A new face on the thriving Bristol Music Scene, Clara Mann first came across music when growing up in the South of France surrounded by Classical sounds, including everything from choral pieces to chamber music. Inspired Clara went on to become classically trained in both piano and voice, elements she incorporates into her new-found sonic world, which could be loosely classified as folk music. Teaming up with Sad Club Records, Clara recently shared her debut single, “I Didn’t Know You Were Leaving Today”, the first taste of an EP, due later this year. Clara Mann’s luscious new single ‘Thoughtless’ is out 20th January with her beautiful EP ‘Consolations’ out 24th February.
Recorded in an isolated collaboration with the help of Benjamin Spike Saunders and Bugs’ Alice Western, I Didn’t Know You Were Leaving Today is a slice of beautifully gentle folk, as Clara’s rich vocal is accompanied initially by a gentle flutter of acoustic guitar, before being joined by the warm buzz of distant violins. It’s a sound akin to contemporaries like Dana Gavanski or Shannon Lay, yet like those artists it also has a timeless quality, equally indebted to Shirley Collins or Molly Drake. Despite the lofty comparisons, there’s a freshness and an integrity to Clara Mann, a voice bringing something new to a genre as old as the hills, and quietly marking herself out as an artist with a hugely bright future.
Tucson, Arizona interdisciplinary artist Karima Walker walks a line between two worlds. Aside from her long resume of collaborative work with artists in the diverse fields of dance, sculpture, film, photography and creative non-fiction, Walker has long nurtured a duality within her work as a musician, developing her own sonic language as a sound designer in tandem with her craft as a singer/songwriter. The polarity within Walker’s music has never been so articulately explored, or graced with as much intention, as on her new album, “Waking the Dreaming Body”.
Waking the Dreaming Body was written, performed and engineered entirely by Walker, with the exception of some subtle upright bass from C.J. Boyd on the song “Window I.” Producing the album on her own wasn’t Walker’s original intention, though; after flying to New York in November 2019 to develop some home-recorded tracks with The Blow’s Melissa Dyne, a sudden illness forced Walker to cancel the sessions and return home to Tucson to recover, and soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic ruled out the possibility of a return trip to New York. Instead, Walker decided to finish the album herself in her makeshift home studio. She spent the following months recording, processing and arranging her self-described “messy Ableton sessions” into densely harmonic arrangements of synthesizer, guitar, piano, percussion, field recordings, tape loops and her own dulcet singing voice, allowing trial, error and intuition to guide her way. The final result is a 40-minute dream-narrative of her conscious and subconscious minds that oscillates between the rich textures of her ambient compositions (as in the instrumentals “Horizon, Harbor Resonance” and “For Heddi”) and the melody and poetry of her melancholic, Americana-tinged song writing (as in the lyrics-focused tracks “Reconstellated” and “Waking the Dreaming Body”), their ebb and flow recalling liminal states of half-sleep where images and emotions are recalled and forecasted from the previous night’s dreams. Night falls in regular intervals throughout the album, forming a natural dialogue between waking and dreaming.
Walker explains:
“I wanted these songs to stand alone as complete worlds, and this required a shift in my usual way of writing. I found myself trying to escape from an excess of interiority by exploring outward, by thinking about the mirroring that happens when you seek connection to others and to the natural world—when you try to bring the outside in. I sought to make arrangements that swell at certain moments and barely hold together at others, moving with my breath and other rhythms connecting my body to the natural world. Ultimately, I was seeking to draw myself out, to reconstruct my personal narrative.”
“I see myself as an in between person I guess,” Walker continues. “Though I haven’t very explicitly brought my own personal history into my music, I think it’s there, and it continues to show up in its own ways and time. I am Arab, half North African/Tunisian on my mother’s side, but was raised in a very white context, with a lot of white passing privilege, especially as I’ve gotten older. But my journey into making music was so different. I kept falling in love with musicians and artists for a while before I realized that maybe I wanted to be so close to these people because they were doing something that resonated deeply in me. So there’s a way in which making music has been a way for me to overcome divides that I couldn’t quite articulate in other ways.
“Waking the Dreaming Body” is out February 26th, 2021 on Keeled Scales / Orindal Records.
All songs written, performed, mixed & produced by Karima Walker
The veteran San Francisco songwriter (of The Fresh & Onlys fame) is putting out a record called “You Are Still Here” this March, and on it features “Give Me Yours”, a single that came together while Cohen waited six hours for a plane out to Denver. He’d already had the chords and arrangements mapped out, but the lyrics came pouring out after Cohen had ordered a tequila soda and chicken sandwich at the airport to pass the time. Oh, and did I mention that he’d also popped “an edible” before leaving his house?
Penned while “on the verge of hallucinations,” as Cohen described it, the track reads like a paranoid fever dream. “They’re gonna drink our drinks/ They’re gonna eat our bones,” Cohen sings in the opening verse, referencing his own airport meal but in exaggerated terms.
“This ‘they are coming to get us’ attitude is a by product of the despair and hopelessness I felt being at the mercy of corporate airlines in what I deemed an irreversible front to my artistic freedom,” he explained and in my half-delusional state I adopted the ‘us against them’ desperation that permeates the album.”
Although fuelled by agony and anxiety, musically “Give Me Yours” actually sounds like a bouncy ball of sunshine. Cohen trades in his Fresh & Onlys garage rock for guitar-led folk-pop that’s much softer yet has an irresistible charm. The percussion snaps and the rhythm sways like something out of the ’60s, and it’s all smiles by the time you reach the extra peppy guitar that pops around all over the chorus. If only my breakdowns at JFK and Newark sounded this good.
Fresh & Onlys frontman Tim Cohen wrote “Give Me Yours” during an airport layover and then fleshed it out in the studio. He’s always had a way with a hook and this one’s no different.
His new album, You Are Still Here, arrives March 26th via Bobo Integral.
Prolific New Zealand-born, Melbourne based singer-songwriter Sarah Mary Chadwick is releasing “Me and Ennui Are Friends Baby” on February 5th via Ba Da Bing Records, and the latest single is “Full Mood,” which Sarah says “is about a Valentine’s Day date I went on. The owner of the bar we were at tried to get us both to fuck her, but she wouldn’t let me be in charge so we didn’t. I remember afterwards we were walking down the road and it was streetlights and still at 3am and everything felt great and shining and I remember thinking that I wish my dad could’ve done this, got drunk and kicked around the city at night when it’s all sparkly, holding onto someone who lights you up, not been stuck in silent dark rural New Zealand, watching other people’s lives on TV, drinking half glasses of box wine while his frowning wife ironed.”
“Me And Ennui Are Friends, Baby” is the latest full-length from New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based singer-songwriter, Sarah Mary Chadwick, whose brutally honest song writing has cast her contrary to the gentleness of most current music. Comprised entirely of minimal solo piano arrangements, the album is despondently clear-eyed and smirkingly self-deprecating, completing a trilogy of records that started with The Queen Who Stole The Sky recorded on Melbourne Town Hall’s grand organ, and her only outing to date featuring a full band, Please Daddy. Each record has followed Chadwick’s internal processing after a traumatic event, with Chadwick’s zeal for psychoanalysis front and centre. On Ennui, Chadwick presents an exacting intensity with her choice to pare back to piano and vocals. It’s in this stark setting that she focuses on the attempt she made on her life in 2019.
Directed by Tristan Scott-Behrends
Starring Daniel Villarreal & Sarah Mary Chadwick “Only Trumpets” Clip featuring Daniel Crook & Xavier Jimenez March ‘Full Mood’ is the third single from forthcoming album ‘Me And Ennui Are Friends, Baby’, out February 5th 2021 through Rice Is Nice Records & Ba Da Bing.
Title Fight co-frontman Ned Russin has shared a second single from his upcoming Glitterer album, “Life Is Not A Lesson”, which arrives 26th febuary via ANTI-Records (pre-order). Like lead single “Are You Sure?”, the just-released “Didn’t Want It” is a little closer to the loud, driving Title Fight sound than the last Glitterer album was, and it’s another very promising taste.
“‘Didn’t Want It’ was the first song I wrote for the new record,” Ned says. “Despite having no road map for how the rest of the songs would turn out, this track established a lot of the qualities that would be further explored as I continued to write – more present and fuzzed out guitars, minimalistic chord changes, and uncertain, longing lyrics.” It comes with an animated lyric video by Rob Fidel, which you can check out below.
“The Baby Remimagined”, a reimagining by her friends and contemporaries of Samia’s 2020 debut LP, The Baby Reimagined is a song-for-song reinvention of the debut album from Samia. It features old friends and new connections forged over mutual admiration. While some remix albums struggle to justify their existence, this one is a testament to the song writing at the core of Samia’s work. In any hands, these songs are special. And in the carefully selected hands at work across this release, these songs are transcendent.
“The Baby”, is due out Friday (1/15) via Grand Jury, and the latest single is Christian Lee Hutson’s folky, contemplative take on “Does Not Heal.” Hutson’s reimagined version of “Does Not Heal” marks his first release of 2021,
“Does Not Heal” · Samia Cover by Christian Lee Hutson released on Grand Jury Music Released on: 2021-01-11
Here’s what they say about it: At long last, we’re proud to announce our new album, ‘Green to Gold’ will be released on March 26th via Anti / Transgressive Records! You can pre-order the new album via Bandcamp. And today, we’ve got a new song to share with you. This one’s called “Solstice”.
“Solstice” is a flashback to the infinite days of peak childhood summer, innocent barefoot hikes, staying outside all afternoon and late into the evening, well past it being too dark to see. But it’s remembered from the vantage of a present day that feels unbearably long rather than joyously endless. It’s an invocation of those simpler times, an attempt to conjure the lightness of youth, before life got so damn complicated. Peter Silberman is back with the first Antlers album in seven years, which will be out in March. Here’s the new single.
Eager to share the rest of ‘Green to Gold’ with you this spring. Thank you for listening. With love,The Antlers”
Vocals, guitar, bass, pedal steel, piano, and organ by Peter Silberman Drums and percussion by Michael Lerner
Bass clarinet on “Wheels Roll Home” by Jon Natchez Violin and viola on “Solstice” by Will Harvey Cello on “Stubborn Man” by Brent Arnold Banjo on “Just One Sec” and “Volunteer” by David Moore Slide Guitar on “Just One Sec” by Dave Harrington Baritone saxophone, flute, clarinet, and french horn on “It Is What It Is” by Kelly Pratt Guitar on “Green to Gold” by Tim Mislock
While the days when you might spot David Byrne at a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show are behind us, Alec Ounsworth has continued to hone his skills as a songwriter. Born out of a dark year, “New Fragility” finds Ounsworth inspired and the songs shared so far are terrific. If it doesn’t end up being Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s best since 2005 it definitely will be the best to feature a song called “CYHSY, 2005.” New single “CYHSY, 2005” isn’t about the days when David Byrne would come to their shows, it’s about home. “Part of being away so often is leaving people behind, and never feeling you’re able to establish conventionally meaningful relationships,” says Ounsworth. “You can be searching for stability – being in one place – and discover that that’s an illusion.”
In any discussion regarding songwriters and lyricists of 21st century indie music, Alec Ounsworth and his moniker, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, will feature prominently. Few have been as consistently brilliant, eclectic, and intimate; fewer still remain defiantly independent, refusing to sign deals that compromise artistic vision. That is what characterizes Ounsworth’s oeuvre, especially the lifetime project he initiated sometime in the early 2000s, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. And with each release since its landmark self-titled debut, he has refined and broadened his sound, indulging an ever wider set of influences.
Prolific and enigmatic as ever, his recent works marry the quirky, left-field spirit of the early years with a well-earned confidence, and grander sense of scale and ambition. Always heading down new avenues of song arrangement and organic connection to his audience, after nearly two decades Ounsworth remains one of music’s most distinctive voices.
The upcoming album New Fragility (February 12th, 2021 CYHSY/Secretly Distribution), including the advance singles Hesitating Nation / Thousand Oaks and Where They Perform Miracles, was produced by Alec Ounsworth, with additional production from Will Johnson,
The Sonder Bombs will follow their great 2018 debut album “Modern Female Rockstar” with “Clothbound” on 1/29, and the singles find them taking their ukulele-fuelled indie-pop punk in all kinds of exciting new directions. The Sonder Bombs have doubled down on their second record. 2018’s debut “Modern Female Rockstar” was their first bet: an all-caps attack against a male-dominated scene brandishing a ukulele and dry wit as chosen weapons. A year and some change passed, where the Cleveland band’s relentless touring ethic and tough love caused a homegrown fan base to explode worldwide. Clothbound, like the title suggests, weaves a different narrative—one of loss, letting go, and losing patience with losers. If the first record introduced unapologetic sensitivity, Clothbound searches for the root causes of other key elements.
Produced in Philadelphia during quarantine with Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Beach Bunny, Modern Baseball), “Clothbound” captures a band burning at both ends. Fans of vocalist/ukulele/guitarist Willow Hawks’ exasperated kiss-offs will have plenty to unpack here, from the frantic goodbyes spat through “Swing on Sight” or “What Are Friends For,” where Hawks entertains this question while the background smoulders around the punctuation—a ukulele strum here, Willow Hawks’ vocal line trailing like an asteroid collision there. As this is the second volume in the Sondie songbook, evolved moments, like the acoustic-electric elegy “Scattered,” sit near the band at their most sloganeering and effective. “Crying is Cool” a live staple eagerly awaiting its reveal, teaches listeners of all ages that it’s okay to hole up with your feelings as long as you give them room to grow. The band’s also not afraid of taking their own advice, letting their emotions run wild on “k.,” an absolute barnstormer of a track where the Bombs fire off all cylinders while winking to hardcore and metal. The chips are down and the deck is stacked here. The band’s all in. Are you?
releases January 29th, 2021
The Sonder Bombs – “k.” From their album “Clothbound” Out January 29th via Take This To Heart Records/Big Scary Monsters (UK/EU)/Dew Process (AUZ/NZ)
Judging by the first single, “Faith Healer,” Julien Baker’s official solo follow-up to 2017’s Turn Out The Lights will be her most fleshed-out sounding solo album yet. A departure from her more stark, minimalistic material, “Faith Healer” features a full band, drums included, while losing none of the power of Julien’s emotionally charged vocals and lyrics. The album — her first release since 2018’s Boygenius EP that had her teamed up with Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers — was recorded before the pandemic, but we’re counting on its arrival to resonate deeply in lockdown all the same.
Julien Baker has shared the second single off her highly-anticipated third album, “Little Oblivions”, the highly-anticipated third album, is due out February 26th via Matador, and she’s just shared its second single, first track “Hardline.” Like “Faith Healer,” it’s a more fleshed-out sounding song than many others we’ve heard from Julien in the past, but it’s still as emotionally resonant as her more spare, bare bones material.
“A few years ago I started collecting travel ephemera again with a loose idea of making a piece of art with it,” Julien writes. “I had been touring pretty consistently since 2015 and had been traveling so much that items like plane tickets and hotel key cards didn’t have much novelty anymore. So I saved all my travel stuff and made a little collage of a house and a van out of it. I wanted to incorporate it into the record and when we were brainstorming ideas for videos we came across Joe Baughman and really liked his work so we reached out with the idea of making a stop-motion video that had similar aesthetic qualities as the house I built did. I don’t know why I have the impulse to write songs or make tiny sculptures out of plane tickets. But here it is anyway: a bunch of things I’ve collected and carried with me that I’ve re-organized into a new shape.”
Baughman directed the video for “Hardline,” he writes, “even after having spent 600 hours immersed in ‘Hardline’ and having listened to it thousands of times, I am still moved by it. It was a fun and ambitious challenge creating something that could accompany such a compelling song. The style of the set design, inspired by a sculpture that Julien created, was especially fun to work in. I loved sifting through magazines, maps, and newspapers from the 60s and 70s and finding the right colours, shapes, and quotes to cover almost every surface in the video.”
Meanwhile, Julien recently taped a performance for KEXP Radio a week ago, which just came out today; it includes a solo acoustic performance of Soundgarden’s “Fell on Black Days” around the 43 minute mark, and you can watch the whole thing below.
Julien Baker sharing a live performance recorded exclusively for KEXP and talking to Cheryl Waters. Recorded January 6th, 2021.
Songs: Faith Healer Song in E Hardline Fell on Black Days
Julien Baker – vocals / guitar / keys Calvin Lauber – bass Mariah Schneider – guitar / bg vocals Matt Gilliam – drums Noah Forbes – keys (overdubbed) Becca Mancari – guest bg vocals Session recorded at Third Man Records in Nashville, TN
Julien also appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last week performing “Faith Healer.”
Julien Baker makes her return to A Late Show with this performance of “Faith Healer” from her upcoming album “Little Oblivions,” available everywhere on February 26th.
