ELIZABETH GUNDERSEN – ” Elephant Heart “

Posted: October 21, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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A few years ago after reviewing Elizabeth Gundersen’s project Le Wrens. It was genuinely became one of my favourite albums from such a promising new songwriter. It was sad to hear that Le Wrens project was discontinued, but then I found out this new solo album had came out recently, Of course Gundersen’s song writing does not disappoint. 

The opening track “Falling For You” is a love song that shows the complications of a new relationship. It’s that feeling of wondering if the other person is as into you as you are into them. There’s some really great modern country styles on the guitar here, but it’s a wonderful way to start the album as Gundersen’s powerful lead vocal is able to show off a bit. One consistent theme on the album that you hear immediately is her ability to articulate dynamics from soft spoken words to big powerful ballad proclamations.

“Walls” is a quintessential Americana track, mixing elements of what we might call country music with a nice Tom Petty kind of folk rock vibe. The storytelling elements in the lyrics make for a comfortable track, even if it’s about the feeling of being unsettled. It seems like the kind of track that could come from someone who has spent time on the road performing music. The line “I’m sorry that I’m broken, but these days most girls are”. Stylistically, “Farewell William” is one of my favourites tracks on the album. The soft, articulate piano work accents Gundersen’s vocal extremely well. The phrasing on this song is the kind of thing that you just can’t teach. She’s reciting poetic lyrics layered over some deceptively complex melody lines. This is the work of an accomplished songwriter. The authenticity drips from her lips on this one. I wish I had more technical terms to say that I just really, really like listening to it. What a beautiful way to say goodbye.

“Elephant Heart” was the first song from this album that I ever heard.  There’s a version of it on YouTube that I listen to it on regular rotation because it’s just SO good. This studio version is paced a bit differently, but still holds that magic of Gundersen’s lead vocal. Her brother Noah Gundersen appears on this track, providing his characteristic vocal brilliance in harmonies. The vibrant imagery from Elizabeth Gundersen as a songwriter, though, steals the show on this one. She gives all these incredible details about the interaction with this lover, then says “you were not there.” 

“Precious Wine” might be my other favourite track on the album. There’s a real dark aggression to the song that is deeply pleasing. The sense of bitterness and frustration is palpable, but at the same time the composition is still really nice to listen to. It’s got the right kind of “edge” to it that cuts through the tension of the situation the lyrics describe.

The final track “My Side” is a delightful, almost hymn-like song. The poetic delivery again transcends easy genre conventions, giving a thoughtful and emotional track. Duo vocals from Seattle artist Chris Rovik really make the song stand out. The minimalist aesthetic of the beginning plays perfectly into the orchestral bloom that comes later in the track. Cinematic and soothing, it’s a song with auspicious ambitions that come to fruition when the strings and vocals blend to perfection.

This is an exceptionally good album from an incredible songwriter. Gundersen’s work with Le Wrens, but this album shows a major step forward in development. 

Nathan Yaccino: Drums (1, 5) Bass (1, 2, 5) Piano (1, 3) Guitar (1, 2, 5) Synth (3)
Jacob Nevaro: Guitar (1)
Jonathan Gundersen: Drums (2) Vocals (2, 4, 5)
Elizabeth Gundersen: Guitar (6)
Noah Gundersen: Piano (4) Vocals (4)
Abby Gundersen: All Strings
Michael Porter: Guitar (2)
Chris Rovik: Vocals (6)
Andy Park: Synth (4)

I wrote most of the songs on this album during the transition from late teens to early twenties. “Elephant Heart” tells a story of that transition. Feeling that I was losing control and going back and forth between diving in and fighting back. Elizabeth

Released January 11th, 2018

TOPS – ” Waiting “

Posted: October 21, 2021 in MUSIC
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Montreal band TOPS just started their North American tour and have just back with a terrific new single that is light and frothy but satisfying. Last July, Montreal indie-pop crew TOPS announced some tour dates and put out the new single “Party Again.” Today, they’re following that up with another new one called “Waiting,”  

Here’s what the band had to say about their latest, which puts Jane Penny’s breathy vocals at front and centre: I’m a very nostalgic person and the last year only made me more so. Nostalgia cuts both ways, memories of my past fed me during that time, but became so vivid that they began to seep the colour from the present. I wrote this song as a tribute to the early days of TOPS and the romanticized version that I have of those times, but it became an exploration of the effect of time in general. When I think back on my life, where am I?

Listen to “Waiting” below.

“Waiting” by TOPS ·

Tops are:Jane Penny · David Carriere · Marta Cikojevic · Adam Byczkowski · Riley Fleck Released on: 2021-10-19

BEIRUT – ” Artifacts “

Posted: October 21, 2021 in MUSIC
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Beirut are releasing a rarities compilation, “Artifacts“, that features 17 unreleased songs, plus b-sides and more. Here’s one of those rarities.

Sun-drenched troubadour Zach Condon of Beirut has just announced Artifacts, an upcoming double album comprised of material from across the band’s discography. Ahead of its release on January 28th via Condon’s own Pompeii Records, the band’s creative leader will be previewing the compilation with a new Beirut track called ‘Fisher Island Sound’.

The compilation album came together after Condon began rooting through old Beirut material in an effort to assemble a new EP. “Artifacts” seemed like the most logical way of documenting his development as an artist since he started making music at 14. The double album will include a few recognisable hits, including ‘Elephant Gun’, one of the most joyous songs ever written. But, all in all, the forthcoming record looks set to be an exploration of Condon’s unreleased work.

Retrospective of rarities and b-sides spanning the entirety of Beriut’s catalogue. 17 of the “Artifact’s” 26 songs have not been previously released.

Artifacts began humbly as a means of compiling a few early Beirut EPs for a proper physical release. However, as Zach Condon explains in album’s excellent liner notes, reconnecting with old recordings through fresh ears turned a simple re-issue project into something much more expansive.

“Artifacts” is a phylogenetic tree. A double-LP’s worth music that traces the evolution of Beirut from a 14-year old Condon’s first attempts at bringing the music he heard in his mind to life, to the fully formed Beirut we know today.

“When the decision came to re-release this collection, I found myself digging through hard drives looking for something extra to add to the compilation,” Condon writes in the Artifacts liner notes. “What started as a few extra unreleased tracks from my formative recording years quickly grew into an entire extra records-worth of music from my past, and a larger project of remixing and remastering everything I found for good measure.”

Discussing Beirut’s new song ‘Fisher Island Sound’ in a statement, Condon said: “This song was written while staying in band member Ben Lanz’s old family cottage on the coast of Connecticut, on the Fisher Island Sound. I played with the lines for years before trying to record versions of it in Brooklyn with the band. Perrin Cloutier had taught himself how to play a new button accordion beautifully, and the band was really sounding their best.”

Adding: “I, however, struggled in those years to put vocals on the songs and ended up scrapping a lot of the music from that era in this part of the collection due to fear, stress and self-doubt. I’ve come to rediscover some of these old songs in a different light since then, but they do remain a heavy reminder of unsteady times.”Artifacts is set for a physical release on March 4th, 2022,

From the new album “Artifacts” out January 28th, 2022 on Pompeii Records

RICHARD DAWSON – ” Methuselah’ “

Posted: October 21, 2021 in MUSIC
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Richard Dawson and Circle have a collaborative album, “Henki”, on the way, due out November 26th via Weird World, and the latest single is the eight-and-a-half minute “Methuselah.” It’s accompanied by a video directed by Samuli Alapuranen, who says, “The trembling stasis presented in the aesthetics of the music video for Richard Dawson & Circle’s song ‘Methuselah’ appropriates the subjective time frame of the world’s oldest living organism, the bristlecone pine, translating that into a mould that better fits the human attention span. To illustrate time’s relativity, the video imagines and visualizes human motion as captured by the compound eye of arthropods. The seemingly immobile human artefacts caught in an Escheresque conundrum of provocative directionlessness evokes a temporal illusion in which the fly-like speed of the viewer’s visual senses reveals the fictional nature of our sensory perception. The flow of things is in essence static, rendering a stumble down the steps ominously immobile and virtually imperceptible. The visual choreography for the song was filmed in various locations, using the modern-day panopticon, the smartphone.”

Richard Dawson & Circle – “Methuselah” from the forthcoming album ‘Henki’ out 26th November 2021 on Weird World / Domino.

HIS GOLDEN MESSENGER – ” Grace “

Posted: October 21, 2021 in MUSIC
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Hiss Golden Messenger is releasing a new holiday album, O Come All Ye Faithful, this Friday (10/22) via Merge. It features his take on traditional songs, covers of Spiritualized, Woody Guthrie, and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and a few original tracks, including “Grace,” which M.C. Taylor says “is about keeping a light for those that are struggling or lost or confused or grieving: the gone ones, our children, poets, teachers. My friends Nathaniel Rateliff, Aoife O’Donovan and Sonyia Turner help me on the choruses.”

Here’s a fun surprise that I’m very glad to let out of the bag: There is a new Hiss Golden Messenger album coming out on Friday. It’s called ‘O Come All Ye Faithful.‘ I think of it as a seasonal record. I started work on this record, in my way, around this time last year when I went into a big box store to pick up some wrapping paper and was struck by how dissonant the overhyped, aggressive holiday music sounded in the midst of so much collective chaos and grief. I wanted to try to make something that felt more resonant with this time of year, something lush, bittersweet, meditative. Some of the songs I wrote myself; some are songs that I love by Spiritualized, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Woody Guthrie; some are old gospel hymns. I’m thankful to Merge Records and everyone that came with me on this trip and trusted me to make something deep.

The record turned out even more beautifully than I dared to hope, and that is down to the many incredible players and singers that gave themselves to this music. The deluxe version of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ includes and fully reimagined, chopped and dubbed version of the album by Cameron Ralston, my partner in Revelators (which you’ll hear more about soon), entitled ‘The Sounding Joy.’ The artwork was created by Struggle Inc. and the photographs were taken by Chris Frisina.

Comes with bonus dub LP The Sounding Joy: Hiss Golden Messenger Meets Revelators on South Robinson Street

HANNAH GRACE – ” Remedy “

Posted: October 21, 2021 in MUSIC
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Fans of Gabrielle Aplin may already be familiar with Hannah Grace. The Welsh songbird, born Hannah Vivan-Byrne, supported Aplin on her 2013 English Rain tour, and is signed to Never Fade Records, the label Aplin co-founded with James Barnes.

Grace’s growing discography already boasts radio staples and playlist mainstays such as Praise You and December, while her debut album, “Remedy“, released in September 2020, offered an eclectic mix of soulful and reflective ballads, proving Grace is a strong recording artist whose career remains on the up, despite the setbacks of 2020.

A familiar artist with a striking approach to being a multi-genre singer-songwriter, Grace has a voice that’s commanding yet comforting. 2021 is sure to see her become one of the best new artists to enter the mainstream.

My debut album ‘Remedy’ was released September 2020

SIMONE FELICE – ” Puppet “

Posted: October 21, 2021 in MUSIC
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Acclaimed singer-songwriter-producer Simone Felice has announced the release of his eagerly awaited new album. “All The Bright Coins” – which marks Felice’s first release through a newly signed deal with Chrysalis Records The record arrives Friday, January 28th, 2022; pre-orders are available now.

It’s Felice’s first studio album in many years, “All The Bright Coins” is preceded by the resonant new single, “Puppet” featuring Four Tet” available now on all DSPs.

I began writing “All The Bright Coins” in 2019,” says Felice. “It had been several years since I had written anything of my own, as I’d felt called to produce records and write with other artists I love. Then one rainy morning I wrote ‘Puppet,’ a mainly autobiographical tune about the dark, empty, and farcical side of being an underground touring troubadour most of my adult life. Part of me felt as though perhaps this should, and would, be the last Simone Felice song I’d ever put out, ‘Puppet stand, Puppet bow,’ a final curtain call. But then a few months later I wrote ‘Prisoner,’ and then ‘Bare Trees.’ The ‘Heat’ (that’s what myself and a few close friends call it: that sweet, painful, ungovernable whisper) was with me once again…”

New video/single Puppet is out now, Feeling major gratitude to have such a staggering amount of talent on this track in my mountain brethren Kieran Hebden/ Four Tet on beats & atmospherics, James Felice on vocals, David Baron on sub bass & keys,

Official music video for “Puppet” (featuring Four-Tet) the new single from Simone Felice.

SIMONE FELICE – ” Produced By “

Posted: October 21, 2021 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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My Page: Simone Felice’s Tower of Song

When Amazon Music Produced By series, where I would work with four different artists on four tracks, I had a basic idea who I wanted to collaborate with. But each one of these songs required a unique creative approach.

I had worked with The Lumineers on their last album, so working with Wesley Schultz again felt like a natural fit. We were both looking forward to the session. It had been a few years since we made “Cleopatra” and the fever to get back in the studio together had been building for all of us. Throughout August, we threw around four or five different ideas for which song we should do. Should we try an original? An old, well-loved cover? A weird, obscure cover? We decided that instead of making a hard and fast plan, we should throw some paint at the wall and see what stuck.

The night before we were planning to record, we took a long ride through the mountains to see a friend’s band. We both DJed a bit in my car on the way and landed on “Bell Bottom Blues,” a song that had been haunting me all year. I remembered hearing it when I was a kid, some late- ‘70s flashback riding in my dad’s van with an ice cream cone and a contact high. But this past winter, deep in the inevitable Catskills cabin- fever, low-vitamin-D blues, I rediscovered it by accident while binging on Martin Scorsese and coming across his brilliant film George Harrison: “Living in the Material World”. I was shaken and moved by the story behind the scenes, how George’s close friend Eric Clapton fell in love with his wife Pattie Boyd, and all the drama, pain, music and emotion that followed. I was glad to learn this song was new to Wes and loved how much hearing it for the first time moved him. We pulled over and listened to it again, both of us spellbound.

When we got to the studio the next morning, I was surprised and moved when Wes said, “Let’s do ‘Bell Bottom Blues.’ I can’t get it out of my head.” I wholeheartedly agreed, without a second thought, and we dove right in with my man David Baron, scrambling to set up mics, find the right key and learn the piano chords. It was the kind of studio moment you hear people talk about and, hopefully, experience yourself a few times on the rocky journey of making records—pure spontaneity, inspiration, danger and teamwork. Needless to say, we forgot about all the other songs we had planned to try.

The approach with The Felice Brothers was very different. My brother Ian wrote this beautiful song a few years back about our mother—her strength, struggles and sacrifice. For one reason or another, it never ended up on an album, so this project presented a welcome opportunity to give this special cut, which had become a staple of the Brothers’ live shows, a proper life in the recorded realm. As luck would have it, Conor Oberst and Wes were in the Catskills the same week we planned to record “Patti”— everyone’s become friends over the years and we all revere Ian’s writing—so it felt like the natural thing to do was to ask them both to guest on the track. Growing up, we loved bands with several different unique lead singers: The Beatles, The Band, Beastie Boys, Traveling Wilburys (the first tape I ever owned), Wu- Tang Clan (a few ill cats spittin’ fire). This was a cool chance to try our own dirtbag homage to that tradition and praise the eternal mother.

Phoebe Bridgers had the idea to do “Powerful Man” by Alex G. I can’t take credit for that—I’m lucky that she turned me on to the song for the first time. I had never heard it before so I was coming to it without any baggage and, when I sat down to listen, I was immediately struck by the poetry and the hypnotic flow on the vocal phrasing. It reminded me, in a completely non-derivative way, of some of the best works by one of my all-time favourite artists, Elliott Smith, so I was all in. Then when we got into the studio together, I was absolutely blown away by Phoebe’s interpretation of the song. When we began recording, she performed the rare magic trick that many covers fail to achieve: She made it her own, as if she had recently written it in a moment of genuine inspiration, while still maintaining the essence of the original melody and meaning. It was a very special sleight of hand.

When Conor and I first began talking about what song we’d do together, he directed me toward a few obscure YouTube videos of him singing some unrecorded material live in various random countries and venues. These were rough fan videos, posted online in the heat of devotion, and I had a private little laugh to myself sitting in my workshop listening and watching my old friend singing because I know that, like most prolific geniuses, he had written these incredibly powerful songs, probably in a flash of inspiration, on the road or in some hotel and, without much pomp and circumstance, taught them quickly to his players (in this case my brother James on piano) and played them at a gig or three before moving on to new ideas. That’s Conor’s brilliance—always hunting for the Holy Grail, the key to the Tower of Song—that’s why he’s one of the best ever. I’m very proud that our recording of “LAX” will be the definitive studio version, haunted and inspired like the original YouTube video, but with Phoebe’s ghostly vocals and a bit of macabre orchestration.

Produced by Simone Felice (Amazon Original)

LEVITATION FESTIVAL Austin Texas 2021

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Image  —  Posted: October 20, 2021 in MUSIC

IAN SWEET – ” f*ckthat “

Posted: October 19, 2021 in MUSIC
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One of the weirdest things to happen over the past 15 years or so has been the absolute obliteration of the telephone conversation. The internet’s ultra-connectivity has made making phone calls relatively irrelevant, and while things like Zoom and texts and DMs have replaced the need to reach out and touch someone, the real reason behind the death of phone calls is that no one you ever want to hear from is calling. Spammers, scammers, bots, and assholes pitching extended car warranties or student loan forgiveness bullshit has made the ringtone a harbinger of absolute dread. Not even grandma’s calling anymore; she’s busy on TikTok.

IAN SWEET feels all this, for real, as the project from one-time Bostonian and Los Angeles artist Jilian Medford offers up a cruising new tune that a little new wave, a little indie-pop, and entirely let it go to voicemail-core. It’s called “f*ckthat,” and we’ve got it dialled in.

“My phone causes me a lot of anxiety!” Medford admits. “I really only like to use it to take videos and pictures of my dog. This song is about not wanting to answer calls anymore and wishing I could just throw it out the window and disassociate from its evil/stress inducing technology.”

Produced by Manitoba duo deadmen, “f*ckthat” dropped last week (September 29th) via Polyvinyl, and comes correct with word of a 2022 North American tour. The 18-date month-long run brings Bnny along for the ride, and watch Medford’s self-directed video for “f*ckthat”, edited by previous collaborator Will Duncan. 

“f*ckthat” is the new digital single from Ian Sweet, available everywhere September 29th, 2021.

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