In the fall of 1975, towards the tail end of a typically productive and prolific year that included finishing production on the “One Size Fits All” album, a spring tour with Captain Beefheart (immortalized on the live album, “Bongo Fury”, released in October of that year), and a performance of orchestral works, Frank Zappa and his band The Mothers played their first and only shows in Yugoslavia while in the midst of their fall tour. The Mothers of Invention Yugoslavian Extravaganza, as Zappa called it, took place in Zagreb and Ljubljana (now the capital cities of Croatia and Slovenia respectively) on November 21st and 22nd, 1975 with the short-lived and slightly stripped-down lineup of Andre Lewis (keyboards), Napoleon Murphy Brock (tenor sax and lead vocals), Norma Bell (alto sax, vocals), Roy Estrada (bass) and Terry Bozzio (drums). In characteristically Zappa fashion, The Maestro made sure to record these historical shows behind the Iron Curtain. “Zappa ’75: Zagreb/Ljubljana”, features the best performances of the Yugoslavian concerts sequenced in the exact order of the show’s setlist to present the crème da la crème from each night for the first time ever.
Produced by Ahmet Zappa and Zappa Vaultmeister Joe Travers, the 27-track live album boasts nearly two and half hours of completely unreleased music and will be available digitally (26 tracks without disc breaks) or on 2CD complete with a 32-page booklet filled with photos of the era and line-up by Gail Zappa and John Rudiak, with insightful liner notes from Travers, an interview between him and recording engineer Davy Moire who recorded the show and worked with Zappa from 1975-78, plus a firsthand account and illustration from Bozzio.”
“The Black Lips’ 10th studio effort Apocalypse Love is scorched with their trademark menace. It cryogenically mutates all recognised musical bases; it spins yarns about vintage Soviet synths, Benzedrine stupors, coup de’ tats, stolen valour and certified destruction, all set against a black setting sun. Since the turn of the decade the band have transformed from austere country pioneers, into a set of Lynchian surrealists, hellbent on recalibrating the history of rock ’n’ roll.
Singer and saxophonist Zumi Rosow muses, “It’s a weird dance record, one that reflects the moment that the world’s in right now.” “Apocalypse Love” is an album that emanates from a dive bar jukebox in the back of your mind; with a playlist that bends between tub thumping doom-glam, Plastic Ono singalongs, cocktail-shaken space age pop, Morricone reverberations and lo-fi outsider acoustic-punk, with mariachi horns, theremins, drum machines and harmonies filtering through the infectious melodies.”
Stand-out number ‘Among The Dunes’ is an amorphous platform-heeled anthem, a signature sax-fuelled stomper filled with trippy swagger. While opener ‘No Rave’ proffers a hypnotic locked groove, with ColeAlexander’s trademark snarl delivered over a sulphurous wall of distorted hedonism, a dystopian anthem for an apocalyptic manifesto. Meanwhile, the twisted exotica of ‘Whips Of Holly’ with its silver screen façade is like the soundtrack to a classic Theda Bara vamp-fest.
As the band venture into their third decade, ‘Apocalypse Love’ is proof that The Black Lips show no sign of slowing down…
From the new album “Apocalypse Love” (Out 14th October 2022 via Fire Records)
The four members of Frankie Cosmos in a Brooklyn studio to begin making their album. Greta Kline spent a few years living with her family and writing a mere 100 songs, turning her empathy anywhere from the navel to the moon, rendering it all warm, close and reflexively humorous. In music, everyone loves a teen sensation, but Kline has never been more fascinating than now, a decade into being one of the most prolific songwriters of her generation. She’s lodged in my mind amongst authors, other observational alchemists like Rachel Cusk or Sheila Heti, but she’s funnier, which is a charm endemic to musicians.
Meanwhile Frankie Cosmos, a rare, dwindling democratic entity called a band, had been on pandemic hiatus with no idea if they’d continue. In the openness of that uncertainty they met up, planning to hang out and play music together for the first time in nearly 500 days. There, whittling down the multitude of music to work with, they created “Inner World Peace”, a collection of Greta’s songs changed and sculpted by their time together. While Kline’s musical taste at the time was leaning toward aughts indie rock she’d loved as a teenager, keyboardist Lauren Martin and drummer Luke Pyenson cite “droning, meditation, repetition, clarity and intentionality,” as well as “‘70s folk and pop” as a reference for how they approached their parts. Bassist/guitarist Alex Bailey says that at the time he referred to it as their “ambient” or “psych” album.
Somewhere between those textural elements and Kline’s penchant for concise pop, “Inner World Peace” finds its balance. Instant centerpiece “One Year Stand” is a small snowglobe of intimacy recalling the softest moments of Yo La Tengo’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. Lifted by Martin’s drones on Hammond organ and synthesizer, it could be played on repeat in a loop. I like to think it’s obvious how Greta’s vocals were recorded: late at night as we all sat by in low light, transfixed as she sings “I’m not worried about the / rest of my life / because you are here today / I go back in time / I’m a cast iron.” The voices of Kline and Martin, who have sung together since middle school, blend seamlessly.
The first order of business upon setting up camp in Brooklyn’s Figure 8 studios was to project giant colorful slides the band had made for each track. Co-producing with Nate Mendelsohn, my Shitty Hits Recording partner, we aimed for Frankie Cosmos aesthetic idiosyncrasies to shine.
The mood board for “Magnetic Personality” has a neon green and black checkerboard, a screen capture of the game Street Fighter with “K.O.” in fat red letters, and a cover of Mad Magazine that says “Spy Vs. Spy! The Top Secret Files.” On tracks like “F.O.O.F.” (Freak Out On Friday), “Fragments” and “Aftershook,” the group are at their most psychedelic and playful, interjecting fuzz solos, bits of percussion, and other sonically adventurous ear candy. An internal logic strengthens everything, and in their proggiest moments, Frankie Cosmos are simply a one-take band who don’t miss. When on “Inner World Peace” they sound wildly, freshly different, it may just be that they’re coming deeper into their own.
Throughout the album there are plays on the notion of feeling seen or invisible, as in “Magnetic Personality” when Kline sings “ask me how I am and I won’t really say,” or in “One Year Stand” when she says “maybe I’m asking myself.” Kline emphasizes that this was her first group of songs in years that weren’t written while on tour, but rather with ample time on her hands. She reflects on past selves in “Abigail” (“that version of myself I don’t want back”) and “Wayne” (“Like in first grade / How I went by Wayne / I always had / another name”). If we’re alone, what becomes of the things we see? As in “Fruit Stand,” Kline asks “If it’s raining and I can’t feel it, is it raining?”
“Inner World Peace” excels in passing on the emotions it holds. When in the towering “Empty Head”Kline sings of wanting to let thoughts slide away, her voice is buoyed on a bed of synths and harmonium as tranquility abounds. When her thoughts become hurried and full of desire, so does the band, and she leaps from word to word as if unable to contain them all. As a group, they carry it all deftly, and with constant regard for Kline’s point of view.
Says Greta, “To me, the album is about perception. It’s about the question of “who am I?” and whether or not the answer matters. It’s about quantum time, the possibilities of invisible worlds. The album is about finding myself floating in a new context. A teenager again, living with my parents. An adult, choosing to live with my family in an act of love. Time propelled us forward, aged us, and also froze. If you don’t leave the house, who are you to the world? Can you take the person you discover there out with you?”
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.
Singer and songwriter John Ross sounds reborn on “ILYSM”, Wild Pink’s follow-up to their 2021 breakout “A Billion Little Lights”. In a way, he was: Ross had already started writing the band’s fourth album when he was diagnosed with cancer, a battle that threatened to derail the LP, only to instead infuse it with urgent purpose.
Ross pushed forward through the dark alongside a community of collaborators, co-producing the record with Justin Pizzoferrato (Pixies, Body/Head, Speedy Ortiz) and Peter Silberman of The Antlers, and enlisting contributions from J Mascis (“See You Better Now”), JulienBaker (“Hold My Hand”), Ryley Walker, Yasmin Williams, Samantha Crain and Ratboys’ Julia Steiner (the title track, among others). The songs they made together vibrate with wonder, as befitting of any pursuit that comes on the heels of an existential threat.
The album is dreamy in a way that feels less like an escape and more like an adventure, as if Ross is seeing his world—and the people who populate it—through new eyes.
On Skullcrusher’s (aka Helen Ballentine) debut album, she wastes no time teaching a master class on vulnerability. The song writing is rooted in the confusion of childhood, examining Ballentine’s own through vaguely told memories and home-video voice memos. The guitar builds itself a home in the ambient, wide production. This is certainly not an album to be pigeonholed into one genre—the influences on this album range all over the board, and include a lot of electronic artists. It peels back the curtains from the culturally romanticized image of childhood, revealing it as a time with the same pain and confusion, as well as abstract joy as any other part of life. Being young is anything but simple, and those dreams and experiences spin around in Ballentine’s mind years after moving away from her childhood home in New York state.
In describing the song writing process involved on the album, Ballentine says, “I viewed my younger self through a wash of emotions: anger, sadness, pity, confusion, all reaching for a kind of compassion. I tried to capture the contradictions that comprise my past and define who I am now.
As I looked back, I saw my life in pieces: some moments blacked out, some extremely vivid, some leading nowhere.” The resulting LP is a shivering look inside yourself through the memories of another.
On the heels of their acclaimed 2020 albums “Saint Cloud” and “Sorceress”, Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and Jess Williamson decided to start down a new road, walking arm in arm as Plains. The duo’s first album “I Walked with You a Ways“, produced by Crutchfield’s “Saint Cloud” collaborator Brad Cook, will also be their last—Crutchfield and Williamson have declared this a one-time collaboration, which is all the more reason to cherish the resulting record. As the pair interweave their voices over warm Americana that’s at turns upbeat and wistful—and sometimes both at once—Plains invite the listener into a shared, communal space, wallpapered with the classic folk and country they grew up on.
Tracks like “Problem With It” and “Line of Sight” lean hard on Crutchfield’s knockout vocal hooks, while “Abilene” and “Bellafatima” let Williamson’s more delicate presence sneak up on you. It’s rewarding to hear Crutchfield and Williamson’s ample talents intermingle as they shape “I Walked with You a Ways” into a celebration of their shared passions.
Written between Kansas City, Los Angeles, and Marfa, the album was recorded in Durham, NC with collaborator and producer Brad Cook. The creative magic of only a few vocal takes, tracking with a band comprised of Spencer Tweedy and Phil Cook, gives the album a feel of fresh, on-the-spot conception. The trust and history of Crutchfield and Cook’s collaborations (Saint Cloud, Great Thunder EP) set the tone for this new container of spontaneity and experimentation.
Crack Cloud’s new album “Tough Baby” is both a clarion call and a life-manual for the listener. For an outfit founded as a healing outlet by and for people in addiction recovery, it’s no surprise the work of this Canadian “band” (now a multi-media collective the size of 3 bands ) sounds as urgent and vital as it does. A wide-ranging experiment with art-punk and post-punk at centre, the collective’s 3rd album engages self-examination and sociopolitical discourse with equal fervor. Highlgihts: “Costly Engineered Illusion,”“Virtuous Industry,” and “Criminal”
Unsurprisingly, “Tough Baby” is a record with purpose and resolve. nothing is wasted. sometimes the music feels deliberately compressed, the essences extracted and bottled into an overpowering cordial, as on ‘115 at night’, which sounds like an ‘80s Van Halen track being squeezed into another shape.
It’s difficult to see how a track like ‘Virtuous Industry’ can hold itself together, such are the sonic hoops it jumps through. the sharp angles and hook-laden guitar lines that were once seen as a trademark sound are less in evidence. Last track ‘Crackin Up’ does nod back to earlier releases with a booming beat and guitars that snag, like wool on barbed wire. but maybe there’s another focus taking shape, one that was not fully realised on the band’s remarkable debut, “Pain Olympics”. Zach Choy: “we made that album with no expectation of making another.” maybe that expectation lent “Pain Olympics” its febrile, combustible atmosphere. but the world moves on, and “Tough Baby” is moving with it.
The new record reflects Choy’s point that “we are always maturing emotionally with our experiences, and so how we understand and express them evolves over our lifetime.” there is a sleekness here: cinematic dreamer music that takes in the street romanticisms and seedy cruises of classic alternative pop. indeed, the record could be a brilliant c21st riposte to the likes of the pogues, the blockheads, roxy music or armand schaubroeck. ‘The Politician’ could be a search party sent out to find the bogus man after 50 years. this is music that is happy to colour outside the lines prescribed for it. in fact, “Tough Baby” reminds one of reading a nabokov novel, with lots of stylistic conceits and clevernesses, sometimes outrageous pretentiousness,
The title track employs orchestral sweeps and other stylings: a broadway musical perhaps, or the sort of uplifting orchestrations that would sit snugly on a modern film soundtrack, and boasting an intermission where we could be listening to unkle. The key track is Criminal’ – also the longest on the record, weighing in at 6 minutes – an angry soliloquy which suddenly snaps into life around a primitive beat (which sounds like someone whacking at a door with a hammer) and a scuzzy bass line. the intermittent vocals and sighs at the end only add to the drama. the band does offer antidotes to help your head find some equilibrium: Zach Choy: “the name “Tough Baby” is an allusion to our planet. to our culture. and to our selves.” it’s made to remind us that whilst we are all in the gutter to some extent, some of us are looking at the kerb.
Miracle Legion were a New HavenConnecticut-based band that immediately sprang to life on the heels of a post-R.E.M. guitar rock boom, chiefly because lead singer Mark Mulcahy’s voice bore an uncanny resemblance to Michael Stipe’s, and the arpeggio guitar structures were akin to Peter Buck’s guitar sound, in the UK, where they were feted by music media such as NME and Melody Maker. In their early stages they received frequent comparisons to R.E.M., more for their presence and overall sound than for their lyrical content. Other than a few similar-sounding songs, the respective bands’ sounds were largely dissimilar lyrically and musically, and as time passed, the comparisons became less valid.
This is one more of a bunch of shows we recorded around this time. After a long time apart we found that we liked being back together. Bit of a nice surprise there. Anywhow I remember driving forever in old broken down truck, NY and when we got kind of close to the venue Scotty Bells just jumped out walked. We all really love the Bell House and that’s it. We ripped it and did it. Using the damage to good advantage. I think someone commented on my shoes and I was happy about that. Little things.
The late 80’s and early 90’s were a huge influence for many new artists. But when they cite sounds from great artists like Johnny Marr, Cocteau Twins, The Durutti Column and the Beach Boys, you know they are on track to something great.
Combining up-beat drum beats, melodic bass riffs, jingly guitar leads, and fluttery lighter-than-air vocals, Tallies gives out a soft, yet bouncy ray of sunshine not unlike The Sundays’ debut album ‘Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic’. Tallies bridges that long lost sound with yet a new and youthful take on something all their own.
With their brand-new sophomore album, “Patina”, The Toronto-based indie pop band Tallies have found a way to expertly walk that razor-thin tightrope between nostalgia and the present, nodding to their favourite bands of the past while transforming their sound into something tight, bright, and undeniably fresh.
The band’s 2019, debut self-titled album solidified the their stature as Canada’s leading dreampop scholars as its mix of upbeat pop hooks and heady, larger-than-life production won the band critical acclaim from the indie underground to the mainstream alike. They began work straight away on a second record, which would prove to be an even more life-affirming endeavour than their debut.
Coming out of Toronto, this indie pop band was formed by lead singer and guitarist Sarah Cogan and guitarist Dylan Franklin, with Cian O’Neill on drums.
It was during this process that Tallies began a working friendship with one of their musical heroes—Simon Raymonde, ex-Cocteau Twins bassist and founder of Bella Union, He caught wind of Tallies and made it his mission to sign the band. Through transatlantic phone calls, Tallies were able to deeply connect with a member of one of their favourite bands.
Tallies shares another new track from the upcoming Patina. Sarah Cogan says, “‘Special’ is about longing to be seen and heard by those who matter to you most. Sometimes feeling invisible is particularly painful when the indifference comes from someone whose opinion means a lot to you.
See Tallies + Sobscene + Bored Marsh w. Some Velvet Evening DJ’s at Rough Trade Nottingham Friday, 28th October, 7:00 pm
Connecticut’s Anxious don’t miss a beat on “Sunsign,” their first new material since the January release of their acclaimed full-length debut “Little Green House”. That’s not to say they’re stuck in one place: The band’s new track dials back their emo-tinged post-hardcore intensity while remaining a carthartic, energizing anthem. Recorded and produced by Mike Sapone (Taking Back Sunday, The Front Bottoms, Oso Oso), the track puts an intimate, acoustic guitar-driven foot forward, exhibiting a new high-water mark of dynamism for the band. Vocalist Grady Allen wrestles with feelings of emotional isolation and overwhelm, wondering in the song’s sticky-sweet choruses, “Am I work when I want help? / Am I thinking ‘bout myself?” These questions have no easy answers, as Anxious know well, but ultimately, the conversation itself matters most: “I call you again and you answer the same.”
On “Sunsign” Anxious–made up of vocalist Grady Allen, guitarist/vocalist Dante Melucci, bassist SamAllen, and drummer Jonny Camner–takes yet another step forward. The urgency that carried “Little GreenHouse” is still there, but it’s presented in new, engaging ways. The song has a sprawl that feels like a marked evolution of the band’s sound while retaining all the earnest emotion that fans have come to love.
“Sunsign” by Anxious, available digitally now on Run For Cover Records.
