MJ Lenderman is an acclaimed artist hailing from Asheville, North Carolina. With a passion for music that knows no bounds, MJ has captivated audiences with their unique blend of soulful melodies and thought-provoking lyrics. With years of experience in the industry, MJ has honed their craft and developed a signature sound that sets them apart from the crowd. Their music effortlessly combines elements of folk, rock, and blues to create a sound that is both familiar and refreshingly original.
Whether performing on stage or recording in the studio, MJ’s talent shines through in every note. Their powerful vocals and heartfelt performances have earned them a dedicated fan base and critical acclaim.
MJ Lenderman’s voice is clear. His music is built on honest lyrics fixed in his own reality and a quick wit buoyed by fervent guitars and pedal steel. On last year’s “You Are Every Girl to Me” from his breakthrough solo album “Boat Songs“, the Wednesday guitarist’s token of love came in the form of airport merch and heartfelt words.
On one of the few solo singles he released this year we hear more about that affection: “Her love for me is real / She gives me what she has to give,” he sings on his rendering of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”—not Bob Dylan’s timeless classic, but American flag apparel enthusiast and professional golfer John Daly’s.
For Lenderman, it isn’t a shootout or a bad game of golf that has him rapping on those big, pearly gates. It isn’t even the DUI he alludes to in the first verse (“They took my driver’s license / But you still have yours”)—instead it’s his lover’s devotion. It’s the kind of love that makes a no-alternative demotion to the passenger seat feel like flying with newfound wings.
“Manning Fireworks” is a remarkable development in MJ Lenderman’s story as an incredibly incisive singer-songwriter, whose propensity for humour always points to some uneasy, disorienting darkness. The punchlines are still here, as are the rusted-wire guitar solos that have made Lenderman a favourite for indie rock fans looking for an emerging guitar hero. There’s a new sincerity, too, as Lenderman lets listeners clearly see the world through his warped lens.
The were a big tip for 2024 from Rough Trade Shops. Words are not to be taken for granted. Especially when they’re being bellowed, full blast, by a broad-shouldered poet with the brimstone fire of a preacher and the honesty and wisdom of a layman, over ground-shaking live beats and between anthemic blasts of melody and rousing riffage. Words matter. History matters. People matter. And Big Special matter.
For Big Special – Joe Hicklin (vocals) and Callum Moloney (drums) – their sound is one that comes from vital, frustrated young working-class voices that don’t always get heard on the scale they should do. It’s a frustration that comes to the fore through a voice that is at times coarse and raw, but sensitive, desperate and soulful at others. Hicklin’s brimstone-fired voice marches from guttural punk barks and serrated spoken word to soaring soul and back again, arriving siphoned from their forebears, crushed under the weight of history, and retooled for a new generation. It’s wrought, raw and angry at a world lacking options, the thinning of the common understanding between the social classes of England, exasperation at repeating cycles, and the feeling that you’re watching your own life unfold from the outside.
These are songs that channel that voice you hear when you look in the mirror and see your true self – fight songs for a world gone wrong.
With drummer Callum Moloney from Birmingham and Hicklin from the neighbouring town of Walsall, the pair first met as what they affectionately describe as “childhood sweethearts” in college back when they were 17. Having performed together under various guises, their chemistry and love of writing together kept them creatively bound – returning to form Big Special a decade later to beat the boredom and frustration of lockdown.
Brown Horse are a Norwich-based country rock band. Rooted in a collaborative approach to songwriting, the six-piece mix guitar-driven 90s alternative rock with the folk and country sounds of the 70s. “Reservoir” is the debut album from Brown Horse. Although recorded over just four days in a quiet corner of Norfolk, the album is a collaborative effort years in the making.
Starting life in 2018 as a folk quartet, Emma Tovell, Nyle Holihan, Patrick Turner and Rowan Braham spent their early days playing old time standards, Michael Hurley covers and original songs in pubs across England. Coming back together in 2022 post-pandemic, the group moved towards a heavier, guitar-driven sound. Introducing Ben Auld to the band on drums, Brown Horse began to make a name for themselves in the resurgent scene of their adopted hometown, Norwich. With the addition of PhoebeTroup in the summer of 2023 completing the line-up, Brown Horse made the short drive north to Sickroom Studios, where they spent four days recording with Owen Turner.
The songs of “Reservoir” are rooted in a country-rock tradition. While the band acknowledges an indebtedness to the turn-of-the-millennium alt-country sounds of Uncle Tupelo, Silver Jews, Lucinda Williams, and Jason Molina, the songs on the album also resonate with the preceding “Last Waltz’” generation of seventies folk-rock artists, as well as more recent works.
Brown Horse (Emma, Nyle, Rowan, Patrick, Ben, and Phoebe) recorded this album over four days at Sickroom Studios in Norfolk, England in the spring of 2023.
Sleater-Kinney announced a deluxe edition of their 2024 album “Little Rope” featuring the addition of live and “Frayed Rope Sessions” tracks, and three new songs. They’ve shared one of those, “Here Today,” which they say is “a song we recorded during the “Little Rope” sessions. The updated album set for release on October 4th will include the nine-track bonus disc.
For now we get to hear one of those new singles, “Here Today,” which is a crunching track featuring stomping drums and buzzing guitars, as well as lyrics like: “Mothers, children, lovers, friends / We all belong to someone else.” Regarding the new track, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker said: “We’re excited to share ‘Here Today’ with you
It’s an earnest song about our brief time here on earth, and where to find meaning in it.”
The new edition include’s new songs that were recorded during the original album sessions, live versions, and our Frayed Rope Sessions.
After nearly 30 years since the release of their debut album, Mercury Rev have become a buzz band all over again with the recent extensive shoegaze revival. Yet although their name has materialized upon countless listicles highlighting the genre’s first wave of artists, their influence extends far beyond the realm of dream-pop, as their psychedelically shaded sound has crossed over into chamber pop, alt-country, space rock, and beyond over the course of 10 albums.
This their eleventh album continues the experimental streak. The singles leading up to “Born Horses” the New Yorkers’ first album since “The Delta Sweet Revisited”,their 2019 collection of collaborations paying homage to country-soul icon Bobbie Gentry have suggested the influence of Beat poetry and minimalist composition, with jazz and classical instrumentation aiding the band’s ambient blend of sound.
Yet as the band’s members explain, that set of influences goes much deeper, with ’60s British prog-rockers Bachdenkel being listed on the influences playlist they’ve shared with us, alongside Chicago’s cult krautrockers Bitchin Bajas, Greek new-age figure Iasos, and a handful of iconic figures among jazz and classical music.
With Born Horseslanding this Friday via Bella Union,
Julianna Riolino knows how to capture and highlight beauty before it fades. She spent her days running up to the release of her solo debut helping restore the stained glass windows at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto.Riolino couldn’t help but reflect on her own past and the memories of pains, healing, and love strewn through it. “It made me think about life as a balancing act, and we’re all just trying to do our best to navigate it,” she says. That focus on morality and the stretch of time seeped naturally into Riolino’s Americana-indebted songwriting, resulting in the golden, fluid album “All Blue”, “If I was a painter, this would be my blue period,” she says. “I’m looking at my life, all my decisions lined up, and either atoning for them or laughing them off.”
The true religious fervour both in Riolino’s life and in the LP is directed towards icons like Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and The Band. Inspired by those artists, Riolino asked for a guitar as a child, and began teaching herself how to bring similar life to the melodies in her head. And while she honed her voice by participating in school musicals, songwriting remained a deeply personal venture.
The stories are told with a hefty dose of wit and wordplay mixed into pitch-perfect representations of classic Americana tropes. Riolino has shown that same duality in her role as a member of cult favourite Daniel Romano’s backing band, The Outfit, here utilizing Romano as a guitarist and putting a tighter focus on her powerful vocals.
Leaning more heavily on emotional reality than diary details, the kernel of truth and experience always shines through in Riolino’s songwriting. Lodged somewhere between AM radio breeze and the florid wash of Waxahatchee. Trilling organ and Roddy Carlyle’s rangy bass play the perfect complement to Riolino’s sweetly strummed acoustic.
Blending past and present musically represents Riolino’s own experience as well, the songs written over a period of years, their meanings picking beyond that stretch and pulling lessons forward. And in that process, her philosophical lyrics bring that complexity forward to the listener in surreally sweet melodies, pouring growth and healing directly through the ear and into the heart. “For me it was about looking into a reflection of who you once were, letting go of that idea of who you thought you needed to be, and being okay with who you are.”
While some of us are on the topic of Go Betweens-adjacent books and writing, it’s about time I mentioned here that the book, Pig City, has been reissued for its 20th anniversary. Even Tracey Thorn’s book references it!
Pig City is obviously a book about music: the subtitle is “From the Saints to Savage Garden”, which nods (with intended irony) to Clinton Heylin’s book on New York punk, From the Velvets to the Voidoids, an obvious influence. But really, it’s a book about Brisbane, during and immediately after the Bjelke-Petersen years; about the tension between art and politics, and how each can exert a push and pull on the other. From cult heroes the Saints and the Go – Betweens to national icons Powderfinger and international stars Savage Garden, Brisbane has produced more than its share of great bands.
The Go-Betweens are, naturally, a massive part of that story both Robert Forster and Lindy Morrison were kind enough to offer their endorsements for the book’s reissue (as well as an alumni, the great Peter Milton Walsh, from the Apartments). Grant McLennan, a few weeks before his death, had said the book had been passed around the tour van on the band’s final run through Europe.
All these things make me proud and while it’s had its detractors too, I’m astonished to still be talking about it all these years later. At the very least it started a conversation, and maybe the best part is that conversation remains ongoing, here and elsewhere.
“Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind” is a live box show from King Crimson, released September 2nd, 2016. It’s the first full-length release of the seven-member incarnation of the group that formed. in 2013. When it comes to quality live material, there’s never been a better time to be a King Crimson fan than the 2010s. In addition to the exhaustive 40th anniversary boxes, there have been multiple releases from the 2014-2015 seven-piece band culminating with “Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind”, a set that features every song performed on the tour in excellent audio and video quality.
The box set was recorded during King Crimson’s 2015 tours of Japan, Canada and France, mainly in Takamatsu, Japan. The material performed is mostly from the 1969-1974, and most hadn’t been performed live since the 1970s, although the songs were rearranged to accommodate the current formation. Also included are some parts from 1995 onwards, along with new material. The title comes from a song of the same name that the band has been playing in concert.
The set was released in two editions: a 4-disc standard edition featuring the full concert on a Blu-ray disc and three CD (“virtual studio albums” with individual tracks without an audible audience); and a 6-disc deluxe limited edition, which includes the same as the standard edition plus two DVDs with the full concert and an extended brochure. The Blu-ray disc has a “image disabled” mode that allows you to listen to music without the video.
The CDs dispense with the running order of the show (and the audience!) in favour of slightly arbitrary thematic groupings: “Mostly Metal,” “Easy Money Shots,” and “Crimson Classics.” These are different mixes than those on the Blu-ray set, specifically for audio-only. The different mixes and running order provide a different feeling to the sets, but both are equally powerful. This band is a juggernaut and hearing them tackle not just the ’70s repertoire they hadn’t performed in decades, but some ’90s tracks as well, is something fans could not have dreamed of at the turn of the century. Rarely has a band that’s been around for 45-plus years sounded so vital. This is essential for fans.
Kate Bollinger grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her mother was a music therapist, and her two older brothers played in local bands. As a child, she sang in the Ash Lawn Opera every summer and began writing songs. In 2011, her brother Will recorded a song of hers, and she uploaded it to SoundCloud. From then on, she made primitive home recordings, which she released online and burned to CDs for her friends. In high school, she spent two summers studying songwriting at Young Writers Workshop and played her first show opening for her former songwriting teacher, Gene Osborne. Serendipitously, the other act on the bill was her all-time favorite band, Philly-based, The Extraordinaires. They kept in touch, and she went to Philadelphia the following year to record her first EP, “Key West”, with The Extraordinaires as her backing band. By college, while studying poetry and cinematography, she continued to self-release folk-pop songs to the attention of The New York Times and NPR. After years of playing and recording in solitude, Bollinger formed a band to record her EP, “I Don’t Wanna Lose, followed by the 2020 EP, “A word becomes a sound“.
She made her Ghostly International debut in 2022 with “Look at it in the Light”, a six-song collection that saw her building out the project’s sound and visual scope, including a series of collaborative music videos. Since moving to Los Angeles, Bollinger has split time between recording new material, contributing to friends’ projects (Drugdealer, Paul Cherry), touring (with Faye Webster, Tennis, Devendra Banhart, and others), directing music videos (for Jessica Pratt and her own), and releasing several standalone singles including “You At Home,” a collaboration with Dave Longstreth of Dirty Projectors.
Bollinger’s full-length debut arrives in late summer 2024 on Ghostly International. Written during a period of transience and change, “Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind” was made to resemble a mixtape — something carefully crafted and delivered from just one person to another. Here, Bollinger and her band favour the eclectic, melodic, and majestic, supporting intimate, stream-of-consciousness lyricism with classic instrumentation inspired by touchstones of 1960s folk-pop and 1990s indie rock.
Kate Bollinger from the forthcoming album ‘Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind’, out September 27th on Ghostly International.
Is there any festival more aptly named than End of the Road? As people and performers gather at the woodland site in Larmar Tree Gardens, near the border of Dorset and Wiltshire, it does inevitably feel like an ending – festival season, and summer itself, drifting into a gentle and bittersweet close. More than 100 live music performances featuring artists from across the world were on the bill at this year’s End Of The Road Festival, held in a quiet corner of rural Dorset.
The independently run event, which is in its 18th year, is renowned for its cross-genre musical line-up, and for showcasing emerging talent alongside established acts.
Headlining on Friday were Bristol-based punk band Idles, riding high after their Glastonbury set earlier in the summer, while on Saturday, 90s shoegaze pioneers Slowdive – who released their fifth album last year – were also taking a turn on the main Woods Stage.
It’s something felt by the artists as much as the attendees. Introducing a moving, pared-back set on the scenic Talking Heads stage, Jess Williamson (one-half of the Waxahatchee collaboration Plains) remarks that it has “last day of school vibes”. For others, such as the brilliant and sonically mercurial electro-pop duo Jockstrap, the weekend also marks the end of a long summer run: a tour in lambent twilight.
The biggest coup of the weekend actually comes on Thursday, as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, the indie-folk music project of actor-songwriter Will Oldham, holds court on End of the Road’s main Woods stage. His is a sound that has influenced a generation of songwriters: sparse, soulful and cerebral Americana. Oldham seldom plays festivals, and his booking here is said to be more than a decade in the making.
It’s worth the wait: watching him and his small band pluck and strum their way through songs such as “Like It Or Not” and the rousing anticapitalist ballad “In the Wilderness” feels like a rare privilege. Not many festivals would yield a primetime spot on their biggest stage to music this gentle and intimate; he is rewarded with an audience that’s pin-drop quiet. When people say that End of the Road is a music lover’s festival, one with audiences that are “more attentive” than typical festival punters, it’s easy to dismiss it as spiel or hyperbole. Oldham’s set suggests it’s right on the money.
On The Woods stage, though, it’s very much a gentle introduction to the weekend. Laetitia Sadier, following the Stereolab reunion that rolled through Larmer Tree Gardens a couple of years back, is here in support of her fifth solo album “Rooting For Love“, containing, in her own words “sonic balm[s] to aid the evolution of Earth’s traumatized civilizations”.
But it’s not all acoustic guitars and mellifluous choruses. The bill across the weekend spans a rich and eclectic range of sounds, from moshy young American outfit Lip Critic (playing in the darkened Big Top tent), to rowdy British rockers Idles, to Irish trad experimentalists Lankum, who headline Saturday’s garden stage slot with a set that’s by turns exhilarating and laden with doomy dissonance. The Irish folk group whose 2023 album became the first in the genre to be nominated for the Mercury Prize in more than a decade. Lebanese collective Sanam and Somali singer and cultural activist Sahra Halgan played the more intimate Garden Stage,
Quirky singer-songwriter Joanna Sternberg is raw and captivating, performing twice, the second time in one of the festival’s many secret sets. Indie rock maven Julia Jacklin takes another, performing a terrific set of songs on her birthday – marked by a cake being brought out on stage.
Another of the highlights of the weekend is Irish country-pop powerhouse CMAT, whose athletic, funny and charismatic set includes an astonishingly well-executed cover of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”. “This is one of the best shows we’ve ever done,” she says towards the end.
Away from the music, the festival is just as eccentric in its choices, with the cinema tent – moved this year into a brick-and-mortar hall, in the part of the site patrolled by peacocks – featuring a diverse and unpredictable mix, from Kelly Reichardt’s wonderful indie Old Joy to classics such as Back to the Future. The comedy billing, meanwhile, includes Stewart Lee, Josie Long, and Fern Brady, who delivers a sharp half-hour about her experience turning down a slot on Strictly Come Dancing, one of the “most sinister programmes on TV”, and a magic mushrooms-dazed trip to Thailand.
A drop-out from Fever Ray due to illness sees indie rock veterans Yo La Tengo seamlessly upgraded to the main-stage headline slot, The US indie rock trio were announced to close proceedings on Sunday.at one point bringing out a young child to join them on guitar, to the delight of the crowd. Despite this, and a few other cancellations, it’s a weekend replete with great music and great vibes. The end has never looked so full of possibilities.
The Fat Angel Sings 