Mitski makes a daring return with “Working for the Knife,” a new single/video and the announcement of a spring 2022 North American tour. “Working for the Knife” surges with synth and a syncopated beat, driven by Mitski’s tenor and production by longtime collaborator Patrick Hyland. “It’s about going from being a kid with a dream, to a grown up with a job, and feeling that somewhere along the way you got left behind. It’s being confronted with a world that doesn’t seem to recognize your humanity, and seeing no way out of it,” explains Mitski.
The video, filmed at The Egg in Albany, NY and directed by Zia Anger with Ashley Connor directing photography, presents a performer returning to the same cruel world that gave birth to her. Mitski’s dedication to both sonic and physical presentation is on full display — every muscle is activated and purposeful, giving itself over to the story of the choreography. It’s dynamic and gritty with a new intensity we haven’t yet seen from Mitski.
“Working for the Knife” the new song by Mitski out now on Dead Oceans.
The magnificent second album by Epic Soundtracks is issued on vinyl for the first time. The original vinyl project was discontinued after Epic’s death. Insert with unseen pictures and liner notes by Chris Coleman.
“I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was playing in Koln, Germany when I heard “Sleeping Star” – I was so cynical about “new” music by then that it took a lot to catch my ear. But I was so enamoured of Epic’s blend of Todd Rundgren meets Carole King piano based ballads that I called Bar None the next day and made arrangements to release the CD in Europe…..you need to hear this, it’s the missing link between Pet Sounds and Big Star’s Third.” (Pat Thomas. Writer, musician and music archivist.)
Epic Soundtracks was the stage name of the British musician Kevin Paul Godfrey. Born in Croydon, Surrey, he was brought up in Solihull, Midlands with his brother Adrian Nicholas Godfrey, who was known as Nikki Sudden.
In 1972, Kevin and Adrian formed the nucleus of what was to become the post-punk rock group Swell Maps, with “Soundtracks” on drums and piano, and “Sudden” on guitar and vocals. Notable fans of Soundtracks‘ solo work include EvanDando and Thurston Moore. Dave Graney paid tribute to Soundtracks with the song “A Boy Named Epic”. The Brother Who Lived. Arthur Lee’s backing band, Baby Lemonade, paid tribute as well, with a song off their 2001 High Life Suite LP called,“Song for Epic”
“A laconic sweetness and oblique humor mixed with melancholy characterises Sleeping Star’s shaggy blue-eyed pop-soul, which is filled with echoes of Laura Nyro, Carole King and Wild Honey era Brian Wilson. He writes songs at the piano, fooling with chords until they suggest a lyric fragment. (Request magazine, 1995)
“Sleeping Star” is a more spare album than Rise Above adorned with haunting violin and cello. A devastating romantic break up inspired songs on both LPs” (Holly George Warren , Option magazine )
Epic Soundtracks later played drums for Crime & the City Solution and These Immortal Souls. In 1991, Soundtracks decided to focus on his own song writing career, and began the series of recordings that comprised his three solo records. As a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist he released three critically acclaimed solo albums, and two more were released posthumously.
Epic Soundtracks died in his sleep on 6th November 1997, at his flat in West Hampstead, London.
New Wave and power-pop greats The dB’s are releasing a double album of early demos, titled “I Thought You Wanted to Know”, that will be out October 15th via newly launched Propeller Sound Recordings. “What we have here are home and field recordings of the dB’s,” says the band’s Peter Holsapple. “Most of these tracks predate the release of “Stands for deciBels” by two to three years, and were the basis of the signing of the band to Albion Records UK in 1980.”
Many of The dB’s early classics are here in rawer form, with a few of them seeing the light for the first time ever; it’s also the first time most of them have ever been made available on vinyl. You can listen to the “NY Rocker Sessions” demo of “Bad Reputation” (which ended up on their 1981 debut)
dB’s member Chris Stamey just reissued The Robust Beauty of Improper Linear Models in Decision Making Vol 1 & 2 and is part of the upcoming live tribute to Big Star in NYC.
23 Tracks of Remastered Early Singles, Demos, and Live Recordings with insert or booklet.
“What we have here are home and field recordings of The dB’s. Most of these tracks predate the release of “Stands For Decibels” by two to three years and were the basis of the signing of the band to Albion Records (UK) in 1980. Some songs are being released to the public for the first time in this package. Now, almost thirty years after a number of these tracks first saw the light of day on Rhino Records, we find ourselves in the position of releasing the earliest of these selections from our archives to a whole new audience. It’s the first time most have been on vinyl. The live recordings were found after months of Chris sifting through a trove of ancient cassettes, and we are glad to be able to include these key songs from those early years.” – Peter Holsapple, The dB’s – Durham, NC – 2021
Bad Reputation (New York Rocker Sessions) · The dB’s Bad Reputation Holsapple Music / Lovolar Music BMI, admin. by Concord Music Publishing Released on: 2021-08-17
Really sad, heartbreaking news to report. Bobby Sutcliff of The Windbreakers has passed away tonight as Tim Lee posted. This breaks my heart. Not only was Bobby an amazing guy, but The Windbreakers (and his solo recordings) were cornerstones to my musical library. RIP Bobby – we love you and will never forget you!
Our heroes, The dB’S, are always lumped in with R.E.M. etc. in my truly humble opinion, R.E.M. can not even hold a candle to the shear brilliant songwriting of Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple ! Their entire catalog can’t even stack to say Black and white or From a window. I am so pro Sneakers/dB’S/solo stuff it’s not even funny.
Billy Joel has released an early version of his iconic song “New York State of Mind,” recorded live during a 1975 San Francisco performance.
This recording predates the official release of “New York State of Mind,” which would not occur until it appeared on Joel’s 1976 album, “Turnstiles”.
“We were all living in California in 1974-75,” Brian Ruggles, who was then Joel’s engineer and live sound producer, . “Billy was in Malibu and I was living in Hollywood. He’d been in California for a few years and was really homesick for New York. He wanted to get back there. His roots are in New York and he missed it a lot.
“He came up with the idea for the song as he rode — on the Hudson River Line, actually — to his house in Highland Falls, New York,” Ruggles added. “He wrote the song down when he got home. This was months before we recorded “Turnstiles.”
The live version will appear on Joel’s forthcoming box “The Vinyl Collection, Vol. 1“. The set arrives on November. 5th and includes an unreleased live album, “Live at the Great American Music Hall – 1975“, in addition to his first six LPs.
Joel can be heard making a few spontaneous quips while performing “New York State of Mind.” “That’s where John Denver is, I’ve heard,” he jokes after singing the line “Been high in the Rockies under the evergreens.” After rehearsing the song and performing it live, Joel decided to take a similar approach on the subsequent studio version.
“Billy liked the arrangement, so they recorded it that way on the album,” Ruggles said. “I remember that the recording truck was owned by the drummer of Creedence Clearwater Revival, and it was parked outside the Great American Music Hall. It was old-school recording, but we were able to put together a pretty good recording for this special release. It stands up really well after almost 46 years or so.”
Billy Joel’s 50 years as a songwriter, performer and recording artist has gifted the world with countless hits and classics.Celebrate his music with The Vinyl Collection, Vol. 1 — consisting of first six solo studio albums (‘Cold Spring Harbor,’ ‘Piano Man,’‘Streetlife Serenade,’ ‘Turnstiles,’ ‘The Stranger,’ ‘52nd Street’), his first live album (‘Songs in the Attic’) and an exclusive pressing of the previously unreleased ‘Live at The Great American Music Hall – 1975!’
With countless hits and influence that spans the globe Legacy will be highlighting Billy Joel’s catalogue for the remainder of the year, with a focus on his early career.
One aspect of the campaign will be The Vinyl Collection, Vol. 1, an 8 album (9-LP) boxset that includes Joel’s albums from the 1970s Also included is a previously unreleased live album, Live at The Great American Music Hall, which will only be available in the boxset.
Though Legacy Recordings insists its exclusive 1975 live disc in their new Billy Joel vinyl box set will not be available outside of the project, they’ve made two tracks from that set available digitally, and it makes us wish it was broken out from the expensive box. It’s one of the better Billy concerts we’ve sampled! (Check out this neat original promo video of “Everybody Loves You Now” the Billy camp has unearthed, too.)
The boxset includes a 50+ page booklet that highlights Joel’s early career through photos, quotes, and an essay. This project is a wonderful opportunity to remind core fans about Joel’s discography while capturing a new, younger audience, digitally. Recently Joel’s influence on Gen Z has been showcased through TikTok trend for “Zanzibar,” name-checked in Olivia Rodrigo’s smash “deja vu” lyrics I’ll bet that she knows Billy Joel / ‘Cause you played her Uptown Girl (co-writer and producer Dan Nigro wrote the line and is the Billy Joel fan) and sited as an influence for BTS’ “Butter” video. The physical product will be for Joel’s established fans,
Michigan-based multi-instrumentalist Laurel Premo plays American roots music on fiddle and banjo, but transfers those old tunes to electric guitar and lap steel guitar – reshaping and recasting them along the way. She joins us remotely to play songs from her latest, “Golden Loam”, for the Soundcheck Podcast.
Multi-instrumentalist Laurel Premo’s latest solo album, Golden Loam, out October 8th, 2021, presents original and traditional music voiced on finger-style electric guitar and lap steel. Perhaps by its most honest classification “roots guitar,” the sonic vocabulary of Golden Loam is informed by guitar’s antecedents in American traditions – fiddle and banjo, the rhythms, melody and intonation therein, as well as that music’s relationship to movement. Glowing, droning, tugging, scraping, revolving, Premo bears renewed electric dirt, the golden loam layered by centuries of folk.
Premo channels a stirring live performance while the saturated lights shine down. “This original guitar piece nods to sounds from a very specific fiddle tuning traditional to Norwegian hardanger fiddle music,” Premo says. “The tuning is FDAE, and is named “gorrlaus” which translates to “very loose” (referring to that lowest string being very low). There’s some mythology around a few of these hardanger fiddle tunings, involving a sort of sonic alchemy and thinning of the veil between the musician and supernatural forces. The gorrlaus melodies are also called ‘strong tunes’ and melodically can seem infinitely looping. The lore goes that the fiddler is endangering themselves of trance by entering in to this practice. I’ve performed this tune on a slack-tuned guitar to follow suit.
The meaning of my title here, “Ma’s Maw” is simply referring to some great throat of the earth herself. I’m certain it’s an awe-filled image I gained hiking on the sand dunes nearby my home here in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan, where there are mountains of sand on the edge of the Great Lake. Sneaking down into some sandy crater and being held in the basket of grizzled herbaceous dune plants seemed an inviting cradle to just go disappear into in 2020.”
“Golden Loam” was self produced and recorded during the pandemic lockdown of summer/fall 2020. The majority of the record is solo performance, but two featured collaborators are woven in to this embodied rhythmic collection. Percussive dancer Nic Gareiss (Michigan) and bones player Eric Breton (Quebec) are also highlighted.
The Brazen Youth are an indie folk-pop group from Connecticut who’ve just released a new EP called Changing. The leadoff track is a grand, slightly bittersweet song called “Hometown” that builds from a simple piano accompaniment to a full-on chorus with a cinematic arrangement. Unusually, the song doesn’t have a recognizable ABA (verse/chorus/verse) structure; the band chooses instead to repeat its “A” section several times, each time gaining momentum and emotional heft as the accompanying sound grows.
If there is one thing we can know for certain, it’s that change is uncertain. and we hope to stay well adjusted to change, but often cannot adjust fast enough. We are lucky to have experienced so much change together. Through the thick of the pandemic we bunkered down together at that farm and recorded something much more expansive than any project we’ve conquered in the past. And through that, we were not able to conquer change, but we were able to get through it. “Changing” EP is a piece of what we did last summer, and it explores the ways we had to adapt- leaving our adolescence, navigating a world of chaos,
Written by: Nicholas Lussier, Charles Dahlke, and Micah Rubin
Brooklyn trio Upper Wilds features Dan Friel (ex-Parts & Labor) on guitar, vocals, and effects, bassist Jason Binnick, and drummer Jeff Ottenbacher and is really exceptional at making fuzzy-noisy songs with big pop riffs, usually concealed within explosive sonic textures. They’ve now released the third in a series of albums about the planets, Venus, and the band is continuing their way further out as they go, planning to release a seven inch when they get to Pluto.
Friel confides that he’s still learning how to be a singer-songwriter after starting with interesting and possibly noisy textures. He prefers using the open tunings of Glenn Branca, tremolo picking, and effects that can ring and chime forever. Friel says that the lyrics just write themselves, themed around the planet named for the god of love, which also happens to be a “backwards-spinning hellscape that melts every camera we send there…”
Hear through the noise to the melodies as Upper Wilds plays very fast love songs from Venus, remotely from their practice space.
Squealy-fuzz noise-pop trio Upper Wilds throws down cathartic love songs with explosive sonic textures and insidiously catchy melodies. They play very fast songs from the album, ‘Venus,’ remotely from their Brooklyn practice space for the Soundcheck Podcast.
“Writing songs on guitar and being the front person for a band is a new thing for me,” admits Fortitude Valley front woman Laura Kovic, laughing “I’ve never been in charge before! ”With a musical restlessness setting in over the past few years during her time as the keyboard player of East London indie pop band Tigercats, Kovic might not be used to being the boss, but she doesn’t seem to be letting that get in the way. After experiencing writer’s block for a couple of years, she took the bull by the horns, as she explains, “Finally I bought a guitar in February 2018 to see if doing something different would help me…and it did!” Kovic cemented the band’s line up by recruiting mutual friend and bassist Greg Ullyart from Night Flowers, meeting bandmates Nathan Stephens Griffin (drums) and Daniel Ellis (lead guitar) of Martha/Onsind through their shared label home on now sadly-defunct indie bastion Fortuna POP!.
“I played in Mikey Collins’ band with Greg, but our first band together was a Blur cover band called Bleurgh…funnily enough, our first show was opening for Martha!” she recalls.
Named after an area of her home town in Brisbane, Australia, Fortitude Valley is a fitting moniker for the songwriter’s first outfit, who says: “It’s essentially the heart of the music scene in Brisbane, and it’s where I first played a show. As a place, it’s always had a special meaning to me.”
Combining elements of power-pop, indie-pop, pop punk and indie rock, their diverse approach takes influence from the likes of Weezer, Belle & Sebastian, The Beths, The Weakerthans, and Pavement. “In the past I’ve usually written more gentle melodic pop songs,” explains Kovic, “but I’ve tried to move away from that slightly on this album and experiment with adding more deliberate bite to my songwriting. Nathan, Daniel and Greg definitely helped to make it more punk. Compared to the other bands people might have heard me playing in, it probably has more of an indie rock vibe.”Addressing those bouts of writer’s block which have plagued her over the years, she says: “I’ve always tended to write in bursts of productivity, then go for long periods without writing anything. The strange thing about this album was that we were ready to record the last four songs in April 2020, then the pandemic hit and we couldn’t finish it, and in the intervening period I ended up basically scrapping some of those songs, and writing new ones instead. My rescue cat Margie has been a great source of inspiration!” Recording in two stints during 2019 and 2021 with a COVID sized hole in the middle, the band’s forthcoming self-titled debut album was laid down between Soup Studios in London, Rocking Horse Recording Studio in Durham, and the members’ respective homes. The album was recorded, engineered and produced by Giles Barrett and Neil Combstock, mixed by Michael Collins, and mastered by Dave Williams.
Addressing themes of the passage of time, friendships and relationships growing apart, and feelings of insecurity, depression, and anxiety—as well as searching for love and salvation—the album is very much a product of our times.With songs ranging from recent single ‘Cassini’, about the doomed spacecraft, to ‘All Hail The Great Destroyer’, a tribute to Margie the rescue cat who destroys everything for fun and is “an absolute legend”, it’s an album that’s packed with pathos, humour, and hope. “The fact that we recorded half of the album before the pandemic hit, and then the other half a year and a bit into lockdown life, those ideas of being stuck in a rut, and looking for salvation, have definitely become more prominent themes,” says Kovic, “but those were there already to some extent. Thinking about time running out has become much more real when everyone has lost a year of their lives (or much worse) to the pandemic.” And now, with time no longer seeming like such a precious and pressured commodity as we all take a step towards COVID being a thing of the past, what does the future have in store for Fortitude Valley?.
“We played End of the Road Festival in September and Twisterella in Middlesbrough in October, but that’s all we have booked in for now,” says Kovic reservedly. “I’m cautiously optimistic about being able to do more when things are safer!” As for Kovic’s continued never-say-die dedication to the underground rock scene? You can take the girl out of Fortitude Valley, but it seems there’s no taking Fortitude Valley out of the girl…
Let us introduce you to Oslo’s next big export – VEPS, who have just released their nineties fueled track ‘Ecstasy’ – which is taken from their forthcoming EP ‘Open The Door’.VEPS are four 17 year old best friends from from Oslo, Norway, that include Laura (guitar), June (bass), Maja (drums) and Helena (keys/piano) who have known each other since elementary school. The girls started playing together in middle school at the age of 14.
Helena, June and Maja knew each other since elementary school, and met Laura when they started middle school. In middle school we were making a short film together, and it was brought up that Laura and Helena was starting a band, but didn’t have drums or bass. June and Maja offered to join in (with limited experience on their designated instruments, June originally a guitarist and Maja who had never touched a drum set) Veps was born!.
The song “Ecstasy” is essentially about commitment issues and jealousy. It’s a story about a guy with commitment issues and a girl who wants him for herself. However, people can interpret it however they like.
The name VEPS means Wasp in Norwegian, and came about in a slightly cosmic and random way. “One Day while in our rehearsal room, we were discussing what our band name should be when all of a sudden a wasp came flying through the window, and we just looked at each other and yelled “VEPS”.
Our new single and music video for ‘Worth It’ are both live now on their respective platforms! A lot of us are far from perfect but we’re still Worth It! Find the link to the song and music video in our bio! We had an amazing team help us to craft this song and hope you love this release as much as we do!
From the start the riffing guitars, pounding drums, and melodic vocal lines. The band cleverly combines elements of pop punk and emo from the early 2000’s. The lyrics of the song stray away from the typical pop punk self-pitying attitude but are empowering instead. The song has a positive message to them that everyone could use. The lyrics go: “I’m worth it…There’s more to me than what is on the surface.”
Our new single ‘Worth It’ on October 1st! To shoot this video we travelled to the beautiful Mississippi River for a change from our usual scenery.
Four Stars is based in Chicago.
“Worth It/Fool’s Gold” Four Stars Music Released on: 2021-10-01
