The South is a brutal place, many feel — the birthplace of American racism. It is also a Black place, and a beautiful one: the music, foodways, spiritual life and family traditions Black Americans sustained throughout centuries of attempted erasure by the white ruling caste provides much of what makes this nation vibrant. The beauty is tied to the land, from coastline to mountains to delta. Adia Victoria, born in South Carolina with more recent ties to Nashville, locates the contours of her own body and being in the Southern earth, and this blues-driven oracular statement is her pledge to it, in love and fury.
“I stood up to the mountain, told the mountain say my name,” Victoria wails over a church-born organ line in the centre of this song. That image — her confrontation with monumental, historical oppression, simultaneously a mystical union with a landscape and Black heritage that welcomes her — epitomizes Victoria’s mission to refresh overtold Southern stories by finding herself in them. (She is a blues poet, after all.) A clear reckoning, “South Gotta Change” is also a love song — “I won’t leave you,” Victoria sings, her voice breaking. Instead, she tells the land that she considers a living being, she will “drag you into the light.” With “South Gotta Change,” Victoria offers a way to consider the region in all its complexity — an origin point worth fighting about, and for.
When I began my recording career I knew that my one true muse would be the south, her people, her stories, her beauty and her blues.
as a kid I would make up stories and recite them to my little sisters. because I never saw our stories being told—stories about black girls in the south, country girls growing up on this land.
I wanna re-center black folk’s experiences in my art. it’s what i do every time I pick up my guitar and write.
The south’s gotta change—and I believe artists are the folk that are gonna bring about that change.
Sprints are another band leading the charge of thrilling post-punk originating from Dublin. Led by frontwoman Karla Chubb, their ferocious brand of punk is packed with hooks and tonnes of attitude, while recent release Drones suggests they’re about to take a darker direction.
Dublin-based four piece, Sprints are the latest new act to emerge from the city fast becoming one of the most prolific places for hot new bands. Similarly with the recent success of other locals Fontaines DC, Girl Band & Silverbacks – Sprints are set to be the latest in line ready to burst out of the city.
Their creative process is very much rooted to the everyday goings on around them. And just like a true garage band, write and rehearse in their village home’s back garden shed. Taking things to the next level, they were quick to team up with Girl Band’s Daniel Fox who has been producing them in his studio. Drawing influence from the likes of Sonic Youth, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, The Strokes and LCD Soundsystem. There is a fun, energetic and retro feel to what they do. But very much sounding as fresh and exciting as their local peers.
Sprints’ singer Karla Chubb sounds like she’s about to give someone a black eye on thunderous anthem ‘The Cheek’ – this is venomous and versatile rock’n’roll. Much like their fellow Dubliners Girl Band and Silverbacks, Sprints are also fully committed to their craft through their blood, sweat and tears approach. ‘The Cheek’ attacks dated attitudes around sexuality while ‘Drones’ looks inwardly at feelings of imposter syndrome. The constant is that they continue to deliver pure and riveting statements, setting them well on course towards future raucous, beer-soaked headline festival sets.
They’re signed to Nice Swan Records, home to some other great bands Sports Team, Malady, Pip Blom, Courting and Hotel Lux. Great company indeed! Give me some Sprints tracks like “Drones”, “The Cheek”
Last year, when Alanis Morissette released “Reasons I Drink,” the first single from her forthcoming ninth album, she couldn’t have known where 2020 would take us. “Such Pretty Forks in the Road”, her follow-up to 2012’s Havoc and Bright Lights, finds the singer-songwriter confronting vices and anxiety over proper ’90s alt-rock guitars. This year also marks the 25th anniversary of the classic “Jagged Little Pill”, her iconic, not-at-all-ironic breakthrough album that was recently revived as a Broadway musical. The album was delayed from its original May release; hopefully it’ll appear soon.
Alanis Morissette has shared another new single from her forthcoming album ‘Such Pretty Forks In The Road’. The track, ‘Reckoning’, follows on the songs ‘Reasons I Drink, Smiling’ and‘Diagnosis’. The latter tackled the challenges and stigma surrounding depression and other forms of mental illness. The new song tackles “predators” and features a string section.
Morrissette was due to hit the road for the 25th anniversary of her ‘Jagged Little Pill’ album this year but was forced to postpone due to the coronavirus pandemic. A digital deluxe edition of ‘Jagged Little Pill’ arrived on June 26th, which featured a new acoustic live recording of Morissette’s performance of ‘Ironic’ at Shepherd’s Bush in March 2020.
Eight years since her last record, Alanis Morissette returned with a wonderful and deeply moving album. No celebrity collaborations, no marketing declarations along the lines of ‘this might be my last’ , just a highly focussed record full of great songs with heartfelt lyrics.
‘Diagnosis’ is as honest and raw as Plastic Ono Band Lennon as it addresses postpartum depression, set to simple piano and strings. It’s all about self pity either, as Alanis recognises how such a situation affects friends and family [“All of you are so frustrated / And everyone around me is trying to help as much as they can”]. In ‘Losing the Plot’ Morissette decrees that she is “grieving the end of superwoman-ing” and the brilliant ‘Reasons I Drink’ adds some big hooks to proceedings.
An album that spends much of its time concerned with mental health issues such as self-loathing, despair, depression and bitterness might sound a bit bleak, but it’s not. These are remain accessible pop songs elevated by lyrics of truth and meaning, not weighed down by them. The melodies and arrangements are all of the highest order and the reliance on piano accompaniment gives Such Pretty Forks in the Road a classic,
The UK dates, celebrating 25 years of the seminal album, will now take place in the autumn of 2021. Supported by Liz Phair, she will stop off at UK venues including London’s O2 Arena, Birmingham’s Utilita Arena, Manchester Arena and the 3Arena in Dublin.
Morrissette’s new album is set to arrive on July 31st, after it was pushed back from its original release date in May this year.
Emo garage-rock becomes thrillingly new on this Chicago band’s debut, driven by the bracingly real song writing of singer-guitarist Lili Trifilio. Pop-punk torpedoes like “Promises” and “Colorblind” power through self-doubt in a way that makes post-teen romantic angst seem at once archetypal yet wholly original; Beach Bunny are college-age kids who’ve been playing together for years, so there’s a surprisingly amount of song writing chops and musical precision here, and when Trifilio gets what she deserves on “Cloud 9,” singing “I don’t want to seem the way I do/but I’m confident when I’m with you,” you can’t help but want to jump up and high-five her.
Honeymoon is the excellent debut album from Beach Bunny, the four-piece band out of Chicago. Recorded at the iconic Chicago studio Electrical Audio with producer Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Algernon Caldwaller), the nine songs on the LP burst with energy that capture their vital and life-affirming live shows. Songs like the swooning and anthemic singles “Dream Boy” and “Ms. California” encapsulate the highs and lows the exiting the honeymoon stage of a relationship.
Beach Bunny found its initial legs in 2018 as fully formed fuzz-pop quartet, landing a streaming hit with the dark-witted body image paean “Prom Queen.” More so than on her earlier more-acoustic releases, Trifilio’s full-band version of Beach Bunny revealed a knack for infectious pop hooks played with a collaborative energy, which helped propel her anxious observations beyond mere folk confessionalism. The success of “Prom Queen” also helped the group net a deal with New York indie Mom + Pop Records, which offers up their full-length debut, Honeymoon.
Like the self-released EP that preceded it, Honeymoon capitalizes on Trifilio’s emotional honesty and strong melodic sense, but with a bolder production aesthetic, doing away with some of the lo-fi leanings of her previous output. Having spent the last couple of years gelling as a live band, Beach Bunny seem altogether more streamlined here, even flirting with elements of pop-punk precision on cuts like “Cuffing Season” and “Colorblind,” though without losing their indie charm. Most of the songs are up-tempo, with Trifilio taking a timeout on the introspective electric piano piece “Racetrack” and the more jagged “Rearview,” the latter of which is played entirely solo until its mighty final 30 seconds. Honeymoon is bookended by a pair of highlights in “Promises” and “Cloud 9,” two rousing tracks that connect squarely and showcase the best of what Beach Bunny can do.
There’s an endearing tenderness to Trifilio’s personal song writing style that mostly avoids emo clichés, and the band’s cautiously buoyant indie pop walks the line between sweet and muscular on this solid debut. The long-awaited debut LP “Honeymoon” from Beach Bunny follows their breakout hit with “Prom Queen” (65 million global streams). released February 14th, 2020 on Mom+Pop Records
‘I’m learning how to say goodbye / to let you go and face the tide / to wrap my feelings in a song,’ sings Dana Gavanski on the title track of her debut LP, “Yesterday Is Gone”. To wrap her feelings in a song: this is the task Dana has dedicated herself to with this record. It’s a goal common to many songwriters, but few approach it with such aplomb. By turns break-up album, project of curiosity, and, as Dana puts it, ‘a reckoning with myself’, Yesterday Is Gone is her attempt to ‘learn to say what I feel and feel what I say’: an album of longing and devotion to longing, and of the uncertainty that arises from learning about oneself, of pushing boundaries, falling hard, and getting back up.
Born in Vancouver to a Serbian family, Dana has always harboured a desire to sing. In her final year of university in Montreal, she picked up the guitar left by her ex-partner and decided to re-learn. But with a father in film and a painter mother, other art-forms clamoured for her attention. She spent a summer as her producer father’s assistant in the Laurentians, in a derelict hotel-turned-office that looked like something out of The Shining. The long days behind a computer cemented her desire to make music, ‘because it was so impossible to play that I needed to, in order to feel like it was real.’ The income she saved that summer funded a year of writing religiously, leading to EP Spring Demos in September 2017, which Dana describes as ‘whatever was coming out of me. A flood.’
Following Spring Demos, Yesterday Is Gone reflects Dana’s aim ‘to make something bigger, more thought through’. Steeped in determination and uncertainty in equal measure – ‘I just wanted to write a good song’ – the album took shape after she returned from a writing residency in Banff, Alberta. She left the residency resolved not to worry about her songs being ‘too obvious’. She’d begun to learn the art of empty time, of being alone with her emotions, losing herself in a landscape. She thought of Vashti Bunyan, riding for hours and writing, writing, writing. She considered how she might use writing to make sense of her life after the tumults of a break-up and a new city. Adrift in Toronto, Dana struggled to feel at home and connected to people, but the solitude also allowed her to ground herself in writing. She kept office-style hours at her bedroom desk every day until she started to understand the writing process, to see that ‘transforming a burning desire into something clear and tangible is a vulnerable and delicate act. You have to be able to let things happen, to accept losing control.’
The record is a co-production between Dana, Toronto-based musician Sam Gleason, and Mike Lindsay of Tunng and LUMP. While Sam helped Dana bring out the tunes, Mike’s input marked ‘the beginning of developing a sound that was closer to what I had in my head’. Though excited by the other elements of a song introduced during production, Dana and Mike were keen on ‘finding essential things, not overblowing, keeping things bare and letting the elements speak for themselves’. Not that the sheer variety of sounds and instruments didn’t overwhelm. ‘But you have that feeling,’ Dana says, ‘then you just pick up an instrument. At the base, you do know what you want. It’s about how to chip away at what you don’t want.’
The album shapeshifted as it passed through the hands of Dana, Sam, and Mike, taking on different tastes, feelings, and visions. When Dana performed the songs with a band, they found new form again. She was intrigued by performers like David Bowie and Aldous Harding, who inhabit different personalities on stage, physically tuning themselves to their music. ‘Watching these kinds of performances,’ Dana says, ‘I feel my body longing to express myself in exaggerations … to leave behind self-consciousness and become this energy.’
But a three-month trip to Serbia in autumn 2018 really pushed performance to the forefront of Dana’s mind. She took singing lessons to learn how to sing with the resonance that defines traditional Serbian song. Stirred by the bombast of fifties, sixties, and seventies music, including the high-energy kafana, or café music, as rooted in expressive pouts as it is vocal resonance, the trip incited a yearning to completely inhabit herself on stage. ‘I often feel we’re all just these controlled bodies,’ she says. ‘Sometimes I just want to make a snarl with my lip and keep it there.’
Stood on a crowded train last spring, Dana sang the Macedonian song Jano Mome to an audience of cheery Scottish ladies. The moment, brief but beautiful, lays bare Dana’s craving for live spontaneity. But it also reflects her injection of stylish drama and vivid emotion into the folk landscape that inspires her, from contemporary singers H Hawkline and Julia Holter, to stalwarts Fairport Convention, Anne Briggs, Connie Converse, and Judee Sill. Expressive urges run all through Yesterday Is Gone. Moments of beguilement splinter a backdrop of tenderly picked guitar, bass, synth, and poppier elements, which commune to produce her own kind of wall of sound. Each component is meticulously placed, yielding a deeply sincere response to the chaos of human emotion.
‘Often we have to go a little far in one direction to learn something about ourselves,’ Dana says. The months of solitary writing and self-doubt testify to this, but they’ve led to Yesterday Is Gone: an optimistic, steely-eyed gaze into the future.
Released March 27th, 2020, on Full Time Hobby Records , Music & lyrics written by Dana Gavanski Dana’s debut album “Yesterday Is Gone” is out now!.
“Failures”, is Katie Malco’s debut album, The songs keep changing lanes on the listener. It can pull you in with the immediacy of a churning, addictive rocker like “Animal,” only to pull back to the slow-burn beauty of “Brooklyn,” before leaning in close to deliver stately folk like “Fractures.” But what unites all the music is an emotional and musical catharsis that erupts on nearly every track, quiet and loud numbers alike building to a payoff that electrifies the listener every time—especially when she embraces her rock-anthem tendencies, as on instant classic “Creatures.” “Night Avenger,” with its minimalist restraint, is the lovely exception that proves the rule.
It’s thrilling to hear a new voice come right out of the gate with such a masterful command of songcraft; it’s even more exciting to realize she’s just getting started, The first proper full length from critically acclaimed UK singer/songwriterKatie Malco and her first new music in nearly seven years. ‘Failures’ finds Malco at her all-time best, taking all she’s learned in recent years, both personally and musically, and combining both with an unmatched song writing prowess. She’s both vulnerable and intense, pouring herself into each song with an uncanny relatability. Malco has recently toured alongside the likes of Julien Baker, Dawes, The Joy Formidable, and ST Manville, as well as supported We Were Promised Jetpacks, Jenny Lewis, etc.
Official music video Katie Malco, taken from the album ‘Failures’ out June 5th, 2020 via 6131 Records.
Jessica Dobson started her music career early as she was signed to Atlantic Records at just 19. She recorded two solo albums, but both her and the label did not like the end result, so they were ultimately shelved. Some would see this one-two punch of disappointment a crippling blow, but she took it in stride focusing on her more indie-orientated jams. This led her to a string of supporting guitar roles with other artists Beck, the Shins, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Spoon, and Conor Oberst. Each of these stops gave her the stripes and positive energy to revisit a solo career that was earlier stifled.
In 2009, the hired gun transformed into a bandleader under the Deep Sea Diver moniker and alongside husband Peter Mansen (drums), she released the New Caves EP. Garrett Gue (bass), and Elliot Jackson (guitar/synth) joined them and quartet self-released their full-length debut, “History Speaks”, in 2012 (while she was still in the Shins). 2014 was the year for DSD’s “Always Waiting” EP that was succeeded by 2016’s “Secrets”. Just ahead of Deep Sea Diver’s third full-length release, ‘Impossible Weight’, Dobson virtually welcomed PG’s Chris Kies into her friend’s Seattle-based studio. The Deep Sea Diver captain opens up about aligning her offset guitar choices to indie icons Elvis Costello, Johnny Marr, and Jonny Greenwood, crediting Nels Cline for introducing her to a must-have pedal, and twisting her band’s sound from “strangled cats to glassy Johnny Greenwood” and everywhere in between.
Deep Sea Diver’s new album ‘Impossible Weight’ out now. Filmed during the recording of Impossible Weight at Hall of Justice in Seattle WA.
Steve Buscemi’s Dreamy Eyes is an atmospheric indie pop band from Stockholm, Sweden. Our debut album ”Sweetie” is finally here! Thank you so much to all of you for supporting us through the years, listening to our songs, buying our records and merch and coming to our shows!
And a special thank you to our Master Producer Emil Aspegren for recording, mixing and mastering! And of course a big thank you to Axel and Sixten at Rama Lama Records for believing in us from the start!
Behind the odd name Steve Buscemi’s Dreamy Eyes is one of the two bands that have been with us from the very start (the other being Melby). The band’s first single “Desire” went straight into our hearts and the thoughts of starting a label became more concrete since we already knew the band members. The band formed in 2015 after bassist/vocalist Tilde tweeted out “Does anyone/anybody know someone who wants to play in a band together with a bassist and a singer that haven’t played in a band for a year and are dying of boredom?”. Guitarist/vocalist Elias Mahfoud responded and the rest is history. Their dynamic and dreamy indie pop have constantly been developing during the band’s career and even though we’ve seen them more times than we can count we never get tired of it. When lead vocalist Siri Sjöberg lifts one end of her synthesizer and bangs her head in her signature move, you know it’s time to party with Stevie B.
Siri Sjöberg (vocals, synth), Tilde Hansen (vocals, bass), Elias Mahfoud (vocals, guitar), Eric Boström Wallin (drums)
Dream-indie at its best” – Ja Ja Ja The sweetest indie-pop songs to back up the incredible name”– DIY” Swoops straight into the part of your brain that’ll never forget it” – The Line of Best Fit This highly likable four-piece blend indie noir with dramatic dream pop textures with almost effortless precision”– Record Collector Magazine
A collection of cover versions that 93MillionMilesFromTheSun have done over the years. Some have appeared on compilation albums, some on EPs and some are unreleased. Thanks to all the artists that have inspired us over the years. As stereotypical visions of people and places go, the good folks of Doncaster aren’t exactly at the top of the list when thoughts turn to embracing new, experimental music. Indeed, having spent the occasional stag night in DN1 and its dens of iniquity also known as night clubs, the nearest anyone could expect to come to encountering new music would be the “Indie half hour” in Seventh Heaven, where Oasis, The Enemy and Ocean Colour Scene are the so-called alternative. Thank heavens for small mercies then, as 93 Million Miles From The Sun to not only manage to dampen stereotypes, 93 Million Miles From The Sun’s extensive make-up is that not only do they express a desire to take their sonic experimentation one step further, but they also never lose sight of the fact that beneath all the reverb and delay lay actual songs that would sound just as affecting.
1. Velocity Girl – Primal Scream 2. Unfamiliar – Ride 3. Kaleidoscope – The Boo Radleys 4. Never Understand – The Jesus & Mary Chain 5. Slowdive – Slowdive 6. Reference – Exit Calm 7. Lounge Act – Nirvana 8. Christine – The House Of Love 9. Drive Blind – Ride 10. To The Sky – Maps 11. Star Roving – Slowdive 12. Fosters Van – The Boo Radleys 13. Killed By Death – Motorhead 14. Can’t Go Back – Primal Scream 15. In A Hole – The Jesus & Mary Chain 16. Falling Ashes… more
93MillionMilesFromTheSun are:- Nick Mainline (Guitars/Effects/Vocals), Kenno (Bass)Jase Burns (Drums/Effects))
released December 31st, 2020
Primal Scream, Ride, The Boo Radleys, JAMC, Slowdive, Exit Calm, Nirvana, The House Of Love, Maps, Motorhead, Lush, The Stone Roses and 93MillionMilesFromTheSun
A Powys trio whose free-spirited invention and exuberant intensity flows through experimental pop: hypnotic, exhilarating and defiantly unique. The Welsh band Islet return with the release of their long-awaited new album. “Eyelet” was recorded at home tucked away in the hills of rural Mid Wales. It took form the months following the birth of band members Emma and Mark DamanThomas’ second child and the death of fellow band member Alex Williams’ mother. Alex came to live with Emma and Mark, and the band enlisted Rob Jones (Pictish Trail, Charles Watson) to produce.
‘Caterpillar’ described by Emma as “a song for my unborn child”. It’s followed by syncopated lullaby ‘Good Grief’ with its haunting keyboard hook and icy percussion thawed by Emma’s yearning vocals about the quiet strength of generations of women. With nods towards Arthur Russell and Jenny Hval, ‘Geese’ is a mini symphony of driven electronica inspired by Welsh cultural theorist Raymond Williams’ novel People Of The Black Mountains.
Young Fathers inflected rhythm can be heard on ‘Radel 10’ that accompanies the multi-tracked variations of Emma and defiant lyrics that were inspired in part by The Good Immigrant – the landmark anthology of essays on race and immigration by BAME writers. Powys trio Islet‘s superlative third record Eyelet is coursing with perpetual motion and meditative depth of the undercurrents of water that flow through the Welsh hills of their home, elemental, hypnotic and spiritual, the cycle of life from birth to death.
“They invigorate the sense of life on the margins with this whirlwind of psychedelic pop” The Guardian
“Unhinged, euphoric, wonderful.” Pitchfork
“They create an ideology that fuels creativity” The Quietus
