While 11 months out of the year it likely comes across as flattering, the thought of hearing your own name mentioned in someone else’s song in the dead of October may send chills down your spine. Such was the case with indie-folk mainstay Matt Pond PA upon hearing Alexa Rose’s 2021 single “Wild Peppermint” though, based on context clues, it doesn’t seem like it was the eerie type of spine-tingling that Pond was experiencing. “I couldn’t believe that a wildly talented musician would mention my name in a song,” he recalls. “It was almost spooky. Hearing her music flipped the switch on the low-level self-hatred I had humming in the back of my head.
Fast-forward to the present day and the two songwriters have teamed up on an actual Halloween-themed single, although it isn’t quite as scary as that may sound. “Halloween Two” is a brief duet calmly peddling in horror-film clichés and other Halloween-y imagery applied to interpersonal relationships. Embellished by cello and a viscerally autumnal music video, the track exhibits the strength—and ease—of collaboration between the two artists.
“A couple of years [after hearing ‘Wild Peppermint’], I asked Alexa if she’d like to sing on a song I’d written,” Pond continues regarding the collaboration before seemingly unintentionally returning to seasonally appropriate language. “Then I started sending her tons and tons of music. Which can be scary you don’t want to frighten your new friends off by being a psycho. But she listened to it all, and the demo she pulled out of the dustbin was ‘Halloween Two,’ a little duet about being the source of our own fears the monster is me/us.”
While the track only clocks in at two minutes, Pond notes that a full EP is on the way,
Flyte, the indie-leaning folk-rock duo of Will Taylor and Nicolas Hill, have been accruing fans from all walks of life, some of which happen to be extremely famous. Last month, they shared a live performance video of “Tough Love,” which featured backing vocals from none other than Florence Pugh, who covered Laura Marling’s studio part.
Heavy-hitting collaborators aside, it’s clear on the band’s self-titled new album why they’ve become so popular. The melodies are catchy but never saccharine, the backing instrumentation minimal and sparse yet clever and interesting. It’s the aforementioned “Tough Love” that serves as the album’s emotional core, built around delicately strummed acoustic guitar chords, weeping strings, and yearning vocals. “Even on bad days, the world is gonna spin,” sings Taylor, affirming that even during low moments love perseveres.
To celebrate the duo’s new album, we had Flyte break down each track on their new LP,
1. “Speech Bubble” This song is a plea for love. It’s a mission statement for a relationship that’s yet to start. The song seeks redemption. It’s certain that love—in all its simplicity, empathy, joy, sadness, and darkness—will be the cure. I sat down on the recording studio floor and sang and played it through a single microphone with Billie Marten, actress Lily Newmark, and photographer Katie Silvester singing hauntingly in the background. The intention of the female voice was to sound like it was responding from the future, as the couple in the song hadn’t yet met.
2. “Defender” “Defender” is written from the perspective of someone trying to care for a partner with poor mental health, even though they may be unqualified, not necessarily any stronger, but trying nonetheless. We wrote this with our friend and next-door neighbor, [South African songwriter]] M Field, around our sitting room table with some classical guitars and a drum machine.
3. “Press Play” We wanted this song to encapsulate the pure joy of love as it begins to blossom—a fireworks display of happiness and nervous excitement. It was a full room of beautiful musicians—Suren De Saram (Bombay Bicycle Club) and Matt Ingram (Laura Marling) both drumming simultaneously, Jack Watts (Memorial) on accompanying guitar with Will, Nick playing bass with Billie Marten on piano, and Her Ensemble provides a string section. Everyone playing together in the same room cemented the kitchen sink jubilance of the song itself.
4. “Don’t Forget About Us” The very beginning of a beautiful relationship and wanting to snapshot every detail. Let’s never forget this early, fragile version of us. It was written very quickly in bed one evening to cheer up a very sad Billie Marten.
6. “Even on Bad Days” An ode to relationships in your early thirties. It started as a poem, a wedding vow even, but it fit perfectly to music. This performance was the first and only take, with one guitar overdub added by William Rees of the Mystery Jets.
5. “Perfect Dark” The toxicity and addiction of sex and love in a city apartment. The grace that can be found in darkness. The harp, french horn, and cello strike the right balance of sinister and beautiful.
7. “Tough Love” This song asks how two people might rattle free from a closed loop of bad habits and codependent tendencies. It takes two people to prop up an unhealthy relationship, so a duet seemed appropriate, and Laura Marling felt like the perfect fit.
8. “Amy” Written while sharing a flat with a group of deflated musicians during the summer of 2020. It’s an ode to struggling songwriters and was maybe the most fun track to record. Almost every musician friend we know plays in the tape loop at the end. There are some excellent alternative lyrics written by poet laureate Simon Armitage.
9. “Chelsea Smiles” This was a melody that we’d been sculpting and playing with over many years. The final lyrics were achieved by writing several versions of the song—multiple themes including romance, football violence, football, and London were all written out then cut up and spliced back together at random.
10. “Better Than Blue” Came from a true state of bliss. The line “Love is a tangerine healer / That makes life an easy peeler,” found written on a forgotten napkin in a pocket of one of Will’s less-circulated jackets, became the catalyst for writing the whole thing. The curious chord progressions are made to offset the bliss with Jess Stavely Taylor’s almost alien vocal overdubs, placing you fully in the dreamstate of early love.
11. “Bedtime Reminder” A lullaby written with Will’s partner, Billie Marten, one sunny morning in Los Angeles.
The Tubs Featuring current / former members of Joanna Gruesome, Ex-Void, GN, Sniffany and The Nits.
London group The Tubs return to Trouble In Mind Records with their hotly anticipated full-length album entitled “Dead Meat”. The band were formed in 2018 from the ashes of beloved UK post-punk band Joanna Gruesome by former members Owen ‘O’ Williams and George ‘GN’ Nicholls. By incorporating elements of post-punk, traditional British folk, and guitar jangle seasoned by nonchalant Cleaners From Venus-influenced pop hooks and contemporary antipodean indie bands (Twerps/Goon Sax, et al).
“Dead Meat”is resplendent in hi-fidelity strum & thrum, incorporating fleeting elements of post-punk and indie jangle, but the group’s penchant for trad British folk and Canterbury folk-rock takes a noticeable, caffeinated step forward. Echoes of Fairport Convention’s decidedly English chime cross swords with singer Owen Williams’ lyrics directing Bryan Ferry’s “thinking man’s libertine” persona into a more dolorous outlook. Many songs (like “Round The Bend” and “Duped”) soar with an urgent strum under Williams’ acerbic lyrics, recalling a younger fiery Richard Thompson. They languish in an aching, bitter resignation (of both the situations described and the protagonist’s place in it), particularly near the album’s second half.
Others like the previously released “I Don’t Know How It Works”, “Two Person Love” and “Illusion” (re-presented here as “Illusion Pt. II” and all rerecorded from their original 7-inch versions) up the urgency, implying that the journey for the person described in each tune is not over and may be even more desperate than before.
The band has never been tighter and more dynamic, often imperceptibly ratcheting up the tension, an extra guitar strum overdubbed, a barely audible organ / synth cranking under a chorus or bridge, or unexpected backups from current Ex-Vöid (and ex-Joanna Gruesome) vocalist Lan McArdle. The Tubs are poised to take over your stereo – there’s no point in resisting.
Emma Anderson, the co-founder of shoegaze icons Lush, is releasing her debut solo album, “Pearlies”, on October 20th via Sonic Cathedral. She shared the album’s second single, “Clusters,” via a music video. Kieran Evans directed the video.
Anderson had this to say about “Clusters” in a press release: “It was the first track I worked on with James and it’s the one we found our feet with. I guess it’s the pop one on the album but, although it’s upbeat, I think lyrically it’s actually quite dark.” Of the song’s lyrics, she adds: “It’s about some young people at a party at the end of summer, seeing some signs on a wall…. Discovering a kind of underlying threat during something that should have been quite fun.”
Some of the songs for “Pearlies”were actually written for a Lush reunion album that wasn’t meant to be. Lush reformed in 2015 for some touring and released a new EP, “Blind Spot”, in 2016. But the reunion came to a somewhat abrupt end that year, with plans for a new album or any more touring scrapped.
“I thought we were in it for the long term, so some of these songs—or even just parts of them—were actually going to be for Lush,” explains Anderson. “That didn’t happen, so I had these songs and bits of music that I didn’t know what to do with.”
At first Anderson worked on home demos with cellist and string arranger Audrey Riley. Then Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins (who produced Lush’s 1992 album, “Spooky”) helped with some further recording, but insisted Anderson sing her own songs. Initially she had planned on getting another singer involved, which she had done with her post-Lush band Sing Sing.
“He basically said, ‘If you don’t sing, I am not going to do it,’ so I decided I would,” says Anderson. “I am not someone that feels comfortable in the spotlight, so for me to take centre stage, metaphorically speaking, was quite a big leap.”
Then Sonic Cathedral suggested James Chapman produce the final album. “He turned out to be exactly the right person,” says Anderson. “People tend to view James as primarily an electronic producer but he has a lot more strings to his bow. He has a wide range of tastes and also an encyclopedic knowledge of music, which meant he was able to bring a huge amount to the album. He really got it.”
One of the final pieces of the puzzle was some additional guitar contributions from Suede’s Richard Oakes.
“I didn’t know Richard back in the ’90s, but it turned that he was a bit of a Lush fan,” says Anderson. “I have a part-time day job as a bookkeeper, and I do bits of work for the Suede camp. I got to know him through that and we became friends. I asked if he would play some guitar on the record and, to my delight, he said yes!”
Previously Anderson shared the album’s first single, “Bend the Round,” The first single from ‘Pearlies’, the debut solo album by Emma Anderson from Lush, released via Sonic Cathedral on October 20th, 2023.
James Chapman (aka Mute Records artist Maps) produced “Pearlies”.
Spearmint re-unite with producer Rhodri Marsden (Scritti Politti) to follow-up 2021’s highly acclaimed “Holland Park”, with the superb “This Candle Is For You”, their tenth album proper. Missed out so far? This new album provides the perfect place to start! The dizzying multiverse of an album covers a wide array of themes, including the search for a missing sister, the ways we remember lost loved ones, Prince’s encounters with Joni Mitchell, the story of John Gavin, the James Bond star who never got to make a film, late-night drinking in Soho, the joys of B-movies and video nasties, changing attitudes to mental health, the plight and wonder of older cats, the reaction to the death of Sarah Everard, and the afterlife.
UK indiepop vets will release new album “This Candle is for You” on November 17 and this is its breezy new single.
By Spearmint, from the album ‘This Candle Is For You’, released on 17th November 2023.
Synthpop icons OMD just released their new album after such a long time “Bauhaus Staircase”, their best album in nearly 40 years, and here’s the video for its opening cut.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) return with their 14th studio album over six years after the triumph of their Top 4-charting record “The Punishment of Luxury”. The album was born from the impetus to kickstart new explorations during lockdown when as Andy McCluskey admits: “I rediscovered the creative power of total boredom.”
The album’s first offering as a single is the title track which serves as a nod both to Andy McCluskey’s love of the Bauhaus era and the power of protest art. “I am a huge lover of visual arts especially mid 20th century movements” Andy comments. “The song is a metaphor for strength and artist passion in the face of criticism and adversity. When times are hard there is a tendency for Governments to look at cutting funding for creativity just at the moment when the arts are most needed to nourish our souls. It seems appropriate that the song and its eponymous album were created during Covid Lockdown.”
Ranging further from the beautiful film noir ballad of ‘Veruschka’ and the dance stylings of ‘Anthropocene’ – a term for the current epoch in Earth’s evolution to the sinister ‘Evolution Of Species’ and the hectic ‘Kleptocracy’ – OMD’s greatest straight-up protest song – the new album is a broad electronic sonic masterpiece that lyrically tackles the topics of the future. The record closes on ‘Healing’ – a moment of reflective calm.
By rights OMD should be in semi-retirement performing classics like Enola Gay and Maid Of Orleans on the nostalgia festival circuit like so many peers. Instead they’ve created a landmark album worthy of their finest work. “Bauhaus Staircase” remains unmistakably the work of a duo who are still perfectly in sync 45 years after their first gig at legendary Liverpool club Eric’s.
“They say people change their cell structure every seven years, so I’ve totally regenerated several times since we started Pylon forty years ago,” says Vanessa Briscoe Hay, frontwoman for that iconic Athens band and now frontwoman for Pylon Reenactment Society. “Over the course of your life, you’re going to learn new things. Your mind is going to change and expand. I’m a lot older now, and I can’t be something I’m not anymore. Pylon is our guiding star, but we’re not Pylon. We’re Pylon Reenactment Society.”
It’s easier to explain what Pylon Reenactment Society isn’t than what it actually is. It’s not a continuation or a reunion, because Vanessa is the only member in both groups. It’s neither a tribute act nor a cover band, although they do perform Pylon songs. Instead, this new band draws inspiration from that old band, taps into its motivating principles.
The 11-song set organically grew out of jams and writing sessions over several years. “Every now and then my lyrics are inspired by a meaningful conversation,” says Pylon / Pylon Reinactment Society’s Vanessa Briscoe Hay of their new single. “Several years back, Pylon Reenactment Society opened for Cindy Wilson at a small club in North Carolina. A young woman shared with me that having her father’s record collection available to her in the middle of nowhere Alabama had ‘saved her life.’ I remarked to her that ‘flowers grow everywhere’ — thinking of my own upbringing in a rural community where music and art had kept me going — I was inspired by the hopefulness of teenagers wondering about the future, no matter their circumstances.”
Pylon Reenactment Society’s “Magnet Factory” organically grew out of jams and writing sessions over several years. As the album took shape, the lyrics peeled away at the layers of time and shared spaces that make up a life. A pair of unrecorded songs by Pylon were brought in to round out this collective unspoken theme. All the music was recorded by the current four members of the band (Vanessa Briscoe Hay, Jason NeSmith, Kay Stanton, Gregory Sanders) with a stellar vocal duet with the incomparable Kate Pierson of The B-52’s.
“Magnet Factory” is set for release on February 9th, 2024 via Strolling Bones Records.
Robert Plant is always down to include versions of songs by his former band Led Zeppelin in his setlists, but he hasn’t played their most iconic hit, “Stairway to Heaven,” since the one-off 2007 Led Zeppelin reunion show that became the “Celebration Day” film.
That changed on saturday night (10/21) at a charity concert for The Cancer Platform at Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire. Developed by the Cancer Awareness Trust and organized by former Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor, the concert was dubbed An Evening With Andy Taylor And Special Guests, and it featured Plant, former Pink Floyd bassist Guy Pratt, Andrew Ridgeley of Wham!, prolific drummer David Palmer (ABC, Andy Taylor, etc), comedian Katherine Ryan, and more.
Plant sang Zeppelin’s “Thank You,” “Black Dog,” and the aforementioned “Stairway to Heaven,” marking his first performance of “Stairway” in 16 years. He doesn’t wail the ending the same way that he used to, but for the most part, he’s still got it.
Andy Taylor and Robert Plant performing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ at Soho Farm House on 21st October 2023 with Andrew James Taylor, David Palmer, Dino Jelusick, Guy Pratt, Goldray and Anne Rani.
The National have a surprise-released a new album, “Laugh Track”. It’s the band’s second album of 2023, following the April release of “First Two Pages of Frankenstein”, and is out now digitally via 4AD Records. The album features guest appearances from Phoebe Bridgers, Bon Iver, and Rosanne Cash. the band shared an animated video for the album’s “Deep End (Paul’s in Pieces).”
But despite all that, the album’s near-eight-minute long closing track, “Smoke Detector,” was the song we liked the best, as it finds the band rocking out more than they have on recent releases. The song was recorded in June during a soundcheck in Vancouver and those circumstances aid the song’s welcome looseness.
“Laugh Track” includes two songs the band shared in August, “Alphabet City” and “Space Invader.” was one of our Songs of the Week. It also features the band’s 2022 single, “Weird Goodbyes,” which was a collaboration with Bon Iver (the project led by Justin Vernon), but was surprisingly not featured “First Two Pages of Frankenstein”.
“It felt like the story had already been told. It was its own thing,” says the band’s Aaron Dessner of “WeirdGoodbyes” and why it was held for the new album. “But it also felt related to what we were doing. That was part of the logic for making another record—let’s give ‘Weird Goodbyes’ its own home.”
“Laugh Track” originates from the “First Two Pages of Frankenstein” sessions and is regarded as a companion album (even the album covers are almost identical). The band recorded at producer Tucker Martine’s Portland studio, Flora Recording & Playback.
The band features frontman Matt Berninger, as well as two sets of brothers: Aaron Dessner (guitar/piano/bass) and Bryce Dessner (piano, guitar), and Scott Devendorf (bass, guitar) and Bryan Devendorf (drums).
Aaron Dessner says The National has often resisted making a full-on rock record, but leaned more into that notion this time, with the drums having a more prominenet role. “It’s not because we don’t enjoy sitting in a room banging around ideas. It’s just that it wasn’t that productive, so we developed a fairly elaborate way of building songs in which [drummer] BryanDevendorf had a very important but compartmentalized role,” he says. “This time we had the desire to make something that was more alive so that Bryan’s playing would drive more.”
Matt Berninger says of their approach to making “Laugh Track” “Let’s just turn everything off and walk away. Bail out of your head, of all the things you’re worried about, your career, your whole identity, how strong you thought you were.”
“Laugh Track” is the band’s most freewheeling, all-hands-on-deck album in years. If Frankenstein represented a rebuilding of trust between group members after 20+ years together, the vibrant, exploratory “Laugh Track” is both the product of that faith and a new statement of intent. Reveling in the license to radically upend its creative process, The National honed most of this material in live performances on tour, and captured those invigorated versions in impromptu sessions at producer Tucker Martine’s Portland studio.
As it’s Halloween Weekend and Duran Duran are getting in the spooky spirit with their new album “Danse Macabre“, The album centred around the dark arts and was inspired by a Halloween show they did last year in Las Vegas.
“We had decided to seize the moment to create a unique, special event…the temptation of using glorious gothic visuals set to a dark soundtrack of horror and humor was simply irresistible,” says keyboardist Nick Rhodes. “That evening inspired us to explore further and to make an album, using Halloween as the key theme.
The record metamorphosed through a pure, organic process, and not only was it made faster than anything since our debut album, it has also resulted in something none of us could have ever predicted. Emotion, mood, style and attitude have always been at the heart of Duran Duran’s DNA, we search for light in the darkness and darkness in the light, and I feel we have somehow managed to capture the essence of all of that in this project.
“Danse Macabre” is about the madness of that time of year. Anything goes. With the horrors we’re surrounded by, it’s quite difficult to think of escaping life and having a bit of fun, but we need to. The song is meant to be uplifting. It’s a dark mood of chaos that makes you smile.”
“Danse Macabre” features a mix of new songs, reworks of thematically appropriate songs from the Duran catalogue (like the early single “Night Boat”) and some appropriate covers. Those include Siouxsie & The Banshees‘ goth classic “Spellbound,”Talking Heads‘ “Psycho Killer’ (a duet with Victoria De Angelis of Måneskin), The Specials‘ “Ghost Town,” Cerrone‘s “Supernature,”Billie Eilish‘s “Bury a Friend,” and The Rolling Stones‘ “Paint it Black.”
The covers are pretty good and Duran Duran manage to put their spin on them without losing the original in the process, and you can tell they were having fun making this one.
There is a rare rework B-side of fan favourite track “Secret Oktober 31st”. Guest artists include producer, guitarist and composer Nile Rodgers, Victoria De Angelis of Måneskin and former band members Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo. Exquisitely packaged featuring images adapted from a collection of authentic vintage séance photos that band member Nick Rhodes sourced at auction.
Tape Modern under exclusive license to BMG Rights Released on: 27th October 2023
