Molina has dedicated his solo career to various guitar-pop sounds “In the Fade” is where you’ll find them all, The California-born songwriter started out in DIY hardcore bands, and took to releasing bite-sized power-pop tunes as a solo artist over a decade ago.
Amid acclaim for his restrained 2018 album “Kill The Lights”, one particular notion stuck in Tony Molina’s craw. “I kept hearing: ‘Oh, he’s maturing, he’s getting into other shit, writing more mature stuff,” he recalls in press materials. “I thought, ‘Man, that’s kinda lame, no I’m not … ’” As if to prove that his older sounds weren’t “immature,” and that he owns every style he’s explored across his singular career, the micro-pop iconoclast made “In The Fade”.
His longest record yet at 18 minutes, it encompasses the power-pop fuzz of “Dissed and Dismissed” and the swaggering guitar-monies of Ovens, It was with Ovens that Molina found his voice as a songwriter as well as the ‘60s acoustic-folk flourishes of “Confront theTruth” and “Kill the Lights”, all tied together with the unerring ear for melody and wry humour that define Molina’s solo output. Simply put, it’s an album that only Tony Molina could make, made on no one’s terms but his.
Back in June, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs announced their first album in nearly a decade, “Cool It Down”The announcement was joined by the gorgeous and sombre single “Spitting Off the Edge of the World” in collaboration with Perfume Genius.
“‘Burning’ is a song about that feeling, smoke signals for the soul. Begging to cool it down, just doing it the best we know how. Nick and I nodded to Frankie Valli’s ‘Begging,’ with the line ‘oooh lay your red hand on me baby.’ We’ve cut a rug to many a soulful sixties bangers in our day, it was in our DNA by the time we wrote ‘Burning,'” Karen O said of the single.
“Back when I was 19 living in the East Village, one night a roommate dragged me out of the apartment for an impromptu drink across the street,” Karen O shared in a statement. “I left a votive candle burning on a plastic Yaffa block which in my absence set flame to my room. Within an hour and a half of having one drink down the block firefighters had come and gone extinguishing the fire, I came home to find that a natural disaster had occurred (to my room) and most of my stuff, lost in the flames. All electronic goods were melted and demolished like my laptop, cameras, etc., but oddly enough the items that held the most sentimental value remained intact like sketchbooks, a favourite sweater with hearts across the chest, and photographs. I had photos of my parents in their youth where the fire burnt around the two of them as if there was some intangible force field protecting them, many photos like that, mysteriously leaving the beloved subjects untouched.”
She continued: “If the world is on fire I hope the most beloved stay protected and that we do all we can to protect what we cherish most in this life. ‘Burning’ is a song about that feeling, smoke signals for the soul. Begging to cool it down, just doing it the best we know how. Nick [Zinner] and I nodded to Frankie Valli’s ‘Begging,’ with the line, ‘Oooh, lay your red hand on me, baby.’ We’ve cut a rug to many a soulful ’60s banger in our day, it was in our DNA by the time we wrote ‘Burning.’”
Secretly Canadian Records It’s the second single from the trio’s forthcoming album “Cool It Down“, which is out September 30th.
The Los Angeles-based three-piece band and design collective Julie has shared two new tracks, “pg.4 a picture of three hedges” and “through your window” The tracks mark the first official release from the shoegaze group since their independently released 2021 EP “Pushing Daisies“. Despite the band’s DIY ethos, they have garnered a bit of a cult following, with standouts like “flutter” amassing thousands of streams. Julie seems to exist on the edge of a knife, the threat of ferocity laying dormant until the moment comes for them to cut deep.
There’s a sustained tension on “pg.4 a picture of three hedges” that crescendos after the should-be-sweet confession, “I like it when you smile.” Instead, the song cliff-jumps into an abyss of blistering, overdrive-drenched guitars and razor-sharp basslines.
London’s High Vis reject comfortable numbness on the latest single from their forthcoming sophomore album “Blending” “Trauma Bonds.” The powerful song is our fourth preview of “Blending” after “Talk for Hours,” “Fever Dream” and the title track. ”‘Trauma Bonds’ was written after the news of another tragic suicide of one of our friends during lockdown,” frontperson Graham Sayle explains in a statement. “It forced us to reflect on how the death of young people had become so normalized within our group of friends that we had become numb to it.
‘Trauma bonds” was written after the news of another tragic suicide of one of our friends during lockdown. It forced us to reflect on how the death of young people had become so normalised within our group of friends that we had become numb to it. Friendships became Trauma Bonds and the gravity of these situations suppressed through toxic coping mechanisms. The song is a hopeful exploration into these feelings in an attempt to support each other through better communication and collective empathy.‘
High Vis are Sayle (vocals), Martin Macnamara (guitar), Rob Hammeren (guitar), Rob Moss (bass) and Edward “Ski” Harper (drums)—deliver that call to emotional arms through anthemic, deceptively complex rock, with hints of shoegaze, post-punk and jangle-pop in its mix. The force of their performances batters down your inner barriers and lets the feeling flow out, but Sayle’s hooky vocal is more circumspect about what it takes to defeat apathy: “I wish I could say / Something sane to wash away / And annihilate the trauma that we save,” he laments before spotting a light at the end of that tunnel: “It might just take just one / Reason inside to carry on / Or something sharp to cut these trauma bonds.”
“Blending” albumrelease September 9th Dais Records,
“This is a song to listen to when you’re confused about somebody’s intent in a relationship,” says Disq’sIsaac deBroux-Slone of the group’s heartland rock-leaning new single. “It started as a sort of ‘British invasion’ vibe but I wanted to take it in a more interesting direction. The feeling of the song is longing and I thought some of the wistful chords and moods from the plethora of ‘90s and 2000’s indie I’d been listening to at the time would fit just right, so I pulled those influences in. The band and I fleshed it out into something close to its current state after I had the initial idea in the Summer of 2020 but something was still missing… It felt ‘boring’ to me so I had my friend Matthew Sanborn come over and help me figure out some new chords to insert into the middle of the song. I added the synth guitar solo over it all and what we now internally refer to as the ‘freak out’ section was born.
We attempted to inject as many nostalgic moments and sonic sighs into ‘If Only’ as we could. Hopefully the results tug on your heartstrings.”
Though initially formed as an extension of the lifelong friendship between guitarist Isaac DeBroux-Slone and bassist Raina Bock, Disq has evolved into a far more democratic and egalitarian organization, as “Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet” finds guitarists Logan Severson and Shannon Conor splitting singing and song writing duties with the aforementioned DeBroux-Slone and Bock. Such an approach could have easily fallen into the trap of “satisfying everyone, pleasing no one,” resulting in committee-approved music devoid of any personality or rough edges, but happily, the opposite is true.
Pushing play on “Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet”, it is easy to imagine that it is the year 1998, and your cool older sister has returned from her freshman year at college only to hand you the sort of mind-altering mixtape out of which lifelong rock fanatics are born. It is the sort of record Beck might have made in his prime, if you swapped out the hip-hop and delta blues of Odelay for midwestern emo, Scottish power-pop, and the sort of all-American indie that functions as “classic rock” for this cherubic cohort.
Wrangling a melange of styles such as this is no simple task, but the record is held together by the powerful yet nimble rhythm section of Bock and drummer Stu Manley, whose muscular and hyperactive playing alternately keeps these adventurous compositions tethered firmly to the Earth and sends them soaring into stratosphere. Producer Matt Schuessler (the recording engineer of Collector making the most of his promotion) rarely lets a verse or chorus go by without adding some new sonic sparkle, keeping the arrangements an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of textures and moods. If there is a record in 2022 which squeezes more ideas into 41 minutes, then that record could surely only be the unlistenable mess that “Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet” avoids becoming so deftly.
Things being how they are in the world today, the idea of finding “someplace quiet” feels like an increasingly remote possibility, and the act of imagining such a place does, indeed, feel more and more desperate. Listening to Disq navigate the myriad twists and turns of their new album can feel akin to an attempted processing of our endless poly-crisis, where each new catastrophe and atrocity jostle for position at the top of the timeline. With their new album, Disq take a valiant stand against the temptation of complacency. As for that “someplace quiet?” It will have to wait… it’s about to get loud in here.
Disq’s new album, Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet, is out October 7th via Saddle Creek Records.
Blues legend Buddy Guy will release his 34th studio album, “The Blues Don’t Lie”. It’s a guest-heavy affair with appearances from the likes of Mavis Staples, Elvis Costello, and James Taylor. And on new single “Gunsmoke Blues,” Guy duets with the alt-country mainstay turned Hollywood favourite Jason Isbell, who has enjoyed quite the glow-up in recent years.
“Gunsmoke Blues” is a classically minded blues-rocker. Lyrically, it’s a sadly current lament about school shootings in America, one that finds Guy and Isbell taking turns with the line, “A million thoughts and prayers won’t bring back anyone.” Despite the grim subject matter, Isbell is elated to be on a track with Guy: “Can’t imagine a higher honour,” he wrote on Twitter, “and it’s a great song too.”
The Blues Don’t Lie is out 30th September on RCA/Silvertone.
After announcing their fifth album “Palomino” earlier this week, First Aid Kit have shared a new single from the record titled “Out of My Head”.
“Out of My Head” is the opening song on First Aid Kit’s “Palomino” album, and will appear on the record with their earlier June outing “Angel”.
First Aid Kit say of the new single, which is teamed with a Jason Lester-directed video, “We wrote this song last year together with songwriter and producer Björn Yttling. It was the first time we wrote for FirstAid Kit song with someone else and it was very inspiring. The song was written in the spur of the moment, almost like a stream of consciousness. It’s about feeling stuck inside your own thoughts and desperately wanting to escape. We produced the song with Daniel Bengtson in Stockholm. It has a bit of a different sound from our previous songs. We wanted the production to feel like an old rock song from the 80s. We were inspired by Fleetwood Mac, Kate Bush and Tom Petty.
This is one of our favourite songs we’ve ever written, we’re so proud of it and are so excited to finally get to share it.” “Palomino” will follow First Aid Kit’s 2018 album “Ruins“, and was written and recorded in Sweden with producer Daniel Bengtson.
“This is the first record we’ve recorded in Sweden since we made our debut album “The Big Black & The Blue” 12 years ago,” First Aid Kit explain. “We worked with Swedish producer Daniel Bengtson at his lovely studio Studio Rymden in Stockholm. It was such a fun experience. We really let the recording take time, we didn’t want to rush it.”
They add, “The songs were mostly written during the pandemic. In such dark times, music felt like an escape from all the horrible things going on in the world. We wanted this album to feel more upbeat and cheerful than our previous album Ruins, which was a break-up record. It’s probably our most pop sounding record yet. The title is a reference to freedom, learning how to stand on your own two feet. Growing older and feeling more comfortable in your own skin. Riding off on a “Palomino!”
“Out of My Head” is out now. First Aid Kit’s Palomino album will be released on 4th November via Columbia Records,
Brooklyn duo The Vacant Lots are releasing their new single ‘Thank You’, Following recent cut ‘Chase’, it’s the second track to be lifted from Jared Artaud and Brian MacFadyen’s new ‘Closure’ LP, out September 30th on Fuzz ClubRecords.
Disco on downers dance beats lashed with gutter-rock guitar riffs underpin the new album’s opening track, with evocatively concise and lacerating lyrics delivered detached and deadpan. “When it’s over it’s a lot easier to look back and see things for what it is. To look back and see the duality of love and hate in a relationship. Sometimes it’s a lot more devastating losing the time you had than the person you thought you loved. Nothing is worse than wasting your time.” (Jared Artaud).
‘Closure’ is available to pre-order now, with exclusive vinyl editions from the Fuzz Club store, Rough Trade and LEVITATION! Catch The Vacant Lots on tour in the US/CA with The Black Angels in Sep/Oct and in the UK/EU over Nov/December
‘Thank You’ is the new single from Brooklyn synth-pop/post-punk duo THE VACANT LOTS and is lifted from the band’s new ‘Closure’ LP, out September 30th on Fuzz Club Records.
Californian ‘Kosmische Tropicale’ duo Wet Satin are releasing their self-titled debut album today A new project from former Lumerians members Jason Miller and Marc Melzer, the Wet Satin LP is now available to stream. Wet Satin describe the record as “an expression of reverence and enthusiasm growing from a long-time shared obsession with lost Cosmic Disco, Cumbia, Afrofunk and Library Music records.” Miller adds: “Music has the ability to alter your environment and take you somewhere else.
We genuinely had a lot of fun writing and recording this. The process fell somewhere in between over-indulgence and necessary catharsis, but it achieved a kind of balance in the end. It’s a travel brochure for a very specifically peculiar psychological terrain. We think you’ll have fun there. Try the hot springs.”
“WitchKraft Singles” is the first track we released back in April, but we didn’t have a Facebook page then. Forgot anybody lived here. Sorry about that. Here’s a pretty video. You can listen to the whole song on that app or site you like to listen to songs on and if it tickles your fancy
The single “Golden Prawn” is a surreal science fiction odyssey, powered by oxygen deprivation, that takes place at the bottom of a swimming pool.
A fortnight plus an Icelandic work week ago, we released the second track off our upcoming S/T full length out August 12th on pepto-bismol pink vinyl and sherbet splatter vinyl (Fuzz Club and Levitation respectively). Coloured Tongues. Everybody has one, except Rona De Ricci in the 1991 version of The Pit and the Pendulum with Jeffery Combs that I probably shouldn’t have watched on TV as a kid.
The album arrives on 180g baby pink vinyl and is included in the August Fuzz Club Membership package. LEVITATION also have an exclusive splatter version available in the US!
Lumerians Members Jason Miller and Marc Melzer, Wet Satin was the name of a reality-altering psychotropic sunscreen from a Philip K Dick novel read in a dream.
Rat Tally (Addy Harris) Writing sad music for sad people. Or happy people. Or whoever.
Hailing from Chicago (by way of LA and Boston), Rat Tally emerged in 2019 with an impressively fully formed sound on her self-released debut EP, ‘When You Wake Up’. The release quickly caught the attention of 6131 Records (Julien Baker, Joyce Manor, Katie Malco), who were eager to work with the young, yet clearly very talented musician. Sitting in corner of indie rock ruled by the likes of Soccer Mommy and Phoebe Bridgers. Despite its relatively modest scope, there’s a bit of a post-rock undercurrent to the song, a sense of crushing heaviness and grandeur threatening to break free. That makes it a good fit for Rat Tally’s new record on label 6131 Records,
A new project from former Lumerians members Jason Miller and Marc Melzer, the Wet Satin LP is now available to stream. Wet Satin describe the record as “an expression of reverence and enthusiasm growing from a long-time shared obsession with lost Cosmic Disco, Cumbia, Afrofunk and Library Music records.” Miller adds: “Music has the ability to alter your environment and take you somewhere else. 
