There are many things we can reasonably expect from our musical heroes: wild thrills, profound insights. Drama. Epiphanies. Transcendence. Their skills as life coaches, however, can be a bit more hit and miss.
As in so many things, though, Patti Smith is an exception that proves the rule. At 75, she stands apart as a rock’n’roll icon whose ability to connect a devotion to art with a practical existence remains inspirational. “I realised, very early on, that there’s always a million reasons to live,” she tells MOJO’s Andrew Male, in a series of intimate and significant interviews that make up our cover story this month.
“I saw, as Allen Ginsberg would say, some of the best minds of my generation lose their life over accidents, mistakes, carelessness or tragedy. I just decided as a teenager that I wasn’t going to be addicted to anything, except perhaps art and love.”
This month, then, we present a kind of History Of Patti Smith In 100 Objects; a gently instructive guide to living one’s best life that involves Ginsberg and Dylan , Burroughs and Stipe , Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith’s Mosrite guitar and Patti’s own boots.
TOMBERLIN – ” i don’t know who needs to hear this… “
Posted: June 20, 2022 in MUSICTags: i don’t know who needs to hear this…, singer songwriter, Tomberlin
Tomberlin’s second full length album, “i don’t know who needs to hear this…”, documents struggles with identity, belonging, and isolation. These are timely topics that she tackles with a dose of empathy with an eye towards experimenting with different musical styles. One of the finest practitioners of this sparse musicality is Sarah Beth Tomberlin, who performs under her surname. Her 2018 debut album “At Weddings” drew comparisons to ambient icons like Grouper and staples of contemporary indie like Julien Baker. Her new album, is grander than anything she’s done before
In spite of the album’s strongest passages, at its beginning and, then again, most of the way through, “i don’t know” is assembled in such a way as to echo times of confidence against those of feeling lost that can leave the listener in a confounding spot.
Recorded in Brooklyn with producer Philip Weinrobe, known for his work with Adrienne Lenker and Buck Meek, the record features contributions from Shahzad Islamly and Told Slant’s Felix Walworth. Where “At Weddings” was written without a goal in mind and carries that homespun air,
With Tomberlin’s past recordings planted firmly in the indie camp, it’s encouraging to see her go down some different paths. Especially given that’s where the album captures most of its magic. “Wasted” from the 2020-released “Projections” EP gave a flavour of what “i don’t know” explores more fully, with backing beat tracks that favour In Rainbows-era Radiohead entering right at the offset on album opener “easy.” The following track, “born again runner,” deals with the scars of an evangelical upbringing. Though not an uncommon topic, Tomberlin’s investment of the personal here, along with the commingling of pedal steel and synth drones, makes for one of the album’s most grounded moments. Completing one of “i don’t know’s” strongest passages, “tap” benefits from the contrast of fidgety percussive beats and a laconic, nearly spoken word vocal.
The middle passage of the album is marred by a lack dynamic range which may mirror feelings of hopelessness, but culminates in the low key snark of “collect caller.” The song’s title makes for an antiquated reference to a freeloader who has a habit of “disappearing from the table before the bill is paid,” but as with the songs that come immediately before, the track drifts by unaided by a jazzy sax line. Though the transition is a touch jarring, the energy boost from the following “stoned” and “happy accident” make for a welcome reprieve. Tomberlin pushes her vocals to their most strident and highest range, which elicits a true sense of frustration. “I wanna die, when you say don’t cry,” she retaliates on “happy accident.” The song’s bent notes and corrosive synths make for a clear highlight and recall Sharon Van Etten’s push into different sonic territories.
Tomberlin’s most open hearted vocals benefit the closing two songs, but the energy level is brought back to the album’s middle, along with another lethargic sax solo to close things out. I don’t know’s initial singles—the acronym-styled title track, “tap,” and “happy accident”—ultimately provide the album’s road map. The further experimentation of “tap” and the display of raw emotion on “happy accident” prove more successful than “i don’t know’s” more down tempo moments, even when those mirror the album’s themes more closely.
Co-produced alongside Sarah Tudzin of Illuminati Hotties, Lou’s debut full-length ‘Pure Chaos’ arrives April 29th via Balloon Machine. ‘Pure Chaos’ is Lou’s take on our futile yet unavoidable attempt to give meaning to the chaos of life. Emblematic of her ‘all-in’ personality, it is a vibrant collection that shines with humour, invention and a peacock swagger.
Lead single, ‘Uppercut’ perhaps best symbolises the album concept. During the truly exultant chorus, Lou pledges to “have fun, even when we’re back on earth as pond scum”.
This commitment to seeking out joy, which not only informs ‘Uppercut’ but every aspect of ‘Pure Chaos’, comes from Lou’s admiration for Las Vegas.
Speaking about it she said: “Las Vegas is the funniest, sweetest thing we could have done as humans. I acknowledge that it’s fucked up but it started with us being in the middle of the desert and asking, ‘What do we like? Games, nudity, lights and money’ and making a playground out of that. It’s hedonism at it’s finest and while it may have failed spectacularly, the initial endeavour was fucking awesome.”
This spirit of Las Vegas also helped Lou find pleasure in life’s unpredictability. While it may be human nature to apply a narrative thread to life, ‘Pure Chaos’ thrives in its inconclusivity and spontaneity. With very little warning it transports us from lesbian desert sex parties to ‘a late night Fred’s’ – Lou’s local takeaway – with fast-friends ‘Mads, Sarah, Brian and Ren’.
This chaos also comes through in the urgent-genre shifts which move unrelentingly from short skits to acoustic balladry to acapella chants, and the unique instrument selections which see a bottle become the chief percussive instrument on previously released single ‘Valkyrie’ and the rustle of a Snickers wrapper feature in a similarly principal role on album-track ‘Big Anvil’.
Lou’s humour, warmth and filth shouts out unapologetically from every sentence of ‘Pure Chaos’, indeed it’s hard to think of an album that represents its creator more. Though shame may have followed such admissions previously, ‘Pure Chaos’ is the sound of an artist owning every ounce of her being and revelling in it with utter abandon.
Released April 22nd, 2022
All songs written & performed by Lou Roy
Caracara have been pushing their sound forward ever since their 2017 debut “Summer Megalith”. Working around the parameters of what they’ve aptly described as “distorted emotional music,” 2019’s “Better” EP saw them collaborating with Grammy-nominated producer Will Yip, who also produced the band’s sophomore LP, “New Preoccupations“, which delivers the same level of excitement and drama on a much bigger scale, as unabashed in its reverence for ‘90s alt-rock as it is in integrating more unusual
For bands making “distorted emotional music,” at least – electronic influences. With its varied palette, the record brings to light singer/guitarist Will Lindsay’s relationship with alcohol, reflecting his sobriety in gratifying ways as much as it evokes rapturous experiences from the past. While “New Preoccupations” embraces a more mellow, at times hazier sound, it also makes way for catharsis with a post-hardcore outro where Lindsay screams, “I’m finally free to let go!” Whichever way you choose to look at it – and Lindsay argues the moment is no more about him than it is about everyone else – there’s no doubt it feels like a gift.
released March 25th, 2022
Caracara is:
Sean Gill
George Legatos
William Lindsay
Carlos Pacheco-Perez
“New Preoccupations” – our new album, available everywhere 3/25/22 on Memory Music.
Australian singer/songwriter Julia Jacklin is releasing a new album, “Pre Pleasure”, on August 26th via Polyvinyl Records. Jacklin has shared its second single, “I Was Neon,” via a self-directed video for the song.
“I first wrote ‘I Was Neon’ for a band called rattlesnack, a short-lived much loved 2019 side project that I played drums in,” Jacklin says in a press release. “I rewrote it for my album during a time when I was desperately longing for a version of myself that I feared was gone forever. I was thinking of this song when I made the album cover, this song is the album cover really.”
“Pre Pleasure” will be Jacklin’s third album and the follow-up to 2019’s acclaimed “Crushing” and the debut 2016’s “Don’t Let the Kids Win”. The album was written after the end of the world tour for “Crushing” and was concluded with several months of recording in Montreal with co-producer Marcus Paquin. “The songs on this record took either three years to write or three minutes,” Jacklin said in a previous press release announcing the album.
Members of Jacklin’s tour band—bassist Ben Whiteley and guitarist Will Kidman, who are both based in Canada and also in The Weather Station—played on “Pre Pleasure” as do drummer Laurie Torres and saxophonist Adam Kinner. Owen Pallett (Arcade Fire) provided the string arrangements, which were recorded by a full orchestra in Prague.
“Making a record to me has always just been about the experience, a new experience in a new place with a new person at the desk, taking the plunge and just seeing what happens,” said Jacklin. “For the first time I stepped away from the guitar, and wrote a lot of the album on the Roland keyboard in my apartment in Montreal with its inbuilt band tracks. I blu-tacked reams of butcher paper to the walls, covered in lyrics and ideas, praying to the music gods that my brain would arrange everything in time.”
Seemingly referencing the album’s title, “Pre Pleasure” Jacklin said: “A lot of the time I feel like I need to do all the work before I can enjoy my life. Whether that’s work on songs or sex, friendships, or my relationship with my family – I think if I work on them long and hard enough, eventually I’ll get to sit around and really enjoy them. But that’s not how anything works is it. It’s all an ongoing process.”
Following her huge Crushing tour, Jacklin spent some time reconnecting with music and finding her way back to the joy of listening. “Once music becomes your job, you can lose the purity of music fandom,” she explained. “I spent the last two years trying to reconnect with that. I didn’t play much, I just listened. Especially to a lot of big pop music like Céline Dion, Robyn and Luther Vandross—music that wasn’t so heavy, big feelings, big production. You lose sight of what putting on a big, beautiful song can do.”
Céline Dion was particularly important, with the Canadian singer’s 1996 hit “Because You Loved Me” being a favourite of Jacklin’s dad. She says that revisiting the song in 2020, “brought back a lot of nice, uncomplicated feelings about music. Pure joy and feeling. And as someone relatively introverted and trying to be cool, Céline was a good person for me to lock onto during this period, because she’s definitely not that. She’s dramatic as hell and incredibly cheesy. I think listening to her helped me get over myself.” If you look closely in the “Lydia Wears a Cross” video, Céline Dion is the background photo on Jacklin’s phone.
Of the themes on the new album, Jacklin said: “I care so much about the people around me, so much it makes me want to sleep forever, it feels so overwhelming. I wasn’t raised in an environment where language was used to express love and care, part of my song writing process is me trying to rectify that, force myself to put words to those feelings”
Enumclaw from Tacoma, Washington, have announced their long-awaited debut album with a great title, “Save the Baby“, due October 14th through Luminelle Recordings. Details of the band’s Gabe Wax-produced first full-length, the follow-up to their acclaimed 2021 EP “Jimbo Demo“,
Alongside a video for new single “Jimmy Neutron.” “This song is about getting so close to love that you can almost taste it,” frontman Aramis Johnson explains in a statement. “All the highs of being in love and how ridiculously unlike yourself it can make you act. All the day dreaming you do about what things could be and how they might go. There’s always a catch, though, and in this story as soon as you reach out to grab ‘love’ and have it in your hands, you drop it.” “Jimmy Neutron” opens with some convivial band chatter before Ladaniel Gipson’s drumbeat cues Johnson and Nathan Cornell’s dialled-in guitars, with Eli Edwards’ (Johnson’s younger brother) thrumming bass completing a pretty sonic picture.
The song’s hooky central riff as Johnson’s vocal performance, his smoothest and most self-assured to date: “I want to fall in love / But I don’t think I can have it / Every time I get close to you / I start to panic,” he sings, steadfast despite being trapped in that emotional liminal space. The track confirms what we’ve believed since Enumclaw first burst onto the scene with “Fast N All” last year:
Their long-awaited debut album, “Save the Baby“, coming October 14th on Luminelle Recordings.
“A Face In Your Life”, the third full-length from Boston power trio Pet Fox, featuring vocalist/guitarist Theo Hartlett (Ovlov), bassist Morgan Luzzi (Ovlov) and drummer Jesse Weiss (ex-Palehound, Grass Is Green), is a difficult album to summarize. Like a perfect skipping stone, its smooth seamlessness defies description—it just feels right in the palm of your hand. The band tracked their follow-up to 2018’s Pet Fox and 2019’s “Rare Occasion” live in a room in Somerville, Massachusetts, with production from New Alliance Audio’s Ethan Dussault and mixing by Seth Engel.
It’s a 10-track half-hour of pristine pop-rock, at turns subdued (“Settle Even”) and hard-charging (“It Won’t Last”), but always effortlessly melodic, and casting a far longer sonic shadow than that of your average trio. Hartlett delivers clipped, koan-esque lyrics (“Checked off, checked out,” “Only warning, only wanting”), yet his vocals are full of feeling, as if in an effort to show and not tell. Pet Fox invite you in and offer a vessel for your interiority, rather than laying out their own; “A Face In Your Life” peoples your solitude without pushing you aside. How many other rock records can say the same?
released June 17th, 2022
Theo Hartlett: Guitar and Vocals
Morgan Luzzi: Bass
Jesse Weiss: Drums
All songs written by Pet Fox
“Checked Out” is the first single from Pet Fox’s new album, “A Face In Your Life,” due out June 17th on Exploding In Sound Records.
Horse Jumper of Love have a knack for picking up on the everyday magic that most people overlook. Their new album, “Natural Part”, finds the significance in the smallest details that you usually wouldn’t think twice about. On the follow-up to 2019’s “So Divine”, the Boston-based band continue to provoke profound emotion through obscure imagery and pensive slowcore. When working on “Natural Part“, guitarist/vocalist Dimitri Giannopoulos decided to switch up his usual writing process.
Through the record’s intricate instrumentation and heart-wrenching recollections, it’s clear that while Horse Jumper still have the same esoteric takes as earlier releases such as “Orange Peeler,” they also give themselves space to branch out, both sonically and lyrically.
There’s a space between literal and abstract where art often resides, and few bands excel at navigating that surreal territory more deftly than Horse Jumper of Love. On their third full-length, “Natural Part“, the Boston-based three-piece revels in the act of grasping at something that can’t be held, smudging the lines between rich details, hazy memories, vivid moments, and intangible feelings to create their most captivating record to date.
Sonically, “Natural Part” feels even more expansive than anything Horse Jumper of Love have done before, which is no small feat for a band whose music has often hinged on billowing guitars and roomy drums. Opener “Snakeskin” gently welcomes the listener with an enveloping atmosphere, before a sharply angled guitar riff in the towering second track “Ding Dong Ditch” fractures the aura. Familiar influences like Duster and David Berman can still be heard throughout, but new elements like cello—performed by Emily Dicks Thomas and inspired by both Nirvana’s unplugged album and listening to Oasis’ “Wonderwall” in preparation for a Halloween cover set)—add different textures to the band’s reverberating sound.
A sense of mystery and the inevitability of change permeates much of The Natural Part, with vocalist / guitarist Dimitri Giannapoulos often capturing snapshots that take note of a flickering feeling in the mundane, and then letting his imagination expand it into something profound. It’s those kinds of details that makes “Natural Part” such a compelling listen. It’s an album planted firmly in small moments that feel big: the unexpected flashes that somehow feel authentic and esoteric all at once, and cut through our busy lives to ground us in something that seems meaningful—even if we can’t fully articulate why.
“…undoubtedly their best release… “Natural Part” is a triumph of dogged proportions, an unfaltering evolution of angular slowcore into enveloping indie pop.” – WBUR
“Sitting on the Porch at Night” by Horse Jumper of Love out now via Run for Cover Records.
