Casper Clausen, You may also know me from bands like Efterklang and frontman of Efterklang and adjacent project Liima, has announced details of his first ever solo record. ‘Better Way’ will be released on January 9th via City Slang Records and today he shares a first taste with the juddering, krautrock-tinged, 9-minute opening jam “Used To Think”.
“Used to Think” was one of the first songs I wrote for “Better Way” a couple of years ago” Clausen comments. “I had a run of some small shows around Portugal testing the new songs I was working on at the time, and this one became one of my favourites, I really like the energy of it. It was also the song that made me reach out to the producer Sonic Boom. He ended up mixing / co-producing the entire album. There is some inspiration from his band Spacemen 3 luring around in there and he lives in Sintra, very close to Lisbon where I’ve been the past couple of years, so it all made sense.”
“To me “Used to Think” is like a Kaleidoscope with interchangeable lenses, each section of the song, a different pallet of colours and shapes. Before I stopped thinking I thought, open up, share more and think less.” We get a taste of the juddering, krautrock-tinged, 9-minute opening jam “Used To Think”!“To me “Used to Think” is like a Kaleidoscope with interchangeable lenses, each section of the song, a different pallet of colours and shapes. Before I stopped thinking I thought, open up, share more and think less.
The video for Casper Clausen – Efterklang’s ‘Used to Think’ is out today and you can watch in full below!. Words from Casper on the video – “It was filmed on a magical island in the middle of the ocean, and we developed and edited the whole thing over the past month on sketchy wifi connections across mother earth.”The video is a homage to this planet. There is a link at the end of the video to donate to Amazon Frontlines.
I’ve spent a long time putting it together, mixed it with Sonic Boom and I’m very excited to get to share these songs with you. I am also using this time to premiere the video for the first single “Used To Think.” I made it with my friends Melanie Matthieu & Andrew de Freitas + more on a magical island.
Casper Clausen – “Used to Think” from the album “Better Way” out January 9th 2021 via City Slang Records.
This beautifully captured performance was recorded live at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival and would cap off her evening performance. A month prior to Woodstock and within a week of the first moon landing, this was a fascinating time in American history. Along with James Taylor, who Mitchell first met at a songwriters workshop on this very same day, the two would become leading lights of the forthcoming singer-songwriter movement, proving that introspective, intelligent lyrics could indeed sell records, and both would inspire countless others in the years to follow. Along with “Urge For Going” and “Both Sides Now,” “The Circle Game” would be covered by many artists, establishing Mitchell as a songwriter of note to other musicians long before the general public caught on to her talent.
Broadcast by PBS as “The Sound Of Summer” that November, it captures, Mitchell on the cusp of becoming one of the biggest stars in the emerging singer-songwriter movement. Spanning early classics such as Chelsea Morning and the lesser-known album tracks and the rare Cactus Tree, it culminates with Dino Valenti’s anthemic Get Together, and is essential listening for the legion of fans.
Unlike a couple of other live records of Joni Mitchell recently released, this one is quite short in respect to duration: She is singing beautifully in what is a relatively short set just 31 minutes. Still, it’s the quality, not the quantity, and this is particularly interesting for its being a record of Joni Mitchell’s early set in her career, although Yellow Curtains beats it on that score too, being a pre- Song To A Seagull release, whereas by Newport Festival that record was out and Clouds was in preparation.
Probably given time was of the essence, there’s very little chatter between songs, and these are delivered with feeling, especially The Fiddle And The Drum. Technically the concert is largely well recorded despite its age, with only the opening “Chelsea Morning” sounding like there were a few initial miking issues, with Mitchell sounding distant. It’s a pleasant concert and evokes the era well. Of particular note is “The Fiddle and the Drum”, performed a cappella and showing Mitchell’s early, voice off beautifully.
This, Chelsea Morning and Both Sides Now, would appear on Clouds, so this is a little bit of a preview for the audience, but three of the songs, For Free, Willy and The Circle Game would not appear on a Mitchell record until the following year on Ladies Of The Canyon. Predating the eponymous festival by a month, Woodstock had still yet to be conceived. Although Joni Mitchell didn’t get around to releasing her own version of “The Circle Game” until her third album, Ladies of the Canyon in 1970, the song had long become a fixture on the folk music scene, thanks in big part to it becoming the title song of Tom Rush’s popular album in 1968. Written in direct response to her friend Neil Young’s song “Sugar Mountain,” Mitchell’s lyric also focused on themes of growing older, lost innocence, and the inability to slow down the hands of time.
The set finishes off with a version of Get Together. Mitchell’s attempts on this to get a singalong going fall pretty flat, the crowd possibly intimidated by her soprano and melismas, which would be difficult for most ordinary mortals to emulate.
From Johnny Thunders’ personal tape archive, this recording is among hundreds of live, studio and writing session tapes he stored away for safe keeping in a box simply labelled ‘Thunders Tapes’. Cleaned up and mastered, our attempt is to reveal the recordings Johnny felt worthy of keeping and to release only the best audio quality and performances that live up to his musical legacy. In the debut release, we hear Johnny and his band performing at a Swiss radio station in 1985.
The digital version includes extra songs not on the vinyl. Spectacular sound. Great set. Production note: The producers have endeavored to attribute and credit all work contained in these recordings. Any omissions brought to their attention shall be corrected in future releases.
Recorded December 2nd–7th, 2019, at Battletapes in Nashville, TN, and produced, engineered, and mixed by Jeremy Ferguson (with the exception of ‘Reservations’ which was ;mixed by Ferguson and Matthew McCaughan, “Trip” sounds like a culmination of the band’s older catalogue fused with recent work. There’s a looseness and freedom that recalls their older sound mixed with a group sophistication and innovation derived through the process of playing together for so long.
The title Trip refers to the circumstances surrounding its creation and the endeavour of “touring” itself. “It also seems to describe a life in music and the situations we created in our life as a band over the years,” Wagner adds. “It’s been a trip…”
For Lambchop’s special Trip LP (out November 13 via City Slang Records), each member of the band assembled over the last two albums was tasked with choosing one song for the band to cover and leading the recording session. Lambchop head honcho Kurt Wagner says, “My idea was to see what might happen if I removed myself from the process as much as possible. In doing so, what surfaced would be elements that have always been there but maybe got overshadowed by my song writing and approach.”
Lambchop’s drummer and saxophonist Andy Stack (also of Wye Oak and Joyero) looked to the Stevie Wonder catalogue and brought ‘Golden Lady’ off 1973’s Innervisionsto the table. The result is delightfully woozy, coating the composition in skittering hi-hats and electronic flourishes, and extending it to nearly seven minutes. The track follows the previously shared cover of Wilco’s‘Reservations’. Trip, the new record, will be released November 13th, 2020
Taken from Trip, out November 13th, 2020 on Merge and City Slang records.
King Hannah’s sound is both soothing in its moods and intoxicating in its rushing soundscapes. Their neon guitar lines and intimate torchlight vocals put the everyday on a pedestal, lifted by melodic licks that swell into dense and swirling atmospheric textures.
Getting excited about new music gets harder with age and I know I dedicated an entire mailout to that topic. But it can still happen and Liverpool’s King Hannah are already one of my favourite new bands of the year, despite having only released two songs so far. Well, to be honest, I already had the chance to listen to their forthcoming debut EP so I can tell you the first tracks are no lucky shot at all. Hannah Merrick and Craig Whittle deliver raw, unfiltered, mellow and heavily old-fashioned indie rock vibes that feel like a grittier version of Mazzy Star. And yes, it might be retro but I think it’s also a bold move to release songs like Meal Dealwho are almost eight minutes long.
They don’t care about certain lengths for intros, outro and all that stuff, they like to lose themselves in the music and the hazy and hypnotizing effect it can have. The last two minutes of this new single are a prime example here. They need this moment to unfold their raw beauty. King Hannah are up for greatness, if it’s up to me and I can only hope that this is the start of something bigger. Their debut EP Tell Me Your Mind And I’ll Tell You Mine arrives on November 20 via City Slang.
The hopes, misgivings, wariness and vulnerability of a new romance all play out together in Helena Deland’s “Comfort, Edge.” The first seconds of the song take their time coming into focus, with whispers and muffled, low-fi instruments. Then the tempo drags its feet, but the grungy guitar chords push forward; the harmonies climb, but Deland’s vocal maintains its cool, with hints of the melody from John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.” She sets out her requirements — “You’ll never make a fool of me” is the first — but she doesn’t necessarily expect them to be met.
Montréal’s Helena Deland opened for Connan Mockasin at the 2019 Montréal Jazz Festival, where Deland’s deft lyricism and sonic edge left a lasting mark. For her debut album, she’s signed to Chris Cantallini’s (of timeless indie blog Gorilla vs. Bear) Luminelle Records, and her dreamy sound slots nicely next to labelmates like Anemone, Hana Vu and Jackie Mendoza. On songs like “Someone New” and the spectacular “Truth Nugget,” Deland expands on themes of interpersonal dynamics and identity in powerful ways. She is undoubtedly one of the best new talents to emerge from the robust Montréal indie scene.
‘Comfort, Edge’, from Helena Deland’s debut album ‘Someone New’ out now.
We recorded this album in 2019 in what feels like a different world, but the sentiments remain the same. It’s about confidence at war with doubt, living in the moment, learning from the past, and taking stock of what’s truly important. We are pleased to share our first single Cat’s Cradle, along with a real cool music video directed by Lauren Adams and Drew Horen of Polar Bear Productions now available on YouTube and all streaming platforms. . Play it loud, share it with a friend, or add it to your favourite playlist. The history of the Pennsylvania indie band Tigers Jaw is often divided into two distinct phases: before and after the 2013 departure of three of the band’s five founding members, one of whom, Adam McIlwee (who now records as Wicca Phase Springs Eternal), went on to found the influential emo rap collective Gothboiclique. Ben Walsh and Brianna Collins stuck around, though, and reshaped the band’s sound into something a bit softer and more introspective than the band’s brash emo roots. Its previous album, 2017’s “Spin,” felt a bit transitional, but “Cat’s Cradle,” the first single from the forthcoming “I Won’t Care How You Remember Me” (out early next year) is a confident step out of the shadow of the past and into the band’s future. Driven by chugging guitars and prismatic keys, it’s a refreshing blast of bouncy power-pop, tinged bittersweet by Collins’ lilting lead vocals.
A decade ago, for a certain kind of in-the-know music fan to have an opinion on Salem, and it wasn’t likely to be a neutral one. The Midwestern trio of Jack Donoghue, John Holland and Heather Marlatt had been anointed the godparents of a heady strain of nihilistic electronic music that seemed to alienate as many listeners as it bewitched.
The group mixed the sounds of sludgy Southern rap with dizzy shoegaze, deconsecrated church music and recordings of terrible accidents, all with a reckless abandon that made some critics wonder whether they were being punked. And then, after just a handful of releases — the 2010 album “King Night” was its only full-length — Salem was gone, slipping out the back door of a party it had crashed.
“I think when we got attention from anyone back in the day, it was novel,” Donoghue, 32, said on a video call from an empty-looking room in the Chicago neighbourhood where he grew up, a woodsman’s beard shrouding his once-boyish features. “Then the novelty wore off.” Holland, 35, nodded solemnly hunched in the dimly lit bedroom of his Traverse City, Mich., home. A blurry tattoo was scrawled across one of his cheekbones that, upon closer study, spelled “CRYME.”
It was just over a week before the release of “Fires in Heaven,”Salem’s second album, a record so long in the works, even Holland and Donoghue sometimes doubted that it would materialize. (The group is now a duo.) And it was less than 24 hours until Holland was due to report to the Grand Traverse County Correctional Facility to serve a 30-day sentence for charges he’d rather not discuss. “It’s unfortunate,” he said softly. “But whatever.” The duo has grown used to this type of mythically bad timing throughout the creation of the new album, though it’s quick to own up to its role in the chaos. “Literally, it’s all a war with ourselves over here,” Donoghue said as Holland dragged from an occasional cigarette.
Pieced together from five years of writing and recording sessions in Michigan, Los Angeles and Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, the songs on “Fires in Heaven” do not drastically depart from the sound Salem pioneered in the late 2000s. It was an era marked by lingering unease from the 2008 financial crisis, when newly available production software and seemingly limitless sample material led to a boom in bedroom recording. Still, Salem’s music stood out. It was billed as scary but more often felt unspeakably sad, even if you couldn’t make out the lyrics. “I think a huge part of their magic and their enduring appeal is just how real it is,” said TravisSalem are unapologetically Salem.
Musically and otherwise, the band pushed things to the edge — which could mean mangled covers of trance hits, infamously sketchy live performances, interviews in which members admitted to addiction and prostitution, or a tendency for Donoghue to rap in a voice slowed down and warped like a DJ Screw mix, a choice that earned the band criticism for appropriating hip-hop tropes.
Donoghue’s raps are the first vocals on “Fires in Heaven,” growling, “Ask me what I’m doing with my life, ain’t [expletive] to tell ya” over a lurching sample from a Russian ballet. “We deeply care, and are deeply invested, but only in our own rules,” Holland said.
Donoghue picked up where he trailed off: “And if there’s no one that wants to listen to it, we’ll still make music together. I mean, we made music for 10 years without sharing it.” The band sound tracked Paris runway shows and cranked out remixes for Charli XCX and Britney Spears. In 2013, Donoghue contributed to the production on Kanye West’s “Yeezus,” an album with an industrial grit that could be called Salem-inspired. (“I still haven’t been paid for that,” Donoghue said with a laugh. “So, yeah.”)
By 2016, Donoghue had moved to Montegut, La. — a fishing town with a population of just over 2,000 — with plans to work on an oil rig, though jobs almost immediately dried up as gas prices plummeted. When Holland hit him up, explaining that he’d just lost someone in Michigan and things weren’t going great, Donoghue suggested his bandmate head south.
The pair moved into an old fishing camp, where they wrote most of the songs on “Fires in Heaven” and got into some trouble. Holland and Donoghue packed up a U-Haul and drove to Los Angeles, but attempts to finish the album weren’t successful. Holland returned to Michigan, and Donoghue got a job installing windows. But with the help of Henry Laufer, better known as the electronic musician Shlohmo, the record was coaxed into completion. Laufer said the music had been scattered across locations and lost files, “but the songs were undoubtedly amazing, even just as demos.” The duo spent weeks at a time in Laufer’s home studio, working obsessively, as Laufer became part cheerleader, part “spiritual guru.” “In a time of such garbage, this was all I wanted and needed to hear,” he said.
Though it took 10 years, the punishing wall-of-sound collages and echoing melodies of “Fires in Heaven” sound right on time. This time, it’s easier to hear the beauty in the darkness, from the swirling synths of the first single “Starfall” to the funeral march of “Red River,” with a half-sung chorus that pleads, “Angels with burning wings, watch over me.”
At last, a new studio album from superb London duo, The Left Outsides, to follow up on 2018’s amazing All That Remains.
The basic building blocks remain the same — half of the sound is Alison Cotton and her viola and keys, the other half is Mark Nicholas with a stunning array of guitars — but the structures they create this time are darker and more forbidding than their antecedents. This album feels very much a piece of the season in which it is being released, as the leaves strip themselves from trees and the sky grows colder, greyer by the hour. More than once while “Are You Sure I Was There” spun I was put in mind of the classic Rainy Day LP, masterminded by Kendra Smith back in 1984. The Left Outsides possess the same sure grasp of that place where sorrow, ecstasy and psychedelics meet in a shower of dying stars.
The tunes here are wonderful. Most are new, although a few have been heard before in different forms (if you knew where to listen.) “The Wind No Longer Stirs the Trees” (with its glorious blend of backwards and forward motion) was on a 7” lathe, backed with “As Night Falls” (a beautiful ode to the promise of winter.) The track “Seance” was first recorded as part of a celebration of Help the Witch, the debut novel by former music critic Tom Cox (whose words were used for most of the lyrics.) And “My Reflection Once Was Me” (which recalls The Trees’ epic tunes by combining massive blocks of raging guitar with Alison’s steady vocals) was featured on the live A Place to Hide LP.
The other compositions are all-new and utterly great. The tunes that Mark sings tend to evoke a certain ’60s whisp. Whether it’s the Floydian lilt of “Only Time Will Tell,” the freakbeat pop of “November on My Mind,” or “Pictures of You,” which stacks a dreamy ’60s overlay upon contempo pop structuring. Alison’s vocals often display a more folky essence. “The Stone Barn” has a vibe very similar to some of Sandy Denny’s later solo work, grounded by stately piano chords. “Things Can Never Be the Same” centers on a gorgeous mid-paced vocal performance, encased in spinning webs of very elegant guitar. And the conjoined vocals on “A Face in the Crowd,” sit atop a huge fuzz riff, sounding like the perfect anthem for the new Slow Music Movement. They wont back down!.
And you shouldn’t either. I’m not exactly sure where anyone gets their records these days but wherever that is, you should march there tout de suite (even if only figuratively) and demand a copy of Are You Sure I Was There? today. And yes, I am sure. Today!
Starcrawler’s remarkable sophomore album “Devour You” is a record that dynamically captures the essence and aggression of their gloriously unhinged live shows. Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, L7) at Sunset Studios, “Devour You” takes the feral intensity of their 2018 self-titled debut and twists it into something grander and more gracefully composed. With its more elaborate and nuanced yet harder-hitting sonic palette, the result is a selection of songs radiating both raw sensitivity and untamable power, and a record that the band’s Arrow de Wilde says, “encapsulates all the blood, sweat, bruised knees, and broken fingers of a Starcrawler show.”
Born on the streets of Los Angeles, Starcrawler is a band possessed by the spirit of its own hometown, every movement charged with a manic electricity. Since forming in 2015, vocalist Arrow de Wilde, guitarist/vocalist Henri Cash, bassist Tim Franco, and drummer Austin Smith have gone from bashing out classic-punk covers in the garage to winning the love of such legendary artists as Shirley Manson and Elton John. They’ve also opened for the likes of Beck, Foo Fighters, Spoon, The Distillers, and MC5, bringing their unhinged energy to an already-fabled live show—a spectacle that’s simultaneously lurid and glorious and elegant as ballet. On their sophomore full-length Devour You, Starcrawler captures that dynamic with a whole new precision, revealing their rare ability to find a fragile beauty in even the greatest chaos.
Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, L7), Devour You takes the feral intensity of their 2018 self-titled debut and twists it into something grander and more gracefully composed. With its more elaborate and nuanced yet harder-hitting sonic palette, the album came to life at the famed Sunset Sound, where the band spent their downtime playing H-O-R-S-E at the basketball hoop and drinking lots of Mexican Cokes. Adorned with so many unexpected flourishes—choir-like backing vocals from a local Girl Scouts troop, tuba and trombone riffs courtesy of Cash (the band’s 18-year-old musical polymath)—the result is a selection of songs radiating both raw sensitivity and untamable power.
Heavy and swinging and brutally catchy, “Bet My Brains” shows the psychic kinship at the heart of Starcrawler’s songwriting. “That song came from thinking about the mole people in New York and Vegas and the Catacombs in France, and the underground village of people who live in the sewers of the L.A. River,” says de Wilde. “I was fascinated with the fact that there’s whole other world happening right under our feet.” Cash adds: “Arrow and I hadn’t even talked about it yet, but I’d already written something about the same thing—about how these people’s eyes adapt to pitch-blackness, and they end up going crazy from never seeing the sunlight.”
Elsewhere on Devour You, Starcrawler drifts from the dreamy piano lilt of “No More Pennies” to the rock-and-roll disco of “You Dig Yours” to the pure punk vitriol of “Toy Teenager” (a song about de Wilde’s refusal to be abused the fashion industry, and about how “people look at my body and just want to put me on a platter”). And on “Born Asleep” the band lets their love for country music shine, slipping into a modern-day murder ballad spiked with pieces of hazy poetry (sample lyric: “I remember when you cut your lip, sippin’ on a soda can/And the time when you fell and tripped, screaming at the ice cream man”).
All throughout the album, Starcrawler taps into the kinetic chemistry they discovered soon after forming—a process Smith describes as a “slow-burning candle of finding the right people to play with.” In assembling the band, de Wilde first contacted Smith after seeing a Facebook photo of him playing drums (“I hit him up and he came to my birthday party, and then he turned out to be a really good drummer,” she recalls. “Right away it was like, ‘Jackpot!’”) In searching for a guitarist, de Wilde next approached Cash, a fellow student at her performing-arts high school in downtown L.A. “I saw him one day and thought, ‘That guy looks cool,’” she says. “‘He’s carrying a tuba, he’s got long hair, I’ve seen him wearing Cramps T-shirts: he’s gotta know at least something on guitar.’” But while Cash has since emerged as a monster guitarist, her instincts were only partly right. “When I was younger I didn’t want to play guitar, I wanted to play the drums because my dad played guitar—although sometimes I’d take a broomstick and jam along to AC/DC live footage,” says Cash. “It wasn’t until Arrow hit me up that I realized it was meant to be.”
Starcrawler then finalized their lineup with the addition of Franco—an old friend whom de Wilde reached out to after a moment of strange serendipity (“I was in the car with my mom and stressing out about finding the right bass player, and then Tim and his brother turned out to be on their bikes right in front of us,” she says). With their early band practices mostly consisting of Runaways covers, the band quickly bonded over a shared love for L.A.’s most unglamorous spaces. “I’ve been obsessed with Hollywood Boulevard ever since I was little,” notes de Wilde. “People travel so far and spend so much money to see it ’cause it makes them think of Marilyn Monroe—when in reality it’s so disgusting, which is why I love it. But really a lot of the L.A. that I grew up with and reminisce about is kind of fading now.”
As an antidote to the toxic mildness overtaking so much of the city, Starcrawler’s live show has only become more outrageous over the years, an element strengthened by their increasingly telepathic connection. “We all know each other in a much deeper way now,” says Smith. “Like, Arrow knows exactly when I’m going to hit the crash cymbals, so she moves to match up with that. It’s completely changed how we play together.” Prone to spitting fake blood and slapping phones from the hands of crowd members, de Wilde has proven to be a once-in-a-lifetime performer, captivating enough to command a room with just the widening of her eyes. “We want to put on a real show and give people some kind of escape from all the shit going on in the world,” she says. “And with the album, I want people to put it on and feel excited, and hopefully get goosebumps. I always want there to be a dramatic response.”
‘Bet My Brains’ is taken from Starcrawler’s second album “Devour You”, out now on Rough Trade.
