The C.I.A. a new project and band comprising Ty Segall, his wife Denée Segall, and the Cairo Gang’sEmmett Kelly announced a new album: “Surgery Channel” which arrives January 20th via In the RedRecords. The group has shared lead single “Impersonator,” along with a music video directed by Joshua Erkman and Denée Segall. In the clip, Denée Segall’s face morphs as other images of Miss Piggy, Pinhead from Hellraiser, Gollum, Chucky, and more—are projected on top of it.
Step into a sick rhythm. And I mean sickly. “Surgery Channel” is a constructed world where everything is piercing and pinpointed. Every single word brings confrontation. With an intro as intimate and uncomfortable as this, The C.I.A. make you question what could be happening here…or what they’re after. Denée Segall (vocals, lyrics) is both haunting and seducing us at once with her voice. Something unhinged might be about to happen and they’re calmly dangling it over your head. Is it the possibility of dismemberment? Revenge?
There is something about “Surgery Channel” that is sterile and covered in dirt at the same time. Maybe it’s the feeling of simultaneous anger and defeat. Maybe it’s what comes after. Or maybe it’s about the ever-so-brief silent spaces between notes and words. Rhythm would be nothing without empty space. Words are rhythm at The C.I.A.
“Vicious visage / Internal monologue / Blink and stare / The metal and the glare / Intentions negating / The ego ascertaining / A pause / A cue / A push to make a move” from “Better”.
The C.I.A. released their self-titled debut album in 2018. The trio wrote “Surgery Channel” last year, and recorded it with Mike Kriebel at Ty Segall’s own Harmonizer Studios. Ty Segall issued his most recent solo LP, “Hello, Hi”, earlier this year.
Father John Misty is releasing “Live At Electric Lady”, a Spotify exclusive EP that features alternate versions of “Chloë and The Next 20th Century”highlights “Goodbye Mr. Blue,” “The Next 20th Century,”“Buddy’s Rendezvous,” “We Could Be Strangers,” “(Everything But) Her Love,” and a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever).” The session was recorded in May 2022 at the famed Electric Lady studios in New York.
Father John Misty’s touring in support of “Chloë and The Next 20th Century” is underway. The North American dates currently end with a show on Sunday, November 20th at Mexico City’s Corona Capital Festival. The late summer and fall tour features support from Sub Pop label mate Suki Waterhouse and includes a stop at Radio City Music Hall with The New York Pops on Thursday, September 22nd, 2022. Father John Misty’s UK live dates follow in March next year.
The Natural Lines, the artist who previously recorded as Matt Pond PA, are pleased to share their latest single and video “Spontaneous Skylights 2” from the band’s “First Five” EP which is released today via Bella Union. The song and its accompanying video, which was created by Jen Taylor, follows the band’s recent single “The Problem Is Me”.
About the song and video Matt Pond says: “My friend Jen Taylor and I were laughing at ourselves a few weeks ago. We simultaneously seemed to have swerved—I changed the name of my band and she started working in television after years of working for herself. I mentioned our song ‘Spontaneous Skylights 2’ and about being out of sync with myself. In the song, I imagined the roof exploding and seeing our world from the stars. Space and time, completely out of whack. Something clicked and I wondered what Jen’s early films would look like with this current track. As if we might be able to make sense of our lives by attaching the present to the past.”
Matt Pond-watchers might wonder why the name change. Recorded with close collaborators and friends over a period that saw Pond make vital adjustments to his life, The Natural Lines’ stealth emergence reflects his desire to set a fresh pace for himself and come from somewhere new, somewhere more open. “I quit lying,” he adds. “I checked my harsher tones. I cut my drinking down. I went to therapy and stopped shouting at cars.”
Now, the name change honours his collaborators. Among a revolving cast, one constant presence in his work has been Chris Hansen, who plays guitar, bass, keys, saxophone and sings. Singer-songwriter Anya Marina, shines on “In The Dark” and Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins / Bella Union) lays down a lush bass on this tale of hide and seek with true connection. Other band members number Hilary James (cello/vocals), Kyle Kelly-Yahner (drums), Louie Lino (keys), Sarah Hansen (horns), Sean Hansen (drums/bass), Andy Dixon (drums), Kat Murphy (vocals) and, also on vocals, 17-year-old MJ Murphy, for whom Matt brims with praise: “She can do anything she wants to musically.”
A genuine rebirth for Pond and his friends, the result also pays warming and witty testimony to the value of reconfiguring one’s outlook. “I thought I might lose the realness in song writing,” says Matt of his decision to steady his pitch. “I thought I’d have to surrender my edge and my shield. But if your best enemy is yourself, it’s hard to be in a band with the same name.
Matt has been anything but quiet since “Still Summer” (2017). A re-sequenced reissue of 2015’s “The State Of Gold” emerged in 2021, an EP of Covid-era originals and covers including The Thermals’ ‘Pillar of Salt’ appeared on the “Songs of Disquiet” EP in 2020, and soundtracks kept Pond busy. But The Natural Lines was not a project to be rushed, and “First Five” gives a window into what is surely Pond’s best work yet.
A further departure from the past for Matt is ‘It’s a Trap’, where he sets out to surpass his own sarcasm, hunting and holding onto hope within his hands. “Morning comes an hour late” gently opens ‘Spontaneous Skylights 2’ and before we know it the roof blows off the building. When ‘The End of the World’ arrives, The Natural Lines appear to have survived and surrendered to love.
“Once I took control of my mind, I could see what I wanted to say more clearly. Instead of random floods of mania and panic, I felt like I was composed and composing. It has become as simple as reading thewords of a sentence in the right order. As small as the pause before I hit ‘send’.” A development, you might say, conducted along the most natural of lines.
Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith have announced news of a special deluxe box set release of “The Perfect Vision”, the triptych of acclaimed albums that encompasses “The Peyote Dance”, “Mummer Love” and “Peradam”.
With their one-off live performance at the Pompidou Centre in Paris taking place this Saturday, 22nd October, Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith today share a beatific rework of the track “Song Of The Highest Tower” by acclaimed electronic artist Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.
“Song Of The Highest Tower” is the second track to be shared from the upcoming deluxe box set release of “The Perfect Vision”, out 25th November via Bella Union and available to preorder here, and follows Jim Jarmusch’s striking reimagining of “Eternity”. Both tracks are included on the remix album that comes with the box set alongside the three accliamed albums – “The Peyote Dance”, “Mummer Love” and “Peradam” – that make up “The Perfect Vision”.
Between 2019 and 2021, Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith collaborated on a triptych of albums which took their inspiration from the writings of three emblematic French poets: Antonin Artaud, Arthur Rimbaud and René Daumal. Central to the work was the poets’ necessity to travel to different lands to acquire a new vision and perspective on themselves and their art. Recorded in the Sierra Tarahumara of Mexico (The Peyote Dance), the Abyssinian valley of Ethiopia (Mummer Love), and the Himalayan Summit of India (Peradam) respectively, each album retraces the poets’ footsteps, channelled through on-location recorded soundscapes, in search of hidden, earthy sounds that hold embedded existence, with Patti Smith revisiting the poets’ words that have been inspired by the landscapes. The result is a sound and visual montage that traverses the works of Rimbaud, Artaud and Daumal in their voyage to elsewhere.
Stimulated by these metaphysical journeys, the musical and sound composition of “The Perfect Vision” is the starting point for a new site-specific and multidisciplinary exhibition – “Evidence” – that SoundwalkCollective and Patti Smith have conceived for the Pompidou Centre. Evidence is a poetic and immersive quest, an ode to a world without borders, a contemporary reflection on the infinite and the universal, a spiritual quest for oneness as a living and life-giving presence. The physical, sound and visual journeys of Soundwalk Collective enter into a conversation with the poetic trajectories of Patti Smith, to create a new vision and language. The exhibition space presents sound, film, abstract imagery, objects and found art collected from their travels, leading the visitor towards a large investigative installation that juxtaposes photography, text and original artwork by Patti Smith, from both her personal collections as well as those of Musée national d’art moderne and MoMA, as an evidence of the existence of these poets and their inspiration, offering a true immersion in their thought and art.
The exhibition opens today and this Saturday 22nd October Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith will play a special one-off live performance in the Grand Salle of the Pompidou Centre.
Billy Nomates, the project of the Bristol-based songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Tor Maries releases her much anticipated second studio album, “Cacti” via Invada Records. Recorded at her flat and Invada Studios, “Cacti”is a huge step up for the artist, who received widespread critical acclaim for her eponymous 2020 debut album, with heavy airplay across BBC Radio 6 Music and support from luminaries such as Iggy Pop, Florence Welsh and Steve Albini.
Though every bit as unrepentant as Billy Nomates’ debut, “Cacti”comes from a much more exposed place and sees Tor further develop her instinctive, inventive song writing and production. Unafraid to wade into the traumas of the past two years and the eerie sense of apathy that lingers, alongside heartache and more political themes, the 12-track collection openly confronts uncomfortable truths, as Tor puts it, “70-80% of being bold is about being vulnerable as hell.”
Maries said: “Writing “Cacti “took just over a year. I wrote very intensely and then none at all. (This seems to be the way I work best). I picked up old drum machines, mapped out things in my kitchen with the same small micro keyboard I always use and then raided the cupboards and rooms at Invada Studios, to play and experiment with old synths, an upright piano, this weird organ thing. I hope everyone finds their own narrative in “Cacti”. I think it’s about surviving it all.”
Out now on Invada Records: Taken from the forthcoming album ‘CACTI’, out January 13th, 2023,
South Carolina postpunk outfit Candy Coffins are releasing their album ‘Once Do It With Feeling’ – a haunting and highly melodic gift ahead of Halloween. Invoking the spirit of Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure, Psychedelic Furs and Afghan Whigs, this loaded 10-track collection showcases solid song writing full of emotion and sonically saturated. Stereo Embers Magazine calls them “a rather stunning band”, noting that this album “might very well be one of the year’s best… a stirring song-cycle about the lifespan of romantic love, chronicling both its chemical and frenzied beginning and its inevitable messy demise. What goes on in between? The usual: hope, betrayal, depression, optimism, reconstruction, life-force depletion and endless nights alone in dark rooms”.
“Once Do It With Feeling” chronicles a relationship from the onset of the first crack to its complete crumbling dissolution. All the feelings and emotions of tumult are captured here, from both persons’ perspectives. The record showcases the mature strides the song writing has made and relates these themes via the vehicle of the band in its confident, cohesive current form.
Jame Lathren: vocals, guitars Tom Alewine: guitars Alex Mabrey: bass Jonathan Bradley: drums, percussion Justin Purdy: keys
Additional instrumentation by John Furr Additional vocals by Margaret Rose Champagne
DMA’S have announced their fourth album ‘How Many Dreams?’ and shared new single ‘Everybody’s Saying Thursday’s The Weekend’. DMA’S continue to branch out from the guitar-driven Britpop anthems of their first two records. “We were finding our feet with a more modern sound on [2019’s] ‘The Glow’,”
“With ‘How Many Dreams’, we really nailed that down and experiments with a lot of different sounds and different genres. It’s a great blend of the three things we love, which are rock’n’roll tunes, pop singalongs and electronic music.
“Our music will always have that nostalgic edge to it,
Elsewhere on ‘How Many Dreams?’ there’s ‘Fading Like A Picture’ which “opens with this rocking guitar riff” and “harks back to that old DMA’S sound,” according to Took. On the flipside, “there’s a song like ‘De Carle’ which is a full-blown, five-minute electronic song” save a tiny bit of electric bass. “We weren’t trying to split the difference. We really leant into the genre, which is so cool. There are surprises like that across the record.”
Lead single ‘I Don’t Need To Hide’ “sums up the album best. It’s got a bit of everything,” explained vocalist Tommy O’Dell. New single ‘Everybody’s Saying Thursday’s The Weekend’, on the other hand, is more of a curveball. It’s about “letting go of the things that weigh us down and embracing the future with a sense of optimism. Stepping in the ‘right light in the dark times’,” Took said in a statement.
“We did what we wanted,” added O’Dell. “We didn’t have any boundaries and that’s what is really exciting about the record. You can’t put it in a box, but it’s still DMA’S.” ‘How Many Dreams?’ was the longest record DMA’S took to make.
The Aussie trio (rounded out by Matt Mason) spent three weeks in a London studio with superproducers Stuart Price and Rich Costey “working on a lot of band in the room stuff”. The Omicron variant hit, DMA’S returned home to Australia and though most of the album was done, “when we got back to Sydney, we were listening to the desk mixes and it felt like we had a lot more work to do.” With Costey and Price on the other side of the world, though, they got Konstantin Kersting in to help them finish the record.
With DMA’S more confident in the studio, ‘How Many Dreams?’ is a “bloody feel-good record,” according to Took. “We couldn’t be more proud of it.”
We have been waiting so many months since Robert Smith declared that The Cure would release their long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s “4:13 Dream, Songs of a Lost World”, before October. Seeing as the temperature has dropped 20 degrees since then, pumpkins now adorn doorsteps, and the calendar currently says October that isn’t happening. “I’d rather it just came out. I can’t stand the anticipation,” Smith said.
That doesn’t mean all hope is lost for new songs from the gothic-rock trailblazers. Turns out, the band has been playing some new material on their current tour. They’ve played unreleased tracks known as “Alone” and “Endsong,” and last night in Stockholm they played another new track titled “And Nothing Is Forever.”
Simon giving a little hug to Robert’s back at the very beginning of the song clearly announces something deeply personal for Robert. The Cure debuted a third new song during the set, “And Nothing Is Forever,” during the show in Sweden, All this material is expected to appear on the band’s next album, “Songs of the Lost World”, although no further details have yet been announced.
“And Nothing Is Forever” is a mid-tempo ballad with an extended instrumental opening. It’s musically reminiscent of The Cure’s classic “Pictures of You,” with frontman Robert Smith lamenting tender moments and teardrops: “it doesn’t really matter if you’ll say we’ll be together.”
The Cure’s current European tour features the return of guitarist/keyboardist Perry Bamonte, who hadn’t played with the band since 2004. “Songs of the Lost World” will be the band’s first new studio album since 2008
The fourth full-length from Wild Pink, “ILYSM” unfolds with all the fractured beauty of a dreamscape. Over the course of 12 chameleonic tracks, the New York-bred rock band build another world inhabited by ghosts and angels and aliens, inciting a strange and lovely daze as the backdrop shifts from the mundane (subdivisions, highways, hotel parking lots) to the extraordinary (deserts, battlefields, the moon). But within its vast imagination lies a potent truth-telling on the part of singer / guitarist John Ross, whose lyrics closely examine his recent struggle with cancer. The follow-up to 2021’s “A Billion Little Lights” a critically acclaimed effort praised by the likes of Pitchfork, NPR, Vulture, and Stereogum, who named it “one of the prettiest rock records of the past decade”—“ILYSM” emerges as a truly revelatory body of work, transforming the most painful reflection into moments of transcendence.
When walking us through his new LP with his band Wild Pink, John Ross immediately notes that the goal for “ILYSM”was to go big without “getting too huge.” It’s the kind of vague talk musicians and technicians tend to share in the studio, with destined collaborators often capable of somehow knowing exactly what the other means when they utter non-technical directions like this, their mutual language leading to a level of creativity rarely tapped by some of the most tightly knit musical teams.
Such is the case with Ross and co-producers Justin Pizzoferrato and Antlers frontman (and amateur mycologist, evidently) Peter Silberman. As an extension of the impressive balance they create together, Wild Pink manage to walk that tightrope with additional contributions from a diverse list of artists including Julien Baker, Ryley Walker, Yasmin Williams, Ratboys’ Julia Steiner, and J Mascis—the latter’s ripping guitar solo, like the raging riff that tears through the title track, managing to greatly expand the scope of the otherwise-fairly-tranquil heartland rock tune without pushing it into excess.
The result is a patchwork of sounds centered in folk-rock ballads and baroque-indie revival informed by everything from the microfolk of Iron & Wine to the epic-scale shoegaze of Jesu. With the album out read through Ross’ track-by-track breakdown of “ILYSM’s” 12 flavorful songs.
1. “Cahooting the Multiverse”
“Cahooting the Multiverse” is a microcosm of the album lyrically and musically. It’s about death, the afterlife, and all the mundane things before you get there. It’s one of the bigger tunes on the album, and I knew I wanted to start the album with a fuller sound—but as a whole, I wanted this album to avoid getting too huge.
2. “Hold My Hand”
This is basically a love song told through the experience of someone having surgery. I knew pretty quickly that I wanted it to be a duet, and I’m super grateful to Julien for joining me on it. This was one of the first songs we rehearsed together as a band in the studio, and David’s piano part felt great almost immediately. There were a couple moments like that in the recording process where a song just immediately fell into place as soon as we started playing it.
3. “Hell Is Cold”
This song is about nostalgia and moving on, and I wrote it in the middle of winter. I like the way the groove came together at the end. Definitely inspired by Sam Beam and Sparklehorse.
4. “ILYSM”
This song, like a few others on this record, takes place where I live and the field next to it. It’s a metaphor for love and obsession about someone visited by a ghost and feeling confused about their feelings for them.
5. “St. Beater Camry”
This song takes place in Miami. It’s about a young person escaping a dangerous domestic situation in the Northeast and making her way down the coast to Florida. She named her car St. Beater Camry.
6. “Abducted at the Grief Retreat”
This is one of the first songs I wrote for the album and was inspired by Signs and the show SurvivingDeath. At its core, this song is a metaphor for obsession, and the protagonist is completely in love with their alien abductor.
7. “War on Terror”
This song is set on the beach at night. There’s also a vignette about someone briefly dying and coming back to life while fighting in the Bosnian War. True story! Jeremy’s clarinet playing along with Mike’s pedal steel at the end is one of my favourite parts on the record.
8. “Simple Glyphs”
This song is about dying and how the older you get the more life feels like it’s closing in on you. I love how the bass solo in this song turned out. Big Peter Hook vibes going on, and Ryley Walker’s guitar playing on this tune just rules.
9. “See You Better Now”
“See You Better Now” is the most straightforward love song on the album, and definitely inspired by Tom Petty and Traveling Wilburys. It was one of the last songs I wrote for this album, and a really fun song to record in the studio. It’s still wild to me that J Mascis did the guitar solo on it.
10. “Sucking on the Birdshot”
This song is about some sandhill cranes down in Florida who were mated for life. One of them died by the side of the road and left the other to mourn. One of the heaviest things I’ve ever seen. Big-time Jesu inspo going on here, but also Talk Talk in the middle part.
11. “The Grass Widow in the Glass Window”
On the surface this song is about a dead hardwood tree that has golden oyster mushrooms growing all over it (thanks to Peter Silberman for the mycology lesson). That felt like a good metaphor for how I was feeling at the time when I wrote it. It all takes a turn by the end toward acceptance, and Yasmin Williams’ beautiful guitar playing touches on that.
12. “ICLYM”
This was the last song I wrote for the album and is supposed to be a coda to “Cahooting the Multiverse.” It feels like a bookend to me with Peter joining in with vocals, which he also does on “Cahooting.” Like “Cahooting” it’s a stream of consciousness song. I enjoy writing that way because I’m able to say things without much context, which is fun because sometimes I don’t fully understand the lyrics until after I write them.
John Ross: Vocals, Guitars and Keys Dan Keegan: Drums and Percussion Arden Yonkers: Bass and Keys David Moore: Piano, Banjo and Farfisa Jeremy Viner: Saxophone and Clarinet Peter Silberman: Vocals, Guitars and Keys Mike ‘Slo Mo’ Brenner: Pedal Steel Julien Baker: Vocals on “Hold My Hand” Samantha Crain: Vocals on “St. Beater Camry” J Mascis: Guitar on “See You Better Now” Julia Steiner: Vocals on “ILYSM” and “See You Better Now” Ryley Walker: Guitar on “Simple Glyphs” Yasmin Williams: Guitar on “The Grass Widow In The Glass Window”
