Psychedelic Porn Crumpets is a psych-rock band formed in 2014 in Perth, Australia. The band consists of singer-guitarist Jack McEwan, guitarist Luke Parish, drummer Danny Caddy, bassist Luke Reynolds (until 2020), and keyboardist Chris Young. Their music is a drug-induced grunge rock trip: biting synthesizer parts, expertly composed guitar riffs, and unique compositional elements elevate their music to the status of other popular psychedelia artists such as Tame Impala and All Them Witches. Their last release, “Night Gnomes”, is as vast and trippy as their others, and is a musical journey you’ll want to take again and again.
In 2020, Bassist Luke Reynolds left the group. He was replaced by Wayan Biliondana in 2022
The return of Siouxsie Sioux to the stage this year was as welcome as it was unexpected. Her not performing in public for the past decade did not mean her fans had forgotten her. Some folk have never abandoned her signature look, and people born long after she had her biggest hits could be seen with that look in British cities and beyond during the interregnum. The music never went away, the originals on repeat and lots of cover versions. Cleopatra Records have assembled an outstanding list of devotees to pay homage in the well-timed tribute “Spellbound”.
There is a tendency to look at Siouxsie and the Banshees, driven by Siouxsie and Steve Severin, with dark purple lenses. But that can neglect the breadth of their achievements. Siouxsie’s influence was very broad across genres and artists, and female artists have consistently expressed gratitude just for Siouxsie’s existence as a trailblazer and icon. From her first recording, Siouxsie called the shots, rejecting her label’s choice of producer, and choosing one that better reflected what she wanted to do. That first single was a hit. Did that make it easier for the next generation of highly talented women to get their vision expressed?
The female voice leads in “Spellbound“, but the music is highly varied. We have already expressed our enthusiasm for Night Club’s “Cities of Dust,” a dancefloor filler for the late evening. Vive La Fete pay tribute to Siouxsie’s Belgian heritage with a jaunty Gallic take on “Christine” and Black Nail Cabaret give a clear reading of “Happy House,” whilst retaining the element of threat that the song needs.
That the latest iteration of Nouvelle Vague make an appearance is not a surprise. Early ’80s electronic pop is their hinterland. What is surprising is that their take on “Night Shift” is not lounge Bossa Nova with a hint of parody; it is something new and outside our experience of them, which is fantastic.
Longtime Banshee Jon Klein joins his post-pandemic collaborator Jah Wobble take on “Monitor” with industrial glee, managing to outmuscle Skold (which is unusual) who take “Peek-A-Boo.”
What about the covers? Here we have two covers of covers. Thankfully neither darkwave specialists La Scaltra, who take “Dear Prudence,” nor Xiu Xiu, on board with “The Passenger,” operate solely within the parameters that Siouxsie set, allowing them some freedom to come up with something new and interesting. They both take that opportunity.
Overall, “Spellbound”is a welcome augmentation to the Siouxsie and Banshees legacy, and covers a wide range of the bands moods, rather than just the purely dark ones.
“Spellbound – A Tribute to Siouxsie and the Banshees” is available released August 25th, 2023.
The Black Crowes have announced a deluxe reissue of their second album, “The Southern Harmony andMusical Companion“, featuring unreleased studio recordings, rare B-sides and a live performance from 1993 at Houston’s Sam Houston Coliseum. Released in 1992, “The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion” continued the Black Crowes’ winning streak following the multi-platinum success of their debut album, “Shake Your Money Maker”.
The original album, which included singles “Remedy” and “Sting Me”, topped the American album chart upon its release in May 1992, and peaked at number 2 in the UK.
The collection is set for release on December 1st in a variety of formats, including “Super Deluxe” four-LP and three-CD box sets. These editions will also include a reproduction of the album’s original 132-page promotional hymnal containing the band’s insights about the album and a set of lithographs of photos taken during the album sessions from brothers Chris and Rich Robinson plus sheet music for the songs. The reissue has been overseen by the Robinsons and producer George Drakoulias.
“Hadsel” is the first new full – length record since Beirut’s 2019 release, “Gallipoli”, and the first on ZachCondon’s own label , Pompeii Records. Recorded in the Norwegian island of Hadsel shortly after a physical and mental break forced Condon to cancel his 2019 tour, Condon was looking for a place to recover after being left in a state of shock and self-doubt. Working in isolation, Condon explains, “I was lost in a trance, stumbling blindly through my own mental collapse that I had been pushing aside since I was a teenager. It came and rang me like a bell. I was left agonising many things past and present while the beauty of the nature, the northern lights and fearsome storms played an awesome show around me. The few hours of light would expose the unfathomable be auty of the mountains and the fjords, and the hours – long twilights would fill me with subdued excitement. I’d like to believe that scenery is somehow present in the music.
The resulting is a collection of songs beautifully reflecting that vulnerability, sense of self-determination and belief that after collapse, one can learn to manage on their own again.
Singer Songwriter Katy Kirby has shared a new song, “Cubic Zirconia,” It’s her first single for ANTI-records. Emma Montesi directed the video. Kirby had this to say about the song in a press release: “I’ve been trying to write this song for nearly four years, but it only came into focus for me when I fell in love with a girl for the first time. It’s an attempt to say something that I don’t think I’m smart enough to articulate outside of the song—something about how much I admire when someone is unembarrassed of being explicit about the cosmetic and aesthetic choices they make for themselves. Why wouldn’t you love the little tricks of their trade—the way they wear makeup, the clothes and mannerisms that make them feel safest and most themselves—why wouldn’t these little tricks be the most endearing artifacts of their inner essence? If you loved someone, why would you not love those choices? It’s an honour to get that close to someone–close enough to see how they construct the image of themselves with which they move through the world as best they can (as we all do). Why wouldn’t that be enough?
“Cubic Zirconia! A lab-grown diamond. A salute to whatever the world looks down on as “artificial”—even a defense of artifice. It seems like naturalness is not only a dangerously vague and subjective concept, but that whenever those concepts get invoked, the invoker is almost invariably being manipulative or even malicious. Insofar as the line between authentic/fake, natural/unnatural, organic/synthetic artificial/genuine is hopelessly thin. Insofar as it’s a line that shifts constantly and doesn’t seem to be in anyone’s interest except the people who’ve decided that they’re the most qualified to draw that line. What a useless concept. What an extremely suspicious concept to leverage in assessing someone’s worth. What a sanctimonious little scam!”
KatyKirby’s debut album, “Cool Dry Place”, came out in 2021 via Keeled Scales.
Arcade Fire ex member Will Butler is releasing a new self-titled album with Will Butler + Sister Squares on September 22nd via Merge Records. The album’s latest single, “Stop Talking,”
Butler had this to say about the album’s latest single, “Stop Talking,” in a press release: “This is one of the ‘dream songs’ on the record. Emotion in dreams; dreams in reality; tired and confused. “Stop talking” there’s nothing to say;’ not sure if it functions as a dismissal ‘Stop!,’ or as a sign of love ‘You don’t have to say it; I already know;’ I think, like a lot of communication between people who love each other—a little of both? Like, this song is full of fear; someone expressing fear to their partner, and the partner being like, ‘There’s nothing to fear, and also, shut up, quit being crazy.’ That’s not exactly it, but there’s something of that here.”
When Will Butler + Sister Squares was announced, the first single, “Long Grass,” .They have also shared the album’s “Arrow of Time” and “Willows.”
Butler left Arcade Fire at the end of 2021 and had spent the preceding two years at home with his children. “I was waking up every morning and reading Emily Dickinson, until I had read every Emily Dickinson poem,” said Butler in a previous press release. “I was listening to Morrissey, to Shostakovich, to the Spotify top 50. I had unformed questions with inchoate answers.”
Sister Squares—who are Miles Francis, Julie Shore, Jenny Shore, and Sarah Dobbs all came together through familial word of mouth. “I met Jenny—my wife!—in college, the year before I joined Arcade Fire. When I needed a band to tour “Policy,” says Butler, referring to his 2015-released solo debut album, “I asked [Jenny’s sister] Julie to join because I trusted her musically. And I asked Sara, Jenny and Julie’s childhood friend, because I knew she was super talented.”
Butler initially had different intentions for his solo career and this album. “After “Generations” [Merge, 2020], I considered making a weird solo record. Me alone in the basement, etc., etc. Mostly I realized that what I wanted was the opposite,” he says.
He then turned to Sister Squares and asked Francis to produce the new album. “Will and I organically discovered our relationship as a production duo through making this album. We didn’t have to talk too much about things as they happened, because the music just flowed,” says Francis. “As a producer, working with Jenny, Julie, and Sara is the dream. They connect so innately. In one motion they can conjure a mood, or get at the root of a feeling.”
Legendary ’90s shoegazers Slowdive released a new album, “everything is alive”, on Dead Oceans. The band shared its fourth single, “‘Alife’ via an animated music video. They also announced some new 2024 UK and European tour dates.
Slowdive’s line-up remains Neil Halstead (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Christian Savill (guitar), Nick Chaplin (bass), Rachel Goswell (vocals), and Simon Scott (drums, electronics).
Halstead had this to say about the new single in a press release: “‘Alife’ is one of the first tunes we finished for the record. Shawn Everett did a really nice job with the mix. We tried so many times to figure out a good mix by ourselves and couldn’t do it…it sort of had us beaten until Shawn stepped in. We decided if he could handle that one he could probably do the whole record. Our friend Jake Nelson did a really nice animation for this song; it takes some of the imagery from the artwork and digs a little deeper into that.”
“Everything is alive” is the band’s first new album in six years. Previously Slowdive shared the album’s first single, “Kisses”. Then they shared its second single, “skin in the game,” and a further song, “the slab.” Halstead had this to say about “Kisses” and the album as a whole in a previous press release: “It wouldn’t feel right to make a really dark record right now. The album is quite eclectic emotionally, but it does feel hopeful.”
The new album is dedicated to Goswell’s mother and Scott’s father, as they both died in 2020. “There were some profound shifts for some of us personally,” Goswell said in the previous press release.
“Everything is Alive”is the band’s fifth album and the follow-up to 2017’s self-titled album, which was their first full-length album in 22 years and first since the band reformed.
The record began with Halstead acting as writer and producer, working from home, and he initially saw the album as a “more minimal electronic record,” but once the rest of the band got involved it became more aligned with their signature shoegaze/dream-pop sound.
“As a band, when we’re all happy with it, that tends to be the stronger material. We’ve always come from slightly different directions, and the best bits are where we all meet in the middle,” Halstead said.
Goswell added: “Slowdive is very much the sum of its parts. Something unquantifiable happens when the five of us come together in a room.”
The album was recorded over the course of several years, starting in 2020 at Courtyard Studio, where the band have recorded before.
Philadelphian-based indie punk band Mannequin Pussy shared a new song this week, “I Got Heaven,” . The new single is out now via Epitaph Records. The band starts a tour next week.
Mannequin Pussy is Colins “Bear” Regisford, Kaleen Reading, Maxine Steen, and Marisa Dabice. John Congleton produced the new song and more new music is promised soon.
Dabice had this to say in a press release: “‘I Got Heaven’ is a song intended to merge the sacred and the profane and to serve as a reminder that we are all perfect exactly as we have been made and that no one gets to decide how a life should or should not be lived. Heaven is here on a planet that gave us everything we needed to survive. Heaven is in the plants and in the water and in the animals who we share this world with. Heaven is inside of me and inside of you. The weaponization of Christianity for political means, for individual profit and power, as a tool to intentionally divide us is one of the greatest threats to our modern world and a threat to our ability to find solidarity through love. To allow the hatred and the violence and the noise to rise is to reject our sacred purpose as individuals, which is simply to love.”
Mason Mercer and Anthony Miralles directed the video. Vocals, Lyrics & Melody by Marisa Dabice Guitar & Synths by Maxine Steen Bass by Colins Regisford Drums by Kaleen Reading
The band have also announced that they are reissuing their long out of print 2016 album, “Romantic”, on their new Romantic Records imprint.
Miracle Legion front-man & singer from Polaris (the Adventures of Pete & Pete) now gone solo, Finally after so many years I got a gig at a puppet theatre. There’s some limited irony playing a place full of marionettes that just stare and give little but the one expression someone painted on a hundred years ago. Opaque judge dolls watching…waiting for a chance. Lambchop or Talking Tina. Not tonight. Not on this dazzling evening in Stony Creek, home of the all male Stony Creek Fife & Drum Corp and the summer cottage of Ayn Rand. Puppets mover over! The shows about to start……
‘Mark Mulcahy “Live at The Puppet House’. 17 songs recorded in a puppet theatre in Stony Brook. Super band, great crowd, lots of puppets. Also a Mr Ray cameo and the Pushing Man. Astounding!.
‘All along I was the puppet.’ -Ian McCulloch
Recorded at The Puppet House Theater in Stony Creek on November 5th 2005
“Cut and Dry” is the new single/video from Cornfield’s forthcoming album “Could Have Done Anything“, that came out in May. Recruiting her brother Joe Cornfield for the video, the two compiled old camcorder footage of Charlotte’s early days as a musician. The result is a heartwarming, tear-jerking exploration of Charlotte’s life up until her current days, playing shows and prepping for motherhood.
“When I wrote this song I was thinking about the idea of leaving things behind as a part of moving on – those painful past experiences that cause a pang of embarrassment and regret, the people who were at one point a central part of my life with whom I’ve fallen out of orbit – and how we can’t really sever ties with our past selves no matter how hard we try.” Charlotte Cornfield
She just gets better and better with every record. There’s something so personal and intimate about her song writing which you can relate to, a bit like a female Jonathan Richman. Some of it reminds me of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, or The Beatles’ classic song writing. There’s a great song on her latest album [] about going to see a Magnetic Fields gig. She’s a real storyteller.
The Fat Angel Sings 