So far, 2022 has been a relatively eventful year for Jack White. He’s released the albums “Fear Of TheDawn” and “Entering Heaven Alive”, each one with its sound and vibe unique from the other, proposed (and immediately got married) onstage in Detroit to kick off his tour, played over sixty shows across three continents to hundreds of thousands of satiated fans…and he’s not even done yet.
To celebrate the explosive run of shows, having received some of the most rave live reviews Jack has ever seen in his 20+ year career onstage, Third Man Records’ 54th Vault package is dedicated to the best of the best, the 3xLP Selections From The Supply Chain Issues Tour.
Jack White Live: The Supply Chain Issues Tour, includes three coloured LPs — one blue, one black, and one white — featuring live recordings from White’s current tour (including the full set from July’s intimate performance at London’s Union Chapel), as well as a glitter blue 7″ featuring a demo version of “A Tip From You To Me” from this year’s stellar album “Entering Heaven Alive”.
“The Supply Chain Issues Tour” on 3xLP. Disc 1 on blue vinyl includes live recordings from the fiery album “Fear Of The Dawn”. Disc 2 on white vinyl, features Jack’s intimate Union Chapel show in London, and Disc 3 on black vinyl showcases his improvisation of several cover songs and off-the-top-of-his-head compositions. Additionally, a 7” single of “A Tip From You To Me” with the unreleased b-side solo acoustic demo pressed on sparkly blue vinyl will be included in this one of a kind package.
Julia Jacklin’s new album draws to a close with a plea: “Be careful with yourself” she sings in the song of the same name. She begs someone to “please stop smoking” because she “want[s] your life to last a long time,” and later advises them to “make sure you have got a little savings” and “keep all our doctors appointments, give voice to our doubts.”
As an early 30-something, the Australian singer is now, like so many millennials, faced with the realities of adulthood. “There’s nobody coming to save us,” she eventually sighs in the penultimate song of her third LP, “Pre Pleasure”. While Jacklin is probably singing from the perspective of a worried friend or partner, “Be Careful With Yourself” is one of a few songs on the album that contain what sounds like advice from a concerned parent. And when her lyrics don’t lean towards the maternal, Jacklin is a sharp observer of her own internal life, hacking away at the crust of her neuroses and conditions—be they intrusive thoughts or caring too much—until some nugget of meaning is unearthed.
For Jacklin, this involves a combination of revisiting childhood and confronting adulthood, a process that results in some of the Australian artist’s sharpest song writing to date. If Jacklin’s stellar 2019 sophomore LP “Crushing” was an album of breakup ballads and single-girl musings, then “Pre Pleasure” is about what comes after—what it takes to keep everything together. Jacklin nods at the unravelling detailed on “Crushing” in the energetic “Pre Pleasure” single “I Was Neon,” in which she revells a bit in enjoying the person she’s become in the aftermath, only to anxiously ask, “Am I Gonna Lose Myself Again?” The song is a testament to not only Jacklin’s personal growth, but also her evolution as an artist. Full, crunchy guitars, an ace melody, and rich and creamy vocals all contribute to Jacklin’s signature polished indie-rock sound that seemingly gets better with each album. Fellow single and album opener “Lydia Wears a Cross,” too, floats across new sonic ground, melding drum machines with piano while Jacklin successfully tries her hand at unpacking religious disquiet.
While the melodies are delivered with ease, Jacklin is grappling with some serious predicaments throughout “Pre Pleasure” namely her struggle to communicate with loved ones, especially family. In the regretful “Less of a Stranger,” Jacklin charts a mother-daughter relationship that continually falls short. “You’re never gonna see me through the same eyes my friends do,” she sings in a stream-of-consciousness style, adding, “I just wish my own mother was less of a stranger.” And then on “Moviegoer,” which pokes fun at film bros who “[love] to throw their film knowledge around the workplace,” she switches gears to attack the issue of communication again: “If you can say it to a stranger, you can call your sister later,” she reasons.
Jacklin continues to sing from her journal on “Ignore Tenderness,” in which she simultaneously replays past conflict, hints at the demands women feel from an early age to look and act a certain way (“Every since I was 13 I’ve been pulled in every direction”), and cultivates her own sexuality free from scrutiny. She delivers a whole list of cultural expectations that are all too familiar to women: Be “strong but willing to be saved,” “be naughty but don’t misbehave” and “ignore the tenderness you crave.” There’s no way to win.
Jacklin approaches another set of uncomfortable feelings on “Magic”: the urge to always perform (especially in sexual situations) and to always be “on,” perhaps a tendency that developed from past abuses, all while trying to stay present in healthy relationships. “Ready to do magic / Naked beneath the cape / For my final trick / I’ll ask if we could wait / Until I feel safe again,” she sings. The word “confessional” gets thrown around a lot when we talk about indie singer/songwriters, especially women, but it should be saved for songs like this one.
She later sketches out another phenomenon of early adulthood: the friendships that seem to disappear out of thin air. The song in question, fittingly named “End of a Friendship,” grieves a loss while also noting that people change and very often shed relationships that no longer serve them. But there’s still the question of what to do with all the affection that was shared between two buds: “All my love is spinning round the room,” Jacklin sings. “If only it would land, plant and bloom.”
Jacklin displays a newly developed maturity in “Pre Pleasure” 10 near-perfect songs, while maintaining her talent for crafting hooky indie rock that often catches you off guard with its emotional weight. Even as she navigates a series of past traumas and changing tides in her songs, Jacklin never holds back—her words are as frank as ever. And even if those words aren’t always as sunny as the accompanying guitar chords, it’s a delight to bear witness to a musician of Jacklin’s calibre in her absolute artistic prime.
Alvvays Pay Homage to The Go-Go’s’ Belinda Carlisle on “Belinda Says”, The dream pop band also releases cheeky ode to reply guys with new song “Very Online Guy” , With their comeback album“Blue Rev” arriving soon on October 7th, the Canadian quintet Alvvays have released two more singles in anticipation: “Very Online Guy” and “Belinda Says.” The former is a quixotic, guitar-laced love letter to Belinda Carlisle, lead singer of the Go-Go’s, while the latter is lead vocalist Molly Rankin’s cheeky, distorted ode to reply guys.
Both songs come with brand new music videos, each co-directed by Colby Anderson. “Very Online Guy” masquerades like an 8-bit video game quest, while “Belinda Says” features some stunning, abstract visuals from Anderson.
“Two new lambs for the cultural volcano! One more sweet slurp of alcopop dedicated to the girls wiping tables called ‘Belinda Says’ and the dial-up electronic dream ‘Very Online Guy,’” the band said in a statement. “We painted and shot the ‘Belinda Says’ video in our living room. We directed a mosaic-mode vid for ‘V.O.G’. with our video guru friend Colby. This was easily the funnest thing we’ve ever shot. Enjoy our clunky low-bit collage of aliased key clacking and step-dance scramble on your CRTs.”
Two years after dropping his fifth LP “I Love the New Sky”, chameleonic English singer-songwriter Tim Burgess is back with another addictive collection of songs. But this time, he’s widened his scope further than ever, and “Typical Music”is an ambitious, monstrous, 22-track document of storytelling. Throughout its near-hour-and-a-half runtime, Burgess ruminates on parenthood, romance, and personal metamorphosis.
On “I Love the New Sky”, Burgess took shelter in the optimistic, penning upbeat, celebratory tunes that pay homage to his heroes, like The Cure and Comme D’Habitude, and takes pleasure in parading as captivating baroque pop. “Typical Music” builds on that world, throwing nods to the moxie of David Bowie, Dexys Midnight Runners, and Genesis while maintaining Burgess’ typical acoustic grit in the process. The product is a rich, dynamic album, brimming with saxophones, synthesizers, and spoken-word. “Typical Music“out today, Burgess spent some time walking us through the record track by track, providing insight on the songs’ inspirations and giving praise to the musicians who helped him perform them.
1. “Here Comes The Weekend”
It’s about a boy missing a girl that he is trying to connect with. The day-to-day struggles of 4G. A modern-day allegory of an age-old story.
2. “Curiosity”
This was written on a campsite in Norfolk on an acoustic guitar. I was very pleased to be able to squeeze the word “reciprocity” into the song and my improvised French “Definit, pert être, laissez-faire, raison d’être” makes up the chorus.
3. “Time That We Call Time”
Pearl Charles sings this song with me. It’s about all of the nonsense that is going on in the world and how it needs to come to an end. There’s no obvious solution in there, so kind of like real life.
4. “Flamingo”
This was written about my relationships with my dad and my nine-year-old son. I like the line “maybe it’s too late to adjust my fate, decided pre-incarnate.” Quelle Chris likes this song (he said that the beat is dope) and Andy Votel has done a killer remix.
5. “Revenge Through Art”
Written about falling in love outside a football stadium. The song is really about the anger you feel after a breakup and when you make the best art because of conflict. We wanted it to sound like Miami Sound Machine. Not sure we succeeded, but I love it anyway.
6. “Kinetic Connection”
I love Sam Gendel’s saxophone playing on this song. I wrote the song after watching the Aretha documentary Amazing Grace. It’s a song about insecurities coming to the surface. It’s also a song about the power of connection.
7. “Typical Music”
It’s the title track of the album, so I imagine this is the song we thought had all the answers. It’s surf, punk, psych, and a song that you could really enjoy on the bus heading to work dreaming of a brighter world.
8. “Take Me With You”
I played this to my friend Sharon Horgan and she said it sounded like Christmas. This is a song for everyone who wishes it was Christmas every day.
9. “After This”
One of my favorites on the album, it’s really romantic and optimistic, and it mentions Kevin from Dexys Midnight Runners. I love the different sections, and, just when you think it’s finished, there is another section. A bit like (I wish) Genesis’ “Can-Utility and the Coastliners.”
10. “The Centre Of Me [Is a Symphony of You]”
It’s a love song, of course. I really like my wonky acoustic guitar playing and Helen O’Hara’s beautiful violin playing. Also, the speed-up at the end was really fun to do.
11. “When I See You”
Another love song written for the (uncredited) girl/woman who provides the backing vocals at the end of the track. The spoken word took me ages to get right—worth it though, I hope.
2. “Magic Rising”
Another love song. I was thinking of Norma Tanega and Paul McCartney. I love the lyrics and the laughing. It’s a massive song. I am so proud of the performances.
13. “Tender Hooks”
I wanted Uffie to guest on this and sent her the song, but it never worked out. It’s not that she didn’t like it. She loved it, but it wasn’t to be. It was a dream about taking the bus to Hackney and locking someone out of the house. Those things actually happened. And the bit about having a shave.
14. “L.O.S.T. / Would You Take a Look At My Hand Please”
It’s a plea to a friend to make themselves visible. It’s a big world and as the Feargal Sharkey song goes, “A good heart is hard to find.” The “would you take a look at my hand please” section of the song is instrumental, and the name came from a friend of mine taking a chunk out of their hand and needing stitches.
5. “A Bloody Nose”
It’s a song about lucky escapes: one story, in particular, is about the Charlatans’ first trip to Arizona in 1991.
16. “In May”
I wrote this song In 2014 about my little boy (originally called “The Littlest B”). He was a year old and is nine now. It’s the oldest song on the album and very close to my heart. Beautiful mix by Dave Fridmann. Also, ace strings arranged by Daniel O’Sullivan (who produced the album) and played by Echo Collective.
17. “Slacker (Than I’ve Ever Been)”
I love the Bowie-style synth and the chord changes.
18. “View From Above”
I feel like I walk the tightrope a lot of the time and this song is my thoughts on that. My favourite lyrics on the album and Dan’s idea for instrumentation and arrangement really make it stand up for me as one of the best songs I’ve ever been involved in.
19. “A Quarter To Eight”
Another amazing production and arrangement by Daniel O’Sullivan. I like mentioning Roddy Frame and Father Thames. Sandra Marvin sings backing vocals.
20. “Sooner Than Yesterday”
Goth, monochrome surf? A bit like Joe Meek or Kim Fowley, like catching a wave in the rain in North Wales.
21. “Sure Enough”
If I was going through some kind of transformation during the making of this 22-track behemoth (which I was), this is the song that sums it all up. The last song written for the record.
22. “What’s Meant For You, Won’t Pass By You”
This song tells you where I am right now, this minute. I am through the other side. I still have questions, mind. Brilliant performances from Thighpaulsandra and Nitin Sawhney.
“Stumpwork”, the follow-up to 2021’s “New Long Leg”. The South London-based group’s first studio album, recorded in just two weeks with producer John Parish at the iconic Rockfield Studios, became a huge critical and commercial success reaching #4 in the UK Album Charts and featuring in best-of-2021 polls across the board. Buoyed by its success, Nick Buxton (drums), Tom Dowse (guitar), Lewis Maynard (bass) and Florence Shaw (vocals) returned to rural Wales in late 2021, partnering once more with Parish and engineer Joe Jones. Working from a position of trust in the same studio and with the same team, imposter syndrome and anxiety was replaced by a fresh freedom and openness to explore beyond an already rangy sonic palette, a newfound confidence in their creative vision. A longer period in the studio afforded the time to experiment, improvise, play, sharpen their table tennis skills.
“Stumpwork” was inspired by a plethora of events, concepts, and political debacles, be they represented in the icy mess of ambient elements reflecting a certain existential despair, or the surprising warmth in celebrating the lives of loved ones lost through the previous year. Surrealist lyrics are as ever at the forefront – but there is a sensitivity now to the themes of family, money, politics, self-deprecation, and sensuality. Furious alt-rock anthems combine across the record with jangle pop and ambient noise, demonstrating the wealth of influences the band feed off and their deep musicality. With the pressure of their debut album behind them, Dry Cleaning have crafted an ambitious and deeply rewarding new work that marks them out as one of the most intelligent and exciting acts to come out of the UK.
The album and single artwork were conceived and created by multi-disciplinary artists Rottingdean Bazaar and photographer Annie Collinge. James Theseus Buck and Luke Brooks of Rottingdean Bazaar first worked with Dry Cleaning directing the official video for ‘Scratchcard Lanyard’ and as their creative partnership with the band continues to flourish, they have fashioned a brilliantly unique visual identity for “Stumpwork”.
So hyped about this new album … Dry Cleaning is the Smiths of our time. That’s the greatest compliment I could bestow upon this special band.
Francis Lung has a new EP, it consists of six songs/stories, three of which are a trilogy set in my hometown of Manchester, and three of which are standalone tales. To me they’re dark yet light, sad but funny, messy yet measured. i can’t wait for you to hear them and hope they transport you someplace nice in your mind.
There are a ltd amount of menus from the infamous ‘Midland Hotel’ restaurant up on Bandcamp, containing all the lyrics from the “Short Stories2 EP. They come with a full high quality download of the “Short Stories” EP,
Finally, i’m real happy to say i’m on tour with The Dears next month across the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the UK,
One evening in early summer 2020, Jackie Cohen found herself sitting alone at the side of a pool at a stranger’s home in a small town on the East Coast, an oil lamp flickering at her side. Befitting the shimmering water at her feet, Cohen found herself reflecting. “I was in the middle of this horrible personal crisis, and for the first time in my life I just asked the universe for a sign, some signal that everything was going to be okay,” Cohen says. At that very moment, a large white moth bolted across her eye-line and directly into the open flame of the oil lamp. “He just dive-bombed, self-immolated,” Cohen says, still in chuckling disbelief years later. “That was my message.” From that point forward, Cohen decided the only way forward was to succumb to the crisis, to relax into it instead of fighting, to find beauty even in the flame—an approach that fuels her sublime new album, “Pratfall”, due September 23rd via Earth Libraries.
Prior to that transformative poolside evening, Cohen had spent a year touring in support of her sophomore release, Zagg, a record dotted through with poetic witticisms and daubed in strings and horns—a gritty pocket of the sun-stained California mystic continuum somewhere between Nilsson Schmilsson and Have One on Me. While she’d been writing songs for the eventual follow-up on the road, it took that winged messenger to crack open the new world Cohen aimed to explore. Before the moth, Cohen had been focused on Meryl Streep, a master of the pratfall. “When you see it, you gasp and hold your breath because it’s so violent that you worry it’s real. You want to look away but you can’t, not until she gets up,” Cohen says. “And when she does finally jump up and say ‘tah-da,’ you’re so relieved that it was all just a bit that you burst out laughing.” Cohen knew her album would embody that anxious, unbelievable, uncomfortable interim where the pain of the fall and the magic of the rise each hold equal potential yet to be realized.
On “Pratfall”, Cohen renders both extremes of that range of experience in warm, inviting indie pop. A prime example comes in lead single “Moonstruck”, a Fleetwood Mac-esque wash of acoustics, thundering tom-toms, and sepia piano. “I’ve had some trouble sticking my landing/ So if you need someone to understand you, I understand,” she breathes, before the song churns through pained urges. “Get the knife,” she repeats, spinning electric guitar surrounding the listener like the eye of the storm. Like the Ten of Swords in a tarot deck, pinned down by a plethora of blades, Cohen found herself stuck in a present of sharp edges, a moment left behind before the lessons and rebirth.
“People so desperately want to gloss over these in-between moments because they’re mortal and uncomfortable, full of uncertainty and helplessness,” Cohen says. “But we have to sit with the ruins, be shredded apart for a second as we gather and take stock of what remains.”
Because of the record’s pandemic origins, Cohen was only aided in studio by two collaborators: her husband, producer Jonathan Rado, and engineer Rias Reed. “We were a tight pod,” she laughs. The three musicians holed up at Sonora Recorders in Los Angeles, tapping into the studio’s vaulted ceilings and haunted feeling to amplify Cohen’s widescreen song writing. “Elliott Smith recorded some stuff there,” she says, “and it always seemed like there was a ghost banging around in there, turning lights on and off.”
In addition to its pedigree, Sonora Recorders was also just a 30-minute drive from the San Fernando Valley where Cohen and Rado had grown up. Paying tribute to that upbringing, “The Valley” acts as the record’s second single, a slice of golden Americana and the most autobiographical song in Cohen’s catalogue. Surrounded by sterling strings and propulsive percussion, Cohen’s vocals have never sounded more focused. “Don’t you know/ No I know you know/ You never leave the valley,” she soars, that certainty at once a promise and a threat, as the six-minute epic unravels.
In addition to studio hauntings and their childhood glowing in the rearview, Cohen and Rado steeped themselves in films from the past few decades while recording . “There was always a movie playing,” Rado recalls. “We got stuck on Vanilla Sky and Eternal Sunshine for a long time, and they’re both about changing memories, with a lot of movement backwards and forwards.”
Third single “Ghost Story” recaptures that self-immolating moth in its self-destruction—as well as Cohen’s perseverance in finding a way to rise up out of her own personal ashes.
A tale of hidden flasks, raw elbows, bondage bars, and fraud, the track shows Cohen’s innate ability to parse perfectly sketched short stories in undeniable indie pop glory. “He tells me I’m the best ghost story he’s ever had,” she calls, before the song explodes into a fireworks show of cymbals and needling guitar.
“I didn’t want to write a dirge inspired by the darkest moments of my life, I wanted a cathartic moment, to experience the emotion and build from it,” Cohen says. “This record is a climax where everything becomes explosive and you can just close your eyes, give in, and dance it off.”
Released September 22nd, 2022 “Pratfall” out now via Earth Libraries
“demo’s” is a new and ongoing project by Du Blonde where, alongside her regular albums, she will drop tracks unintended for professional release. These will include demos, unreleased tracks, instrumentals, experiments and more.
The idea for “demo’s” came about after a period of illness in which Du Blonde found herself becoming too much of a perfectionist to complete projects. In order to get back to the place of fun and spontaneity she had experienced at the beginning of her career, she decided releasing unfinished tracks, recorded, mixed and mastered in a matter of days, would bring her relationship with creating music back to a more grounded and light hearted place.
I’ve just released a new edition to demo’s. This is a track I wrote last night called ‘On The Upswing’. More of a true demo than “Live Wire” was, just a simple iPhone recording. Nowadays I tend to demo straight into Logic, hence the multiple instrumental arrangements on Live Wire (that software makes layering easy), but the new house I’ve moved into isn’t set up for recording yet so my acoustic travel guitar and my phone were all I had. I’m planning to do some more like this as it’s much more akin to the way I used to track new songs.
All tracks are written, recorded, engineered, mixed and mastered by Du Blonde, with occasional help from Fred St-Gelais.
released May 20th, 2022
Written, recorded, engineered, mixed and mastered by Du Blonde
Hand Habits aka Meg Duffy shares two new tracks “Greatest Weapon” and “Under the Water” with the latter featuring long time pal Amelia Meath on lead vocals.
Psychic Hotline, the record label formed by Sylvan Esso, has a stellar single series in the works. They’ve already shared original tracks from Ethan Gruska with Bon Iver, Uwade, Flock of Dimes, Anjimile, and Bartees Strange with FINOM (f.k.a. OHMME) and Eric Slick.
Meg Duffy’sHand Habits project shared a new set of singles titled “Greatest Weapon” and “Under the Water,” the latter featuring Sylvan Esso’s own Amelia Meath on lead vocals.
“Greatest Weapon” is a propulsive tune that combines a web of banjo plucks with Duffy’s echoey vocals. The song was crafted with Ethan Gruska and recorded in his home studio in Los Angeles, featuring Sylvan Esso’s Meath and Nick Sanborn on background vocals. According to Duffy, it’s about “coming to grips with the dance of time.”
In addition to taking lead vocals on the second single, Meath also penned “Under the Water.” She explained, “I wrote it all in one go. Learning how to hold my head underwater when I was a kid was a moment of independence that I hadn’t been expecting—all of the sudden I was able to be completely alone in the pool, even when I was surrounded by people.”
