“It was a sort of dark time in my life when I was struggling to find my way. I was in a relationship when it occurred to me that a lot of times you find yourself apologizing to someone after you’ve let them down. So, the idea came to me to apologize in advance. Instead of waiting to apologize until I mess up, let me apologize before, ha ha!
The song went through a lot of changes. From point A to point B there was a bunch of things I put in and took out but what I ended up with was weirdly similar to what I started out with… In spite of that, all the things that I did were necessary. There were times when I took out the main electrical piano that I started with and tried to fill the space with something different, but it never sounded right to me, so I put it back in.
This comes up a lot, I think. You’re always looking for this vibe or tone, you want it to be as pristine and well-recorded as possible, but sometimes there’s really no substitute for the feeling you that had in the beginning. At this point I don’t even remember where I played that electric piano sound or where it came from, but after trying to duplicate it in the studio with all the grand equipment I just couldn’t seem to get the right sound. Sometimes you have to try things that are wrong to figure out what you don’t want, just to confirm that your original idea was right.”– Aaron Earl Livingston,
“Demon To The Dark” by Son Little from the album ‘New Magic,’ available September 15th
Every December, Christchurch, NZ enjoys the start of summer as Saskatoon, SK begins to freeze over. For as far apart as these places may seem, you would never know it from the sound ofPlastic Bouquet, the debut collaborative album between Saskatoon duo Kacy and Clayton and Christchurch singer and songwriter Marlon Williams. While on tour across Europe in 2017, Kacy and Clayton quite literally stopped Marlon in his tracks. As if playing by divine design through the radio, the pair’s Springtime of the Year immediately enchanted him. Soon thereafter, Marlon hopped a flight to Saskatoon and they wrote and recorded the bulk of what would become Plastic Bouquet. They unlocked undeniable chemistry. With Plastic Bouquet, these three musicians find common ground in dusty country spun through a kaleidoscope of psychedelic soul and dreamy fifties delivery. They created an ethnosphere that is more than the sum of its parts. It’s also the beginning of something very exciting.
Kacy: ”For the album, this was the first song I wrote that I sent to Marlon. So it was written before I knew him, but there are some parts that maybe would make you think otherwise. He wrote a line or two on it. It was written before he arrived into Canada with this winter scene in mind. I added some lines like the one including the Southern Hemisphere, to make it more kitchy, ha ha!
We postponed the song because I was worried about it. I thought all the other songs were way better and I was embarrassed to present it. So I had to finish it up. The song is very short because I cut a lot of verses from it. The story changed and I just felt they were unnecessary information. The first verse is just half as long as the second. I felt the verse melody was too boring to keep going for too long, so hit the chorus and trick everyone into listening to the last minute of the song.
Clayton played the organ at the start of the song, he played most of the fancy stuff on the album which was a nice asset to have hanging around. Marlon and I are more for the singing but Marlon definitely changed that one up. He played the electric guitar which I think is a nice part. It was just a little acoustic fingerpicking song before. I think he actually provided the most guidance on that song out of all of them, arrangement wise and adding a line and such. I’m glad we got it out.”
Marlon: ”That’s a song that Kacy wrote early on in the process and one of the first songs we had good to go. She writes such beautiful melodies for her voice. You’re compelled to fall in love with her songs because of how she puts melodies to such a beautiful voice. For me there was a very rare moment to be able to play a guitar solo, I have never done one!
We produced the album together instead of having someone else. Because of our shared love for the same music and having that same bedrock of foundational, traditional country music, all of this happened very organically so there wasn’t really much of a need for an extra party to make it all gel. The way we had started sending the songs back and forth to each other, there was no point at which we couldn’t work things out on our own.”
East London four piece ZolaBlood bring forth a brooding and darkened offering full of haunting elements in their latest single ‘SilverSoul’, the second release from their highly anticipated EP ‘Two Hearts’ “
‘Silver Soul’ is about saying a last goodbye to a time or a place when you’ve outgrown it and you know it’s time to change. In terms of the writing process, ‘Silver Soul’ was kicking around for a couple of years before we figured out how to make it work. We tried a bunch of different versions and ideas, and it was coming up with that drum loop – that you hear at the beginning – that helped us weave it all together. Usually the music comes first for us, which in turn inspires melody and lyrics. For ‘Silver Soul’ it kind of happened the other way around – we just had some basic chords, lyrics and melody but the rest was pretty fluid. So it was fun to take a different approach.
Speaking about the track, they explain, “Silver Soul is about saying a last goodbye to a time or a place when you’ve outgrown it and you know it’s time to change.
East London based quartet, Zola Blood is undoubtedly one of our favourite electro-ambient projects to come out of the UK. The recent tour with RÜFÜS DU SOL has left a visible mark on the band – they appear more direct and powerful in their delivery. ‘Silver Soul’ is taken from their latest EP via Akira Records.
“Way before I even started recording I had written an e-mail to Jim (James) saying ‘I want to make this album about compassion and empathy’. It was early 2017 so there had been a lot of major shifts, planetary and energy shifts all over the place. I had no idea how much I would need this record for myself when I was working on it. Just to put this positive vibration out into the world but also to hear and sing these songs back to myself was more important than I could have ever imagined.
I realized I had been writing all these songs with so many questions. Every single song on the record has a question in it except for the last one, which I had started initially as a bit of a mantra or meditation, a George Harrison influenced kind of thinking. Here’s a statement to choose love over fear, or over negativity, or over borders and walls. Even when it feels like the world is ending in the darkest place I’m going to promise myself that that’s what I’m going to choose. I didn’t even realize how much singing it would have that effect on me as well as that reminder. So it felt good to have that at the end after all these questions.
It’s really fun to play when it goes off into outer space in the rock section! Like I’m very insistent on this statement, like I mean it for real. Especially since we were working on it in the Joshua Tree it kind of feels like that moment of the day where everything’s quiet but all of a sudden the song has gotten down and everything goes straight off into the stars at that point. I had this idea for a crazy space rock solo at the end and that’s played by Jim. One of the benefits of having him around!” . Basia Bulat
Basia Bulat “Love Is At The End Of The World” from the album “Are You In Love?“
New Zealand greats The Chills are back with a majestic new single, “You’re Immortal.” With a goth-tinged, baroque arrangement, this is orchestral pop that tips its hat to groups like Love and The Left Banke but was clearly written in 2020.
“These are unprecedented times but, as usual, the young feel invulnerable and the elders are concerned,” says frontman Martin Phillipps. “The old people (like me) want to feel more involved but they also know that their time of influence has largely passed. So we learn from the young and admire them as they make their own mistakes yet still, hopefully, shape extraordinary history we could not have imagined.
No word on whether this is a teaser for something larger, but The Chills’ label, Fire Records, says 2021 is “set to be an exciting year.”
“You’re Immortal” through Fire Records Released on: 16th December.
Clem Snide was a character created by William S Burroughs and adopted by Eef Barzelay as the name of the band that he created in 1991. Burroughs’s writing was often informed by personal tragedy. These included a lifelong heroin addiction and a conviction for the manslaughter of his second wife, who died in a gun accident. Like his inspiration, Barzelay has suffered more than his fair share of misfortune. Beginning with the collapse of his band and subsequently his marriage, Barzelay then lost his house and was declared bankrupt. Now, five years on from the last Clem Snide record, Barzelay is back with quite possibly the best album that he’s ever made, and there have been some very good ones along the way.
Whilst at his lowest ebb, a fan sent Barzelay a video of the Avett Brothers peforming one of his songs and an interview with Scott Avett in which he states that he is a big fan of Clem Snide. From this Barzelay contacted Avett, with the result that he agreed to produce the new Clem Snide album. Avett actually ended up co-writing some of the songs and also plays and adds harmony vocals on it. He brought in AvettBrothers drummer Mike Marsh and Band of Horses bassist Bill Reynolds. This quartet then put down the majority of the album at Avett’s North Carolina farm. The album was then concluded in Nashville with finishing touches from Old Crow Medicine Show fiddler Ketch Secor and Avett Brothers cellist Joe Kwon.
Scott Avett’s simple arrangements and minimal instrumentation allow Barzelay’s songs to live, breathe and flourish as their words are expressed by the compelling idiosyncrasies of his voice. This back-to-basics approach is the perfect platform for Barzelay. Shaped by his difficult experiences, the songs deal with issues of depression, identity, mortality, God and the afterlife. However, this is not an album of hopeless self-pity. The songs also raise the prospect of hope, discovery, reinvention and regeneration. The very personal nature of the songs underline that although it carries the Clem Snide name, to all intents and purposes this is an Eef Bazerlay solo record.
The album’s opening track ‘Roger Ebert’ serves as a prologue to the whole album. Based around the celebrated film critic’s last words “It’s all an elaborate hoax” Barzelay contemplates the nature and meaning of life, spirituality and God. Boy meets girl it isn’t. Subsequent songs investigate, contemplate and reflect upon similarly weighty themes. In ‘Don’t Bring No Ladder’ Barzelay recalls that “I thought to ask the voice inside my head/if it would still be there once I was dead” and in ‘The Stuff of Us’ he notes that “to be blessed is always to be cursed as well” Yet, despite all the darkness, at the end of ‘The Ballad of Eef Barzelay’ he concludes that “ As I kept falling/I came to realise/I finally realised/that there was no ground” thus raising the possibility of a turnaround and new beginnings.
The intensity is punctuated by three co-writes. ‘Sorry Charlie’ is a song about reaching middle age (Barzelay recently turned 50) in which he offers reflections on leaving the wildness of younger days behind “Sorry Charlie/We can’t party anymore” and the acceptance of responsibilities and a steadier existence “I’ve got a good job now”. The album concludes with‘Some Ghost’ another co-write which offers some hope “after we stumble/we’ll find a path”. We can only hope that the path that Eef Barzelay is now on is a straight and steady one. Plans to tour the album have, in the present circumstances, been shelved. For a man who has been in such a perilous financial state, this will come as a major blow. We could all help out by buying this album. I suggest that not as an act of charity, but because you will be getting one of the best albums you’re likely to hear this year.
“I think we always feel like we’re falling through life? Desperately grabbing at whatever little snappy branch we can but if there is no ground then there is no fear and then we’re flying or least floating… And in the end, a leap of faith is inevitable. Like the song says ‘to live is to fly’.
Also, it satisfies the rhyme of job and kebob and advocates for ‘the secret’. I named it after myself to be cheeky but it is an accurate expression of what I believe.” Eef Barzelay
Forever Just Beyond / Ramseur Records marketed and distributed by Thirty Tigers Released on: 2020-03-27
Hazy scenes from Asbury Park abound in the stylish new video, one directed with a VHS-inspired and retro cool by Taylor McFadden. “Domino” is the Hammond-drenched and funk-fueled new single from Nicole Atkins, and it’s taken from her forthcoming Italian Ice LP. Out from May 29th,
“One summer while touring, my band and I got really into listening to French electro music. It’s the perfect kind of music to drive to for long hours at night. Back at home in Nashville, I turned my friend Dex Green onto some of it while we were recording for my other project with Jim Sclavunos of the Bad Seeds. Dex caught the bug and got into it too and we talked about how we could write something together that felt like French electro but would still fit into my style. A few days later he sent over a drum and keys track and we finished the song from there fairly quickly.”
– Nicole Atkins
“Domino” – from the new album ‘Italian Ice out May 29th.
Three Zeppelin-themed pinball machines are your chance to “become a Led Zeppelin member through gameplay” . Barely two months have passed since humanity marvelled at the news of a Guns N’ Roses pinball machine, and now silver ball freaks the world over have another reason to celebrate: a Led Zeppelin machine has been launched.
The machine is made by Stern Pinball, who say, “In this high energy rock and roll pinball concert experience, pinball and music are fused together. Players are transported back to Led Zeppelin’s early days and tour the world from 1968-1980. As if players were members of the band playing its music, their play updates game features at the start of each verse and chorus of ten iconic Led Zeppelin songs.”
The songs that feature in the game are Good Times Bad Times, Whole Lotta Love, The Song Remains The Same, Rock And Roll, Trampled Under Foot, Ramble On, Kashmir, Immigrant Song, Black Dog and Communication Breakdown.
“There is nothing more energising and fun than bringing pinball and music together,” explains Gary Stern, Chairman and CEO of Stern Pinball, Inc. “Partnering with Led Zeppelin, we created a one-of-a-kind pinball experience. It’s our dream goal to create a pinball machine with this iconic rock band.”
The Led Zeppelin pinball machine is available in three editions. The Pro edition features Led Zeppelin III–themed artwork, while the Premium edition is adorned by the cover art of the band’s debut album and the Limited Edition model comes wrapped in the band’s Swan Song “Icarus” logo.
All three feature a custom-moulded Hindenburg Zeppelin, which, when lit, “scores speed locks on the player’s musical journey to Zeppelin multiball.” Meanwhile, players can “become a Led Zeppelin member through gameplay, an “Icarus sculpted leaper toy takes flight when smashed by the chaotic pinball,” and there’s “Live concert footage with custom animations for each song.” It’s possible the excitement will all be too much.
Shopping are propulsive bass lines, primitive disco-not-disco drums and guitar lines sharp as broken glass. The band wasformed in 2012 by members Rachel Aggs (guitar), Billy Easter (bass) and Andrew Milk (drums), who’ve all done time in a plethora of notable UK DIY bands
This is the fourth long player from Rachel, Andrew and Billy, with their adept lo-fi take on that mutant disco/no wave dance-punk sound. Shopping pull the neat trick of getting better with every album, leaving you restless to hear what they do next. Album centerpiece “For Your Pleasure” is a treatise on hedonism set to retrofuturist synthesizers and artificial handclaps; perhaps too frantic for the ’70s discotechques Shopping has conjured in the past, it would sound right at home in the cocaine ’80s. It resembles no other Shopping song before it, raising the ceiling for a promising band with plenty left to say.
Post-punk trio Shopping have long been heralded as queer icons of the London DIY scene—but things change. For one, Shopping no longer consider London as their home base: Guitarist Rachel Aggs and drummer Andrew Milk have relocated to Glasgow, while bassist Billy Easter is currently living in L.A. The trio is also shaking off their pared-down sound, instead choosing to embrace the possibilities of synths, beats and a polished studio feel.
The band is, obviously, still emblematic of queer artistic expression, but just maybe not in the way you were so sure that they were. On All or Nothing, Shopping’s fourth album since their inception in 2012, they deliver some of their most articulate, exciting songs as a group, while also eschewing some of the formulaic components of their music that made them so interesting in the first place. They teased the electronic-leaning sound of the album with singles “Initiative” and “For Your Pleasure,” but while many bands lose their edge when they adopt a smoother, synthier aesthetic, Shopping still remain punk in a restless and frenetic way—even when the guitars are put down.
I’ve always thought that Shopping are all about bringing a dance ideal to the punk aesthetic. Or maybe they’re all about adding a punk ideal to a dance aesthetic? I’m not really sure which it is, but I’m still really impressed with the result, an effortless blend that speaks to a perfect understanding of both forms, along with being a great collection of songs that make you wanna dance.
Relatively few artists have produced as many albums in as much time of equally high quality and interest, and the latest really showcases them at their most punchy and impactful yet. They really peak when they are all singing together.
With their 2018 debut Parts, Ohmme introduced a combustive art-rock style based on tightly intertwined dual vocals and improvisatory guitars, wringing sing-song catchiness from baroque complexity. On “Fantasize Your Ghost”, the Chicago band further explores this craggy terrain, with detours into noisenik squalls, Krautrock grooves, and chamber-pop delicacy. Core duo Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham (who has worked for the company that produces Pitchfork Music Festival) are most impressive in their sharp-tongued songcraft, whether confronting a distant partner or conjuring up a childhood reverie that juxtaposes hot lava and hot dogs—unsettlingly delectable.
OHMME presents: “Fantasize Your Ghost” is a special concert film recorded live at Constellation in their hometown, Chicago. Bridging the gap between their frenetic live shows and their carefully crafted studio albums, the film presents their latest full length album in its entirety with the addition of their newest songs “Mine” and “Miasma” The show captures Ohmme with an expanded line-up featuring Nnamdï Ogbonnaya on drums, Ruby Parker and Quinn Tsan on backing vox and V.V. Lightbody on backing vox and flute.
Co-directed by Jake Saner and Lauren Pratt with set design by Delaney Stewart, sound by Dorian Gehring, movement by Ashley Robicheaux, and co-produced with Constellation, the film pulls you in close with the band, enveloping you in their music and their dreams.
Chicago duo Ohmme was started by Macie Stewart and Sima Cunningham in the summer of 2014, combining their love for lushvocals and song writing with their love of experimentation and sound.
Released June 5th, 2020
OHMME is Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart All songs written and performed by OHMME All drums and percussion performed by Matt Carroll
