This is what I always hope for when a band releases killer songs as download only or a cassette…that someone will see fit press it to vinyl. That is what happened with TheUmbrella’s “Maritime EP”. Released as a cassette in 2019 and then straight to vinyl in 2020! The San Fransico band push the right indie pop buttons, taking some raw Beat Happening and adding some Small Factory and Versus. And it ain’t just the right influences they’ve got songs too, four of ’em that’ll have you wishing for more.
Discontinuous innovation inc. is proud to announce the release of the umbrellas. We have seen an exponential increase of rain with in the past decade. Streets have been flooding, homes have eroded due to water damage , and 60% of automobiles are now aquatic. How does a consumer protect themselves from these torrential downpours? With the umbrellas of course!
San Franciscan jangle pop group “The Umbrellas” take over the bay area with their astonishing 5 song e.p. “Maritime!” this e.p. was recorded by Matt Ferrara in his apartment and released on his independent label, discontinuous innovations inc, that delivers top notch tunes for your ears to hear.
to listen to the Umbrellas and other amazing artists, visit https://discontinuousinnovationinc.ba…. TheUmbrellas are Morgan Stanley, Matt Ferrara, Nick Oka, and Keith Frerichs.
Melbourne’s The Shifters are quite possibly my current favourite purveyors of your guitar-based rock-and-or-roll,” commented Captured Tracks label head Mike Sniper upon its release. “In fact, they come from the best scene of that genre, the one in mullet-ravaged young Australia”.
“Left Bereft” sounds like it could be set in a post apocalyptic world or today. According to the band it’s “an overly simplified rabble-rouser that people who maybe use English as a second or third language can understand and maybe feel a bit of solidarity. I like to imagine drunk students in France listening to it whilst wrestling on the kitchen table.” Their Fall-ism’s abound here, but it’s so good (and Mark’s gone) that I’m just happy there’s band doing similar stuff at such a top level quality while putting their own stamp on it.
Back in March, the band released a 26-track rarities collection titled ‘Open Vault’ comprised of unreleased studio material, early demos, live renditions and solo home recordings from between 2016 and 2019. The collection also features covers of songs by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Ray Davies and Death in June.
Melbourne, Australia. The Shifters released a new 7″ vinyl single – ‘Left Bereft’ – via New York label Captured Tracks.
The 17-year-old star of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series has dropped her first official song, and the music video, Olivia Rodrigo may have earned a name for herself by scoring the lead role in the hit Disney show, but she’s now dipping her toes into a musical career of her own. After months of teasing her debut single, Rodrigo shares a lovelorn video alongside her track “Drivers License.”
Speaking about her inspiration behind the track, she describes the disorienting emotions of her recent heartbreak. “When I came up with ‘Drivers License,’ I was going through a heartbreak that was so confusing to me, so multifaceted,” she said in a statement. “Putting all those feelings into a song made everything seem so much simpler and clearer and at the end of the day, I think that’s really the whole purpose of song writing. There’s nothing like sitting at the piano in my bedroom and writing a really sad song. It’s truly my favourite thing in the world.”
The graceful visual offers a vignette of Rodrigo’s post-heartbreak healing. She earns her drivers license but instead of going to her old fling’s house, like she used to dream of, she finds herself instead aimlessly circling side streets. All the while, Rodrigo replays scenes of her fleeting relationship. At first she’s only confronted by the happy memories, but eventually, all the toxic traits of her ex-partner come flooding back to her.
Music video by Olivia Rodrigo performing drivers license. Under exclusive license to Geffen Records
This week Bell Orchestre ( Arcade Fire’s Sarah Neufeld and Richard Reed Parry) announced their first new album in 12 years, “House Music”, and shared a new track from it, “V: Movement.” House Music is due out March 19th via Erased Tapes. A press release says the album was “created almost entirely from a single improvisational session between its members.” It was recorded in Neufeld’s rural Vermont house with the aid of engineer Hans Bernhard. The band features SarahNeufeld (violin, vocals), Richard Reed Parry (bass, vocals), Pietro Amato (French horn, keyboards, electronics), Michael Feuerstack (pedal steel guitar, keyboards, vocals), Kaveh Nabatian (trumpet, gongoma, keyboards, vocals), and Stefan Schneider (drums).
Neufled had this to say in a press release: “If you sliced away the front wall of the house and looked in, you’d see the horn section—with so many different things going on— down on the first floor of what would normally be the living/dining room, and it was full chaos with tables and tables of kalimbas and harmonicas and synthesizers and horns. Then you travel up a floor, and there’s me and Richie in an empty, warm sounding wooden bedroom. Mike was on pedal steel in the bathroom, on the same floor as us. And then up the stairs, through the ceiling and in the attic, was Stefan, alone on drums. It’s a big piece of land, and if you went outside to take a break, you’d look over and hear all of this crazy shit coming out of all the different floors, and it filled this valley, and there were lots of rocks so the sound would bounce around. It was spooky and glorious.”
Parry had this to say: “Most of my favourite recordings have some element of an explorative and accidental feeling within the music, a feeling which reflects the truth of musical minds which are partially super focused on specific musical ideas and partially wandering, exploring the musical world surrounding those ideas. I think it’s really satisfying as a listener when you can hear a musical mind exploring an idea not just a musician who has pre-formed an idea and rehearsed it 100 times until it’s totally perfect and ironed out.
In this recording, every one of the six of us is simultaneously exploring our own ideas, deeply listening to each others’ wide open minds and also totally immersed in our own strange and beautiful little internal musical worlds.”
METZ has shared a new video for their song “Framed by the Comet’s Tail”, directed by the band’s drummer, Hayden Menzies. The visual companion to a personal favourite track of Menzies’ from Atlas Vending was created within a set of self-imposed limitations; it was all shot by Menzies on his phone, edited at home, with no borrowed content. He says of the video “It’s not a literal interpretation of the song by any means, but a document of random firing synapses of the mind during isolation.” Watch the video now.
This week we also announced the first Atlas Vending tour dates and tickets for our 2021 European and UK tour are on sale now. If you can’t wait until 2021, join us next week for a very special livestream of Atlas Vending in its entirety from The Opera House in Toronto.
“Atlas Vending” is Metz’s most dynamic, dimensional, and compelling work of their career, and is now available worldwide from Sub Pop Records.
What people are saying about Atlas Vending: “Atlas Vending is the sound of a band fully confident in itself and delivering their biggest and best work yet.” ★★★★ – Upset Magazine
“The Toronto band maintain a formidable degree of power and velocity throughout their fourth album yet… provide more welcome respites from the ferocious barrage they’re otherwise highly skilled at delivering.” [8/10] – Uncut
” A record which draws on 35 years of North American alt-rock excellence, while still stamping its creators’ own identity firmly across its grooves.” [4/5] – Kerrang
”By gathering everything the group has done to date and mixing it together Metz manage to create a perfectly potent cocktail, one filled with nostalgia, sadness and grinding euphoria.” [8/10] – Loud and Quiet
“The expansiveness of the sonic palette on Atlas Vending just gives the band more room to paint outside the lines.” [8/10] – Under The Radar
“A record that feels both raw and refined, this will shake you to the core”★★★★ – DIY Magazine
Lael Neale is sharing an official video for new single “For No One For Now,” an uptempo lament set in Didion’s Los Angeles. The drum track of the Omnichord calls to mind the agitated beat of driving fast on the freeway against the backdrop of the San Fernando Valley with its bent palms. Lael offers this, “I’ve always loved these stretches of road where the magic of the city seems hemmed in by the mundane.” The song contrasts romantic idealizations with the banality of folding sheets and toasting bread. “For No One For Now” is available worldwide on Sub Pop Records.
Lael grew up on a farm in Virginia among acres of clouds, fields, and woods. It was writing and writers close to nature – Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Steinbeck, and Mary Oliver – that she most connected with. In 2009, she moved to California with a rising devotion to music and for nearly 10 years has now called Los Angeles home. She worked with countless musicians, producers and collaborators, making entire records and eventually stowing them away. Despite endless frustration, she never resigned. After discovering a new instrument, the Omnichord, she experienced a moment of illumination and began recording a deluge of emerging songs with the intention to capture them in their truest form. She remarks, “Guy Blakeslee who had been an advocate for years facilitated the process. He set up a cassette 4-track in my bedroom and provided empathic guidance, subtle yet affecting accompaniment, and engineering prowess.”
She returned to her family farm back in April 2020 and has taken advantage of the limitations imposed by this period. She resurrected her old Sony Handycam from high school and is using it to make impressionistic companion pieces to the songs she recorded in Los Angeles.
She continues, “I am enjoying the strong contrast between the songs I wrote and recorded in California and the videos I am making for them in Virginia. It offers something unexpected.” In this installment, starry-eyed fantasy is cut with dull reality and a touch of the otherworldly. It is at once dreamy and creepy. The sweetness is skinned by subtle humour as she pokes fun at her own romanticism.
Buildings burning in every direction; macabre unknowns in your friendly neighbour’s basement; under pressure we could call Kiwi Jr’s “Cooler Returns” “timely.” But what year is it, again? On their sophomoric smash-up album released world-wide by Sub Pop Records, Kiwi Jr troll through the recent zigs & looming zags of the new decade, forgotten and under-investigated small town diner fires, piecing together low-stakes conspiracy theories on what’s coming down the pike in 2021. Put together like a thousand-piece puzzle, assembled in flow state through the first dull stretch of quarantine, sanitized singer “Cooler Returns” materializes as a sprawling survey from the first few bites of what has been the terrible twenties.
Not so long since their debut “Football Money” in unending grey eons later in the years of quaran-time, spiritually Canadians Kiwi Jr return to disseminate this year’s annual report to the shareholders, burying the incriminating numbers in the endless appendices of a longform narrative record.
Opener “Tyler” builds a Frankenstein of all your musician exes; don’t you remember “falling apart in the green room while they drank half the headliner’s rider?” In “Waiting In Line” we’re still slumbering at the bar, We hear “it isn’t past until it burns,” in “Maid Marian’s Toast” but what explains the accompanying & extensive itinerary of incinerated Eastern Canadian eateries? Investigated off the clock by Kiwi’s Jr. Throughout these crises, histories, and head games Kiwi Jr. don’t expect you to be taking notes or checking dates – and on the back nine, when “Omaha” demands proof that “Woodstock ever happened in the first place,” perhaps the freewheeling guitar groove underfoot tells us all we need to know about who’s been flipping through the festival files, air-drumming along.
Kiwi Jr sing this song to an indoor audience, only song writing remaining to deliver engrossing tales to the populace, just how I imagine it worked in the old days. Best Wishes, Warm Regards, Good Luck? Cooler Returns.
Kiwi Jr. is Jeremy Gaudet (mic, guitar), Brohan Moore (drums), Mike Walker (bass), and Brian Murphy (guitar).
The Cool Greenhouse know comedy gold when they see it. “Alexa!” very humorously mocks those smart spearkers that folks can’t seem to live without. Alexa, email my credit card details to my contacts list. Alexa, open the pod bay doors. You get the idea. Cortana makes a guest appearance and the Cool Greenhouse continue to employ repetition (They are repeatedly making great records) to their advantage.
“Alexa!” Set the alarm for 3AM! Limited Edition 7″ vinyl available for pre-order via Melodic Records.https://www.melodic.co.uk/product/the… Written by The Cool Greenhouse. Produced by Phil Booth & The Cool Greenhouse.
Romero are From Melbourne, Australia , with a nod towards Sheer Mag, Public Practice, Breakneck tunes that could make even the cleanest of spaces feel like a grimy dive bar made for moshing in. You’re going to love them: Their riffs might be front and centre and turned up loud, but this Aussie bunch can’t hide their big pop hooks. Frontwoman Alanna Oliver possesses a voice that’s rich and subtly theatrical, adding both an air of class and urgency to the walls of sound that have already scored Romero a hefty slice of attention, despite only having shared three songs so far. Spoiler: they’re all ridiculously infectious and ready to rock out to. Romero are a tremendously exciting proposition. They trade in high wire indie-rock that owes a debt to classic power-pop, having made waves back home by selling out their debut Honey / Neapolitan 7” at a rapid clip. Vocalist Alanna Oliver’s economical, drawled hooks cut back against the grain of charging guitars that owe a debt to everyone from Radioactivity to Blondie, coalescing into a killer package of studied cool.
Check out the other highlight track ‘Troublemaker’
There’s a high to ‘Honey’ that is immediate and habit forming – the sweetness belies the addictive element. It’s endlessly playable, which means there’s a good chance I’m still returning to this song by year’s end. Romero’s set the bar high, not only for themselves moving forward, but everyone else existing in a similar power pop space. Speaking of need, this is the kind of bright spot that we could all use.
Romero – “Honey” available through Cool Death Records ‘’Honey’’ is a record for the freaks and geeks alike. Hell, it’s for anybody that needs to be picked up and reminded that’s it’s not all completely terrible.
The Band: Vocals: Alanna Oliver Guitar: Adam Johnstone Guitar: Fergus Sinclair Bass: Justin ‘Murry’ Tawil Drums: Dave Johnstone
That wasn’t supposed to be the title, of course. In one of the most oft-told tales of happy mistakes in rock, Iron Butterfly member Doug Ingle was so drunk on cheap wine that when he played his new song, “In the Garden of Eden” for a band mate it came out as “In-a-Gadda-Da Vida.” The band decided to keep it that way, and a classic hard-rock song was born. The track, more than 17 minutes on the album of the same name, slashed down for the single, is often considered one of the seminal tunes of heavy metal ever.
The band formed in San Diego in 1966, with Ingle on vocals and organ, along with Jack Pinney (drums), Greg Willis (bass) and Danny Weis (guitar). Another singer, Darryl DeLoach, who also played tambourine, soon joined them, and Jerry Penrod replaced Willis on bass before they were signed to a recording contract. Ingle has said that the band’s name was supposed to indicate a contrast between weighty and light, but no one will ever accuse Iron Butterfly of being too soft. From the start, they were going for something louder and more primal and aggressive than other bands of the day, and they titled their debut album “Heavy”, released on Atco Records in 1968, just to get the point across.
That album reached #78 early in the year and by the summer of ’68 the group was already set to release its sophomore LP. “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida”released on June 14th, 1968, and featuring the quartet of Ingle, guitarist Erik Brann, drummer Ron Bushy and bassist Lee Dorman—took its name from its title track, which occupied all of Side B on the original vinyl LP. Most of that time was given over to a post-psychedelic jam that dovetailed with the improvisational music that was being played at ballrooms in the U.S. and abroad and would soon be taken to new extremes by groups that would fall into the just-emerging heavy metal category.
Lyrically, other than the misheard title phrase, there really wasn’t much to “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida.” It could have been a ’50s love song. They sang:
“In a gadda da vida, honey Don’t you know that I’m lovin’ you In a gadda da vida, baby Don’t you know that I’ll always be true”
The chorus, too, was hardly profound:
“Oh, won’t you come with me And take my hand Oh, won’t you come with me And walk this land Please take my hand”
But it was all in the presentation, and Iron Butterfly found their audience with their second album and its center piece. The album, recorded on Long Island, rose to No#4 on the BillboardLP chart, while the single, was edited down to a more radio-friendly 2:52, found its way to onto that chart. Not all rock fans were swayed: “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida,” and Iron Butterfly itself, were divisive: you either loved the song or despised it. The single and album signalled a shift in rock away from the more flowery, psychedelic sound that flourished at the Monterey Pop Festival and San Francisco’s rock palaces toward something more head-battering.
Nonetheless, “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” quickly established itself as a rock classic and when the band performed the song live, they often extended it even beyond the 17-minute mark, reportedly reaching a half-hour at times. The In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida album has been certified multi-platinum, reportedly selling more than 30 million copies total. (Iron Butterfly was, in fact, the first-ever group to receive an RIAA platinum album award.)
Iron Butterfly continued to find success for some years after 1968. Their next album, 1969’s “Ball”, and the group was scheduled to play Woodstock Festival but missed the gig when the helicopter meant to transport them to the site failed to show up. The 1970 “Live” album included a 19-minute version of followed just a few months later by the album “Metamorphosis”.
But as the ’70s unfurled, and other trends and bands came into the picture, audiences moved on. Iron Butterfly disbanded in 1971 but by ’74 a new line-up had revived the name, and they’ve never gone away. To this day there is an Iron Butterfly band, featuring one early member, Ron Bushy—although there has been no new Iron Butterfly album release in more than four decades.
Announced is a 7CD Box Set “Anthology” of material by legendary acid prog band Iron Butterfly‘Unconscious Power – An Anthology 1967-1971’ features all of the albums issued on Atco, newly re-mastered from the original master tapes, plus rare mono mixes previously unreleased on CD, along with two CDs of recordings made at the Fillmore East in New York City in 1968. It also includes all of the band’s US non-album singles and single edits and a lavishly illustrated booklet.
