Anthony da Costa is an American singer-songwriter based in Nashville, TN. He has been writing and performing original material since he was 13 years old. He names Ryan Adams, Dan Bern, and Bob Dylan as some of his biggest song writing influences. He attended Columbia University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in ancient Greek and Roman history in 2013. In 2016, Anthony released his solo album, “Da Costa,” which was self-produced and features Aaron Lee Tasjan, Devon Sproule, and members of Ben Kweller, Eric Johnson and Okkervil River. Anthony is also an in-demand live and session guitarist, having toured with Aoife O’Donovan of Crooked Still, Jimmy LaFave, Joy Williams and now the Grammy-award-winning songwriter Sarah Jarosz.
My new album, “What Plans” is out today. There’s so much I can and will say about the making of this project…but right now, I want to thank each and every person who helped me do this. This record is a first for me in many ways, one of them being that there are 25 guest artists and musicians featured on this thing.
New live video! An acoustic rendition of my new single, “Messages” (which has been streamed almost 20,000 times in its first few days, thank you!). I thought it was only right to play a song I wrote about missing people and questioning your place in the world on a $17,000 guitar in one of the best shops around, @cartervintageguitars (full video on their page and YouTube). Thanks to @theguitarphotographer as always, and go check out “Messages” featuring @frances_cone
CJ Camerieri has had a hand in recent music from Taylor Swift, Paul Simon, The National, and plenty more, but now he has centered his focus on the release of his own self-titled debut album under the moniker CARM, which features flourishes of horns and entrancing instrumentation, along with guest appearances from Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Sufjan Stevens, and members of Yo La Tengo.
CARM is the solo project and inaugural album of multi-instrumentalist, producer, and arranger CJ Camerieri. Whether it’s playing the iconic piccolo trumpet solo on Paul Simon’s “The Boxer;” anthemic horn parts on songs like The National’s “Fake Empire,” Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago,” or Bon Iver’s “For Emma, Forever Ago;” performing with his contemporary classical ensemble yMusic at Madison Square Garden; or recording lush beds of french horns for artists from John Legend to The Tallest Man on Earth, you have undoubtedly heard the virtuosity of Camerieri on record or in arenas across the globe.
A graduate of The Juilliard School, Camerieri plays trumpet, french horn and keyboards for some of the most important artists of our time. He founded the classical ensemble yMusic, joined Bon Iver—winning two Grammy awards for the band’s sophomore album—and became an integral member of Paul Simon’s touring band in 2014, assuming a pivotal role in the legend’s last two records.
The music of CARM features the trumpet and french horn in roles typically reserved for drums, guitars, and voices, while also seeking to escape the genre categorizations normally reserved for music featuring an instrumentalist as bandleader. It is not jazz or classical music, nor is it a soundtrack to a larger narrative. This is contemporary popular music that features a sound normally used as a background colour and texture as the unabashed lead voice.
CARM started with the question: ‘What kind of record would my trumpet-playing heroes from the past make today?’ I believe Miles Davis would want to work with the best producers, beat makers, song-writers, and singers to create truly culturally relevant music, and that’s what I sought to do with this project.” Produced by Ryan Olson in Minneapolis, it is a completely unique sound that additionally serves as a survey of the many collaborations that have come to define the artist’s career thus far.
We are excited to announce that Palberta’s single, “Something in the Way,” is out now. Since the release of the acclaimed Roach Goin’ Down, Ani, Lily, and Nina have been busy touring the U.S., releasing a live benefit album and opening for Bikini Kill at Brooklyn Steel. All the while, they have been writing and perfecting new songs, a few of which entered the band’s sets before the global pandemic shut live music down and postponed their first U.K./Europe tour, originally scheduled for April.
“Something in the Way” marks the first Palberta release tracked in a professional studio environment. They found a great recording partnership with Matt Labozza (Palm, Shimmer) and took easily to putting down their new material in a studio setting while still experimenting with song-structure, as they do on the outro of “Something in the Way,” a repeating motif from John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.”
The recording of “Something in the Way” achieves a clarity not heard on past Palberta releases. From the harmony vocals to the guitars that chime and caterwaul, Palberta’s singular sound is brought into focus in Matt Labozza’s recording. New York art-punk trio Palberta has been forging ahead over the last several years, dropping impressive album after impressive album. “Palberta5000” might be the most intriguing of all the band’s releases to date, with Steven Hyden praising the band for finding “the middle ground between minimalist, deconstructionist indie and the danceable grooves and relentless rhythms of funk and R&B”
“Something in the Way” started as many Palberta songs do, with one person playing a drum, guitar, or bass riff and then the other two building off of that initial feeling. As usual, we frantically but carefully guided each other to the end of the song. When we got there, we found ourselves fading into a tricked-out looped fragment of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” Coltrane’s melody has a direct connection for us to our beautiful friend Pablo Ramirez, who passed in 2019. His view on life—”LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL LIFE IS IN COLOR LIFE IS A W A Y”—impacted us all in such a positive way, and his beauty and genuine LOVE of life lives on through the thousands of people that he blessed through meeting. We dedicate this song to Psplifff and his mother, the amazing Mammasplifff, and all the beautiful people on the right side of history showing up right now. We love you! – Palberta
Camp Trash have been a big deal on Twitter for a while now despite not actually releasing any music. The burgeoning hype is probably related to Keegan Bradford who is an editor at The Alternative and a highly active Twitter presence, with Stereogum contributors Ian Cohen and Arielle Gordon being in the band. Whenever someone with any amount of clout in a certain scene starts a new musical project, you always run the risk of that project coasting by on social goodwill. Fortunately, now that Camp Trash have shared the lead single from their debut EP, it appears they’re legitimately very good.
The band, whose members are spread out around the country, claims influence from the likes of the Get Up Kids, Oso Oso, and Something Corporate, and you can certainly hear all that in “Weird Carolina,” our first preview of the imminent “Downtiming” EP. There is some Built To Spill resemblance in the vocal melody, which Bradford confirms. And, as you’ll hear, there’s a well-executed lyrical reference to James Taylor.
The band explains that several of the songs on Downtiming were written before Camp Trash officially formed, resulting from Bradford and Bryan Gorman “exchanging voice memos and song ideas while living in different cities.” Bradford adds that “Weird Carolina” is about “moving away from places you love, and the people you love moving away from you, and how those places are usually Georgia or North Carolina.”
When I listened to “Weird Carolina,” I can hear the people who grew up at the same time and listened to the same bands digesting that music and creating something with a bit more distance and polish. I know even a normal January seems interminable, but the last few weeks — cold weather, short days, near-total shutdown, have been some of the toughest of the pandemic. I can’t walk to a friend’s house, but I can walk down memory lane for a few minutes at a time,
Camp Trash debut single from upcoming EP, “Downtiming”. Count Your Lucky Stars Records.
Following the release of debut single ‘Did I Get It Wrong?’, rising newbieDora Jaris back with new track ‘Multiply’.
A shapeshifting and hypnotic track that moves from folk, to grunge, to pop, with a lil’ surprise for you at its midway point too, Dora says of the song, “I’m building a funhouse of songs.‘DId I Get It Wrong?’is the basement, full of my subconscious fears.‘Multiply’ is a spiral staircase leading up to the rest of the house: excited and bursting into a brighter place.”
“Why do I live my life questioning every move I make / Is it a mistake?” That’s the first line from the debut single of New York-born, California raised artist Dora Jar. “It’s funny that my first release is me questioning myself,” Dora says. “I guess my intention is to purge all my worry from the start. If ignoring it means being ignorant then I want to face shit head on, and know myself.”
Despite the admission that she’s harbouring self-doubt, Dora Jar’s vocals exude calm strength and she’s open with her story—in “Did I Get It Wrong” she references her older sister Lueza, who was born unable to walk and talk. When Lueza passed, Dora was even more inspired to sing, dance, and create.
Dora Jar’s first offering is a powerful introduction. Produced by Felix Joseph (Pa Salieu, Jorja Smith) and paired with a striking music video directed by Dora alongside Erica Snyder, it’s the rare type of debut that feels fully formed. It does, however, leave a lot to wonder about what comes next—especially knowing that Jar’s influences range from Gwen Stefani to Outkast. We’ll have to wait and see.
An exciting glimpse at what else she’s got to follow,
The five members of Sun June spent their early years spread out across the United States, from the boonies of the Hudson Valley to the sprawling outskirts of LA. Having spent their college years within the gloomy, cold winters of the North East, Laura Colwell and Stephen Salisbury found themselves in the vibrant melting-pot of inspiration that is Austin, Texas. Meeting each other while working on Terrence Malick’s ‘Song to Song’, the pair were immediately taken by the city’s bustling small clubs and honky-tonk scene, and the fact that there was always an instrument within reach, always someone to play alongside.
Coming alive in this newly discovered landscape, Colwell and Salisbury formed Sun June alongside Michael Bain on lead guitar, Sarah Schultz on drums, and Justin Harris on bass and recorded their debut album live to tape, releasing it via the city’s esteemed Keeled Scales label in 2018. The band coined the term ‘regret pop’ to describe the music they made on the ‘Years’ LP. Though somewhat tongue in cheek, it made perfect sense ~ the gentle sway of their country leaning pop songs seeped in melancholy, as if each subtle turn of phrase was always grasping for something just out of reach.
Sun June returns with Somewhere, a brand new album, out February 2021. It’s a record that feels distinctly more present than its predecessor. In the time since, Colwell and Salisbury have become a couple, and it’s had a profound effect on their work; if Years was about how loss evolves, Somewhere is about how love evolves. “We explore a lot of the same themes across it,” Colwell says, “but I think there’s a lot more love here.”
Somewhere is Sun June at their most decadent, a richly diverse album which sees them exploring bright new corners with full hearts and wide eyes. Embracing a more pop-oriented sound the album consists of eleven beautiful new songs and is deliberately more collaborative and fully arranged: Laura played guitar for the first time; band members swapped instruments, and producer Danny Reisch helped flesh out layers of synth and percussion that provides a sweeping undercurrent to the whole thing.
Throughout Somewhere you can hear Sun June blossom into a living-and-breathing five-piece, the album formed from an exploratory track building process which results in a more formidable version of the band we once knew. ’Real Thing’ is most indicative of this, a fully collaborative effort which encompasses all of the nuances that come to define the album. “Are you the real thing?” Laura Colwell questions in the song’s repeated refrain. “Honey I’m the real thing,” she answers back.
They’ve called this one their ‘prom’ record; a sincere, alive-in-the-moment snapshot of the heady rush of love. “The prom idea started as a mood for us to arrange and shape the music to, which we hadn’t done before,” the band explains. “ Prom isn’t all rosy and perfect. The songs show you the crying in the bathroom,, the fear of dancing, the joy of a kiss – all the highs and all the lows.”
It’s in both those highs and lows where Somewhere comes alive. Laura Colwell’s voice is mesmerising throughout, and while the record is a document of falling in love, there’s still room for her to wilt and linger, the vibrancy of the production creating beautiful contrasts for her voice to pull us through. Opening track ‘Bad With Time’ sets this tone from the outset, both dark and mysterious, sad and sultry as it fascinatingly unrolls. “I didn’t mean what I said,” Colwell sings. “But I wanted you to think I did.”
“Everywhere” by Sun June from the album ‘Somewhere’ out now via Keeled Scales and Run For Cover Records
One of today’s best songwriters & voices. Laura of Sun June plays a couple solo acoustic tunes off the brand new album “Somewhere” !
Somewhere showcases a gentle but eminently pronounced maturation of Sun June’s sound, a second record full of quiet revelation, eleven songs that bristle with love and longing. It finds a band at the height of their collective potency, a marked stride forward from the band that created that debut record, but also one that once again is able to transport the listener into a fascinating new landscape, one that lies somewhere between the town and the city, between the head and the heart; neither here nor there, but certainly somewhere.
Released February 5th, 2021
Laura Colwell: vocals, keys, guitar Michael Bain: lead guitar Stephen Salisbury: guitar Justin Harris: bass
Sarah Schultz: drums
The Sydney-based three-piece Middle Kids release their second album, “Today We’re The Greatest” . Recorded and produced in Los Angeles by Lars Stalfors (St. Vincent, Soccer Mummy, Purity Ring), the follow-up to the band’s award-winning 2018 debut, Lost Friends, is their most personal and courageous effort to date. Moving away from lyrics of a more conceptual nature,Today We’re The Greatest is the open, uninhibited product of fearless collaboration. Showing a real vulnerability, Joy is pulling directly from her own experiences and breaking down barriers she had previously set for herself.
The album includes “nervy Strokes-esque floorfiller” (The Guardian) “R U 4 Me?” and their monumental new single, “Questions”, a charged three-minute odyssey which sees Joy struggle poetically with concepts of honesty and intimacy over an explosive rhythm section and a stunningly orchestrated brass-filled climax.
Here is our new song ‘Cellophane (brain)’. sometimes i picture my noisy brain as a crinkly bit of coloured cellophane. not sure what jung would say about that but i think it just means i don’t have a good grip on human anatomy.
Other tracks like “Run With You”, were written when Joy was a few months into pregnancy with her and Tim Fitz, her husband and bandmate’s, first child. They recorded her 20-week sonogram, and wove the gentle, rapid thump of their baby boy’s beating heart into the last 20 seconds of the track -an exuberant declaration of devotion. Joy’s journey to motherhood and her marriage with Fitz has imbued her songs with a vibrancy that’s unabashedly romantic yet free of clichés. There’s also “Stacking Chairs,” with its unique allegories and Joy’s sunny vocals, that strikes this delicate balance beautifully: it’s a testament to her deep connection with Fitz and the new, “infinitesimal” love that transformed their lives with their son’s arrival.
“Cellophane (Brain),” the new single from Middle Kids’ forthcoming album ‘Today We’re The Greatest,’ out March 19th, 2021. Domino Recording Co Ltd
If 2020 was a year for flexibility, then 2021 is the year where everyone will be showing off what they’ve been up to. Wolf van Elfmand has a head start — the author of the sweetly earnest tune “Flexible Cowboy Man” has his new album “All Blue”, to show for his quarantine pains. Van Elfmand is also from NYC, leaving cowboy yoga behind in Denver for whatever path awaits him here in the five boroughs. I talked the album up in last week’s podcast episode, but I wanted you all to get another listen to the bluesy “Way Down in Denver.”
While most of the album is comprised of sweet folksy blues, All Blue picks up when Van Elfmand is giving vent to a little spleen.
“This is the first full-length record that I wrote, produced and mixed. The conception of the album occurred when I started to learn how to sequence drum parts on my recording software. I was listening to artists like JJ Cale who frequently used drum machines and wanted to take a stab at it,” Van Elfmand . “At the onset of quarantine I had written a bunch of new songs in April. Without being able to play with other musicians, I wanted to find a project to give them life. This record is truly a product of 2020. While shacked up at a house in Northwest Michigan I spent the month of May recording the majority of the album. The bass parts and pedal steel were done remotely and the backing vocals were then added for a final touch. It’s a guitar-heavy album that lends itself more to a vibe than other lyric-centric stuff I’ve released.”
Indeed, the album is best experienced on a foggy day with a nice cup of tea: Van Elfmand’s hazy sadness truly captures those early days of spring 2020, and the solace we all continue to need.
Wolf van Elfmand writes songs and plays the guitar. His music explores genres within the Americana realm from finger-pickingfolk to alternative country to good ol’ fashioned rock & roll. As a solo artist and producer, Wolf’s albums contain different ensembles and players. With no touring in sight, Van Elfmand has plans to release some new music in 2021 so keep your eyes peeled and ears perked.
“All Blue” · Wolf Van Elfmand Released on: February 12th, 2021
The Bones of J.R. Jones—the project of New York singer-songwriter and guitarist Jonathan Robert Linaberry—will release a new EP called “A Celebration”, which was largely inspired by the sprawling deserts of the Southwest. Today he shares the EP’s second single, premiering below, and it’s a wistful, weathered folk number about yearning to “Stay Wild.”
I don’t mind the night / and the dark it brings / to my skies, Linaberry croaks in the opening verse, his voice more ember than flame. Later, Linaberry sings like he’s praying, or like he’s trying to submit to something larger than himself: I want the tinny taste of love / across my teeth / I want to feast / I want to be / a storm raging / I want to believe / in the American Dream.
“It’s the perfect distillation of what I wanted the EP to feel like,” the Catskills musician tells American Songwriter of “Stay Wild.” “It set the precedent and tone for the rest of the songs. I really wanted to tap into the vastness of the desert, which can make you feel so small, but there’s a certain strange freedom that comes with that smallness, with that insignificance—you feel exposed and in a way that makes you more open to the unknown wildness all around you.”
“Stay Wild” also arrives with a video—directed by Joshua Zimmerman and choreographed by Jacqui DeFranca—that shows a scruffy, stick-wielding Linaberry dancing in the headlights of his pickup truck. The flick, featured below, is a visceral complement to the song.
“I wanted ‘Stay Wild’ to toe the line of realism and the fantastical,” says Linaberry. “It was important to me that it reflects on how the mundane parts of life can overflow and the only outlet would be an ungraceful somewhat ugly response. In the case of the video, it was a dance performed by someone who does not dance… Hopefully once you lose yourself in that moment something spectacular could happen.”
“The EP and the art that comes along with it really does reflect every aspect of this song for me,” he explains. “The prints, the designs, the songs, the melodies, the words… all of it was designed to reflect a restrained explosion or an appreciation of that explosion. I wanted to feel it in my chest, but not have it be so otherworldly that it was unrelatable. Everyone can fall into the monotony of their days and then at some point, there is a subtle pop, a change, something that makes you want to get lost, to live, to lose yourself to a whim. That’s what I was after with A Celebration.”
You can hear that profound, lose-yourself quality in every fibre of “Stay Wild.”
Copenhagen’s Iceage will make their Mexican Summer Records debut on May 7th with “Seek Shelter”, their fifth album and first since 2018’s Beyondless. The Danish rockers shared another preview of the album in the form of new single/video “Vendetta” a menacing, yet danceable blues-rock track that moves in a fashion somewhere between swaggering and stumbling. “This ain’t no place for a sightseer,” Rønnenfelt warns, his impressionistic lyrics conjuring hazy images of transaction, exploitation and retribution. He swears vengeance over swaying shakers and drums, rowdy guitars and a monolithic synth hum that swells as “Vendetta” crescendoes, with discordant horns only sending it deeper into its dark downward spiral.
Of the album as a whole, Rønnenfelt had this to say: “When we started, I think we were just lashing out, completely blindfolded with no idea as to why and how we were doing anything. For Seek Shelter, we had a definite vision of how we wanted the album to be carved out, yet still the end result came as a surprise in terms of where we sonically were able to push our boundaries.”
A decade on from New Brigade, an instant punk record made by four Danish teenagers that came out of nowhere and inspired total devotion around the world, Iceage’s fifth album and label debut is a thrilling new chapter for the band. Produced by Sonic Boom (Pete Kember of Spacemen3) and mixed by Shawn Everett (Haim, The War on Drugs), Iceage come with a new emotional palette ripe with psychedelic flourishes, romantic piano balladry, invocations of patron saints and even a gospel choir for a song or two. Seek Shelter is a striking new direction for a band at their most expressive and expansive, recorded in a dilapidated wood-paneled Lisbon radio studio with a steady rain dripping through the ceiling. Equipment was arranged around puddles and slowly-filling buckets, garden lamps lit up the high-ceilings and a special record was made.
Sonic Boom (aka Pete Kember) produced the album. It includes “The Holding Hand,” a new song the band shared at the start of the February. The band’s line up features Elias Bender Rønnenfelt, Jakob Tvilling Pless, Johan Surrballe Wieth, and Dan Kjær Nielsen. An additional guitarist, Casper Morilla Fernandez, also joined them to record Seek Shelter, which was mixed by Shawn Everett.
Of the new single, Rønnenfelt had this to say in a press release: “Crime is the undercurrent that runs through everything. If you don’t see it, you’re not looking. In its invincible politics, it is the glue that binds it all together. ‘Vendetta’ is an impartial dance along the illicit lines of infraction.”
Director Jonas Bang directed the “Vendetta” video, which features actor Zlatko Burić alongside the band. Bang had this to say: “We wanted it to be less 1:1 story and more short format collage-ish like if you flick through a chapter in a book reading a bit here and there.”
The band’s previous album, Beyondless, came out in 2018 on Matador Records.
Iceage – “Vendetta” from the album ‘Seek Shelter’ out May 7th on Mexican Summer Records,their first for the label.
