On her song, “Forgive Yourself,” Nicole Rodriguez, who records under her moniker Pearla, details events in her past, from the routine (“Can you forgive yourself for missing the last get together? / It’s alright to stay inside if you think that will make you feel better”) to the traumatic (“Can you forgive yourself for turning your back in fear / When that man died on the welcome mat at the coffee shop that you worked at last year?”). Quilting & Other Activities,Pearla’s consistently beautiful debut EP—and first release on EggHunt Records, Lucy Dacus’ former label—is full of flashes like this. Rodriguez cleverly tosses a lot of curveballs: a bizarre drum fill here (“Daydream”), building guitar feedback there (“Somewhere”).
This is the sort of dependably gorgeous singer/songwriter release that almost sounds like a lullaby at times, but Rodriguez refuses to allow you the nap, using creative methods to throw the listener for a loop.
She demands your attention, and it’s nearly impossible to turn away, frequently recalling the best of Phoebe Bridgers or Julien Baker.
The debut album from Russian Baths has been a long time coming, and for anyone who’s kept tabs on this Brooklyn duo, there weren’t many surprises when the record was released last month. “Ambulance” and “Ghost” were shared as singles all the way back in 2016, while “Parasite” and “Tracks” began floating around the web this summer. Of the six new tracks, though, “Tremble” is the standout, positioning Jess Rees’ castrato vocals against the band’s sludgy instrumentation to provide the perfect hypothetical grunge horror movie soundtrack composed by a metal band. Stepping out of the shadow of producer Ben Greenberg’s career in noise rock, and checking their evident reverence for A Place to Bury Strangers at the door, “Tremble” is a uniquely chilling outro (not considering the even-more-chilling, nearly ambient proper closer, “Guts”) to their introductory LP
Sometimes a rock band exudes such swirly, Goth-tinged intensity, you’d swear you can actually hear the smoke machines and foreboding light.” ~ NPR Music
an ambient wash of artfully loud rock music, pushed and pulled by lulling vocals and echoing yet powerful riffs.” ~ Stereogum
Russian Baths is Jess Rees (guitar, vocals) and Luke Koz (guitar, vocals), joined live by Kyle Garvey (bass) and Steven Levine (drums) from Brooklyn, NY. They have shared stages with Black Midi, Drahla, Uniform, Horrors, We Are Scientists, Bambara, and others.
One thing you won’t be able to avoid on Bambara’s “Stray” is death. It’s everywhere and inescapable, abstract and personified – perhaps the key to the whole record. Death, however, won’t be the first thing that strikes you about the group’s fourth – and greatest – album to date. That instead will be its pulverising soundscape; by turns, vast, atmospheric, cool, broiling and at times – on stand out tracks like “Sing Me To The Street” and “Serafina” – simply overwhelming
Bambara are twin brothers Reid and Blaze Bateh, singer/guitarist and drummer respectively, and bassist William Brookshire – have been evolving their midnight-black noise into something more subtle and expansive ever since the release of their 2013 debut Dreamviolence. That process greatly accelerated on 2018’s Shadow On Everything, their first on New York’s Wharf Cat Records and a huge stride forward for the band both lyrically and sonically.
The album was rapturously received by the press, listeners and their peers. NPR called it a “mesmerising…western, gothic opus,” Bandcamp called the “horror-house rampage” “one of the year’s most gripping listens,” and Alexis Marshall of Daughters named it his “favorite record of 2018.” Shadow also garnered much acclaim on the this side of the Atlantic. Influential British 6Music DJ Steve Lamacq, dubbed them the best band of 2019’s SXSW, and Joe Talbot of the UK band IDLES said, “The best thing I heard last year was easily Bambara and their album Shadow On Everything.” The question was, though, how to follow it?
To start, the band did what they always do: they locked themselves in their windowless Brooklyn basement to write. Decisions were made early on to try and experiment with new instrumentation and song structures, even if the resulting compositions would force the band to adapt their storied live set, known for its tenacity and technical prowess. Throughout the songwriting process, the band pulled from their deep well of creative references, drawing on the likes of Leonard Cohen, Ennio Morricone, Sade, classic French noir L’Ascenseur Pour L’Echafraud, as well as Southern Gothic stalwarts Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews.
Once the building blocks were set in place, they met with producer Drew Vandenberg, who mixed Shadow On Everything, in Athens, GA to record the foundation of Stray. After recruiting friends Adam Markiewicz (The Dreebs) on violin, Sean Smith (Klavenauts) on trumpet and a crucial blend of backing vocals by Drew Citron (Public Practice) and Anina Ivry-Block (Palberta), Bambara convened in a remote cabin in rural Georgia, where Reid laid down his vocals.
The finished product represents both the band’s most experimental and accessible work to date. The addition of Citron and Ivory-Block’s vocals create a hauntingly beautiful contrast to Bateh’s commanding baritone on tracks like “Sing Me to the Street”, “Death Croons” and “Stay Cruel,” while the Dick Dale inspired guitar riffs on “Serafina” and “Heat Lightning” and the call-and-response choruses throughout the album showcase Bambara’s ability to write songs that immediately demand repeat listens.
While the music itself is evocative and propulsive, a fever dream all of its own, the lyrical content pushes the record even further into its own darkly thrilling realm. If the songs on Shadow On Everything were like chapters in a novel, then this time they’re short stories. Short stories connected by death and its effect on the characters in contact with it. “Death is what you make it” runs a lyric in “Sweat,” a line which may very well be the thread that ties these stories together.
You may have seen Meg Duffy in the past, shining on stage as Kevin Morby’s touring lead guitarist. But with Hand Habits, Duffy has shown their own polished arsenal as a songwriter and their sophomore record, placeholder, dropped today on Saddle Creek Records. Hand Habits’ music gives rise to calming evenings and humble wanderings of the mind. Duffy’s sweet melodies provide a solace for a troubled heart and a salve for a heavy conscious. The gently operatic “What Lovers Do” and the wonderfully reprised version of “Yr Heart” are notable doses of what Hand Habits doe’s best: provide sheer comfort through song.
Meg Duffy describes the songs on their second full-length release, and first for Saddle Creek, as their most direct to date, crafted with clear intention. Instrumentally, Placeholder can be situated alongside some of Meg’s folk-adjacent contemporaries like Angel Olsen or Big Thief, and the guitar work on this album proves that Meg continues to be one of the finest young musicians working today. Placeholder is another entry in the Hand Habits songbook, but it’s also a valuable testament of our time.
Hailing from Brooklyn, Jeanines are the indie-pop duo of Alicia and Jed. After catching the ear of many with their recent self-titled LP, released via the legendary Slumberland Records, the band are currently plotting touring plans for 2020. This week the band have shared their first ever, “proper”, music video, for their seasonally titled, album stand-out, Winter In The Dark.
Brooklyn’s Jeanines specialize in short bursts of energetic but melancholy minor-key pop. With influences that run deep into the most crucial tributaries of DIY pop — Television Personalities, Marine Girls, early Pastels, Dolly Mixture they’ve crafted a style that is as individual as it is just plain pleasurable. Jeanines specialize in 60s-meet-80s melodies that combine with timeless guitar jangle in a way that recalls the UK’s C86/C88 era, when smart young bands crafted perfect pop gems enlivened by the inspiration of punk. Clearly, with 16 great songs included, there is a lot at work here on this standout debut album. Jeanines have been compared to such cult pop icons as Dear Nora, Black Tambourine, and more recent acts like Veronica Falls and Girl Ray, but their dark, modal melodies and pensive, philosophical lyrics ensure them a place of their own in today’s crowded but boisterously healthy DIY pop scene.
Winter In The Dark is a fine example of Jeanines’ sound, a style pitched between 60’s pysch-folk and C-86 jangle-pop, Alicia spits out her words like a stream of consciousness, as bright airy guitars sit beneath contrasting the sublime bass-runs and urgent rhythms. With Slumberland turning thirty in December, you’d forgive them a little nostalgic naval gazing, instead with bands like Jeanines, they remain as exciting and forward thinking as ever, here’s to another thirty!
The Jeanines’ self-titled LP is out now via Slumberland Records. Taken from their self-titled debut album, out now.
Margaux is a singer-songwriter living between Seattle and Brooklyn, NY. Brooklynite, Margaux Bouchegnies, Aka simply Margaux to the record buying public, is set to release her lengthily titled debut EP, “More Brilliant Is The Hand that Throws the Coin”, next week. Ahead of that release, this week Margaux has shared her latest offering, “Cave In”.
Cave In a fascinating game of two halves, starting life all airy and intricate, like those lo-fi early Angel Olsen recordings, before suddenly exploding into life at the fifty second mark when a rumble of claustrophobic bass slams into view. From there the track, starts to gently distort and warp, reinventing itself as a slice of emotive 90’s rock nodding to Julia Jacklin or Snail Mail. Lyrically, the track seems to deal with a futile attempt to reinvent yourself in the eyes of another, one second, “climbing out of somebody’s memory”, the next, “haunted by the same old, same thing, everything”. A track that’s got more intriguing ideas going on than many people’s whole albums, Margaux is arriving in style and doesn’t look like going anywhere.
Meet Stimmerman, a punk-infused solo artist who knows how to combine heavy guitar riffs and a whole lot of attitude. It’s not hard to see what we’re talking about if you listen to, for instance, her latest single “It Shows,” which has one of the sickest, distorted, punk rock guitar riffs you’ll hear this year, The song comes from Stimmerman’s forthcoming “Goofballs” album which just so happens to be the first full-length released under the Stimmerman moniker.
The album traverses the subjects of loss and survivor’s guilt, related to her experience seeing a good friend pass away due to a fatal drug overdose at a young age. Side A of Goodfalls is about looking back at the environment in which her relationship began with the friend, a reality filled with the pressures of children having to reach a certain level of success, mature faster than they should be, and the general difficulties of being an adolescent living in Brooklyn. Side B is more of an introspective look at grief and culpability, and coping with her friend’s passing. The name of the album Goofballs has a double meaning, where from one point of view, the album explores more of Stimmerman’s sense of humour, but on the other hand, it also is a reference to the meaning of goofballs within the drug culture where it’s meant to describe the class of drug barbiturates.
Stimmerman, real name Eva Lawitts, is a native New Yorker, active in the music industry for many years. She has played on various records by various artists and toured with many musicians, including Vagabon and Princess Nokia. She is also half of the team behind the creation of Wonderpark Studios in Brooklyn and previously released the debut EP Pleasant Vistas In a Somber Place.
The Hold Steady had three different focal points – guitarist Tad Kubler was a classic rock riff machine, emulating the bar band rock of Thin Lizzy. Vocalist Craig Finn was inspired by hip hop, weaving interlocking narratives of Catholic teenagers in sin and redemption in Minneapolis. Keyboardist Franz Nicolay added an extra layer to their sound, his piano and organ drawing comparisons to Springsteen’s E Street Band.
Between 2004 and 2006, the Hold Steady released three albums “Almost Killed Me, Separation Sunday”, and “Boys and Girls in America” that set a different standard for what indie rock could sound like. When their Brooklyn peers were mining postpunk and dance music, the Hold Steady channeled Springsteen, Thin Lizzy and ‘70s hard rock radio to back Finn’s bleeding heart missives about bad girlfriends and boring boyfriends, summer beers with your best friends, lovers who were bad news, kids getting high by the river and waking up in different cities. There was nothing like his voice, either; he sounded like someone nursing the world’s worst head cold while trying to talk through a mouthful of margarita mix. On top of kick-ass guitar riffs, he invented an entire universe in a ubiquitous speak-sing cadence with the persistence of a drunk stranger yelling a story at you.
The Hold Steady peaked with three great records in the 2000s; 2005’s Seperation Sunday featured their densest narratives, 2006’s Boys and Girls in America was their most accessible, while 2008’s Stay Positive was their most eclectic. Nicolay left the band before 2010’s Teeth Dreams, and without Nicolay, and as Finn moved from shouting to singing, they lost some of their identity and critics started comparing them disparagingly to Weezer and Counting Crows.
Originally together in Lifter Puller, vocalist Craig Finn and guitarist Tab Kubler were inspired to form The Hold Steady while watching The Band’s The Last Waltz. Kubler plays classic rock inspired riffs while Finn spits out dense lyrics inspired by hip hop, interweaving stories about sex, drugs, and Catholicism. Almost Killed Me is a strong debut, but in light of what follows it feels like a rough draft – Finn’s narratives would become even more complex and the band’s sounds both became more complex.
Their 2004 debut album, Almost Killed Me, sounds like the E Street Band after they slipped into the gutter, Thin Lizzy if they got fat and American, and a hundred other bands from Southside Johnny to the early-’70s Kinks that liked to party, but did it with the occasional tear-filled eyes and desperate hearts. Like the best of these classic rock staples, the Hold Steady can flat out rock. Kubler can rip off a fret-searing solo with bullfighter style, which he does quite frequently, and the rhythm section has enough muscle power to stop a speeding locomotive. On top of this vintage rock chassis, the band drop Finn’s vocals and vision. Without him, the music is straightforward enough to appeal to the AOR masses and backstreet fanatics; with him they are far too weird and wild. His pop culture name-drops, knowing references to obscure musicians like Andre Cymone, real-sounding tales of the streets, and flights of knuckle-busting anger are far out in left field, and his bracing, eye-bulging delivery of said lyrics pushes it even further over the top. It’s a high-wire balancing act of sorts, and it would be easy for the band to topple over into boring mainstream rock cliches or veer into embarrassing drunken poetry territory but it never happens, not even once. The group plays with intense energy at all times, propping Finn up and giving his words the dramatic backdrop they deserve. Finn holds up his end of the bargain by being hilarious and oddly touching as he rambles, coughs, and shouts his way through what sounds like a lifetime of journal entries, inside jokes, and record store soliloquies.
Franz Nicolay only guests on a few tracks here, but his keyboards would beef up their sound on future releases. The strongest tracks include ‘Knuckles’, with its repetitive lyrical formula (eg. “I’ve been trying to get people to call me Freddie Mercury/But people keep calling me Drop Dead Fred”, and ‘Certain Songs’, which still feels like a prototype for later piano based Hold Steady tracks.
Almost Killed Me is a strong debut, but at the same time it’s like a rough sketch for The Hold Steady’s future releases.
Separation Sunday notches up everything from the excellent start of Almost Killed Me; The Hold Steady’s arrangements are more muscular and detailed, with Franz Nicolay as a full-time member on keyboards, while CraigFinn’s lyrics tell fragments of inter-weaved narratives. Thematically dense, Separation Sunday revolves around four characters: the narrator Craig, the pimp Charlemagne, the skinhead Gideon, and Holly/Hallelujah, who veers between faith, addiction, and prostitution.
While a lot of the appeal of Separation Sunday comes from Craig Finn’s intertwining stories, there’s plenty of musical punch here too. Separation Sunday though. It is a much darker record, revolving around drug casualties, broken lives, a hoodrat fixation, spiritual and physical dissipation, and general despair, and there aren’t as many easy laughs this time out — but instead the listener gets lots of head-shaking wonderment at Craig Finn’s genius lyrics and voice. His gruff, in-your-ear vocals negotiate the twisting torrent of words like a world-class skater kid. He is insanely literate and insanely insistent: he is strangely brilliant. He is also just about the best rock & roll frontman Whipping up a classic rock-inspired frenzy of monitor-straddling guitar riffs, dual harmony leads, E Street piano flourishes, and galloping horns, the band behind Finn sounds like nothing less than Jim Steinman’s dream group. You could talk about great individual songs (the epic “How a Resurrection Really Feels,” the piledriving album opener “Hornets! Hornets!,” the weird and almost funky “Charlemagne in Sweatpants”), but the strength of the album is in the flow from song to song and the way the intensity level (which starts off at a near fever pitch) elevates until your head is just about ready to burst from the thrill of it all. Call it a quaint idea in 2005, but Separation Sunday is truly an album, one that sounds almost perfect when played from beginning to end in the proper running order. Block out about 42 minutes sometime, hold steady, and get ready for indie rock — no, rock & roll — at its sweatiest, most intense, and most impressive.
The most immediate track here is perhaps ‘Your Little Hoodrat Friend’, with its rhythmic guitar fills and powerful organ backdrops. As Finn is largely talk singing, Kubler is free to play almost anything, and the riff that fuels ‘Stevie Nix’ is both brutal and intricate. The record climaxes with the double punch of the short mournful ‘Crucifixion Cruise’ and the celebratory ‘How A Resurrection Really Feels’, which bounces along with an optimistic horn line.
Separation Sunday is fascinating; all the literary and classic rock allusions make it fodder for aging music critics, but it’s accessible all the same, although you might want to start with the more conventional next record.
Boys And Girls In America is more accessible than its predecessors, with Craig Finn employing vocal melodies on many of the tracks, while the band’s approach is less brutal and is reminiscent of the E-Street band in their prime. Some of Separation Sunday’s characters make return appearances (“Charlemagne pulls street corner scams/Gideon’s got a pipe made from a Pringles can/Holly’s insatiable/She still looks incredible”), while Finn’s still endlessly quotable (“We started recreational/It ended up all medical/It came on hot and soft and then/It tightened up its tentacles”).
One of the ballads here, “First Night,” begins with a piano and an acoustic guitar lilting a rather loose melody that gives Craig Finn the support he needs to get out of his pent-up, novelistic, wordsmithing mouth. All of these characters are young, desperate, and fleeing from their inner fear, except for Holly who is wise enough to tell the protagonist that “words alone never could save us”….and then “cried when she told us about Jesus.” The piano fills out that unfillable hole in Holly and the rest, no matter where they run. Finn can do nothing but repeat his lines and find a last verse somewhere to let the song just fade into silence, because it never really ends. Boys and Girls in America is a sophisticated shambles. There’s still a barely-on-the-rail feel, despite the literate compositions. Finn’s always either behind or ahead of the beat, but it’s alright, his bandmates can more than handle that because they’re as engaged as he is. There are a few guests, and even a horn section on one track, and the classic girl group chorus call and response . There’s real sadness in the Wall of Sound and chanted chorus in “You Can Make Him Like You,” which examines everything from addiction to betrayal, to the insecurity in love that can push someone over the edge, never to return. Thin Lizzy makes a return on “Massive Nights,” complete with roiling bass as Finn opens the whole escapist mix, swinging and setting up a hedonist’s dream: “The guys were feeling good about their liquor run…” There are low expectations and drama where only the music counts. The tune turns back on itself when the singer is trying to convince himself and the huge, wailing, responsorial chorus, that something so utterly suburban could be cool, until “She had the gun in her mouth/She was shooting up at her dreams/When the chaperone said that/We’d been crowned/the king and the queen.” And it just ends. The reason this record is worth embracing, and even celebrating, is because it’s an honest to God rock & roll album. It exposes in the first and third person what it means to grow up right now in the midst of suburban waste. It’s angsty, but Finn’s got a sense of humor, and the band can play their asses off. That they so readily embrace rock history as a means of unfolding Finn’s stories suggests that “cool” and “indie” are simply terms in the larger dialogue. This is a smoking little record.
Boys And Girls In America is one of the most instantly visceral rock records of its decade; ‘First Night’ is a pretty piano ballad for most of its duration, until it switches gears into a torrent of guitars and some of Finn’s most incisive lyrics. ‘Southtown Girls’ builds from a single a capella vocal into another tour de force, while ‘Citrus’ never raises its pulse above a simple acoustic lament (“Lost in fog and love and faithless fear/I’ve had kisses that make Judas seem sincere). Meanwhile, the trio of rockers that open the record are all incredible, with Nicolay fluidly filling the gaps between Kubler’s propulsive riffs.
In some ways Separation Sunday is the more interesting, unique album, but when Boys And Girls In America hits full flight, it’s amazingly compelling.
Stay Positive is a worthy sequel to Boys and Girls in America. Lyrically it has Craig Finn’s usual themes, but it’s less dense than before, and it also feels like a love letter to rock music; they’re referencing The Clash and Hüsker Dü in the opening ‘Constructive Summer’, while Led Zeppelin are referenced on ‘Joke About Jamaica’.
Musically, The Hold Steady are exploring similar territory to Boys and Girls in America – again there’s a big piano ballad at track 5, this time with an epic guitar solo (‘Lord I’m Discouraged’), and again there’s a great song at the end with the propulsive ‘Slapped Actress’. The weaker tracks are the most sonically adventurous – ‘One For The Cutters’ rides Franz Nicolay’s harpsichord, while ‘Navy Sheets’ is built around a synth riff, but neither is particularly interesting beyond the lyrics. The bonus track ‘Two Handed Handshake’ is also noteworthy.
The Hold Steady have lost even more of their edge on Stay Positive, but the material here is mostly great.
After that virtuosic run of albums, the Hold Steady released the very good Stay Positive in 2008, capitalizing on their newfound status as the most righteous band in indie rock. (I mean, look at that title.) What happened next was, by the band’s account, a little trying. A European tour was canceled on the eve of setting out because of Kubler’s bout with pancreatitis. After putting out four albums in five years, the band found themselves pushing harder to complete out the next. “It was rushed,” Kubler says of the 2010 release, Heaven is Whenever. “Not everybody was on the same page, and I don’t think there was a lot of communication. Longtime keyboardist Franz Nicolay, whose contributions were crucial to the sweeping melodrama of Separation Sunday and Boys and Girls in America, left during the making of Heaven is Whenever,
Four years passed between that record and Teeth Dreams—longer than it took for the first three albums to come out. In between, Finn recorded a solo album and the band added a new guitarist, Steve Selvidge, which allowed Finn to drop the pretense of being a guitar player. (During the show, he will play without one—usually, one would just dangle untouched around his neck like a dead limb.) Selvidge joined during the Heaven is Whenevertour, and helped write the music for Teeth Dreams. You can hear his influence in the guitar interplay, which is the most nuanced of the band’s career.
Nicolay rejoined The Hold Steady in 2016. Thrashing Thru the Passion is their first album since his return, and it’s been hailed as a return to form. It clocks in at a brief thirty six minutes, and it feels less conceptually ambitious than their early records, a collection of songs rather than a grand statement. The second half of the album will be already familiar to fans, already released as advance singles.
Craig Finn had this to say, It’s our 7th LP, Thrashing Thru The Passion, is out . It’s our first album with the six piece lineup of The Hold Steady, and our first in five years! We are very proud of it. Lots of people deserve thanks for major contributions to the project.
Producer Josh Kaufman helped us a ton and made the sessions super fun. Annie Nero gave us some amazing vocals. Horns were expertly provided by Stuart Bogie, Jordan McLean, Dave Nelson and Michael Leonhart.
One of our oldest friends Dave Gardner mastered the record. Nick Hollomon created the fantastic art for this and all the preceding singles. Frenchkiss Records was kind enough to put it out into the world. We raise a glass to all of these folks. We will continue celebrating this release two more nights in Seattle, and then on to Chicago, Nashville, and Boston. Thanks for listening, Thanks for understanding. Stay Positive!
Despite the lack of thematic weight, Thrashing Thru the Passion is fast-moving and fun. Finn’s still playing with words, throwing in rapid-fire cultural references like this couplet from opener ‘Denver Haircut’. Elsewhere the band sound great, whether they’re crunching rock and roll like ‘Confusion in the Marketplace’ and ‘Star 18’, or drifting closer to Van Morrison territory than you might expect with Nicolay’s classy piano and horns of ‘Blackout Sam’.
It doesn’t feel as significant as their earlier masterpieces, but Thrashing Thru The Passion is a tight, fun record that captures more of The Hold Steady’s past glories than you might expect.
The first single “Come and Find Me” is out now, with a stunning video directed by D. James Goodwin. We spent a night in July in his pool, filming all sorts of dark, under water passages…but after hours of doing that, we dropped everything, and shot this, in one take.
The latest from NY psych/shoegaze rocker Shana Falana, “Darkest Light” (Arrowhawk Records) explores extreme contrasts and the process of conversion. From anthemic pop (“Go Higher”) into gutsy sludge rock (title track) and moments of elegant, minimalist beauty (“Come and Find Me”), Darkest Light is described by Falana as “druggy music by sober people.” In her 40s and owning it, the veteran of the San Francisco and Brooklyn experimental pop scenes finds themes of rebirth and empowerment in the darkest materials.
Falana worked for the third time with producer D. James Goodwin (Kevin Morby, Wand) to craft a record of great sonic and thematic substance. Shana combines live looping of reverb-drenched vocals and guitar with tribal drums and stunning visual projections. Her live experience has often been described as transcendental.
It’s mid-September and the weather is beginning to shift — one day is balmy, the next crisp. The prolonged chill of fall is coming, but you can’t yet pin down the weather’s tempo. Bethlehem Steel. The Brooklyn-based foursome make the perfect accompaniment to these autumnal atmospheric happenings. Their brand of guitar rock is brooding, raw, and chock-full of time changes. And, like the weather forecast of late, essentially unpredictable
The Indie rock four-piece Bethlehem Steel shared another single from their upcoming self-titled record. This one is called “Govt. Cheese”, The band was originally a trio, comprised of vocalist and guitarist Rebecca Ryskalczyk, bassist Patrick Ronayne, and drummer Jon Gernhart. Longtime friends Jon and Rebecca met Patrick while working at a local venue, guitarist Christina Puerto was brought on last year and instantly clicked.
“It was an immediate yes,” Rebecca said of Christina’s audition. “Nobody else mattered. Even though we should probably hear the other people we told to come try out, we were like, ‘No, this is the one.’ And I was right.”
The addition of Christina cemented the group’s lineup and their sound.
The new album follows 2017’s Party Naked Forever, and is set to arrive September 13th via Exploding in Sound Records. We’ve already heard a couple tracks from the Brooklyn-based band’s latest LP — including “Bad Girl” and “Empty Room”. For more on the new record, Bethlehem Steel have broken it down Track by Track.
“Sponge”: “Sponge” is basically about stretching yourself too thin, giving too much of yourself to other people. Trying to figure out how much of yourself you can give before you fully disappear. It started out as two separate songs but felt right to put them together as something that sonically provided darkness and light. — Becca Ryskalczyk
“Govt Cheese”:
When I wrote this I was looking back on a lot of toxic and abusive male relationships that I’ve had over my life. A lot of them made me smaller and were holding me back from becoming a stronger woman. Sometimes you can still feel like you’re emotionally held hostage by them. Trying to find a way to be there but at a distance in order to take better care of yourself. “Govt. Cheese” has a grungier build, with the dual guitars thrusting the track forward. The pre-chorus is instrumental, and one guitar has this fascinating send into a different octave in which it becomes cleaner. This structure allows for the vocals to blossom into a near Corin Tucker range of strain on the chorus, while also asserting the repetition of, “I must take care of myself.”
The video, directed by lead singer and guitarist Becca RyskalczykI, features the group’s members along with dancer Sam Gehrke jauntily grooving out to the song against a tinfoil-like backdrop. It eventually devolves into RyskalczykI and guitarist Christina Puerto doing workout routines in spandex one-pieces, and it’s hysterical, frankly. Of the choreography, RyskalczykI says,
“I really wanted to choreograph a dance for Christina and I so I did. I wanted to show how sometimes certain male relationships held me back. In letting some of that go I could grow as a person and find more strength in myself. The dual dancers shows the importance of healthy friendships and a solid support system if you’re lucky enough to find that.”
“Empty Room”:
I wrote “Empty Room” at a time when I was experiencing debilitating anxiety and depression and was so paralyzed/overwhelmed I was unable to even begin to look at what the root cause might have been. It’s basically asking for patience from those close to me — Christina Puerto
“Couches”:
This song is about processing being abandoned by someone very important to you. It’s difficult to perform and was difficult to record the vocals to because the emotions are still very raw. The most tears went into this one and this track is pretty important to me. I feel so grateful that my old bandmate Paul Swenson was able to play cello on the track which makes it feel even more personal and special to me. —Becca
“Not Lotions”: Pat wrote the bones to “Not Lotion” then Christina and Jon fleshed it out. Becca wrote the lyrics. This is the first time we wrote a song this way so it feels pretty special. A lot of times I feel so much anxiety and sadness that I kind shut down or go numb. Writing this I was feeling that. Feeling judged by people because I’m 30 and still play in a band and am broke. But does anyone have their shit together? Doesn’t everyone go numb sometimes? I didn’t cry a lot as a kid. I was just very angry. I hold so much pain inside my body. I’ve been trying to learn to cry and let the anger out instead of it just have me. The end of this song is a release of that. Just letting it go. Letting myself feel something. — Patrick Ronayne, Becca and Christina
“Bad Girl”: “Bad Girl” is about all the nights that my brain keeps me awake. Irrationally telling me I’m a terrible person. Going over and over and over all of the things I might have done to upset or inconvenience another human. This song was incredibly fun to flesh out with everyone as well as record. Christina pulled the end guitar riff out of her ass while recording so that was pretty great to experience. —Becca
“Read the Room”: “Read the Room” is about a time when I left an unhealthy situation but didn’t explain to anyone the true reasons why. I was living with the regret of not sharing the truth with others for one because it wore down on me to hold it to myself and also because I worried (and still do) that someone else might have a similar experience. It’s one of the darker songs I’ve ever written and it felt really cathartic to lean into that. —Christina
“Four Aliens”:
Another song about giving too much of yourself to others. Maybe so much that you forget to take care of yourself. When you allow people to suck your life force out of you. Like they’re taking your soul. You feel selfish for trying to take personal space. People trying to decide what’s wrong with you instead of just being there. — Becca
“Sheryl”:
“Sheryl” was the first song I shared with Becca and the group, so it’s definitely special to me in that way. It’s about feeling deep empathy and sadness and anger for someone very close to me that has been wronged/abused, and while processing these feelings seeing occurrences of these same patterns in my own life and acknowledging them for what they are. — Christina
“New Dark”: “New Dark” is a song for women who have spent a lot of their lives just going along with whatever men decide to do to them. Not realizing that it’s wrong, that it’s abuse and that it’s manipulation. The fault of society for normalizing such bullshit behaviors. When talking with other women it’s shocking how many of us have been betrayed by male friends. Who have been taken advantage of while we are vulnerable. It’s shocking the amount of us that would go along with it because we were taught to be nice. The line “I got out of a family that hates women” does not refer to my blood family. I’m talking about past manipulative relationships and people who have made me feel less than because I am not a man. — Becca
The Fat Angel Sings 