Morly has shared a new song called ‘Wasted’. It’s the third offering from the singer-songwriter’s forthcoming debut LP “‘Til I Start Speaking“, which is out August 20 via Cascine/Sweat Entertaiment, following previous singles ‘Dance to You’ and ‘Twain Harte’. “It’s one of those songs that felt like it was already written,” Katy Morley said in a press release. Read more:
Morly, moniker of Minneapolis-bred, London-based visual artist and singer-songwriter, Katy Morley, creates stirring downtempo tracks that explore the transient space between joy and melancholy. Her strange and beautiful world is informed by her choral background, a penchant for minimalism and a love of dance.
Performed by Katy Morley — vocals and guitar Marcus Foster — piano and bv’s Max Whipple — bass Rhys Hastings — drums
Bad Bad Hats are an indie rock trio from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Known for bringing a joyful, exuberant presence to their live shows, touring with The Beths, Margaret Glaspy, The Front Bottoms, Hippo Campus, and Third Eye Blind, the group took specific care to bring their fun-loving spirit to their third LP, “Walkman”.
Kerry (guitar/vocals), Chris (bass), and Con (drums) let their collective hair down on “Walkman”, bringing raucous and explosive riffs alongside witty lyrics. Though you might not notice from their indie rock exterior, Bad Bad Hats draws a heavy influence from classic pop song writing that shines through in their hooky choruses and strong melodic sensibilities.
For this release the band set out to push their capabilities as a trio. Subtle changes in process helped the band achieve this goal, such as shifting Chris from a wider multi-instrumental role to allow him to prioritize his bass playing, having Kerry record the bulk of the guitars instead. “You can hear all of our musical voices a lot better on this record.”
A carefully crafted studio sound brings the record to life, injecting it with an energetic voice that is unique to Bad Bad Hats. Walkman is the group’s fourth time working with producer Brett Bullion, including their previous two LPs, Psychic Reader and Lightning Round, and the Wide Right EP. Bullion and the band use the studio as an instrument, resulting in their most polished work to date.
GRAMMY® Award-nominated artists Tycho and Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie/ The Postal Service have announced the release of a landmark new collaboration. “Only Love” is available now via Mom + Pop Music/NinjaTune; an official visualiser – designed by Tycho mastermind Scott Hansen.
“Only Love” stands as a powerful anthem from both artists, meticulously fusing Tycho’s transcendent production and signature arrangements with Gibbard’s cathartic, deeply humanist lyricism. The first new major electronic collaboration for Gibbard since his RIAA platinum certified work in The Postal Service more than a decade ago, the track began its life after Death Cab for Cutie invited Hansen to remix their 2015 single, “The Ghosts of Beverly Hills.” Though Hansen is famously selective about commissioned remixes, he fully connected with the song’s lyrical melody and Gibbard’s distinctive vocals.
“I had been a fan of Ben’s work for a long time when, in 2016, I had the chance to do a remix for Death Cab for Cutie’s track ‘The Ghosts of Beverly Drive,’” says Hansen. “Ben’s voice was a very inspiring element to work with from a production standpoint, I felt it really meshed well with the kinds of sounds and instrumentation I gravitate towards. ‘Only Love’ started life as an instrumental, but something was missing. I sent a rough demo to Ben and he recorded some vocals over it. The first time I heard the rough vocals the whole song suddenly made sense and the arrangement flowed out of that. After my early experimentations with vocals on Weather this felt like a great opportunity to put everything I had learned during that process into practice. It was certainly an honour to be able to work with such an iconic voice.”
“In 2014 while reading This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein, I came across a quote from Montanan goat rancher and environmentalist Alexis Bonogofsky that moved me immensely,” says Gibbard. “Speaking about the fight to protect public lands in southeastern Montana from the mining company Arch Coal, she said: ‘(The) connection to this place and the love people have for it, that’s what Arch Coal doesn’t get. They underestimate that. They don’t understand it so they disregard it. And that’s what in the end will save that place. It’s not the hatred for the coal companies, or anger, but love will save this place.’
“When Scott sent me the music for ‘Only Love,’ it seemed perfect for this statement. Since reading Alexis’s words I’ve carried them as a universal truth; that the only way we preserve the people, places or things we care for is with love, not hatred. This is often easier said than done, of course. But I find myself coming back to her statement as if it were a mantra.”
“I grew up hiking and camping on public lands here in Washington State and my love for them has only increased since becoming a mountain / ultra / trail runner. They were in the forefront of my mind while working on this song.”
I couldn’t be more thrilled to announce the next release…Skeletal Family “Singles Plus 1983-1985” 2XLP out now! If you’re unfamiliar, Skeletal Family are a killer goth/deathrock band who have many great songs that have become staples of goth nights everywhere. This compilation has never had a vinyl release until now. We released it for RSD Drop 2 so grab from your local indie shop. The Graveface Record Club variant might be my fav thing ever.
I love the Skeletal family in a way I can’t explain. It’s not as if they’re that good, but in other ways they are brilliant. Anne-Marie, Stan and Trotwood (plus various drummers, ending with Martin I think) had it all yet never quite got there. These songs take you back to those carefree early 80’s days when “goth” was the coming thing. But they were better than that. There’s a naked beauty in “Trees” that marks them out as different, and She Cries Alone is a masterpiece. It could only happen in Keighley, and they came so close but not close enough. Anne Marie went on to Ghost Dance,
Graveface Records is a small independent label with a focus on all things hand-made, hand-assembled & unique.
A lightning bug glows with the aid of a chemical called luciferin, derived from Latin for “light-bringer”. Lightning Bug began as three friends who made music together to bring each other light. The music we make continues to hold that purpose at its heart. The music of Lightning Bug is an attempt to record the deepest experiences in the self and connect them outward.
Lightning Bug is the hypnotic shoegaze project led by Brooklyn-based Audrey Kang, who released their album “October Song” in 2019 . The band announced they’ve signed to Fat Possum, who will re-issue October Song physically for the first time. Grounded in a tightly knit friendship and an intuitive musical bond, Lightning Bug’s music, an enveloping mix of rapturous shoegaze, longing balladry, and ambient soundscapes, sits at the centrepoint of a creative exchange among songwriter Audrey Kang, multi-instrumentalist Kevin Copeland, and producer Logan Miley. Despite a knack for sonic eclecticism, each Lightning Bug record holds a magnetic sense of cohesion. Lyrically, the songs document Audrey navigating a relationship with her own humanity, memories fraught with joy and pain, and the constant cycle of tension and release necessary in developing self-trust. Lightning Bug’s music is then the manifestation of dialogues: a musical dialogue amongst members of a sacred creative partnership and an internal one as Audrey plumbs the depths of her own foundation.
Last year’s October Song (released via Marbled Arm) marked Lightning Bug’s second full-length offering, the follow up to the largely anonymous release of their self-titled debut Floaters. Earning a spot on NME’s best debut albums of 2015 respectively, Lightning Bug have emerged as one of the musical underground’s most fertile sources for textured world-building and soaring catharsis. Lightning Bug have now announced Fat Possum as their new label home.
Setlist:00:00 I Lie Awake 04:00 The Return 11:20 The Right Thing Is Hard To Do 15:35 Song of the Bell 18:58 A Color of the Sky
Lightning Bug have wrestled with the fragile alchemy of the artistic process. On their third album, the billowing “A Colour of the Sky,” vocalist Audrey Kang zeroes in on a fascination with self-discovery through song, contemplating music’s ability to illuminate deeper truths in both its author and receiver, and artistic labour’s unlikely transfiguration into bliss. Underneath the record’s enveloping shoegaze swoon, these quiet musings bring us close enough to feel the vulnerable intimacy of its creation.
“A Colour of the Sky” is the New York group’s most direct and fully rendered work to date: It’s a beautiful collection of songs paying direct homage to the dreamy atmospheres, curling synthesizers, and blown-out guitars of slow-burning art rock of bands like Mazzy Star, Cocteau Twins and blistering shoegaze greats Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine. Yet Lightning Bug re-imagine this cannon in the context of an entirely new plot. Like a Creation Records fan fiction, a ’90s 4AD reboot, or a shoegaze memoir, “A Colour of the Sky” builds upon a familiar palette, reconfiguring foundational sounds .
Lyrically, the album amounts to an extended meditation on the struggle inherent in the creative process. “If I empty me of all myself, am I a vessel or a shell?/Mining for the substance in the dark and precious well/Pour out my convictions till I’m hollow as a bell,” Kang sings on “Song of the Bell.” Her voice’s delicate confidence tells its own story. The record’s driving momentum and spiritual haze simultaneously pit enchantment and disillusionment against each other. The evolution from simple song to sonic universe is almost always made clear by each track’s gradually intensifying production, effectively mimicking this dialogue. Most songs build upward from a quiet voice and an acoustic guitar, drum, or synth into a sea of lulling feedback and fluttering ambience, direct conversations bleeding out into layered fantasies. Each song has a brief moment when the whimsical textures dissipate, and Kang is left alone, looking directly into the mirror.
“When you’re playing or writing a song, you have to enter your own little world to access it. I think that’s another way of ‘coming back to yourself,’” Kang has said. Kang articulates this dance on opener “The Return”: “But as I starе into the heart of my own twisting fire/The songs yet to be written flock around me like a choir.” She reckons with the need for the work of others to communicate her own feelings: “I turn to poetry/I turn to the books I read/To say what I mean,” she whispers on the album’s title track. She interrogates the phenomenon of the phantasmagoria, how signifiers can feel more real than what they remind us of: “How colours feel stronger and feelings so true/That even the flowers smell more like you.” Narrating the process of searching for the self through song, A Colour of the Sky feels like a surreal ride-along to the creative process. Even so, it can be difficult to make out these lyrics through their quiet exhaled delivery behind a haze of effects, like pulling back a curtain only to reveal a cloud.
Listening to A Colour of the Sky can feel, at times, like playing all of your favourite shoegaze, alt-rock, and dream-pop records sounds at once. Moments feel plucked directly from their source, recontextualized as subtle elegies to the loyal comforts of a treasured record collection. From the Bends-era heavy chords of “I Lie Awake” to the Loveless-like harsh whisper-squeals of “Song of the Bell” to the patient Talk Talk tribute “The Chase,” a collage of lush synth tones and fuzzy warmth orbits each track like an atmosphere, evaporating into thin air, and drifting away like a memory.
“A Colour of the Sky’s” immersive textures beckon, while its meta-aware poetry keeps the listener at a distance. Yet Kang’s attempts to demystify the nature of song writing somehow pull us in closer, providing a glimpse into the process of creation. Lightning Bug’s ability to transform the vulnerability and struggles of producing meaningful art into a gorgeous and deeply affecting record is its own sort of magic trick.
Lightning Bug’s new album ‘A Colour of the Sky’ out now.
For Chicago-based singer songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Nick Levine (formerly of the band Pinegrove), the blue heron is much more than just a big bird. It’s the symbol at the centre of their debut album as Jodi, the elusive understanding they search for in their intimate, effortlessly tuneful “queer country.” Levine had the great wading bird tattooed on their back, posing in a freezing Chicago pond on the album cover, one symbol immersed within another—one perspective on life’s meaning in a limitless spectrum of experience.
An alter ego for singer-songwriter Nick Levine, who was a multi-instrumentalist in Pinegrove up through last year’s Marigold. Listen through their debut album “Blue Heron” without any prior knowledge and you could probably figure that much out. An air of pensive melancholia, loosely drawling vocals, diaristic lyrics about deep feelings and fateful interactions: The imprint of Levine’s former band is unmistakable in these songs,
Levine’s lyrics evoke the personal and universal alike, often in the same breath: “Night driving at four in the morning through the town / Dim forager lost in the dark, following the sound,” they sing on “Get Back” over a gentle acoustic riff and keening pedal steel. The beauty of Blue Heron is Levine’s acceptance that true meaning is fleeting, and just being alive with one’s eyes open—perhaps even lucky enough to catch a glimpse before it spreads its wings and takes to the air—is cause for joy. “Is it really so bad to be floating around?” Levine wonders over rippling acoustic guitars on the closing title track, “wonder” being the operative term.
Levine is operating in an emo-adjacent folk-rock space somewhere near Slaughter Beach, Dog’s Jake Ewald, Big Thief’sAdrianne Lenker, and Lomelda’s Hannah Read (whose brother and collaborator Tommy co-produced Blue Heron in the Reads’ hometown of Silsbee, Texas). Collectively, it is the sound of twentysomethings working through heavy feelings one tastefully sighing guitar ballad at a time.
Jodi Go Slowly ℗ 2021 Sooper Records Released on: 13th April 2021
One month ago today, Sydney rock band Gang Of Youths returned with “The Angel Of 8th Avenue”, their first new song since 2017’s “Go Farther in Lightness”. The track infused the group’s hearty arena-indie sound with some War On Drugs/Killers style synth action, and upon its release, singer David Le’aupepe told Zane Lowe, “It’s probably the only song that you’ll hear from us from now that sounds remotely kind of what we sounded like the previous kind of six to eight years.”
Today, we get our first test case for that statement. Gang Of Youths have surprise-released a new EP called “Total Serene“. It includes three tracks, starting with the aforementioned “the angel of 8th ave.” The closing song, “Unison,” is much moodier and more low-key than usual — the new lowercase fixation is starting to make sense — but it ends with some hard-hitting drums that may or may not be programmed. “unison” sounds not unlike Elbow, whose “Asleep In The Back” title track is covered on the EP as well, though the National and U2 come through big time as well.
“‘Unison’ is a deeply important track for us that really signals where the music is headed on the new record,” Le’aupepe says in a press release. “I conceived the song in Samoa, my ancestral homeland. Here we sample and introduce the work of David Fanshawe, who travelled to the Pacific Islands in the 1980s and recorded the most extensive library of indigenous Pacific music anywhere in the world.” As for the Elbow cover: “We love Elbow and we thought it was thematically relevant. It couldn’t have been anything other than ‘Asleep In The Back.’”
Gang of Youths are an Australian indie rock group from Sydney. The band consists of principal songwriter David Le’aupepe, Max Dunn, Jung Kim, Donnie Borzestowski, and Tom Hobden.
Introducing Norway’s next great exports Veps! Their debut EP “Open the Door” is out now digitally & September 3rd on vinyl. Preorder today and watch the really fun DIY vids for Ecstasy and Girl on TV
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.
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”.
Lala Lala’s sophomore record The Lamb was one of 2018’s most underrated indie records; balancing a violent, unpredictable edge with hard-won optimism, it felt like a crystalising of Chicagoan Lillie West’s talents. “Diver”, the first single from her third album, I Want The Door To Open, takes a brighter outlook: featuring baroque instrumentation and a soaring crescendo, it’s a warm introduction to the album, which attempts to reckon with, and fall in love with, life’s Sisyphean struggle.
“I want total freedom, total possibility, total acceptance. I want to fall in love with the rock.”
That’s how Lillie West describes the theme of “Diver,” the song she calls the thesis of Lala Lala’s third record, I Want The Door To Open. The rock in question is a reference to Sisyphus, the mythical figure doomed by the gods to forever push a boulder up from the depths of hell. To West, it is the perfect metaphor for “the labour of living, of figuring out who you are, what’s wrong with you, what’s right with you,” she says. “I think it’s easy to feel like we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, that we never learn, that we’re Sisyphus; but time is actually a spiral that we move up. The key is falling in love with the labour of walking up the mountain.”
“DIVER” from the album “I Want The Door To Open” by Lala Lala (Release date: October 8, 2021)
