If you’ve had your ear to the ground over the past year or so, there’s a good chance you’ll have heard of Elliott Green already. If not, now’s a good time to listen. The Seattle-based songwriter released “Referee” as a teaser from her then-unannounced second album back in July. Green also signed with Count Your Lucky Stars last month off the back of “Nothing to Anybody”, her self-released late-2021 debut.
She’s drawn comparisons to Julien Baker with a similarly confessional and emotionally lacerating style, and if that record was her Sprained Ankle, then its follow-up is her “Turn Out the Lights”. A bold statement, but then you listen to Green’s new single and it makes sense. “Goodness” is the second song to be lifted from “Everything I Lack”, and is anchored around a thunderous full-band interjection that stands in stark contrast to the frailty and introspection of its verses.
Green sums up the song as “a sliver of optimism that allows us to push through. On what is an album largely about loss and heartbreak I wanted to leave space for a track that’s about the little joys in our everyday lives that we so often take for granted.” Fans of Baker, her boygenius cohorts Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, Indigo Sparke, or even Cassandra Jenkins: you’re going to love this record, and this is a shining example of why.
Originally released on Sarah Records in 1992. Compilation of various singles and early tracks including Sarah Records’ first release “Pristine Christine” (Sarah1). First ever vinyl reissue for this sought after long player. Liner notes by Television Personalities legend Dan Treacy.
Cutting their teeth as teens in a West Bromwich bedroom, The Sea Urchins were nothing like the heavy metal that seemed to fill every bar in the UK Black Country. Fringe haircuts, perfect trousers, suede jackets and infectious tambourines gave plenty of hints as to their youthful ambition, but nothing could fully prepare you for just how utterly spellbinding these songs would be. Compiling their fanzine-only flexi material with the full complement of singles for Sarah Records, “Stardust” runs chronologically from late 1986 to the middle of 1989, beginning with the singles split for Clare Wadd’s Kvatch and Matt Haynes’ Sha La La, before hitting the first of what would be an even hundred releases from the new label Wadd and Haynes would form – Sarah.
The song that launched a legendary label and defined a sound, a scene, a place and time; “Pristine Christine” still rings out as immediate and magical today as it did on first listen. What a glorious jangly rush racing around the corners of pop’s history! The band would reach such heights time and again over the course of this three year burst. The melancholy swinging folk of “Everglade” and it’s wonderfully yearning vocal; the organ-fuelled british invasion garage rock sing-a-long of “Solace”; the playful psych pop of “A Morning Odyssey”; the acoustic sweep of “Wild Grass Pictures”; the perfectly named “Summershine” leaving you with a ramshackle smile out on the dancefloor.
All of it is just so filled with delicate humanity, yet somehow absolutely perfect. As Bob Stanley said about the shimmering ballad “Please Rain Fall” while bestowing it with NME Single Of The Week (an honour also bestowed upon “Pristine Christine”), “think of some variations on the word marvelous and you’re most of the way there.” In their time, they might have seemed wildly out of step, but it’s not crazy to say that things could have been very different for the likes of Radiohead, The La’s, and Oasis without The Sea Urchins.
The Sea Urchins – A band from West Bromwich, England James Roberts (vocals,acoustic guitar) Robert Cooksey (lead guitar) Simon Woodcock (rhythm guitar) Darren Martin (bass) Bridget Duffy (vox organ,tambourine) Patrick Roberts (drums)
Terry Hall, singer of UK pop and ska band The Specials, has died aged 63 following a “brief illness”. Terry Hall, the lead singer of the Specials and a former member of Fun Boy Three and the Colourfield, has died aged 63, his bandmates in the Specials have confirmed.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing, following a brief illness, of Terry, our beautiful friend, brother and one of the most brilliant singers, songwriters and lyricists this country has ever produced,” the band announced on social media.
They added, “Terry was a wonderful husband and father and one of the kindest, funniest, and most genuine of souls. His music and his performances encapsulated the very essence of life… the joy, the pain, the humour, the fight for justice, but mostly the love.
“He will be deeply missed by all who knew and loved him and leaves behind the gift of his remarkable music and profound humanity. Terry often left the stage at the end of The Specials’ life-affirming shows with three words…’Love Love Love’.” The band then asked for fans to respect the Hall family’s privacy.
“Ghost Town”, the recession-themed single released in 1981, hit top spot in the UK. As well as performing with The Specials,Hall collaborated with numerous artists, such as Sinéad O’Connor, Gorillaz, Tricky, Bananarama, Lily Allen, and many more acts.
Hall joined the first incarnation of the Specials – then called the Automatics – shortly after the Coventry band formed in 1977, replacing vocalist Tim Strickland. After a stint as the Coventry Automatics, they became Special AKA, known as the Specials. The pioneering 2 Tone band rose thanks to the support of Joe Strummer, who invited them to support the Clash live, and of BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel.
They released their debut single, “Gangsters” (a reworking of Prince Buster’s Al Capone) in 1979, which reached No 6 in the UK singles chart. They would dominate the Top 10 over the next two years, peaking with their second No 1 single, and calling card, “Ghost Town”, in 1981. The lyrics, written by the band’s main songwriter, Jerry Dammers, dealt with Britain’s urban decay, unemployment and disfranchised youth.
At 12 years old, Hall was abducted by a paedophile ring in France; the singer told Richard Herring on his podcast. “I was sort of drugged up then on Valium for about a year, and I didn’t go to school,” Hall added, noting that he dropped out of school at 14 due to his trauma.
He sang the words “You took me to France on the promise of teaching me French” on the 1983 Fun Boy Three song, “Well FancyThat”, alluding to what happened to him. “I can laugh about it now, but it sort of switched something in my head, and it’s like I don’t have to do that, and that’s when I started not listening to anyone,” Hall told Herring. The singer also discussed trauma with The Big Issue. Having survived a tough childhood in Coventry, Hall became one of pop’s defining voices at the turn of the 80s, chronicling British decline and disfranchised youth with the 2 Tone band
“The Specials were a celebration of how British culture was envigorated by Caribbean immigration but the onstage demenour of their lead singer was a reminder that they were in the serious business of challenging our perception of who we were in the late 1970s. RIP Terry Hall,” Billy Bragg wrote on Twitter.
Singer Belinda Carlisle also paid tribute to Hall, noting, “Forever bound in music history with #terryhall. He co-wrote the breakout hit, “Our Lips Are Sealed” with Jane Wiedlin.
Folk punk singer Frank Turner also chimed in and tweeted: “God damnit. Just heard the news about Terry Hall. What an absolute sadness. The Specials were one of the most important bands for me as a kid. Taught me many things I needed to know. Gutted. RIP.”
Portishead and Beak multi-instrumentalist Geoff Barrow shared his tribute, too: “This is very very sad news
“It’s time to put the specials where they belong as one of the greatest British bands ever.
Born in Gastonia in 1988 a few months after my grandpa Booge died. He no longer remembered dad because of the Alzheimer’s and I can’t imagine how painful it must’ve been for my father. Adeem is a seventh-generation Carolinian, a makeshift poet, singer-songwriter, storyteller, and blue-collar Artist.
I don’t know what their financial situation was like, to be honest. I know that my grandfather had his little garage and that he didn’t charge people very much to work on their cars. I know that he worked his daddy’s farm and then as a machinist, then managed an auto-parts store, that they owned a house in Mecklenburg County. Booge was blue-collar and my dad was blue-collar. I can’t say if we were ever people of means.
My dad dropped out, got his GED, and started running the lathe when he was a teenager. One time he told me about running away to the beach with a girl he’d pined over. He described it wistfully as a teenager’s dream. She soon grew lackluster, though, and one day she was just gone. I don’t think he ever told me her name but I remember it as Tiffany.
My parents were young. Dad was 23 and mom was 19 when they found themselves expecting me. They couldn’t afford me. They didn’t know each other. The first place I can remember is the trailer on Thomas Fite in Belmont. I must’ve been a little over a year old when we moved in there. I played Power Rangers in the yard. Their friends would come ‘round still in the early years. I remember nights of drinking and partying and I remember these as the fondest years. There is warmth there in the trailer.
At night, I stay up late with my mother and we watch La Femme Nikita on the television together, fawning over Roy Dupuis. It’s a callback to the trailer where we sit snuggled close on the couch with Days of Our Lives flickering on the tube television. Marlena is possessed by a demon and I mention it over dinner.
Faye is the other friend & alternative neighborhood aunt. Faye lives in a house on the corner that turns down our street. To me, this is the upper echelons of Belmont in my childhood imagination. She lives with Joel who is the first musician I ever meet. Joel plays Dungeons & Dragons. He has long, beautiful hair and very empathetic eyes. He always smells like weed & speaks softly. My mother told me that he was in love with her and asked her many times to leave dad to be with him. Cannot verify. He gives me my first guitar pick- it is 2mm and dark purple.
Joel & Faye have been together for several years but they are not married. This is tough for me to understand at this age. When he died, I was in my teenage years. It was an overdose. Faye was devastated. She gave me a CD of his songs. I still have it. He was a beautiful songwriter. In the trailer, dad and I play games together. We wrestle like the fighters on the TV and we line up army men and throw bouncing balls to see who can knock over the most. My dad would take me to hockey games back then and sometimes we would pick up a box of tacos on the way home if the Checkers scored enough points. I loved Chubby and the cold games with my dad.
We had souvenir Checkers cups and a brown food processor. Dad would toss ice cream, milk, and peanut butter in that food processer and we would have peanut butter milkshakes on weekends. We’d drink them out of the Checkers cups.
These are some of my favorite memories. Cigarette stained memories. Alcohol scented memories. Everyone is loud. Everyone is profane. Every callous exchange imbued with irreverent humour. I am twenty-two years old when I leave my parents’ house for the first time, out into the infinite unknown. In a flurry of symbolism and rage, my unconscious exorcises the first large, looming specter of my childhood trauma & I am thrust towards the truest parts of myself uncomfortably, armed with a watered-down accent and an arsenal of potato chip casserole recipes. My entire childhood is white trash revelry. Big Dave, the biker my grandfather is friends with, who is on the run from the Hell’s Angels’ pops by the trailer for a meal. Richard brings his girlfriend by and they smoke a joint and we rent a film from the blockbuster in Gastonia.
This record was funded largely through $1 contributions via Venmo, Cashapp, & PayPal from people who believed in me or thought it was a quirky fundraising idea. It was an impossible dream to create this album that meant so much to me manifested by the kindness of others.
The above essay was written 2 years ago and the songs on this record largely fell out of it. The players on this record were folks I had dreamed to be able to pay well to perform with. The studio we recorded in was a block or so from the first apartment I ever lived on my own.
A lot of meaningful pieces came together for this and it all began with a phone call to my friend Kyle on October 30th, 2021. I said, “I want you to do something on my new album yet but I haven’t decided what yet.” He said, “Why don’t you let me produce it & my buddy Robbie Artress can engineer?”
I said, “Well, we’d have to raise at least 5k by the end of the week to hire the folks I’d want to hire and all that.” Kyle said, “Maybe you can, I don’t know.” So, that night I posted a silly Tik Tok saying all I needed was 15,000 people to donate $1 each for the album to be funded.
That included a budget for production, mastering, publicist, radio, & the whole shebang. By Tuesday, we had $5,000. I paid for the studio time and started asking people if they’d come. By the end of December, all the parts had been tracked & I was slack jawed.
I threw a little party at my buddy Troy’s tattoo shop. We got tattoos and ate barbecue & listened to the first mixes and took photos for the album cover & accompanying lyric book. What a rush, the whole thing. A whirlwind.
Oregon-based songwriter Anna Tivel’s latest album “Outsiders” starts with a lens so wide that we have left the planet to look back from a great distance at the turmoil and beauty of our shared humanity. From there, the lens pulls close and unfolds in a gripping collection of stories so often ignored. Tivel’s flawed and honest characters move through a landscape of hurt and loss, of small triumph and big love. In 11 songs full of recognition, veracity and hope, Tivel’s watchful and empathetic eye details the undeniable ache of living.
Recorded almost entirely live to tape in Rock Island, IL with producer and multi-instrumentalist Shane Leonard and engineer Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens), the album is a truly collaborative exploration. Tivel gathered the same vibrant group of friends from her acclaimed record, “The Question”, which was heralded as “one of the most ambitious folk records of 2019.”
“We holed up together in a little house a few miles from the studio,” she says, “walked there every day to sink deep into the music. No one had heard the songs beforehand, and I would play each one sitting on the floor trying to convey the gut feeling. Then we’d face each other in a circle and feel our way through, working to find the heart of each song in a few takes. Shane brings this layer of uninhibited magic to every session, setting the stage for everyone to listen deep and react with open doors. He gives himself as fully to sonic atmosphere as I do to words and I have a great amount of trust in his vision and admiration for the care he takes with the world of each song.”
The constraints of analog recording fostered a rawness and immediacy in the final tracks. The arrangements on “Outsiders” are spacious and full of intrigue, drawing you into the cinema of Tivel’s lyrics. The title track opens the album with a meditation on the first moon landing. “I wrote it sitting on the floor in front of the TV between fragments of an Apollo 11 documentary,” she recalls. “The news was feeling especially dark, full of pain and distorted truths, and watching all that incredible footage of human hope and achievement hit me so hard. For just that one moment in the great upheaval of the times, everyone paused together to witness something new and full of wonder.”
The second track “Black Umbrella” is a winding story that follows a small-town robbery and a bystander who tries to help only to fall under the weight of misconception and old, broken systems. “It’s a song about all the ways we fail to really see each other,” Tivel shares, “about poverty and desperation, race and power, history, opportunity, and otherness.”
While writing the album in 2019-20, Tivel found herself circling back again and again to this idea of otherness. “The deep division and ugly rhetoric being amplified–especially in the US–seeped into everything I wrote. I kept wanting to explore this feeling of being unseen, profoundly lonely and disconnected, and how it affects our perception of the world and our place in it,” she says. “Outsiders” is an album about looking more deeply into ourselves and each other, really trying to see and examine the internal and external forces that keep us from connecting in real ways and the forces that draw us together.”
Throughout her work, Tivel has emphasized storytelling and this album is no exception, building on the strength of her ability to observe and reflect with a clear-eyed empathy. Inspired by authors from Steinbeck to Morrison, Didion to Dubus, she imbues her songs with attentive detail and a dreamlike quality that leaves the ordinary feeling both palpable and poetic. “Tivel’s characters are common but unforgettable,” “Her images linger, and become populated with the energy of the real.”
“Outsiders” is out now on Mama Bird Recording Co.
the second single off Anna Tivel’s forthcoming album ‘Outsiders’, coming August 19th on c.
Hello Mary are that very rare band who nod to their influences while sounding completely new. Most importantly, these are great songs and they are great players . This sounds like hope to me.” – Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses, The Breeders, Belly
Hello Mary is a three-piece rock band from NYC comprised of guitarist/vocalist Helena Straight, drummer/vocalist Stella Wave and bassist Mikaela Oppenheimer. Melding together elements of indie rock, grunge and shoegaze, Hello Mary delivers lovely vocal harmonies layered over crunchy guitar parts, melodic bass lines, and driving drums that pay homage to the alt. rock scene of the 90’s.
For all the praise thrust on them, words can’t quite capture the sensational grit created by vocalist/guitarist Helena Straight, bassist Mikaela Oppenheimer, and drummer/vocalist Stella Wave as Hello Mary. Harnessing elements of shoegaze, indie, and alt-rock, the Brooklyn trio’s dense soundscapes nod to the ‘90s while simultaneously embracing distinct modernism. It’s no surprise that their grungy, high-fuzz rippers have been collecting acclaim from names that have shaped the contours of good rock music – but they’re not just a band’s band despite being students of the past, entrenched in the rigor of bygone scenes. Hello Mary are instantly accessible, refreshingly singular, and their music immediately quenches that ever-present thirst for catharsis.
Formed in 2019, Hello Mary self-released their debut album in 2020 when Straight and Oppenheimer were 16 and Wave was 19. The release established the band’s penchant for unpredictability, surprising melodic twists, and explosive instrumentation. Across seven songs, they flex their muscle for changing time signatures with perfect synchronicity, gratifying whiplash helped along by their composition that, sophisticated beyond their years, counterbalances sonic space with blindsiding moments of thunderous drums and guitar.
Since the debut, they’ve been refining their sound in the confines of the pandemic with impressive results: in addition to shows around city parks, they’ve opened for Sunflower Bean, Luna, Quicksand, Dehd, and Pretty Sick. Most recently, they teamed up with industry vet Bryce Goggin (Dinosaur Jr., Pavement) to produce their latest batch of ear-splitters, including “Stinge” and “Sink In.”
The two singles find the unsigned band dialling back the thrash of their earlier material, still packing the tracks with controlled blitz but in sparser environments that allow each of their individual talent to shine. It’s hard not to speak in hyperboles when Wave’s kick drum ignites every chorus across the pair of songs, when Oppenheimer slices through the fuzz with chugging basslines in “Stinge,” or when Straight’s searing guitar solo comes for you in “Sink In,” the only refuge from which is her crystalline voice that transcends the slick sludge. While the lyrics in their debut weren’t as robust as their instrumental offerings, resonant reflections on love and the loss of it now colour the music, rounding out their initial explorations of loneliness and isolation with experience.
Reflecting on “Stinge” and “Sink In,” Wave shares how the songs pair well together: “‘Stinge’ is a passion-filled, sad/angry song focusing on the polarizing emotions and back and forth feelings that come with nearing the end of a relationship (friend, romantic partner etc.), “Sink In” puts the relationship to rest. The feeling is less angry, and more accepting of the new state of things.”
She also sees the singles as representing a “new era” of Hello Mary. “It’s more mature on all fronts. Most of the songs on ‘Ginger’ were written when Helena and Mikaela were 14 years old. The song writing, even though it can be catchy and fun, is pretty amateur in comparison to the new songs.” Tighter collaboration and the pivot from DIY recording to studio time also contributes to the band’s elevated form. “Our ‘sound’ has become more unique since we have been playing together for longer. It’s more Hello Mary.”
“Hello Mary are my favorite new band from New York City. Sometimes you get lucky and discover a project that restores your faith in the new. Sometimes you just need a great show with passion, kids moshing, and guitars really, REALLY loud. Hello Mary is the future of rock & roll, and they’re only just beginning.” – Julia Cumming of Sunflower Bean
“Hello Mary has everything that gets me truly excited about a band.. They have their own unique sound down to their strong adolescent bones” – Britta Philiips of Luna, Dean, Britta
The Hopeful and the Unafraid is Jason Anderson’s third solo album since the dissolution of his indie pop act Wolf Colonel. The previous New England and The Wreath found Anderson reverting to the Elliott Smith-style singer/songwriter vibe of his earliest days, but The Hopeful and the Unafraid is something entirely different. Kicking off with the nearly eight-minute epic “El Paso,” this album is aimed unapologetically at the new Bruce Springsteen vibe that sounds like what the Arcade Fire, Mariah, and the Hold Steady have been flirting with, but in a far more overt way.
They’re mostly forgotten now, but in the wake of Springsteen’s breakthrough success with 1975’s Born to Run, a whole school of blue-collar singer/songwriters emerged, mostly from the industrial northeast, who were aiming for a similar blend of Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison: play The Hopeful and the Unafraid back to back with any late-’70s album by the likes of Robert Ellis Orrall, Steve Forbert, John Cougar Mellencamp, Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes or Elliott Murphy, and this defiantly retro collection of pop/rock tunes won’t sound a bit out of place.
From the honking saxophone that powers the bouncy title track, through the grandiose piano runs coloring “July 4, 2004,” “The Half of It,” and “Colonial Homes,” and from the powerhouse FM-radio swagger of “Watch Your Step” to the teenage desperation of the novelistic, detail-stuffed “The Post Office,”
Anderson has written an entire album’s worth of shameless, unabashed Bruce Springsteen homages/rip-offs. If nothing else, it’s a moderately fascinating exercise in Rutles-ization, and there’s no doubt that much of the album rocks quite hard in a refreshingly non-ironic way.
Just like on 2019’s excellent“In the Dark”, Rapport leader Maddy Wilde (Moon King, Spiral Beach) delivers six absolutely perfect new wave pop ditties. Full of chugging Cars guitars, twinkling OMD synths and Wilde’s bubblegum melodies, “FloatingThrough the Wonderwave” is an absolutely delightful ’80s throwback, with the jangle pop of “Trial Run” and the Air-like airiness of moody closer “My Bed” displaying a range that goes way beyond mere period pastiche.
Toronto-born Maddy Wilde (Moon King, Born Ruffians) formed Rapport after a decade of playing in various local bands and performing with other artists; Wilde’s imposter syndrome finally gave way to a desire to create music that she felt was under explored in her city. With band members Kurt Marble and Mike Pereira, (Twist, Ducks ltd, Most People) both experiencing the same urge to face the challenges of creating earnest pop despite their musical backgrounds in garage, punk and glam rock; Rapport embarked on a journey into the depths of classic pop.
Wilde’s arrangements combine her intuitive sense of harmony with a desire to sincerely capture the essence of sentimentality. Warm synth pads soften the space between Pereira’s punchy percussive bass style, referred to by the band as the “chug,” which steadily drives the songs forward, while Marble’s Knopfler-esque guitar lines play off of Maddy’s rich vocal melodies.
“Floating Through The Wonderwave” is Rapport taking a darker, more melancholic turn. Themes of jealousy, neuroses and self-doubt arise as Wilde explores the balance between artistic creation and self-promotion. “I had to uninstall social media apps on my phone when I realized they were a major source of anxiety and a hugely addictive waste of time which I could have spent making music. My creative practice was suffering as a result. But without these tools, how are artists meant to share their work?”
The concept of “turning off” – the target of Wilde’s musings on lead single ‘Video Star’ – is a presumptuous fantasy that she knows won’t last. Inevitably she will return to her old habits, mindlessly scrolling, endlessly roaming.. “Floating Through the Wonderwave”.
There’s a palatial poise to the ways in which Nemah Hasan lays herself bare. On “suicide,” she coos almost matter-of-factly, “I am a triple threat / Three nations want my head,” over the sparse yet lush folk-futurist balladic bedrock of her debut EP — named after the 11-acre farm in Milton, ON, where she grew up. The Palestinian-Canadian’s crucial voice is one that captures you with an unflinching confidentiality that recalls Mustafa’s landmark “When Smoke Rises”, as well as the chilling ability to orchestrate closeness and distance — and cinematically pan the lens between the two — that’s all Hasan’s own.
