For their new EP, Philadelphia’s The Obsessives met up with producer Will Yip to get the best out of them in the studio. The result? A 3-song EP called ‘Monastery’ that finds the band settling on a mellowed sound after having gone through numerous stylistic changes over the years that ranged from grunge and alternative to more math-y endeavours.
They kick things off with single ‘Lala,’ a breezy slice of dream pop with a synth solo, big hooks and warm layers of twinkly guitars that make the song feel weightless. Equally easy-going is ‘I’ll Always Love You,’ a song that benefits especially from its simple yet highly effective chorus. Rounding things out is a cover of the Breeders’ 1993 classic ‘Divine Hammer,’ which The Obsessives have not only slowed down, but only stripped down. An unfortunate choice, as the result is a rather lifeless shell of a song that does not hold up to the original, leaving the listener behind on a bit of a sour note.
Says Katy: I’ve always been uneasy with the idea of alternate universes, or realities. Even choose-your-own-adventure books used to stress me out. I wondered if it might be equally interesting and more helpful to consider “alternate universes” something as simple as other people. Around the time I wrote this song, I had been considering what I’d retain from a relationship if or when it ended—what I might be left with in the long run, after it didn’t hurt anymore. I realized that it’d be an alternate version of myself. Hell, how many parts of whatever I call a self aren’t even accessible without a particular interaction? “Portals” is me thinking about the alternate, purely interior worlds that slide open with each person/universe we intersect with, and if what we think of as “closeness” to that person has anything to do with what gets opened.
Katy Kirby released a new single this week “Portals,” accompanied by a nostalgic lyric video created by our new designer Sarah Goldstein.
“Katy Kirby’s Timeless Songs Are Wonderful Leaps of Faith …The best debut album of 2021 so far.” — VICE / Noisey Next
“Clearly putting her own twist on pop” — Bob Boilen, NPR All Songs Considered
Katy’s been included on: VICE’s 10 Albums That Will Get You Excited for 2021, Paste’s 40 Albums We’re Most Excited About in 2021, The Line of Best Fit’s 50 Artists on the Rise in 2021, Stereogum’s 101 Most Anticipated Albums of 2021, Paste’s 30 Best New Artists of 2020 and more…
Milly is a rock band from Los Angeles led by principal songwriter Brendan Dyer and backed by Spencer Light on guitar, Yarden Erez on bass, and Zach Capitti Fenton on drums. In January, 2020, Milly drove to rural Colorado to record their new five song EP, Wish Goes On, with Corey Coffman of Gleemer at his home studio. With its sweet bounce of a melody carved into a wall of dense guitars, “Denial” is the second single released from these sessions. Milly’s new track is sadder and more subdued than their previous Wish Goes On single “Star Thistle Blossom,” which Lizzie Manno described as “the most straightforward rock song they’ve released so far” and a “delectable wash of grunge-tinted shoegaze guitars” upon its October release. “Denial” is more of an off-speed pitch, albeit one with hooks aplenty. “Galaxies wish you well / Come back again, come back alone / Do you wish that you could come back here?” sings frontman Brendan Dyer, longing for something he can’t bring himself to acknowledge that he can’t have. “We’re gonna wish on it,” he insists over a comforting blend of acoustic and electric guitar fuzz, cymbal crashes roiling as the song crescendoes, only to collapse.
‘Denial’ is about the idea of being fixated on something but knowing deep down it’s gone,” Dyer explains in a statement. “I was living in N.Y. at the time I wrote it and was going back and forth between there and Connecticut. I was really trying to capture the feeling of being alone and why it was hard for me to digest how that felt. My hometown spots feeling different after leaving, people moving on with their lives,
L.A. slowcore quartet Milly’s first new material of 2021 is the second single from their forthcoming Wish Goes On EP, due out April 9 on Dangerbird Records. “Denial” arrived Friday alongside a surreal music video, directed and animated by Mark Cheche.
Official video for “Denial,” from MILLY’s new EP ‘Wish Goes On’ coming April 9th, 2021.
Activity recently shared this track “White Phosphorus,” a b-side from their debut album “Unmask Whoever”, named as one of the best rock albums of 2020. Much like their LP, the New YorkCity band’s latest track has a pervading eeriness, complete with hushed vocals, a steady synth hum and elusive guitar lines—not to mention bleak lyrics like “decorate the walls with horse insides.” Its twisted drama is quite cinematic, and their instrumental sprawl is nothing if not absorbing.
This is actually the first song we recorded but it didn’t work on the album. Putting it out NOW on Bandcamp only. It’s called “White Phosphorus.” We hope you enjoy!
One night in June of 1999, we were sitting in Jason’s tiny house in Modesto, California when he mentioned that he could sit down at the piano and play the whole of what would be The Sophtware Slump front to back. This meant he was (finally!) ready to begin recording. The piano was in the kitchen then so we sat and he started to play. Distracted by beer and conversation, we didn’t make it all the way through.
Early last year, as we discussed if we should commemorate the 20th anniversary I recalled the memory and wondered what the album would have sounded like before all that wonderful production, before one note had been committed to tape.
Today we announce The Sophtware Slump…..on a wooden piano. Recorded at Jason’s home during Pandemia 2020. It will arrive digitally November 20th on Dangerbird Records and as part of a four piece vinyl boxset of the original album and most of the b-sides and odds and ends from that era, many appearing on vinyl for the first time here. And a standalone physical release to follow in early 2021.
Grandaddy formed in 1992 and have released five official LPs, most recently 2017’s Last Place. In its 20th anniversary feature on The Sophtware Slump, Stereogum summed up the album, and Grandaddy, with the question: “What if West Coast indie, but sci-fi?” In an age of unprecedented connectivity, these songs spoke to significant solitude. Grandaddy members include Jason Lytle, Aaron Burtch, Jim Fairchild, Tim Dryden, and the late Kevin Garcia, who passed away in 2017.
The Sophtware Slump. Grandaddy’s second album, released 20 years ago today, essentially answered the question: What if West Coast indie, but sci-fi? Or, given the music’s vast prog-rock horizons and Lytle’s skepticism toward all the technology encroaching on Earth’s natural order: What if Radiohead, but West Coast indie? Grandaddy hailed from Modesto — Spanish for “modest” — and the punny title was appropriately self-deprecating. It made a lot of thematic sense, too:
This was a concept LP about the slouching citizens of a disappointing dystopia, trapped on a tapped-out planet full of useless junk. But far from a dreaded second-album misstep, The Sophtware Slump stands as a quirky, ambitious landmark in the overgrown ruins of Y2K-era indie.
Lytle formed Grandaddy in 1992 after his burgeoning pro skateboard career was unceremoniously ended by a knee injury. Early gigs at skate parks plus a longstanding devotion to the Maximumrocknroll radio show led to Grandaddy playing up tempo punk rock at first, but by the time they released their debut album Under The Western Freeway in 1997, their style had softened into a rustic yet electronic spin on the scrappy underground guitar noodlings of Pavement and Built To Spill. The album’s best, most enduring song, “A.M. 180,” paired fuzzed-out power chords with a deviously catchy keyboard riff that sounded futuristic and amateurish all at once. The other tracks toyed around with a less overtly poppy variations of this aesthetic, a sort of ramshackle space-age slacker rock that, as it turned out, lent itself perfectly to songs about the American West decaying into a technological wasteland.
Such is the genius of The Sophtware Slump. Jason Lytle had established an entire alternate universe in sound and substance, strung together in peculiar vignettes that left much to the imagination. It was a triumph, but Grandaddy weren’t done evolving yet. Three years later, they’d return with Sumday, an album that ditched the mythology and experimentation in favor of ’70s-inspired hi-fi splendor. At the time, Lytle called it “a reflection of everything we’ve been working towards” and “the ultimate Grandaddy record.” Maybe, but some might argue that the ultimate Grandaddy record is the one they rolled out in the year 2000, the grand treatise about the tortured love triangle between mankind, his planet, and the works of his hand. Like the clunky machinery that dots its landscape, The Sophtware Slump may now seem like an outdated relic, but boot it up and you’ll discover it still works wonders.
Wishing you all as much health and happiness as you can muster during this often trying time. With love from Jim, Jason, Aaron and Tim. And Kevin.
Grandaddy really figured out their sound and worldview with their fantastic second album, featuring frontman Jason Lytle’s absurdist tales of mundanity and stress in our increasingly tech-reliant world, set to a blend of ’90s indie rock, glammy synthphonic flourishes (Flaming Lips/Mercury Rev’s influence loomed large in 2000), and twangy country. The concept album imagines a world full of alcoholic robots, sad computer programmers, lost pilots, stuntman Evil Knevil, and forests made of discarded appliances that Lytle makes relatable with his empathetic style and a hard drive full of earworm spacerock pop…somehow it all sounds even more relevant now than it did in Y2K.
For those who have followed McNally’s nearly twenty year career, the essence of what she brings to Americana Blues music is all packed into her performance. McNally’s voice oozes with nostalgia of Blues music history to almost hypnotize and transports her audience back to a time when life was simple and music was outlaw. With a large and growing catalogue of songs and a star-studded list of peers with whom she has written, recorded and toured with, McNally continues to create music that transcends.
When Shannon McNally signed with the artist collective Blue Rose Music, she was given the option of recording … well, whatever she wanted. Which would be a dream come true for most of us, corporate backing with no demands on our artistic output. But where many singer/songwriters would choose to record their own material, McNally—who already has several releases of original material under her belt going back nearly two decades—chose to record not only an album of covers, but an album of songs originally cut by one of the most iconic country legends ever, and a male legend at that.
The Waylon Sessions is McNally’s upcoming album of Waylon Jennings material on Compass Records, set to drop on May 28. With tracks like “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line,” “I’ve AlwaysBeen Crazy,” and the current lead single, “Ain’t Livin’ Long Like This,” McNally enlisted friends Rodney Crowell, Buddy Miller, Lukas Nelson, and Jennings’ widow Jessi Colter to help out, as well as a top-notch band assembled by guitarist Kenny Vaughan of Marty Stuart’s Fabulous Superlatives.
Listen to “I Ain’t Living Long Like This” Written by Rodney Crowell Made Famous by Waylon Jennings sung by Shannon McNally on the new album, ‘The Waylon Sessions,’ out on Compass Records.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band have shared a new ensemble rendition of Bob Dylan‘s 1964 classic “The Times They Are A-Changin”. This new cover features contributions from Jason Isbell, Steve Earle, Rosanne Cash, and The War and Treaty and serves as a fundraiser for Feeding America.
In the song, released via Bandcamp last week, NGDB leader Jeff Hanna bookends the track with the first and final verses. Between those two ends, each vocalist delivers a unique vocal performance that is able to make a song so iconic and familiar appear in a new light. From Earle’s gravely outlaw country drawl to Cash’s powerful ballad gusto, each singer is able to put their own mark on the song’s timeless lyrics.
Though the track, originally released on Dylan’s 1964 album of the same name, may seem older than time itself, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was founded just two years after the song’s release.
“I’ve been a fan of Bob Dylan’s since I was a teenager, living in California,” Hanna said. “I was fortunate enough to see him sing ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ in concert the year the song was released. It moved me deeply then and that hasn’t changed. The lyrics are as relevant today as they were when Dylan wrote it. Maybe even more so.”
Consider purchasing it via Bandcamp to help Feeding America. Each donation of $1 can provide up to 10 meals for children, families, and individuals facing hunger across the county.
Released February 5th, 2021 Original Composition by: Bob Dylan
Island are back with a new tune for a wintry February. ‘Octopus’, out now via Frenchkiss Records, is a sweet, melodic indie-pop delight from the quartet, written during lockdown last year and produced by Thom Yorke collaborator Mikko Gordon.
London four-piece ISLAND are an alternative guitar band whose history is characterized by old friendships, close bonds, and an almost telepathic mutual understanding. Forming as teenagers when frontman Rollo Doherty’s acoustic bedroom project was treated to the boisterous backing of guitarist Jack Raeder, bassist James Wolfe and drummer Toby Richards in a dingy windowless practice room where they began to painstakingly shape a sound which combined darkly twisting instrumental with a sweetly melodic song-writing nous that belied their age.
“‘Octopus’ describes the feeling of looking back on rebellious teenage years from a time where an impulse to cause trouble has been replaced with new sentiments,” say the band. “The song ends by flirting with the idea of reverting back to old ways, and getting back to making trouble.”
Last October, releasing “Sentimetal”, the debut album by London-by-way of Argentina three-piece, Value Void. Remember the band from when we posted the track ‘Back in the Day’ in May. That song features on the album, alongside ‘Babeland’, which to these ears, it conjures some kind of magical interzone between Breeders’ jangle and Women’s hypnotic creepiness. Not a bad place to be.
Sentimental is available on limited edition green vinyl (first pressing limited to 500 copies) and the usual CD and digital formats. Paz Maddio and Marta Zabala grew up with each other in Azul, a small town south of Buenos Aires, where the seeds of this project were sown. They collaborate in the same way that Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote songs, with Marta penning lyrics then taking them to Paz to spin them in to music.
Marta first came to London on tour with the super-slanted art punks Los Cripis, where she met Luke Tristram (of Cop, Score and Owner) who released their record via his Unwork label. Paz followed to join them and scrape rent from the city’s bars and cafes. By early 2017 the three of them were holed up in practice rooms, Luke adding Evens-esque basslines that laid concrete to their minimalist guitar-lead pop songs. Originally as WVS, they started playing shows with bands that had once orbited the tiny Power Lunches venue in Hackney and, since its death, were now to be found on bills at DIY Space, New River Studios and other dusty successors of its autonomous, cheap drink, creative-friendly spirit. In common with bands like Shopping, rudimentary surroundings and resources fed into nonetheless ambitious, hooky work. Songs such as “Teen For Him,” a self-effacing lark importing strains of Leslie Gore and the Velvets; the minimal, Guided by Voices-reminiscent chug of “Bariloche” and “Cupids Bow,” an up tempo, Breeders-esque standout, were lynch pins of a pummeling, inspired set.
In April of that year, they recorded with Euan Hinshelwood of Young Husband at the studio TVT, in an overlooked corner the other side of Blackheath, tucked under giant knots of flyover on the way to Charlton in South East London.
Upon deciding to flesh the songs out for a full length, they returned to TVT studios with Euan in April this year, tweaking the mix and laying down two new songs: “Mind,” a down tempo lullaby/lament in which the band track into the territory of early St. Vincent, Grouper or Julianna Barwick, supported by a raw dirge that blossoms in feedback, and “The Deluge,” which is also reflective but structured by a roaming curiosity and big chorus seeking road movie oblivion.
The album is instantly affecting, with an ease and clarity that suits the elegance of the lyrics: coded love songs and cool reflections on life which are all the more vulnerable and touching sung in Paz Maddio’s lilting, ultrachromatic voice – a ceramic-sharp diagonal transatlantic on a pure open tone, with subtle waves of vibrato at its top end. It’s a particular heart breaker on tracks such as “Babeland” and “Dead Ladies Lament”.
Restricted to a palette of drums, bass, guitar and double tracked vocals caught on 2″ tape, coloured here and there with a daub of feedback or a passage of ground-shifting tape delay, this is the sort of thing that gets called “stripped back”. It speaks to the powerful understatement at the heart of their style, but it fails to capture the crafty, delicate, taught and spaced-out ride Value Void subject you to: a species of NY proto-punk and Californian post-hardcore born miraculously from London’s piss swilling street level like religious icons in toast.
LostMap RecordsSulka is the lo-fi melodic scuzz-rock song writing and recording project of Glasgow-based Lukas Clasen. His debut single for LostMap, ‘Fear It’, was released in October, 2020 on digital services and as part of LostMap’s subscription service The PostMap Club.
“Take Care” which will be released in January 2021. The Album “‘Fear It’ channels a lot bands I listened to in my late teens,” says Lukas, “Cloud Nothings, The Cribs, Dinosaur Jr, Elliott Smith for example. So it has a kind of nostalgic but timeless feel to it for me. Lyrically there’s a lot of angst and turbulence in there which I think sets up some of the themes of the album quite well. I’m especially grateful to my friend Niamh from Moonsoup for adding some last-minute backing vocals which makes it a million times more listenable to me.”
Sulka has been putting out a steady stream of albums and EPs since 2017 via various local cassette labels including Gold Mold, Death Collective, Common and Negative Hope. Luka’s songwriting draws its main inspiration from figures of the late 90s and early 00s alternative scenes; Elliott Smith-esque acoustic compositions, scuzzy upbeat indie-rock tracks reminiscent of The Cribs and experiments in sound collage in the vein of Badly Drawn Boy.
The dynamic and stylistic range of the tracks are kept coherent through a DIY home recording aesthetic and a consistent lyrical tone. Throughout the tracks, raw personal subject matter such as relationships and mental health are often explored with a mixture of sincerity and tongue-in-cheek word play. Sulka has regularly performed live (both solo and as a full band), with highlights including opening slots for like-minded acts PAWS, Sorry, Current Joys and Jeffrey Lewis & the Voltage.
This release was available exclusively via our membership series, PostMap Club, during the month of January 2021. To keep up with all our future releases, sign up from just £3/month: lostmap.com/club
