So far, Austin five-piece Sun June has done an excellent job of selling their forthcoming record Somewhereto its intended nostalgic audience, in turn referring to it as their “prom record” and describing their sound as “regret pop.” To add to that, vocalist Laura Colwell describes it as being “bigger, fatter, sadder” than its predecessor when introducing its latest single, the dusty-trail dream-pop (and prom-ready) “Bad Girl,” which longingly looks back on the freedom of Colwell’s teenage years.
To introduce the new single, the band is unveiling a vibrant, sun-soaked visual for the track, setting its moody tones to an ecstatic dance routine. While the influence of Terrence Malick—whose set for Song to Song is where Colwell and bandmate Stephen Salisbury met—is evident in the contemplative cinematography, the band claims to have taken inspiration from “films like Blood Simple and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, which were also shot in rural towns just outside of Austin.”
“Bad Girl” is about a younger version of myself I like to obsessively despise while desperately trying to emulate. It’s about a self-destructive past and how my fear of death and FOMO (for lack of a better term) affected my decision making. I really wanted to make a dance video because the song has so much attitude. The dancer/choreographer Sarah Navarrete really captured the push and pull of the lyrics. The video is like a noir narrative,
“Bad Girl” by Sun June from the upcoming album ‘Somewhere’ out February 5th, 2021 via Run For Cover Records
The music of Alex Maas has always mesmerised. Now, on his soul-baring solo debut “Luca”, the Texan and The Black Angel’s singer journey is taking an equally hypnotic detour along the wild trails of his indigenous homestead. Driven by the force of nature, each phase of life is celebrated through songs of love, hope, human connection whilst navigating perils of modern society and tentatively facing the darkness. As the shamanic vocalist and bass player of The Black Angels, Alex Maas knows neo-psych-rock well; yet its menace is barely noticeable across his masterfully crafted soul-baring debut solo album. Named for Maas’ firstborn, whose name means “bringer of light,” Luca was a long time coming, with some of its songs dating back almost a decade, put together piece-by-piece over the course of a couple years. The record began its transformation from loner folk leanings to a worldlier embrace of gentle psychedelia.
It’s a record fuelled by memories of an upbringing in the strange, unique paradise of his father’s plant nursery in Seabrook, Texas by the waterfront of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Native American sounds that would drift through the garden’s hidden speakers, ricocheting off multi-coloured pottery mazes of curiosities from across the world.
Casting shades of deeply personal wide-eyed innocence and the darker realms of paranoia, Luca has its sights set on the near and distant future. Subtle psychedelic flourishes and instrumentation come from a cast of expert players in Austin but this is a deeply personal endeavour.
It’s been a while since the Black Angels released an album and I’m happy to hear Alex’ Voice again, Driven by the force of nature, The Black Angels singer’s solo journey takes an hypnotic detour along the wild trails of hisindigenous homestead with songs of love, hope, human connection whilst navigating perils of modern society and tentatively facing the darkness.
The five members of Sun June spent their early years spread out across the United States, from the boonies of the Hudson Valley to the sprawling outskirts of LA. Having spent their college years within the gloomy, cold winters of the North East, Laura Colwell and Stephen Salisbury found themselves in the vibrant melting-pot of inspiration that is Austin, Texas. Meeting each other while working on Terrence Malick’s ‘Song to Song’, the pair were immediately taken by the city’s bustling small clubs and honky-tonk scene, and the fact that there was always an instrument within reach, always someone to play alongside.
Coming alive in this newly discovered landscape, Colwell and Salisbury formed Sun June alongside Michael Bain on lead guitar, Sarah Schultz on drums, and Justin Harris on bass and recorded their debut album live to tape, releasing it via the city’s esteemed Keeled Scales label in 2018. The band coined the term ‘regret pop’ to describe the music they made on the ‘Years’ LP. Though somewhat tongue in cheek, it made perfect sense ~ the gentle sway of their country leaning pop songs seeped in melancholy, as if each subtle turn of phrase was always grasping for something just out Sun June returns with “Somewhere”, a brand new album, out February 2021. It’s a record that feels distinctly more present than its predecessor. In the time since, Colwell and Salisbury have become a couple, and it’s had a profound effect on their work; if Years was about how loss evolves, Somewhere is about how love evolves. “We explore a lot of the same themes across it,” Colwell says, “but I think there’s a lot more love here.
”Somewhere is Sun June at their most decadent, a richly diverse album which sees them exploring bright new corners with full hearts and wide eyes. Embracing a more pop-oriented sound the album consists of eleven beautiful new songs and is deliberately more collaborative and fully arranged: Laura played guitar for the first time; band members swapped instruments, and producer Danny Reisch helped flesh out layers of synth and percussion that provides a sweeping undercurrent to the whole thing. Throughout Somewhere you can hear Sun June blossom into a living-and-breathing five-piece, the album formed from an exploratory track building process which results in a more formidable version of the band we once knew. ’Real Thing’ is most indicative of this, a fully collaborative effort which encompasses all of the nuances that come to define the album.
“Are you the real thing?” Laura Colwell questions in the song’s repeated refrain. “Honey I’m the real thing,” she answers back. They’ve called this one their ‘prom’ record; a sincere, alive-in-the-moment snapshot of the heady rush of love. “The prom idea started as a mood for us to arrange and shape the music to, which we hadn’t done before,” the band explains. “ Prom isn’t all rosy and perfect. The songs show you the crying in the bathroom,, the fear of dancing, the joy of a kiss – all the highs and all the lows.” It’s in both those highs and lows where Somewhere comes alive. Laura Colwell’s voice is mesmerising throughout, and while the record is a document of falling in love, there’s still room for her to wilt and linger, the vibrancy of the production creating beautiful contrasts for her voice to pull us through.
Opening track ‘Bad With Time’ sets this tone from the outset, both dark and mysterious, sad and sultry as it fascinatingly unrolls. “I didn’t mean what I said,” Colwell sings. “But I wanted you to think I did.” Somewhere showcases a gentle but eminently pronounced maturation of Sun June’s sound, a second record full of quiet revelation, eleven songs that bristle with love and longing. It finds a band at the height of their collective potency, a marked stride forward from the band that created that debut record, but also one that once again is able to transport the listener into a fascinating new landscape, one that lies somewhere between the town and the city, between the head and the heart; neither here nor there, but certainly somewhere. “Karen O” by Sun June from the upcoming album ‘Somewhere‘ out February 2nd, 2020 via Run For Cover Records,
We are extremely happy to be announcing the February 5th release of Sun June’s forthcoming LP Somewhere. “We shot the video out on a Texas Hill Country ranch with a spotlight ranchers use to check on cattle at night (very Texas of us). We thought the stage lights and disco ball helped draw out the connection between feeling an emotion and performing it, both for yourself and others. We got lucky and happened to shoot during a lightning storm, so we went full melodrama with it.”
The goal was to push my brain to places it didn’t want to go. The idea was to not have any idea – to keep myself confused about what I was doing,” frontman Will Sheff says about Okkervil River’s newest album ‘I Am Very Far’. It’s a startling break from the band’s previous work: terrifying and joyous, violent and serene, grotesque and romantic, it’s a celebration of forces beyond our control.
This chapter has been a long time coming; we recorded almost every show from the American and European 2018 #intherainbowrain tour so it took a long time to sort through it all. Also, the audio liner notes are…. just shy of 5 hours long? Almost a whole audiobook in themselves. I’m super proud of the music on here and so excited for you all to hear it! Thank you all so much for coming on this journey with us and if anybody’s hesitated till now climb aboard and scope out the whole thing!
I’ve had some of my most fun onstage experiences of the past few years doing the “Rarities & Requests” touring format, but because of logistics we’ve often had to restrict these shows to larger markets. Under the current quarantine situation, I thought it would be really cool to play a streaming “Rarities & Requests” show where we could open the request pool to anybody all over the world.
This will be the first Okkervil streaming show we’ve done his year, and I’m super excited about it. We’ll have more details soon on when it will air, but we wanted to open requests ASAP. So if you plan to watch start submitting requests via the request form link in the comment section! (But not in comments themselves please). Note that we’ll still be taking requests from the big cities but we’ll be giving extra weight to requests from people in towns we’ve never hit with the #raritiesandrequests format.
Hovvdy released a new single, “Runner,” last month, and now they’ve followed it with a second, which “is about the mixed emotions when a relationship has to change or end,” Will Taylor says. “Grief and relief. We were excited to pull the guitars back to let the vocals and ambient textures shine. The clank and swing of the programmed drums create a resonance and energy that brings it all together.”
Hailing from Austin, Texas, indie-pop duo Hovvdy are back again with another sumptuous treat for our ears with new single; ‘I’m Sorry’. Shortly after their release of ‘Runner’ — released just last month — ‘I’m Sorry’is Will Taylor and Charlie Martin at their finest; delightfully odd as always, whilst showcasing dreamy melodies that are best suited to lying in bed on a calm Sunday morning.
Slightly muted vocal melodies greet us from the get-go, along with a reverberated kick and snare beat that echoes through your soul to the very end. The song in its entirety feels somewhat zephyr-like; feelings of heartache but also of healing: a journey downstream that Hovvdy are kind enough to let us in on. Gradually swelling in volume, accompanied by wispy, mellow vocals throughout; ‘I’m Sorry’is a harmonically beautiful, and melodically considerate track — created for the disenfranchised, and executed to foggy, ambiguous perfection.
Fundamentally acoustic, Hovvdy also incorporates elements of electronica in the most subtle ways; pulling us in gently at the beginning with synth-enhanced vocals and rhythms, then reverting to their familiar, honestly indie style, before welcoming back the electronic-inspired rhythms, vocals and synths for the end of the track — bringing closure in a familiar, comforting way.
Stacking on Will Taylor’s growing pop sensibility, “I’m Sorry” carves a beat around the artist’s hollowed-out, echoing vocals. Jumbled feelings in flux swirl a cloud of granular electronic ambience. “I’m sorry,” he sings. “Going under the water again.”
Of the song and stylistic venture, Taylor says: “‘I’m Sorry’ is about the mixed emotions when a relationship has to change or end. Grief and relief. We were excited to pull the guitars back to let the vocals and ambient textures shine. The clank and swing of the programmed drums create a resonance and energy that brings it all together.”
Effortlessly minimalistic in nature, Hovvdy is consistent in delivering stunningly layered instrumentals lead by melodically sweet, wistful vocals that haunt you and soothe you in equal measure; providing a plethora of influences from pop to hip-hop. All-in-all, ‘I’m Sorry’ is the oh-so-familiar nostalgia trip that Hovvdy never fail to contribute to this ever-expanding world of plentiful music that we’re currently living in. Unapologetically honest, inexplicably raw, and invariably delightful; I’m Sorry is yet another notable mark on the musical map — transcending above normality and welcoming us in to their world of authentic memories.
Knaresborough-raised troubadour Bill Callahan returns with “Gold Record” – an album made whilst he was preparing to tour his previous album Shepherd In A Sheep’s Vest. A lot of the album is culled from tracks he’d written over the years for other artists to sing – all recorded on the hoof in an intuitive and creative burst with some good friends helping flesh the sounds around that rich, warm baritone vocal. Called Gold Record and it’s out September 4th via Drag City Records. The 10-song album features a new version of “Let’s Move to the Country,” from Smog’s 1999 album Knock Knock, and a track named after Ry Cooder.
It’s the Gold Record we always knew Bill Callahan had in him! Last summer, he returned from a silence of years – now, he’s raring to go with another new one already. The abiding humanity of latter-day Callahan is highlighted by dark plumes of caustic wit upending standards of our everyday life and the songs that celebrate it: the job, the wife, the TV, the neighbors. Bill slips easily into his characters, whether they’re easy people or not – and the cross-hatch of their light and shadow is unpredictably entertaining in the manner that belongs only one singer in this whole wide world: we’re still talking about Bill Callahan.
His first record in….uh, well, just over a year, Bill Callahan gives us a Gold Record. They might not all be gold, and fortunately, they’re not all six years apart either. You could probably ALSO call it “Gold Records”: the songs all have a stand-alone feel, the way singles do, for you to have a deep encounter with ’em all of a sudden, a whole relationship, from the start of the song to the finish. And what do you got when you have a record full of singles – and let’s face it, hit singles, at that?.
For Bill, preparing to tour for Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest meant considering being away from home for long stretches of time – months, seasons, maybe as much as a year, who knew? Feeling his oats, Bill pulled out a few sketches from the notebooks and finished them up some. Before he knew it, he was recording them, and in the shuffle, new songs started popping up too.
It happened fast. Basics were recorded live, with Matt Kinsey playing guitars, guitars, guitars and Jaime Zurverza holding it down (then letting it go) on bass. Drums and horns were brought in for a couple songs. Spirits were high! Six out of the ten tunes were done first take; overdubs, when needed, came equally quickly. Listening, one hears the intuitive cohesion coming together richly, back of Bill’s titanic voice spread across the stereo spectrum: the gentle-yet-spirited conversation of Bill and Matt’s guitars, the subtle percussing of bass and drums and oddments of trumpet, woodwind and synth, striking notes decorous and discordant, sounding for all the world like the naturally occurring sound meant to accompany and express lives lived everywhere.
We know how you feel right about now, over midway through this tumultuous year: another week, another…. oh hold up, wait – it’s another Bill Callahan song! With 2020 chock-full of unprecedented, fundamental shifts, it’s only fitting that modern day Bill C would tackle the Gold Record reveal with a similarly conceptual yet seriously positive approach!. Bill’s latest offering, “Protest Song” details a singer-songwriter aghast at the unreality of the musical guest’s cartoonish protest POV on late night TV, leading to a protest song of its own kind. An apex of faux-noir, brooding in bluesy atmosphere up to his armpits, Bill flies in a touch of Bowery Boys-style comedic elevation to let everyone in on the joke, through song.
Releases September 4th, 2020 , Drag City Inc
Gold Record is the follow-up to last year’s Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, which marked Callahan’s first album in six years. He recorded Gold Record with guitarist Matt Kinsey and bassist Jamie Zurverza.
Bill Callahan will share a new song every week leading up to the full album’s release. The tracks arrive on Mondays, starting on June 29th.
we’re very excited to share an album of demos today. please consider supporting us or an artist you love on Bandcamp today as they have graciously forfeited their cut of sales.
Born out of a union of club bands on the burgeoning Austin, Texas bohemian scene and a pronounced taste for hallucinogens, the 13th Floor Elevators were formed in late 1965 when lyricist Tommy Hall asked a local singer named Roky Erickson to join up with his new rock outfit along with guitarist Stacy Sutherland. Four years, three official albums and countless acid trips later, it was over: the Elevators‘ pioneering first run ended in a dizzying jumble of professional mismanagement, internal arguments, drug busts and forced psychiatric imprisonments. In their short existence, however, the group succeeded in blowing the lid off the budding musical underground, logging early salvos in the countercultural struggle against state authorities, and turning their deeply hallucinogenic take on jug-band garage rock into a new American institution called psychedelic music.
Before the hippies, before the punks, there were the 13th Floor Elevators: an unlikely crew of outcast weirdo geniuses who changed culture. Paul Drummond has spent years documenting every aspect of the history of this amazing band and amassing an unprecedented archive of primary materials, resulting in this comprehensive visual history. The book recounts the story not just of the Elevators as a band–wild and remarkable though it is–but that of the American counterculture itself: the hallucinogens, the rebellion and the truly profound music that resulted. The 13th Floor Elevators: A Visual History places the band finally and undeniably in the pantheon of innovators of American rock music to which they have always belonged. The band was together from 1965 to 1969, and during that period released four albums and seven singles for the International Artists record label who signed the Elevators to a record contract and released the album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators in November 1966, which became popular among the burgeoning counterculture Tommy Hall’s sleeve-notes for the album, which advocated chemical agents (such as LSD) as a gateway to a higher, ‘non-Aristotelian’ state of consciousness, has also contributed to the album’s cult status.
In November 1967, the band released a second album, “Easter Everywhere”. The album featured a cover of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. However, shortly before work began on Easter Everywhere, Walton and Leatherman left the band and were replaced by Danny Thomas on drums and Dan Galindo on bass, because of disputes over mismanagement of the band’s career by International Artists and a fundamental disagreement between Walton and Hall over the latter’s advocacy of the use of LSD in the pursuit of achieving a higher state of human consciousness. As a result, they were not credited in the Easter Everywhere sleeve-notes, despite having appeared on “(I’ve Got) Levitation” and “She Lives (In a Time of Her Own)”. Despite the lengthy studio work and resources utilized, Easter Everywhere was not the success the band and International Artists had hoped for. Lacking a hit single and released too late in the year, it sold out its original run, but was never reprinted, suggesting somewhat disappointing sales. Record label paperwork indicate that the band’s debut album sold upwards of 40,000 copies during its original run, while Easter Everywhere may have sold around 10,000 copies. As documented in a lengthy interview and article in the Texas underground music magazine Mother No. 3, the band worked all Spring of 1968 on their new album, which at one point was to be called Beauty and the Beast. However, because of an unstable member line-up and the increasingly erratic behaviour of the psychedelicized Tommy Hall and mentally fragile Roky Erickson, little of value came out of these sessions. The live shows had lost their original energy, and often the band would perform without their lead singer Erickson, due to his recurring hospital treatments at the time. The last concert featuring the “real” Elevators occurred in April 1968.
A special aspect of the Elevators’ sound came from Tommy Hall’s innovative electric jug. The jug, a crock-jug with a microphone held up to it while it was being blown, sounded somewhat like a cross between a minimoog and cuica drum. In contrast to traditional musical jug technique, Hall did not blow into the jug to produce a tuba-like sound. Instead, he vocalized musical runs into the mouth of the jug, using the jug to create echo and distortion of his voice. When playing live, he held the microphone up to the mouth of the jug, but when recording the Easter Everywhere album, the recording engineer placed a microphone inside the jug to enhance the sound.
At Tommy Hall’s urging, the band often played their live shows and recorded their albums while under the influence of LSD, and built their lifestyle and music around the psychedelic experience. Intellectual and esoteric influences helped shape their work,
Around this time, the original 13th Floor Elevators disbanded, as the nucleus of Erickson-Hall-Sutherland had been reduced to guitarist Stacy Sutherland only. Sutherland brought some of his own songs for a final set of studio sessions, which led to the dark, intense posthumous album Bull of the Woods. Initially disliked by many Elevators fans, it has found a substantial fan-base today, with some even rating it the band’s best LP. These final sessions consisted of Sutherland on guitar, Ronnie Leatherman on bass, and Danny Thomas on drums.
Hall remained the band’s primary lyricist and philosopher, with Sutherland and Erickson both contributing lyrics as well as writing music, and, later, working with Danny Thomas to arrange the group’s more challenging music. In addition to Erickson’s powerful vocals, Hall’s “electric jug” became the band’s signature sound. Later, Ronnie Leatherman returned for the third and final studio album, Bull of the Woods along with Thomas, and Sutherland.
A few live gigs were played around Texas during the second half of 1968, until an article in Rolling Stone magazine in December 1968 declared the band gone. International Artists pulled together the various studio recordings from 1968 and, with the assistance of drummer Danny Thomas, added some horn arrangements, which became the Bull of the Woods album, released in March 1969. Drug overuse and related legal problems left the band in a state of constant turmoil, which took its toll, both physically and mentally, on the members. In 1969, facing a felony marijuana possession charge, Roky Erickson chose to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital rather than serve a prison term, thus signaling the end of the band’s career.
Bull of the Woods, was released in 1969, was the 13th Floor Elevators’ last released album on which they worked as a group, and was largely the work of Stacy Sutherland. Erickson, due to health and legal problems, and Tommy Hall were only involved with a few tracks, including “Livin’ On”, “Never Another”, “Dear Doctor Doom”, and “May the Circle Remain Unbroken”.
Today, the 13th Floor Elevators continue to influence new generations of musicians. In 1990, 21 contemporary bands—including R.E.M., Richard Lloyd, David Leonard,the Jesus and Mary Chain, and Primal Scream who all recorded covers of Elevators songs “Slip Inside This House” was covered by Scottish alternative rock band on their album Screamadelica album. 1980s drone/space-rock band Spacemen 3 were influenced by the 13th Floor Elevators, covering “Roller Coaster” twice, for their debut album, Sound of Confusion, and as a 17-minute version for their debut EP Walkin’ With Jesus. Vocalist/guitarist Pete Kember also covered “Thru the Rhythm” with his post-Spacemen 3 project Spectrum. Radio Birdman, features a song titled “Lunatics at the Edge of the World”, which Tek described as “An ode to Syd Barrett and Roky Erickson.”
Studio albums
The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, (October 1966)
Easter Everywhere, (November 1967)
Bull of the Woods, (March 1969)
Noted Hollywood actor/Musician Johnny Depp praised the Elevators in a 2005 magazine interview “Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, a band out of Texas. They were basically the first psychedelic-rock band. 1965. And if you listen to old 13th Floor Elevators stuff—Roky Erickson especially, his voice—and then go back and listen to early Led Zeppelin, you know that RobertPlant absolutely copped everything from Roky Erickson. And it’s amazing. And Roky Erickson is sitting in Austin, Texas; he’s just there. And Robert Plant had a huge hit. It always goes back to those guys, you know? I love those guys.”
White Denim are prolific at the best of times. Put the band – which is driven by frontman James Petralli – in isolation and you’re bound to get results. ‘I Don’t Understand Rock And Roll’ is more of that driving, guitar-heavy, psych rock with delightful pop hooks that the band do so well. Written and recorded in 30 days under quarantine from March 18th – April 17th, 2020.
World As A Waiting Room’ vinyl update! Thank you for your patience as our manufacturer works through some unavoidable delays with their printing vendor. The current timeline is for records to be assembled the last week of May.
Their isolation album, which they wrote and recorded in just 30 days, is called World As A Waiting Room and it’s available now.
Band Members:
James Petralli,
Steve Terebecki,
Michael Hunter,
Greg Clifford,
Austin, Texas-based songwriter Christelle Bofale will be the first to tell you the importance of family roots and mental health, considering how much those things aided her own self-discovery. Being the first American born in her family, the rich heritage of the Congo is deeply rooted in her upbringing and relationship with sounds.From singing and dancing with her mother as a child, to praying to Congolese music with her grandmother, to her father, a soukous guitar player and musical director for the Congregation at his church, Bofale’s journey as a musician has been defined in tiny intervals throughout the course of her life. As a songwriter, she infuses hints of the Congo into various aspects of her music, bridging the musical influences of the diaspora with juxtaposed elements of indie rock, soul and jazz respectively.
Christelle Bofale grew up steeped in the music of her Congolese parents — influences that only deepen the languid textures of her lush, jazzy, deliberately paced folk songs. Bofale’s Swim Team EP unfurls gracefully, revealing a thoughtful set of ruminations on addressing mental health, moving past awful moments and clinging to sources of solace in a world that seems to be spinning out of control.
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The Fat Angel Sings 