The Dandelion, Dead Radio, The Frowning Clouds, Hurricane Heart Attacks, Mezko.
Band Members: Richard Snowden, Elizabeth Tillman, Ryan Lloyd, Samuel Potter & Joshua Hutchins-Smith
Swedish-born Natali Felicia is a breath of fresh air. She has released two of the year’s most astonishing songs, both of which recaptured pop music’s timeless narrative. First up was “Used To Be” in March, a jaw-dropping mixture of melancholy, relatability and catchiness. It was followed up this summer with the epic grandeur of “EasyRide” whose accompanying video somehow managed to be as stratospheric visually as it was musically.
Felicia’s music creates a world that’s entirely her own and is soundtracked by a vast, sweeping tunefulness that debunks the myth that pop is a dirty word. She describes her songs as pop, but with a caveat: “It’s not happy pop, it’s a dark world but there’s still some hope there. You can see the light in the tunnel but it’s quite dark and dreamy.”
Her family gave her a guitar and she started playing cover versions, mainly Johnny Cash songs. She then began to write her own songs and played them live, which was a turning point. “I went to open mics and performed them and I got a really beautiful response, which really motivated me to continue. Slowly and steadily I started to find my own way.”
Mikael Häggström (Ane Brun) added drums and Johaness Berglund (The Knife) joined on mixing duties. Whilst Felicia doesn’t produce the music, she verbalises what she’s looking for from her collaborators: “I don’t know the producer part, but I can explain how I want the sound picture and what elements I want.” The songwriting process is fluid, but who writes what isn’t set in stone, she explains: “I sit with my guitar and come up with a few phrases and a melody and we work with that or it can come from Andreas or we can start something from scratch, it’s always different.”
Unlike the political snark of some groups, or the activist message of others, INHEAVEN creates music out of a love of, well, just music. “All those bands you grew up loving, especially those that changed your life ,owning that t-shirt and buying that record, looking at fanzines – you kind of owe it to them to carry it on. You want to do what all your favourite icons did,” explains singer and guitarist James Taylor. “Nirvana were a massive influence for me growing up, and the Clash for their ideology. Sonic Youth, the Cure…”Lyrically they just go with what comes naturally, rather than trying to be topical or on some sort of message. “I just write how I feel really,” says Taylor.
Chloe Little, on bass and vocals, laughs: “I’ve tried to be clever before and ‘say something’ with lyrics, but it just came our awful. We’re better just going with how we feel.”
With a sound echoing some of the ’90s shoegaze and grunge they explored in their teens, INHEAVEN understand that semi-obsessive streak that fans experience. “Bands are so emotional,” says Little. “I used to grab hold of everything I could and just cling onto it, pour over it.”
Having released just four songs into the world, their own fans are already responding with excitement
IDER’s Megan Markwick and Lily Somerville are one of the most exciting new UK duos, The London-based duo managed all this with their first track “Sorry” back only in April 2016. Megan Markwick and Lily Somerville appeared out of nowhere with a song built from rolling piano chords, burbling electronics and soon-to-be-trademark second nature harmonies. Both empowering and battling against an overwhelming sadness, its closing mantra “all my skin / I’m wrapped in / all I need” firmly embedding in your head.
It’s the harmonies I keep returning to, but there’s also a collective IDER voice, when Markwick and Somerville sing in unison, and it makes the duo stand out from other electronic pop also-rans. You can hear it on “Pulse”, whose honesty is refreshing as it is startling. There’s a moment where IDER sing togther “gave myself to madness / to the madness” which makes the chest heave, leaves you gasping for breath, but then pulls you back with the most glorious “let’s stick together no matter what” chorus imaginable. In singing “I’ll fall if you do…show me how to hold you” IDER capture the perils and peaks of love and loss. Further singles “King Ruby” and “Million” contained moments which me believe just how incredible this band is.
His irreverent subject matter and genre-fluidity has garnered him a cult following online but now Gabriel Black is ready to take his message to the people. Born in New Jersey and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Gabriel Black’s interest in performance stemmed from his love of legendary hip hop artist Immortal Technique. “His message really drew me in as he was a very political rapper and I was a very political kid at the time” he says. After dropping out of college in Boston Gabriel found himself working at Immortal Technique’s label Viper Records in New York who set him up with an apartment on the Upper West Side.
A bout of self-doubt settled in leading our young songwriter to Monterey, California where isolation and boredom led him to creating some of his greatest work.
“Monterey is this little coastal town, it’s actually pretty beautiful. I had one friend there and I’d go out to bars with him like once a week. Other than that, I would just stay in the house all the time” he explains “I don’t know what it was but when I was in Monterey I started to make all this music. It was the most efficient and crazy musical and creative time of my life.”
Whilst there Gabriel wrote “sad boy”, a song as diverse sonically as the cities it’s writer has resided, all bound together by Gabriel’s distinctive vocal tone and sparse production. This theme entrenched in simplicity runs through all his offerings from the eerie falsetto of “Pine Trees” to the face melting guitar solo in “Freedom”.
Brooklyn-via-Baltimore singer /songwriter/guitar prodigy Lindsey Jordan aka Snail Mail is the latest addition to the Matador Records roster. Snail Mail will release a full-length album in 2018, following SisterPolygon’s 2017 12″ reissue of the of the introductory cassette, ‘Habit’. Snail Mail’s NPR Tiny Desk concert premiered this morning, and might provide a hint or several why press, musical peers (including but not limited to Waxahatchee, Priests and Girlpool), and yeah, record labels have taken so much interest in a short spell..
Jordan has a voice that only comes along every now and then … she is able to fit a universe of emotion into a single turn of phrase without any vocal affectation … whether she’s muttering or shouting, you feel the heartbreak, the frustration, the joy that came with writing these lyrics”
Jordan started Snail Mail at 15 and released the quietly stunning Habit EP via Priests‘ in-house label last year. She’s quickly found fans in Helium and Ex Hex’s Mary Timony (who also happens to be Jordan’s guitar teacher) and just went on tour with Waxahatchee and Palehound. She’s just signed to Matador Records.
Set List
“Slug”
“Thinning”
“Anytime”
MUSICIANS
Lindsey Jordan (electric guitar, vocals); Raymond Brown (drums); Alex Bass (bass)
Body/Head is the minimalist duo of ex-Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon and experimental guitarist Bill Nace. On their intoxicating first full length, where both play guitar and Gordon sings, the duo treat a limited palette as a challenge, like the straitjacket a magician dons to prove he can break free.
Recently released on CD – now available on vinyl. Body/Head the duo of Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth, Free Kitten) and guitarist Bill Nace (Northampton Wools, Celyon Mange). They play experimental, free-form guitar drones highlighted by Gordon’s unmistakable voice. Their sound is an immersive, three-dimensional experience and no two performances are similar. No Waves was recorded on March 24th, 2014 during Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN at the Bijou Theater.
The musical approach Kim Gordon and Bill Nace chose for their duo Body/Head seems intentionally restrictive. Both play only guitar. Their songs are slow and sometimes static, an effect enhanced by the near-total absence of beats (and, in concert, by the slowed-down films projected behind them). Gordon sings mostly in monotone, spreading her words out in a glacial rap or moaning them in a breathy whisper. The mood is similarly confined, sticking to a strident heaviness through serious lyrics and dirge-like guitar.
This limited palette could feel claustrophobic, or just boring. But on Body/Head’s first full-length album Coming Apart, the duo treat it as a challenge, like the straitjacket a magician dons to prove he can break free. (Not coincidentally, the album is named after a 1969 movie set in a single apartment and shot from a single camera angle). In nearly 70 minutes of music over two LPs, Gordon and Nace burrow deep into their narrow sound, mining it for more variety and emotion than it should rightfully hold. The effect is subtle– at first the music feels aimless, in search of something vague and elusive. But give Coming Apart a few listens, and distinctive shapes emerge. Eventually, the duo’s dedication to a specific point of view becomes intoxicating.
That dedication shows up most strongly in the conversational guitar work of Gordon and Nace (himself a veteran of many excellent collaborations). Oddly, the duo chose to pan their individual sounds to opposite sides of the stereo space. But rather than making them feel disconnected, that tactic gives their interplay a call-and-response synchronicity. When one of them hits repetitive chords or plucks two-note patterns, the other weaves long tones or dense distortion; at other times, one’s left turn into dissonance inspires the other to find melody in the noise. (The chiming quality of that noise sometimes recalls Evol–era Sonic Youth, but there are many other evocations in the pair’s timbres.) The timing of these actions and reactions makes Coming Apart surprisingly engaging– though all 10 pieces were mostly improvised, many have an arc that’s thoughtfully song-like.
Even more engaging is Gordon’s singing, which is as expressive as anything she did in Sonic Youth, and often more so. She stretches out syllables, expands phrases, and melts her voice into the rising guitar lava. At times it seems she’s simply exploring the way words sound, treating them like physical objects sliding up her throat and pouring off her tongue. At other points, the concrete meaning of her lyrics is all that matters. So when her simple yell of the title in “Actress” turns urgent, it suddenly sounds like the most important word in the world.
Gordon’s voice also provides an entry point into tunes, which can otherwise be a bit forbidding. But it’s also easy to get lost in them, much the way the most intense work by Jandek or Scott Walker can take on the quality of a dream. As in dreams, time on Coming Apart becomes a moving target, and sometimes seems to disappear altogether. As a result, these songs often feel longer than they actually are– but this is the rare case where that’s a strength rather than a weakness.
Still, given the music’s endless feel, closing Coming Apart with its two longest tracks is risky. But Gordon and Nace manage to find new ideas in these elongated settings. 17-minute closer “Frontal” is like an album unto itself, gradually moving from distant echoes to the duo’s most aggressive tones. Its predecessor, “Black”, is even more mesmerizing. It’s ostensibly a cover of the traditional folk song “Black Is the Colour (Of My True Love’s Hair)”, but Gordon was likely inspired by one version in particular: the radical take recorded by singer Patty Waters and her free-jazz group in the late 60s.
Gordon doesn’t get as frantic or desperate sounding as Waters; in keeping with the album’s tone, her interpretation is darker and heavier. But it’s just as radical. Waiting almost seven minutes before singing, Gordon reworks simple stanzas into zombie mantras, eventually duetting with herself in a chorus of abstract hums. The re-imagining is typical of her career, which has featured more detours than she’s perhaps been given credit for. Count Coming Apart as another fascinating step in that journey, and Body/Head’s musical path as one that she and Nace will hopefully follow for a long time.
After years as Jenny Lewis’ back-up singer and keyboardist, Tristen is back with her third album. The songs, recorded in her home studio, act as snapshots on universal themes. The melodic “Clandestine” is but one fine example.
It’s coming up on four years since songsmith Tristen Gaspadarek released her wide-ranging sophomore full-length album “Caves”, but she’s been plenty busy since then, including a stint touring in Jenny Lewis‘ band and also releasing a collection of poetry. Her new album “Sneaker Waves” is due via Modern Outsider.
Recorded and co-produced by Buddy Hughen, the record features contributions from a wealth of top local players, including touring band members Coley Hinson and Kaleb Kirby as well as Ben Parks (Fox Fun, Sun Seeker), Matt Rowland (Ghostfinger, Rayland Baxter, Kacey Musgraves), Linwood Regensburg (Those Darlins) and Jerry Roe (Friendship Commanders, many more) — plus a guest appearance from Jenny Lewis on standout track “Glass Jar.”
The based Nashville singer-songwriter Tristen is ready to put her killer vocals on the map with a new psychdelia-tinged single and music video for “Glass Jar.” The song is on the album Sneaker Waves, her first original album release though she did release a poetry book called Saturnine last year.
Tristen also toured with the likes of Vanessa Carlton and the Weeks, but for the past two years she’s been part of the backing band for Jenny Lewis, Perhaps not coincidentally, fans of Lewis’ most recent album The Voyager will probably find a lot to like here too.
“I don’t have to say goodbye/ You don’t get to see me cry/ You put me in a glass jar and tap, tap, tap to see how I move,” Tristen croons on the track, which speaks to more weight than the song’s overall airy vibe suggests. Synths and guitars overlay the the idea of being trapped and on display in something more like a prison than a home.
Director Casey Pierce’s music video plays on the themes of the song’s ’60s-nostalgic sound and the isolationist lyricism. Tristen is often cast in pale, pastel light, outfitted in the tunics and skirts of the time. Her image is duplicated side-by-side, like looking through a half of a kaleidoscope. The jar imagery comes to mind as she dances by herself with only a shadowy, undeterminable background behind her, emphasizing the song’s seclusive language.
Another wonderful Australian band you should be listening too, Instead of calling this an album, Black Springs chose to call “When We Were Great” a compilation of songs from their past giving you the idea that the band are no longer together maybe lets hope not ?. Mystery aside, this record has elements of dreampop, shoegaze and jangle and a confidence that has me pulling for them to make another record.
Sydney four-piece Black Springs have released their debut LP. Mixed by Caleb Jacobs (aka Plum) and boldly titled ‘When We Were Great’, it sure is a moody collection of guitar reverie. The buoyancy of singles Boys In Blue and Slinky Day make way for more fragile yet equally catchy moments throughout with a healthy dose of the band’s trademark wig-outs thrown in for good measure (Bitter and Twisted, Staying in Again).
