Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief has released a new video for her song “forwards beckon rebound” from her 2020 solo album “Songs”. The video features Lenker’s silhouette shot floating around the screen accompanied by her elucidative dancing at dusk in the desert. Filmed at Wild Heart Ranch in Joshua Tree, the “forwards beckon rebound” video was self-directed by Lenker but brought to life by cinematographer Adam Gundersheimer and producer V Haddad.
Last fall, Lenker released two solo albums titled “Songs” and “Instrumentals”, which featured her strong song writing abilities and indie-folk sound seeping through each track.
Both albums were written and recorded in April 2020 while under quarantine. After Big Thief’s European tour ended early due to COVID-19, Lenker retreated to a one-room cabin in the mountains of western Massachusetts and set up a studio there with the aid of engineer Philip Weinrobe.
“I grew really connected to the space itself,” said Lenker in a previous press release. “The one-room cabin felt like the inside of an acoustic guitar—it was such a joy to hear the notes reverberate in the space.”
Saint Seneca is back with another dose of the gorgeous, triumphant indie folk that they’ve become best known for. Main member Zac Little says, “I wanted to write a Christmas song, but it didn’t feel right this time, so I thought about old new years and made a Valentine. I miss everyone, and I figure a song is kind of like a little tent. A place in space and time – you can pack it up and take it with you, get it out when you need it, and I like to imagine being together inside. Columbus-based folk-punk artist Saint Seneca has returned to the scene with his latest single, “All You’ve Got Is Everyone.” The song is out now via ANTI-records.
This track has a moderate tempo, accompanied by Little’s longing vocals and dreamscape guitar synth that blends harmoniously to create a story of ardent longing. Written during the pandemic and in the midst of a global lockdown, Little wrote the track to embody a hug—something that is not attainable at the current moment.
“All You’ve Got Is Everyone” is Saintseneca’s first single since 2019 and it features less folk and more lo-fi drum/bass that sounds something like a new beginning. Saintseneca’s last album was 2018’s Pillar of Na, which was produced by Mike Mogis.
I really admire this band on so many fronts: the musicianship, the songcraft, the ranging harmonies, the tender vocals, the sweet tunes, the ease with which they move from gentle melody to riotous foot-stomping, and more. This particular song covers a lot of emotional ground, and I detect a hint of their Dark Arc work in the play of the bass and the lead vocal.
Country music’s influence on rock ’n’ roll is nearly as old as rock itself, a dominant gene in rockabilly and vocal touchstone for seminal artists from Elvis to Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers. in 1968 the rise of a school of artists consciously bridging those genres, accelerating the pace that two of the sub-genre’s defining albums would overlap in conception even as the bands creating them buckled under internal strain.
The Byrds had enjoyed first mover advantage in recording “Sweetheart of the Rodeo”, spurred on by Gram Parsons, a 21-year-old singer-songwriter whose deep love for Southern country and R&B found a kindred spirit in bassist Chris Hillman and pragmatic support from lead guitarist Roger McGuinn. Country influences were already in the air, not only in originals and covers from the Beatles, the Lovin’ Spoonful, Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds themselves, but also in up and coming artists like Bobbie Gentry and Linda Ronstadt.
Before “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” hit stores in late August, Parsons had bolted from the band on the eve of South African dates and veered into a bromance with Keith Richards that injected the Rolling Stones with country influences while fanning Parsons’ own dreams of rock glory. After hanging out in London with Richards, Parsons returned to Los Angeles in early August weighing his next move.
The Flying Burrito Brothers’ original line up: Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Gram Parsons, Chris Ethridge and Chris Hillman. The recording line up had yet to add a drummer
Meanwhile, Chris Hillman had left the Byrds’ coop after increasing tensions with management. Despite an earlier falling out with Parsons, Hillman reconciled with the Florida-born, Georgia-raised musician. The erstwhile combatants once more bonded over music and even became roommates, writing the bulk of what would become the original material on the debut for the Flying Burrito Brothers. Chris Ethridge was recruited as bassist, freeing Hillman to play guitar and mandolin, and the duo tapped Sneaky Pete Kleinow on pedal steel guitar.
The chance to snag a new band with two Byrds quickly drew competing bids from Warner Bros. and A&MRecords, with A&M winning the battle. In contrast to the sessions for Sweetheart, shepherded by a seasoned producer and crack session players, the Burritos entered the studio with a big advance, a lot of ideas, a fledgling co-producer who was no match for the strong-willed Parsons and Hillman, and no drummer. The Burritos would share producer credits with A&M’s Larry Marks and engineer Henry Lewy, reflecting a more chaotic studio environment that would find them going through a collection of drummers.
Gram Parsons had envisioned the Burritos as “his” band, but The Gilded Palace of Sin, released in early February of ’69, underscores the partnership between Parsons and Hillman, who co-wrote six of the album’s eight originals. The opening track, “Christine’s Tune,” finds them sharing lead vocals and driving acoustic rhythm guitars, with harmonies built on classic thirds that harken back to the Louvin Brothers, the Everlys and other high, lonesome harmony singers. An overly ripe bassline evidently designed to emphasize rock power loses its edge to muddiness, but Sneaky Pete’s pedal steel commands centre stage with an aggressive, fuzz-toned attack and his own unorthodox tunings.
A stop-motion animator and special effects craftsman, Kleinow provides a potent departure from the more traditional steel parts heard on Sweetheart, leaning here into the rock side of the sub-genre’s equation. Kleinow unleashes that power elsewhere on Gilded Palace while proving his skill with more traditional accents on the ballads, starting with “Sin City,” a country waltz that trades in the sin and salvation polarity central to Parsons’ vision for an amalgam of country, rhythm ’n’ blues and rock.
Its synthesis of country soundscape with urban modernism strikes an apocalyptic tone. “On the thirty-first floor, a gold-plated door won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain,” the duo sings in a prophesy that warns “this old earthquake’s gonna leave me in the poor house.” They could be singing about L.A. or Las Vegas; heard today, it’s hard not to envision the gilded escalators in Trump Tower.
The R&B component in Parsons’ “cosmic” Southern synthesis leads him back to Memphis, source for Sweetheart’s countrified R&B cover (“You Don’t Miss Your Water”). this time yielding two superb ballads sharing lyrics from Dan Penn. “Do Right Woman,” written with Chips Moman, was a sensuous Aretha Franklin cut demanding equal sexual satisfaction from her man, a contract that survives its gender flip as another gliding country waltz. Instead of changing the mood or their compass bearings, the Burritos follow with the darker sexual torment of “Dark End of the Street,” a Penn collaboration with Spooner Oldham. Parsons dominates the vocals with an audible anguish over a locked battle between passion and guilt for two lovers “hiding in shadows where we don’t belong,” resigned to the inevitability of discovery and shame in a tableau of illicit love familiar in both country and soul tropes.
For two self-referential album tracks, Parsons wrote with Chris Ethridge. “Hot Burrito #1” is another soulful ballad that dispenses with any hint of sexual guilt to remind an ex-lover that “I’m the one who showed you how/To do the things you’re doing now” in frank sexual metaphors. With “Hot Burrito #2,” Ethridge grounds the track in a strutting bassline as Parsons rants about a lover’s quarrel with an eyebrow-raising opening “Yes, you loved me and you sold all my clothes.” If the lyrics verge on incoherence, the track itself is a lively standout.
Elsewhere, Parsons and Hillman nod to the tension between their music’s Southern roots and their countercultural instincts. On “My Uncle,” Hillman takes the lead on vocals and mandolin as a young American pondering the draft who’s “heading for the nearest northern border” against a fleet bluegrass backdrop. And on the closing “Hippie Boy,” Hillman reverses roles for a poker-faced, spoken word sermon as a redneck whose encounter with a hippie brings something like peace, love, understanding and the sage advice to “never carry more than you can eat.”
With the album completed, the Burritos recruited a third Byrd, drummer Michael Clarke, but chaotic behavior sabotaged supporting tour dates as they burned through the label’s advance, missing a crucial New York date. The Gilded Palace of Sin stalled on the Billboard chart, considerably worse than Sweetheart’s disappointing tally months earlier. The addition of Bernie Leadon would strengthen them musically, but Gram Parsons was already restless. He would leave “his” band after the Burritos completed a scattershot follow-up, Burrito Deluxe.
Gone missing years before the death of Gram Parsons, one of the four iconic outfits worn on the cover of the Burritos’ The Gilded Palace of Sin, and unknowingly bought by Elton John, resurfaces
Phoebe Bridgers knows how to leave an impression. The singer-songwriter made her debut as the musical guest on the February. 6th episode of Saturday Night Live, which was hosted bySchitt’s Creek star Dan Levy, with a memorable performance.
Bridgers kicked off her two-song set with “Kyoto,” the second single off her sophomore album, 2020’s Punisher. Like in the song’s video, the artist and her backup musicians sport the skeleton onesies while performing the tune, which is up for the best rock song and best rock performance Grammys.
For her second song, the 26-year-old offered up Punisher’s “I Know the End” on a darkened stage bathed in soft red lights, her skeleton onesie gone, though the baubles she wore resembled a rib cage. She once again started soft and dreamy, but about two thirds of the way into the tune, Bridgers let loose, her guitar roaring, the singer-songwriter screaming at the top of her lungs.
Bridgers eventually walked to the front of the stage toward an amp, and for the last 30 seconds or so, repeatedly smashed her guitar against the amp — causing sparks to fly — eventually giving the amp a kick for good measure and finally dropping her instrument to end the set.
Bridgers, who is based in Los Angeles, is up for a total of four Grammys this year. In addition to the two she’s earned for “Kyoto,” the musician is up for best new artist — in which she’s up against Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, Ingrid Andress and others — and best alternative music album for “Punisher“. The Grammys are set to air March 14th on CBS.
Musical guest Phoebe Bridgers performs “Kyoto” and “I Know The End” on Saturday Night Live.
Bruce Springsteen, who traditionally shuns any kind of corporate tie-in, has partnered with Jeep for “The Middle,” a two-minute ad that debuted on the car brand’s social media platforms at midnight ET on Sunday (February. 7th) and will air during the Super Bowl. “Olivier Francois [global chief marketing officer for Jeep parent Stellantis] and I have been discussing ideas for the last 10 years and when he showed us the outline for ‘The Middle,’ our immediate reaction was, ‘Let’s do it,’” Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau said in a statement. “Our goal was to do something surprising, relevant, immediate and artful. I believe that’s just what Bruce has done with ‘The Middle.’”
Jeep® kicks off Game Day by reminding us we are stronger than the obstacles in our way, and invites us to remember all the ways we are connected as Americans. A timeless CJ-5 takes us on a journey to the U.S. Centre# Chapel in Kansas in search of common ground. We have spanned deserts and climbed the highest peaks. We can cross this divide.
Like those previous short films, “The Middle” features sweeping footage of great expanses of America’s heartland, as Springsteen voices a narrative about a chapel in Lebanon, Kansas — “standing on the exact centre of the lower 48. It never closes, all are more than welcome” — before going into broader themes about how divided we have become. “It’s no secret, the middle has been a hard place to get to lately, between red and blue…between our freedom and our fear,” he continues.
Springsteen appears in the ad, driving a Jeep through snow-lined streets, as the commercial’s elegiac score,
Wyndow is a collaboration between Laura J Martin and Lavinia Blackwall (Trembling Bells). A set of musical postcards sent across the wires from Liverpool to Clydebank and once described by a four year old boy as a complete nightmare. Voices intertwine on a bed of homebrewed minimalism with words detailing the quiet moments. ‘Take My Picture. Laura J Martin has released three acclaimed solo albums and supported the likes of PJ Harvey and Cate Le Bon. Lavinia Blackwall is a solo-artist in her own right, as well as a member of Trembling Bells who have released seven albums, The pair first met when they were both playing Moseley Folk Festival in Birmingham.
The band recently shared their first single, “Take My Picture”,
Written by Wyndow
Laura J Martin (vocals, flute, piano) Lavinia Blackwall (vocals, autopharp) Marco Rea (bouzouki, guitar, bass, synth) Iwan Morgan (synth, beat)
With a sound oscillating between psychedelic pop and space rock, Triptides’ album “Alter Echoes” channels both The Byrds at their most hallucinogenic and Floyd at their most cosmically composed while creating something immediate and new. The band has established itself as a preeminent part of the Los Angeles new wave psych music. With “Alter Echoes,” they pull away from the pack, thanks to the quality of their song writing, performance and production.
Triptides have become a staple of Southern California’s sun-baked, surf-tinged psych-rock scene over the last decade, and now the Los Angeles trio is gearing up to release a new album called Alter Echoes, due next month via Alive Naturalsound Records. Today, the band continues to live up to its name with a dreamy, hallucinogenic new single premiering below. “Perhaps the most laid back track on the record, ‘Moonlight Reflection’ is a love song gliding through the darkness of a clear night,” vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Glenn Brigman says.
The track opens with a breezy, undulating intro, but the first verse sets the scene: “In the dead of night, see the moon reflecting the light / Do you feel alright? Don’t run and hide.” Brigman’s spaced out vocals are barely tethered to the instrumentation below. Eventually those vocals give way to a heady, transcendent guitar solo the kind of guitar solo that begs to be performed outside on a warm summer night. “We drew upon the dreamy moods of Erasmo Carlos,” explains Brigman, “and the heroic melodies of the Isley Brothers, letting the vocal track ebb and flow while the lush chords glisten in anticipation of the climactic conclusion: a final jet-phased guitar solo that ascends like the first light of a new day.”
“Moonlight Reflection” is the second single off Alter Ehoes following the more driving “It Won’t Hurt You,” which arrived last month. Both tracks follow a string of singles and double-singles released over 2019 and 2020.
For our new record, we decided to create something more organic, performing together in a classic Hollywood studio and recording it live to tape,” says Brigman. “We wanted to make sure we were expressing the true sound of the three of us in a room before elevating the recordings with additional overdubs.”
The band recorded the album at Boulevard Recording Studio. Formerly the Producer’s Workshop then Westbeach Recorders, the studio was upgraded in 2010 when engineer Clay Blair decided to revamp it. “I came across this Craigslist ad,” Blair told an interviewer in 2016. “It said, ‘Recording Studio.’ There was only a picture of the building outside.” In its previous eras, the studio hosted Pink Floyd, Ringo Starr, Bad Religion, Blink-182, and plenty of other pop, rock, and punk hitmakers (it also housed Epitaph Records at one point).
“We kept the writing spontaneous and let our influences drift from 70’s fuzz rock (‘Hand of Time’) to bossa nova (‘She Doesn’t Want To Know’) to electric jazz (‘Another Dream’),” says Brigman of Triptides’ new material. “Through our collaborative mind we were able to weave these vibrations together to form “Alter Echoes.”
Alter Echoes comes after the self-described “sun-warped psychedelic rock” band’s 2018 albums Visitors and Estrela Magica (with Winter), as well as 2017’s Afterglow. Triptides is led by multi-instrumentalist Glenn Brigman, the trio is rounded by bassist Stephen Burns and drummer Brendan Peleo-Lazar.
“Moonlight Reflection” is out February 5th. Alter Echoes arrives March 19th via Alive Naturalsound Records.
Phantom Handshakes are the New York- based duo of Matt Sklar (Exiles) and Federica Tassano (Sooner, Mônetre), a band who have pretty much only existed in the age of social distancing. Last year saw the band release their debut album, “Be Estranged”, recorded in their respective homes in Brooklyn and Manhattan at the end of Spring 2020. The album was released by Slovakian cassette-label Z Tapes, who will also release their second offering, No More Summer Songs, recorded in the same manner as their debut, and due out in April. Ahead of that release, today Phantom Handshakes are sharing the first single from the album, No Better Plan.
In Phantom Handshakes’ Instagram bio, the project is described as “a band born to cope with the quarantine’s gloom,” but it would be just as accurate to say the dream-pop duo has been helping us cope, with gorgeous songs that have offered some serious sonic solace during what’s certainly been the strangest of years.
Now, about five months after the release of the NYC duo’s excellent debut EP “Be Estranged”, plus the newest track from Phantom Handshakes
Musically, Phantom Handshakes’ sound seems to exist in-between worlds, the guitars have a certain to the production of early-90’s shoegaze and the catchy unforget-ability of indie-pop. Through this heady mixture of influences, they seem to mark a path of their own, while there’s touchstones to the likes of Chorusgirl or Hazel English, ultimately Phantom Handshakes are plotting their own course, and sounding increasingly compelling doing it.
New single ‘No Better Plan’ available now From the upcoming LP ‘No More Summer Songs’ out April 30th Written and recorded by Phantom Handshakes (Federica Tassano & Matt Sklar)
L.A. Witch’s eponymous debut album tapped into the allure of warm nights on the West Coast while hinting at the loneliness and lawlessness of living on the periphery of a country founded on a dark past. The three-piece composed of Sade Sanchez, Irita Pai, and Ellie English culled sounds from the outlaws of warmer climes, whether it was 13th Floor Elevators’ lysergic rock n’ roll or the cool hand fatalism by The Doors on songs like “The End”. It’s an album transmitting subdued revelry while also smirking at the inevitable consequences of the night. There is no better season for these kinds of songs than the autumn when the promises of summer have abated and the nights of reckoning grow longer.
#L.A. Witch seized the moment by revisiting some of their early tracks and reshaping them into “Octubre”, a five-song EP that delves deeper into their darker side. “Because these are old songs—we don’t play them live anymore but still wanted them to be heard—this was the perfect opportunity to get experimental with sounds and textures,” Sanchez says of the EP. Despite this new studio adventurism, the songs on Octubre stay true to L.A. Witch’s vintage starkness.
In February 1980: UK band Squeeze released their third studio album, ‘ArgyBargy’, on A&M Records; it contained two of the much-loved group’s all-time classics in “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)” and “Another Nail in my Heart”; it would be their last album featuring founding keyboardist Jools Holland until Squeeze’s first reunion album, 1985’s ‘Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti’...
Written and recorded after the band’s successful sophomore release, Cool for Cats, the album’s lyrics were written by Chris Difford while living with his wife in New York City. The band reunited with Cool for Cats producer John Wood and, after Glenn Tilbrook composed music for Difford’s new lyrics, Following the Cool for Cats tour, Chris Difford married spent the summer of 1979 in the US with his wife. There he wrote over forty new lyrics, inspired by his new marriage and his time spent in Greenwich Village. He recalled, “I would sit in the flat all day while [wife] Cindy went to work and this fluidity of lyricism came gushing forth. The whole of the “Argybargy” album came in one fell swoop and lots more besides that never saw the light of day.
“Argybargy” has seen critical acclaim from music writers. Chris Jones of BBC Music called the album “their crowning achievement” and “a masterpiece of kitchen sink pop,” concluding, “If you’re going to own at least one Squeeze album, this has to be the one. Argybargy doesn’t stay in one place; it’s restless and crackling with colours… with “Argybargy” it was clear that Squeeze were at the top of the pack among new wave popsters, and that their sardonic yet lively voice was unique among any pop group before or since.
The album has since been recognized as a classic of new wave and features multiple of the band’s most famous songs, including “Another Nail in My Heart,” “Pulling Mussels (from the Shell),” and “If I Didn’t Love You.”
In February 1980: UK band Squeeze released their third studio album, ‘ArgyBargy’, on A&M Records; it contained two of the much-loved group’s all-time classics in “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)” & “Another Nail in my Heart”; it would be their last album featuring founding keyboardist Jools Holland until Squeeze’s first reunion album, 1985’s ‘Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti’...
Written and recorded after the band’s successful sophomore release, Cool for Cats, the album’s lyrics were written by Chris Difford while living with his wife in New York City. The band reunited with Cool for Cats producer John Wood and, after Glenn Tilbrook composed music for Difford’s new lyrics,Following the Cool for Cats tour, Chris Difford married spent the summer of 1979 in the US with his wife. There he wrote over forty new lyrics, inspired by his new marriage and his time spent in Greenwich Village. He recalled, “I would sit in the flat all day while [wife] Cindy went to work and this fluidity of lyricism came gushing forth. The whole of the Argybargy album came in one fell swoop and lots more besides that never saw the light of day.
Argybargy was released in February 1980. It spent 15 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, Argybargy was the first Squeeze album to also chart in the US, Taken from their third studio album, ‘Arbybargy’ (A&M Records), UK band Squeeze released the single “Another Nail In My Heart” (backed with the non-album track “Pretty Thing”); early copies came in a picture sleeve & clear vinyl; it climbed to #17 in the UK but the group would once again strike out in the US (where the B-side title was changed to “Pretty One”)…
Squeeze:
Chris Difford – rhythm guitar, vocals, lead vocal on “Here Comes That Feeling”, co-lead vocals on “If I Didn’t Love You” & “I Think I’m Go Go”
Glenn Tilbrook – lead guitar, keyboards, lead vocals
Jools Holland – keyboards, vocals, lead vocal on “Wrong Side of the Moon”
