Nation of Language’s third album, “Strange Disciple”, is somewhere on the horizon, but, for now, we have “Sole Obsession” to gush over. As always, the synths are shimmering, the bass and drums waltz together in perfect harmony and frontman IanDevaney’s vocals careen like the perfect amalgamation of Bernard Sumner and Andy McCluskey.
It’s a perfect dancefloor number about devotion and human compulsions; delicate, soulful swagger ripe with post-punk undertones. Nation of Language remains an eternal synth-pop powerhouse. NOL keeps surprising me with such lush vocals mixed with etheric beats. And the video is stunning! Can’t wait for the full album!“Sole Obsession” written by Nation of Language
To keep the momentum ahead of her forthcoming album, “All of This Will End”, The immense, De Souza is back with “Smog,” a backbreaker indie track glossed over with delicious disco inflections. Where “Younger & Dumber” found her reflecting on the heartbreaking loss of her own youth, “Smog” is a story spun with doubt in the present. Here, she is restless, attempting to understand her own flaws, which include feeling most like herself at night, when everyone else is asleep. The arrangements are catchy and balanced and, in the verses, De Souza takes a monotone, patient approach, until she lets her vocals cascade perfectly into a sound wall packed with an atmospheric pastiche of drum machines and synths. “I come alive in the nighttime, when everybody else is done / I come alive, it’s the right time to really start having fun / I don’t know how to turn around if I’m not ready / I don’t know how to tell you that your jokes aren’t funny,” De Souza sings.
My new single “Smog” from my upcoming album ‘All of This Will End’ is out today
New Album: “All of This Will End” out April 28th on Saddle CreekRecords
Less than a year after releasing her honky-tonk opus “Big Time”, Olsen is back with “Forever Means”, an EP of songs she wrote and recorded during those same sessions. Lead single “Nothing’s Free” makes sense as a post-Big Time release. Sonically, it wouldn’t have fit within the architecture of the record. It is its own elegant and strange cosmos. “Here it comes / No way to stop it now / I’m broken / Down for you like no one else / No one else,” Olsen sings in a trembling, haunting octave glazed atop a jazz lounge-style piano with horns and organs surrounding her. It’s eerie, queer, gothic and perfect; the ultimate cocktail of grandeur from one of our greatest living songwriters.
Last year’s “Big Time” brought Angel Olsen to a deeper, truer sense of self than ever before. Borne from the twin stars of grief and love, the album delivered beautiful sense of certainty, the sure-footed sound of an artist fully, finally at home with herself. But within that wisdom comes the realisation that there is no finish line, no destination or static end point to life while you’re living it, and “Forever Means” collects songs from the “Big Time” sessions that hold this common theme. They are, in Olsen’s words, “in search of something else.”
“I was somewhere traveling,” says Olsen, “stopped for a few days and wandering the city, and I was thinking ‘what does ‘forever’ really mean? What are the things I’m seeking in friendship or love, and how can ‘forever’ be attainable if we’re always changing?’” Sitting with the reality of that entropy, Olsen realised “maybe the secret to ongoing love is to embrace change as part of love itself, that forever must have something to do with playing, looking, constantly searching things out for yourself, never letting yourself think you’re finished learning or exploring.”
‘Forever’”, says Olsen, “remains curious while trying also to be kind and honest.” All this packs into the four precious songs that comprise “Forever Means”, songs from Olsen’s roads travelled and the ones ahead. “Nothing’s free / like breaking free” Olsen sings, comfortable with the costs of her clarity, her heart and voice fixed on the present, the future, the not-yet-known and the beautifully unknowable.
“Nothing’s Free” by Angel Olsen from the upcoming EP ‘Forever Means’, out April 14th on Jagjaguwar Records.
Ben Folds’ masterful new collection, “What Matters Most”, isn’t so much a statement as it is an offering, an open hand reaching out to all those wounded and bewildered by a world that seems to make less and less sense every day. Recorded in East Nashville with co-producer Joe Pisapia, the album marks Folds’ first new studio release in eight years, and it’s a bold, timely, cinematic work, one that examines the tragic and the absurd in equal measure as it reckons with hope and despair, gratitude and loss, identity and perspective. The songs are bittersweet here, hilarious at times, but often laced with a quiet sense of longing and dread: a text message goes unanswered; an old classmate descends into the dark depths of internet conspiracies; a relationship unravels in the middle of a lake. And yet, taken as a whole, the result is an undeniably joyful record that refuses to succumb to the weight of the world around it, an ecstatic reminder of all the beauty and promise hiding in plain sight for anyone willing (and present enough) to recognize their moments as they arrive.
After eight years, Ben Folds is returning with a new album “What Matters Most”. Its first single, “Winslow Gardens,” is a light, springy tune backed by his iconic keys. The lyrics hint at a couple going away for a trip and finding themselves in that place much longer than expected. Ten weeks turns to ten years, while it all feels like just ten minutes—you lose track of time as small routines with your loved ones become the only things that matter. The swirling, repetitive melody at the end of the chorus, “You started all over / We’ve started all over again,” makes you feel like you’re in a that time loop with the characters—and it’s not particularly a bad feeling, but a comforting one.
From the new album ‘What Matters Most’ out June 2nd New West Records.
Florence + The Machine (aka Florence Welch and backing band) has shared a new cover of No Doubt’s 1995 hit “Just a Girl” for season 2 of Showtime’s acclaimed drama Yellowjackets. The show returns March 24th.
Florence commented “I’m such a huge fan of Yellowjackets and this era of music, and this song especially had a huge impact on me growing up, so I was thrilled to be asked to interpret it in a ‘deeply unsettling’ way for the show,” says Welch in a press release. “We tried to really add some horror elements to this iconic song to fit the tone of the show. And as someone who’s first musical love was pop punk and Gwen Stefani it was a dream job.”
Depeche Mode are releasing a new album, “Memento Mori”, on March 24th via Columbia Records. Now they have shared the album’s second single, the atmospheric and ghostly slow-burner “My Cosmos Is Mine.”
Previously Depeche Mode had shared “Memento Mori’s” first single, “Ghosts Again,” via an Anton Corbijn-directed video. Then they were the musical guests on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, in which they performed “Ghosts Again” and their classic single “Personal Jesus.”
“Memento Mori” will be the first Depeche Mode album to be released since the death of the band’s Andy ‘Fletch’ Fletcher, who passed away in May at age 60. It was announced last October.
Fletcher did work on the album before his death. “Memento Mori”will be the band’s 15th studio album and the follow-up to 2017’s “Spirit”. The band also annonuced the “Memento Mori”tour will be the band’s first tour in five years and the band’s 19th tour overall. With Fletcher’s passing, that makes the official lineup for Depeche Mode as Dave Gahan and Martin Gore.
Gore had this to say about the album in a previous press release: “We started work on this project early in the pandemic, and its themes were directly inspired by that time. After Fletch’s passing, we decided to continue as we’re sure this is what he would have wanted, and that has really given the project an extra level of meaning.”
Gahan added: “Fletch would have loved this album. We’re really looking forward to sharing it with you soon.”
Brooklyn band Stolen Jars have written a great song that is truly a great representation of social connection in a digital age. Catalyzed by lockdown, Cody Fitzgerald, Sarah Coffey and Elias Spector-Zabusky aimed to make an ode to finding love and warmth through a computer screen. “It isn’t safe in my head / I can’t figure out how to live in silence instead / When the world doesn’t make a sound,” Coffey sings on the track. The arrangements on “Somewhere Else” are addicting and danceable.
While Stolen Jars tackle some dark, foreboding themes on the song, the sonic textures enveloping the story are both auspicious and drunk on joy. What the future holds for the band is not etched in stone quite yet, but “Somewhere Else” signals an immediacy and excitement that we should all, gladly and buoyantly, hitch a ride with.
When we were all isolated in our rooms at the start of the pandemic, we wanted to write a dance song we could shout along to. This is what came of that, and it still feels good to scream it now. It’s a song about feeling stuck in one place, both physically and mentally, and trying to find your way out by dancing and screaming at the top of your lungs – even if you are alone and your friends are far away in their own apartments, only connected to you by the glow of a computer screen.
Indie outfit Gal Pal debuted in 2017 with their full-length record “Girlish”The Los Angeles indie outfit Gal Pal have returned with their first new song in over four years. Following the 2019 EP “Unrest/Unfeeling”, “Mirror” is a dreamy fit of gothic West Coast shoegaze. The lyrics are sparse yet repetitive, and vocalist Emelia Austin’s vocals soar across octaves and echo like a chamber choir. “He sees you as his mirror / He sees you as his mirror / I am your mirror / I am your mirror,” Austin sings.
The track was produced by Sami Perez, who’s done past work with Cherry Glazer and Jerry Paper, and her vision lets Gal Pal’s ornate, mystifying sonic palette shine. The highlight is the sputtering, cyclical percussion provided by drummer Nico Romero. “It helped me form the theme of being stuck in a pattern. For me, ‘Mirror’ is about the ways we allow our identities to be misshaped by people in our lives, how we are used as reflections for others, and the anxiety over being able to control it or not,” Austin said in a statement. It’s been six years since Gal Pal’s first record, but “Mirror” suggests what’s forthcoming will be burgeoning with kaleidoscopic adventure. ‘Mirror’ streams everywhere February 21st 2023
“Mirror” is a lustrous and dreamy effort, centered on skittering drum lines and shimmering guitar textures. Producer Sami Perez (Cherry Glazer, Jerry Paper) captures the band in flux, caught in a whirlpool of stuttering patterns and cyclical riffs, one that steadily grows more tense and insistent with each loop. The guitars turn spiked and distorted, the drums turn muscular and pounding, all building to a chaotic apex before the track gives way to a floating synth-tinged reverie. Later, the skittering drum pattern returns once more, now shaded with discordant stabs of synths as the track draws to a close.
‘Mirror’ Written by Gal Pal (Emelia Austin, Nico Romero, Shayna Hahn)
Cambridgeshire sextet Black Country, New Road put out one of the best records of 2022, “Ants from Up There“. But, just days before the album’s release date, vocalist Isaac Wood left the band to focus on his mental health. In the wake of Wood’s departure, many fans were left wondering how the band would continue. Black Country, New Road trudged on, touring across the world and playing new songs for adoring crowds. Since Wood left the group, the remaining six players elected to not perform any of his songs live.
This week, the band released “Live at Bush Hall”, an artsy, nine-song live record of the material they’ve been playing since “Ants from Up There“. Every song in the set is a triumph, but the treasure is “Turbines/Pigs,” a massive, near-10-minute cut that showcases pianist May Kershaw’s vocal chops. It’s a beautiful chronicling of heartbreak, as Kershaw unspools a story of loss, uncertainty and doubt. “The bubble that you left then / I think it’s safer than the cold / Not too late to go home now / I’ll chew the pill for you,” she sings. After delivering an angelic five verses, the entire band crescendos into an explosive instrumental driven by Georgia Ellery’s violin.
BC, NR is Lewis Evans (saxophonist), May Kershaw (keys), Charlie Wayne (drums), Luke Mark (guitar), Tyler Hyde (bass) and Georgia Ellery (violin).
It hasn’t been long since Chicago outfit Whitney released their fourth LP, “Spark” last autumn. Even so, in the wake of that record’s singularity, colour and intimacy, the band bring forward “For A While,” a track they’ve been playing live for over seven years. They’d written it around the time of their 2016 debut, “Light Upon the Lake”, but had never given it a proper studio recording. The song, in its purest form, is an emblem of the first two Whitney records: sun-soaked and brimming with clean, airy guitars that contort delicately.
Drummer and vocalist Julien Ehrlich’s singing is in peak form, as he races across the octaves of a lush falsetto, while Max Kakacek plucks richly beside him. Though “Spark” took big swings at electronic glory, here we get Whitney going back to the basics. It’s not a signal that they’re retreating back to their old sound for good; rather, it’s them giving a beloved live tune its day in the sun. And how lucky we are to watch “For A While” swallow it whole.
So glad to finally hear a studio recording of the song we fans have all come to know and love as “Rolling Blackouts”! This was a highlight of several live shows of yours I’ve seen – the perfect encapsulation of a peaceful summertime thunderstorm!
“For A While” by Whitney, out now on Secretly Canadian.
