Juliana Hatfield has announced new album “Blood” that will be out May 14th via American Laundromat Records. Juliana Hatfield has announced the release of her 19th studio album, Blood, which will be out on May 14 via American Laundromat Records. Coinciding with the announcement, she has shared the album’s lead single, “Mouthful of Blood.” Check out the song and see the cover art for Blood ,
I think these songs are a reaction to how seriously and negatively a lot of people have been affected by the past four years,” states Hatfield in a press release regarding her new album. “But it’s fun, musically. There’s a lot of playing around. I didn’t really have a plan when I started this project. I always love coming up with melodies and then trying to fit words into them—it’s like doing a puzzle. And I always find places to use the Mellotron flutes and strings, on every album, because those sounds are so beautiful to me. They are a nice counterpoint to the damaged lyrical content.” Hatfield also speaks a bit on the album’s creation, in which she was forced to record in her home in Connecticut as a result of the pandemic: “Usually I work in a studio. I did more than half the work in my room—with Jed helping me to troubleshoot the technology, and helping with building and arranging some of the songs and then I finished up with additional overdubs and mixing with engineer James Bridges at Q Division Studios in Somerville, MA.”
Hatfield’s most recent album, Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police, a cover album of songs by The Police, was released in 2019. “Mouthful of Blood” released on American Laundromat Records, Inc. Released on: 2021-01-28
In what feels like a match made in goth/dark folk hell, Chelsea Wolfe and Emma Ruth Rundle have released a collaborative single, “Anhedonia,” out now on Sargent House Records. It’s a haunting, bare-bones track, and it should come as no surprise that Chelsea and Emma’s soaring voices sound incredible together. Chelsea says:
I wrote “Anhedonia” after I experienced it during summer of 2019, then tucked the song away and moved forward with my acoustic album and subsequent North American tour. When COVID-19 hit and stay-at-home orders began in 2020, my European tour was cancelled and I had to fly home. Restless, I started listening through my archives of unfinished songs and little unused ideas. When I heard Anhedonia again, it hit me how strangely relevant the lyrics felt to current times. I’d been wanting to work on a song with Emma for a long time, so I recorded it and sent it her way. She graciously added her gorgeous vocals and lead guitar, and then Ben mixed it, adding his signature sound landscape as a fortress around the song. As I listened back to the final version, I was finally able to set free those emotions which I couldn’t feel back in 2019. I had worries around releasing the song, not wanting to romanticize the condition of anhedonia (the inability to feel pleasure), but I also understood that it could possibly be cathartic for others who are struggling, as it was for me, to sing and dance my way out of a depression.
Emma adds, “I was moved to tears when she sent me Anhedonia, which made getting through the tracking very emotional and slow on my end. I love the way the guitars I tracked morphed in Ben’s mix. The whole song swirls in a poignant eddy of sorrowful sound and still takes a hard swing at my heart hearing it now.”
Last year, Chelsea released the debut album by her new project with Jess Gowrie, Mrs. Piss. She’s also one of the guests on Xiu Xiu’s just-announced duets album.
Emma released a collaborative album with Thou last year (one of our favourite metal albums of 2020), and they followed it with a new EP earlier this month. Wolfe’s most recent solo studio album, Birth of Violence, was released in 2019.
Led by powerhouse vocalist, guitarist and ukulelist Willow Hawks, Cleveland quartet The Sonder Bombs are back with the follow-up to their buzzed-about 2018 debut “Modern FemaleRockstar”. As its title suggests, “Clothbound”—produced in quarantine by Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Beach Bunny, Modern Baseball) finds the band interweaving a multitude of ideas, both lyrically and instrumentally. On “k.,” Hawks delivers biting kiss-offs like “Treat your pearls like shit / You’ve always been entitled to it / Run your morgue mouth quick / Parseltongue and electric tips” amid bright ukelele and a pop-punk chug that would make Paramore proud, building to a hardcore breakdown.
Standouts like “The Brink” and closer “Play It By Fear” blend hard-charging punk and hushed pop, excelling in both aspects without selling either short Clothbound is at its best in this sweet spot, with Hawks wearing her emotions on her song writing’s sleeve (“Feeling is fine / You don’t need to be tough / All of the time ’/ We could hit Netflix and a box of wine,” she sings on single “Crying Is Cool”) and couching them in bittersweetly ebullient, multidimensional rock. The Sonder Bombs take aim at the sophomore slump on Clothbound and let loose with both barrels.
I can’t believe the day is here! We’ve been waiting so long to bring you the brand new The Sonder Bombs album entitled “Clothbound”. Please take a listen and remember it’s avail in UK/EU via Big Scary Monsters and in AUZ/NZ via Dew Process. We are so very proud of this band and the album they made!
“a revved-up and catchy rocker about urging your friends to get emotionally vulnerable.“Crying Is Cool” has a big pop-punk chorus, and its lyrics are fully sincere: “No one ever tells us it’s OK/ But it’s OK/ Yeah, you are safe.”– Stereogum
“the lead single, “What Are Friends For?” It nails a balance between subdued, folk-tinged indie punk and bigger, more anthemic rock, and it’s a very fun song that you’ll be humming along to before the first listen even ends.”– Brooklyn Vegan
“The band’s songwriting is more focused and concise than ever, Willow Hawks’ vocals take on a new shimmer as they float atop nostalgic instrumental arrangements that hammer home the quartet’s new and improved sound.”- Indie Mixtape
The Sonder Bombs – “Crying Is Cool” (Official Music Video) From their album “Clothbound” Out now via Take This To Heart Records/Big Scary Monsters (UK/EU)
With Kaputt, which came out 10 years ago this week, Dan Bejar demolished preconceived notions of what his band Destroyer sounded like a little more than a minute into Kaputt, the first saxophone appears. It’s just a little ascending sax run leading into the second verse of “Chinatown” nothing extravagant — but then it’s back, riffing and grooving with increasing fervour, as the song approaches its gentle jazz-pop climax. There’s more sax on “Blue Eyes,” colouring in the margins around Dan Bejar’s bemused references to Beatles songs and long-dead outlaws, before his band goes full lounge-pop during the luxuriating outro of “Suicide Demo For Kara Walker”: saxophones, trumpets, and flutes twirling around each other like faded dispatches from a past era.
That inaugural saxophone, performed by Canadian musician Joseph Shabason, feels like the moment where everything changed for Destroyer. Certainly, it’s the moment where Kaputt lets you know it’s anything but just another Destroyer album.
“Kaputt” released 10 years ago today. The production details are radiant. Glistening synths flicker like strobe lights throughout the title track’s soft-disco pomp. On “Downtown” and “Song For America,” jazzy backing vocalists underline Bejar’s vocals as though they were given the night off from a Steely Dan tour. Fretless bass licks slither underneath it all with the slightest hint of reverb.
Quiet storm, sophisti-pop, smooth jazz — whatever you want to call this stuff, it wasn’t what anyone expected a big-ticket indie album to sound like in 2011. What makes it work, aside from the band’s fluid virtuosity, is that Bejar wholly commits to the bit. Nothing on Kaputt is half-assed, no part executed with a wink or a smirk. The drum sound in “Savage Night At The Opera” has just the right dainty light touch. When “Suicide Demo For Kara Walker” a sprawling meditation on race written with the visual artist Kara Walker.
Plenty of great albums locate profundity within schmaltz, but few of them are as good as Kaputt.
The songwriting on Kaputt is more rich with imagery than discernible meaning. In press materials, Bejarcited “the hopelessness of the future of music” and “the pointlessness of writing songs for today” he said he’d largely lost interest in indie-rock as a serious vehicle for lyric-writing — “I just started blurting things out in a really condensed period of time,” he said of Kaputt‘s process — and yet the album contains some of his greatest, least-fretted-over lines to date.
At the time, the album’s formless writing and sonic textures seemed like a vast departure from Destroyer’s previous LPs. In retrospect, Kaputt has its roots in two Destroyer EPs released in 2009 and 2010, respectively: Bay Of Pigs, which featured a slightly extended version of Kaputt‘s majestic closing track of the same name.
When I made Kaputt people who had one foot in ambient music and one foot in pop music and one foot in jazz and one foot in world music.”
Steely Dan’s pair of late ’70s-early ’80s classics, Aja and Gaucho, both come to mind as well, particularly for their juxtaposition of slick grooves and cynical, debauched lyrics with ample references to recreational drug consumption.
Ten years later, Kaputt isn’t just the consensus pick for Destroyer’s best album (though I might still go to bat for Rubies depending on the day). In retrospect, it’s the pivot point of the group’s entire career — the sax-soaked fulcrum that divides Destroyer’s catalogue into two distinct eras: Before Kaputt and After Kaputt generally had some idea of what a new Destroyer album would sound like before it arrived.
THE KAPUTT PLAYERS: Daniel Bejar, Pete Bourne. Nicolas Bragg, David Carswell, J.P. Carter, John Collins, Joseph Shabason, Sibel Thrasher,
Frontier Records’ third Lilys re-issue is here! This remastered edition of “A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns” features a previously unreleased track, “G. Cobalt Franklin,” replacing “Glosseder” from the original 1994 10” LP. The songs “Elsa,” “Coby,” “Timber,” and “Hymn” — originally recorded in 1994 during the demoing process for Eccsame The Photon Band — were shelved, and then quietly released in 2000 on the long-out-of-print Lilys/Aspera Ad Astra split EP. “Ginger” is as sweetly sung as any song written in the indie rock canon. These bonus tracks, etc, are also excellent. SOOOO glad to see this reissued!
Tracks 1-5 were performed by Harry Evans, Paul Martin, and Kurt Heasley. Additional vocals by Joey Sweeney. Tracks 6-10 were performed by Erik Sahd and KurtHeasley.
Loney Dear – “Trifles” is taken from Loney Dear’s forthcoming album ‘A Lantern and A Bell’, due out March 26th, 2021 via Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records label. A central track to Emil’s new album, ‘Trifles’ had a particularly long gestation period in the studio – a previous, mixed version eventually scrapped in favour of a new recording captured in a single day, just before a bike accident put Svanängen temporarily out of action. Speaking about the track, which builds from its austere piano beginnings into a lush embrace of electronics, Emil says; “I love this song. All these gentle uneven bars barely noticed in a good song. The glock ostinato starting to copy the piano figure, and the disoriented whistle in the interlude. The powerful ending, even if we promised ourselves to not have songs that grew in the end.
Loney Dear is the singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Emil Svanängen’s idiosyncratic musical project where classic song-writing meets complex productions – both wide open and uplifting as well as sensitive and heart breaking… recorded by Svanängen with producer Emanuel Lundgren in a mythical studio on Western Södermalm in Stockholm, ‘A Lantern and A Bell’ is Loney Dear second album for real world, following 2017’s self-titled release.
Maritime themes permeate across ‘A Lantern and A Bell’ – the album arrives bearing artwork depicting the international nautical flag for distress and Emil’s voice is frequently bolstered by diffused water sounds at dark low frequencies and the calls of sea birds. for those who know their Loney Dear, the constant references to sea and ships are hardly something new. all that is an important part of my inner life, maybe a romantic dream of adventure, but also a phobia, a danger i cannot help but be drawn to, says Emil; near where I live, freighters pass by every day and the sounds of their engines get into my head. and further into the music. speaking about Emil’s new record – on which he has consulted as a sounding board, label founder Peter Gabriel says; sad soulful melodies that create space in your head that fill with memories dreams and tenderness. I am very proud that we are working with such a gifted songwriter. when you’re isolating, what better than to be wrapped up in these beautiful imaginative constructions – the work of a master.
Written by Emil Svanängen. Performed and produced by Emil Svanängen and Emanuel Lundgren
Loney Dear – “Trifles” Released on Real World Records due out March 26th, 2021
‘Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too’ is the debut EP from Leeds-based artist Amber Strawbridge, someone who records under the name Bored At My Grandmas House. In the same vein as a brace of well-received singles throughout 2020, ‘Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too’ is a collection of five warm, lo-fi studio recordings influenced by shoegaze, dream-pop and indie-rock. Nothing about the sound of Leeds-based songwriter Amber Strawbridge is new. Let’s make this clear from the start. But if you happen to be a lover of warm, dreamy indie-rock with shoegaze like me, her alter ego Bored At My Grandmas House might bring a few moments of delight into your cold and grey lockdown reality. And yes, I fall for that sound less often than I used to in the past but occasionally it happens and the sounds of all the singles of her upcoming EP Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too so far really spoke to me. This title-track I’m showing you right here is a perfect example. And yes, she also has a really great artist name which definitely roots in a real-life-experience because she started to write songs when she was in fact bored at that said place. The EP is out next week, please give it a spin.
Debut EP from Leeds based 19 year old Amber Strawbridge (Aka Bored At My Grandmas House). Starting out as an exercise in passing time when she was quite literally bored at her Grandma’s place. Playing all the instruments and self-recording most of the EP at home, Amber took the tracks to Alex Greaves (Working Men’s Club, Bdrmm) at the Nave studio for live drums and some final mixing flourishes, leaving an EP full of lo-fi charm but with a studio feel.
Inspired by Slowdive, Wolf Alice and Alvvays, Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too showcases Amber’s singular vision of indie-pop, on an EP that deals with topics like humanity, nostalgia and the current refugee crisis.
my new EP ‘Sometimes I Forget You’re Human Too’ is available to order now,
“Obviously” is the new album from Lake Street Dive. It includes the new single ‘Nobody’s Stopping You Now’, a letter of encouragement from lead vocalist Rachael Price to her teenaged self, co-written with bassist Bridget Kearney. Lake Street Dive has figured out how to write tunes that reflect this particularly turbulent chapter in our shared history. Obviously was produced by Grammy Award-winning producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Mike Elizondo who is best known as a song writing collaborator for Dr. Dre, Eminem, and 50 Cent and has also served as a record producer for Fiona Apple, Mary J. Blige, Carrie Underwood, and 21 Pilots, among many others.
Utilizing Elizondo’s hip-hop record-making expertise coupled with the permanent addition of keyboardist Akie Bermiss, Lake Street Dive’s wide-ranging taste in pop, rock, R&B, and jazz have blended together to make an impressively cohesive sound, combining retro influences with a contemporary attitude. “We’ve been a band for so long that we didn’t want to just become a feedback loop of our own ideas,” recounts Kearney. “It felt like a really good time to bring another person like Mike [Elizondo], and he really opened us up. He encouraged us to make bolder arrangement choices, take those chances and try those things. The record really is a success in what we set out to do: continue to challenge ourselves, continue to grow, and do things we’ve never done before.”
Over the summer, I was fortunate to spend some time on a beautiful remote island off the western coast of Canada. My pals Elise Boeur and Adam Iredale-Gray were kind enough to learn “Nobody’s Stopping You Now” for one of our Lounge Around Sounds streams. Here we are in Elise’s verdant garden (from which I partook of many tasty things!) which doubled as the livest of tracking rooms at Fiddlehead Studio! ~ Rachael
Rachael Price: vocals Mike “McDuck” Olson: guitar Bridget Kearney: bass, background vocals Mike Calabrese: drums, percussion, vocals Akie Bermiss: piano, vocals String Section: Alan Umstead, Mary Kathryn Vanosdale, Jung-min Shin, Bruce Christensen, Catherine Umstead, Anthony LaMarchina
“Nobody’s Stopping You Now” from the new Lake Street Dive album “Obviously” Out March 12th on Nonesuch Records
Ahead of their upcoming studio effort “Open Door Policy”, The Hold Steady have released another single from the record, “Spices.” The new track marks the third that the band has released from the forthcoming album; they previously released “Heavy Covenant” and “Family Farm.”
“‘Spices’ began with the intro riff that guitarist Tad Kubler brought in,” Craig Finn said (via press release). “It unfurled quickly when the band got together. It’s probably one of the heaviest songs on the record, but it achieves some levity with the horn section that arrives at the chorus. Like a number of others on the record, ‘Spices’ speaks of technology – the way texts, social media, DMs, etc. allow acquaintances to pop up into our lives and potentially disappear again just as quickly.” Produced by Josh Kaufman,
Listen to another song from Open Door Policy called “Spices” wherever you listen to music! This one features a killer guitar riff from Tad and some cool horns on the choruses courtesy of our friends Ray Mason, Stuart Bogie and Jordan McLean. Like a number of others on the record,
The band dropped “Family Farm” in December of 2020, just before their ‘Massive Nights’ livestreams from Brooklyn Bowl in New York City. “Heavy Covenant” was then released in early January.
2020 was a, well, er, interesting year. Imagining The Weekender in London being the last time we’d all be together wasn’t the way anyone planned. But we’re excited to be able to play for you later this week with Massive Nights 2020 via the magic of live-streaming. What we’re possibly more excited about bringing you new music and starting off 2021 with a brand new album! “OPEN DOOR POLICY” is our 8th studio album and will be released on February 19th, 2021 via our own label, Positive Jams, in association with Thirty Tigers.
The Hold Steady premiered several new songs from their upcoming Open Door Policy at Massive Nights V. I was immediately bowled over by “Heavy Covenant”. Beautiful song.
We recorded “Open Door Policy” in two different sessions in the back half of 2019. Once again we teamed with producer Josh Kaufman and engineer Dan Goodwin, this time at the Clubhouse studio in upstate NY. Our intention was to create an album that worked as a grand piece, rather than a collection of songs. 2019 was an active year for The Hold Steady — our writing was consistent, and new songs were coming in pretty regularly. The recording process was creative, open and fun.
The songs on “Open Door Policy“are about power, wealth, & mental health. They’re about technology, occupation, consumerism, freedom, fandom and escape. And although the album was written and recorded in 2019, the themes of this record seem to be underscored and highlighted by this year of virus and quarantine. Big thanks to Dave McLaughlin for his photo on the album cover, which appears above. “Family Farm” is the first song from the album we’re sharing. It originated from a demo Tad brought in, with Franz adding a classic THS bridge. Our friends Stuart Bogie and Jordan McLean came in with the horns. The song even includes a mention of the great Eddie Van Halen solo “Eruption”, an unintended tribute to a great rock hero in light of his recent passing.
Marking her first solo release in nine years, singer Julia Stone will release “Sixty Summers” on April 20th. To stoke excitement for the LP – which was produced by St. Vincent – she’s shared the new single/music video for “We All Have,” featuring Matt Berninger of The National. Reimagined, reborn and reinvigorated, this new era for Julia Stone replaces dirt under foot with wet pavements and sticky dancefloors; trades blue skies for red lights and red lips. Step into Julia Stone’s brand-new world.
“This song is about how everything transforms and moves; even though you feel so shitty at one point, it might shift into something new,” explained the singer-songwriter. “Love is all that we really need to be here for — not love with someone else but love in your heart.”
Added Berninger, “Berninger said, “It’s always really inspiring to hear old friends creating such amazing music. I’ve been a big fan of Julia’s work for a long time, and it was so fun to be invited to be a part of this song!”
Listen to ‘We All Have’ (featuring Matt Berninger): Julia Stone’s forthcoming album ‘Sixty Summers’, released 16th April:
