A heart-shaped 7″ release from Father John Misty for Record Store Day 2015. Father John Misty is putting out this limited edition vinyl to celebrate. It’s a red heart-shaped disc that features an acoustic version of his “I Love You, Honeybear” cut “I Love You, Honeybear”, here re-named as “I Loved You, Honeybee”. The release also features the B-side “I’ve Never Been a Woman”. Today, Misty is sharing the A-side.
PINS have unveiled the B-side to their new 7” single release ‘Too Little Too Late’. ‘Hybrid Moments’ is a Misfits cover, which the band describes as “a simple and perfect pop song! We started to play it live to make everyone dance, we recorded it with Part Time Punks and gave it a PINS stamp with lots of choir girl harmonies.”
The track was mixed by Josiah Mazzaschi and is available for you PINS’ new album Wild Nights is due out on June 9th via Bella Union Records.
I Break Horses is the musical project led by Maria Lindén. From her Stockholm base, the Swedish artist delivered an extraordinary debut album in the shape of ‘Hearts’, released by Bella Union in August 2011. Forward two years, and the arrival of an eagerly awaited follow-up, entitled Chiaroscuro, is upon us. The latest chapter in I Break Horses’ much celebrated songbook is everything fans could wish for and more. In the words of Lindén: “My only aim when starting to write this album was to ignore any possible second album expectations.” The result is a more confident and evolved sound with a more dramatic expression.
With ‘Chiaroscuro’, I Break Horses have created a fully-realised and utterly captivating tour-de-force. New sonic terrain is compellingly explored by Lindén, where electronic beats and synth-pop soundscapes replace the more shoegaze based-sound of their debut. As a result, there is a marked immediacy and directness to the new songs. As Lindén states: “I found myself writing almost all the sketches on the piano this time.” The music was recorded, mixed and produced by Lindén, with first lp wordsmith Fredrik Balck providing lyrical ideas from the images he derived from the music. Finally, Lindén and Balck would finish the lyrics together.
The title of ‘Chiaroscuro’ – meaning “light-dark” – serves as the perfect embodiment of Lindén’s sonic creations, where an atmosphere and mood is created that evokes innermost feelings and thoughts residing beyond the surface reality of the material world. Affecting ballads such as ‘Heart To Know’ and ‘You Burn’ are wrapped in fragile beauty. ‘Denial’ and ‘Medicine Brush’ are sublime synth-pop odysseys whose pulses guide you to new horizons. ‘Faith’ is a dance anthem complete with hypnotic beats, swirling synths and the mesmerising looped vocals of Lindén. “I let myself write both the happiest songs but also the saddest, and then I put them together”, states Lindén. This arrangement of light and dark forms the essence of ‘Chiaroscuro’.
‘Ascension’ is rooted in a gorgeous 80s synth-pop sound, where Lindén’s vocals melt into the lush sonic tapestry. The song deals with love and forgiveness. An irresistible groove lies at the heart of ‘Disclosure’ where a divine purity is distilled in the intricate array of instrumentation. ‘You Burn’ is perhaps the album’s centrepiece, as well as being the opening track, where a brooding darkness envelops the surrounding human space. The delicate piano chords drift magnificently amidst Linden’s searching lyrics. I Break Horses are one of those rare bands capable of conjuring up raw emotion through a sound that is ultimately something life-affirming.
Tiny Ruins: Live in Session for the Sideways Through Sound radio show on 2SER 107.3 Sydney, Australia.
1. Me At The Museum, You In The Wintergardens
2. Kings County
While continuing to be based in New Zealand, Tiny Ruins has spent much of the past three years touring throughout Australia, the UK, Ireland, Europe and the USA, touring with and opening for bands such as Beach House, Joanna Newsom, Father John Misty, Fleet Foxes, Sonny & the Sunsets, The Handsome Family, Calexico and Neil Finn.
Manchester four-piece PINS have announced the release of their new album “Wild Nights” on 8th June through Bella Union Records . The first 7″ single from the album, “Too Little Too Late”, will precede it on 30th March. The perfect taster for the album, it opens with a fearless drumbeat and heavy bassline before slowing into a sparse momentary instrumental. The track then reverts back to Faith Vern’s alluring vocal before finally stampeding heavily into a fuzzed up sound clash of guitars and drums. It is our favourite PINS track so far…watch the super slow motion video
Ezra Furman and Bella Union are thrilled to announce the signing of Ezra Furman whose most fully realised album, chock full of snarling, zestful tunes, will be released Summer 2015. Pre-order the first single, “Restless Year”, on 7″ vinyl now!
London-based quartet MY SAD CAPTAINS release a new EP into the World today, titled ‘Extra Curricular’. The EP features a brand new version of the track which appeared on last year’s album ‘Best of Times’. Produced and mixed by Leo Abrahams (Wild Beasts, Brian Eno, Jon Hopkins), its whip smart and well-turned out, an ambient pop song full of sideways sonic glances and melodic detours. The video was filmed by the band’s Dan Davis and Nick Goss on location at the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, home of the famed Lipizzaner Horses. It features a dancing white stallion in the palatial surrounds of the school’s main arena. The video contrasts the song’s notions of habit and endurance with images of a completely alternative type of kinship. A strange, archaic relationship between the horse and the rider and the groom.
The EP also features new songs plus a fresh recording of Keeping On, Keeping On, a song whose pulsing electronica on record took flight as the band developed it on tour last year
“Love Isn’t Anybody’s Fault” is a Pop Rock song by BC Camplight that released in 2015 on “How To Die In The North“
BC Camplight’s first album since 2007 sounds like he’s spent the intervening years playing mad scientist with these captive pop songs. Heir to both Brian Wilson and Harry Nilsson, this Manchester-based American presides over the piano with hangdog sweetness before taking his twinkling melodies for brash hairpin turns. Watch out for sudden flirtations with a wonky funk bass, maybe some mariachi horns and jarring guitar jags, and observe how “Grim Cinema” jumps from aw-shucks Beach Boys homage . BC Camplight spins such contradictions into pure gold: “Just because I love you doesn’t mean I love you,” goes the chorus of the lead single.
Considering it was a debut album there were shockingly high expectations for “Fear In Bliss“. Following the earlier superb EP, “Grow Deep Grow Wild”, and a jaw dropping support slot with Midlake at Shepherds Bush Empire, we anticipated something good, maybe even something great, , but it exceeded beyond even our wildest expectation the release was frankly remarkable.
The Oklahoma based five-piece created an album deeply routed in the traditions of American alternative music, both old and new, it simultaneously recalled the true greats, artists like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and the more modern classic, with shades of Fleet Foxes, Beach House and Grizzly Bear. The album managed to balance experimentation, the almost acapella “Already Dead”, the buzzing synths and low-key vocal of closing track “Warm Regards”, So with songs that fitted perfectly with their previous output, the likes of “Human Geographer” and stand-out track “Dead Drum” wouldn’t sound out of place on their previous recordings, but they sounded more refined, better recorded and just stronger examples of song-writing.
If musically it was a varied collection, it was all pinned together by both the voice and lyrics of front-man Cameron Neal. His voice is not a classically trained beauty, but it’s powerful, and carries an emotional weight like almost no other. Lyrically he delves into issues many songwriters wont touch, there were flirtations with religion, mortality and growing up with unshared doubts about the reality of all you are told.
2:54 are an alternative rock band from London comprising sisters Colette and Hannah Thurlow.The Thurlow sisters were born in Ireland but spent much of their childhood in Bristol after moving there at an early age.In mid-2010 they formed 2:54, named after part of a song by The Melvins (in Colette’s words the “point on ‘History Of Bad Men’ where the bass line turns doomy, and dreamy”.
They first came to public attention in 2010 after putting one of their demos online. Their debut single, “On a Wire”, released in 2011 and was followed with “Scarlet” on Fiction Records.
They toured with Warpaint, Wild Beasts, The Big Pink, The Maccabees, and The xx, and played at several festivals including South by Southwest. The sisters are joined for live shows in by bassist Joel Porter and drummer Alex Robins.
Their self-titled debut album, recorded with producer Rob Ellis and mixed by Alan Moulder, was released in May 2012 on Fiction Records in the UK and Fat Possum Records in the US.
In July 2014, 2:54 announced they had signed to the excellent independent record label Bella Union. They released their second album later in that year, initially making available a stream of the track “Orion”.
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