No Age fully deliver on the promises of their earlier albums.
Moaning is a band defined by its duality. The abrasive post-punk trio comprised of LA DIY veterans, Sean Solomon, Pascal Stevenson, and Andrew MacKelvie, began nearly a decade after the three started playing music together. Their impassioned debut album comes born out of the member’s experiences with love and distress, creating a sound uniquely dark and sincere. Although the band is just breaking out of their infancy, Moaning’s sleek and cavernous tone emphasizes the turmoil of the era they were born into. One where the endless possibility for art and creation is met with the fear and doubt of an uncertain future.
Solomon, Stevenson, and MacKelvie initially met as teenagers while growing up in the San Fernando Valley, and immediately developed a kinship through Los Angeles’s local music scene. The three began regularly frequenting DIY institutions like The Smell and Pehrspace, eventually selling out dozens of their own shows at both venues with their first few bands. Moaning’s conception came when Solomon sent Stevenson and MacKelvie the first demo for “Don’t Go,” setting the tone for the impulsive songwriting that would follow. The three fleshed out Solomon’s primitive recordings, adding in MacKelvie’s heavy syncopated drumming, and Stevenson’s melodic driving bass and synth parts, capturing each member’s personality in their sparse and fuzzed out tracks. Like many of their previous collaborative projects, Moaning forces pain up against pleasure, using the complexity of personal heart break to inform the band’s conflicted sound.
The band chose the moniker Moaning, admiring the ambiguity the name held, and hoping to reference both an intimate wail and an anguished scream. The band’s homemade video for an early, home-recorded version of “The Same” caught the attention of Alex Newport, a seasoned engineer and producer who had previously worked with At The Drive-In, Bloc Party, and the Melvins. With Newport, Moaning began working on the tracks that would make up their self-titled release, employing a lush, open ended production quality that had never been at the band’s disposal. Tracks like “Artificial” stand out among the recordings, where Moaning used the studio’s recourses to take their frantic live arrangement and give it the intensity merited by Solomon’s lyrics.
As a whole, Moaning drifts from sentimental to catastrophic, hiding meek and introspective lyrics within powerful droning dance songs, giving sonic nods to some of the band’s musical heroes like, New Order, Broadcast, and Slowdive. The band’s youthful attitude is met with the weight of topics like loss, routine, and mental health, reflecting the anxiety towards the status quo that much of their generation faces today. Where many young bands take years to find their footing as writers and performers, Moaning has built up a confidence in sound and vision from the ten years of playing basements, bars, and ballrooms together in their previous projects. Yet, even with their polished exterior, Moaning continues to make the sacrifice of deeply personal anecdotes and emotions to their audience for the benefit of their craft.
Girlpool have shared “Hire,” their first single off their newly announced forthcoming album What Chaos Is Imaginary, due out February. 1st, 2019, on ANTI- Records.
“Hire” follows the pair of songs Girlpool released earlier this year, “Lucy’s” and “Where You Sink.” While “Hire” is a more rollicking ride, it shares a tenderness with those previous releases. The central revelation of all of these songs is co-vocalist Cleo Tucker’s voice—Tucker transitioned after the band’s last album, and their voice is now a hearty, wounded baritone. The band’s signature harmonies feel weightier, Tucker’s vocals landing with heft while Harmony Tividad’s ethereal coos swirl overhead.
“Hire” finds Tucker maxing out their dynamic range, slowly raising the stakes from hop-along valleys of groove to scorching peaks of winding screams. The possibilities raised by the band’s new vocal dynamics are far-reaching, and “Hire” is a bracing proof of concept.
Listen to “Hire” The band will be touring with Hatchie in 2019
“Hire” by Girlpool from the album ‘What Chaos Is Imaginary,’ available February 1st
Mazy Fly, is the second full-length by the Bay Area artist Spelling, explores the tension between the thrill of exploring the unknown and the terror of imminent destruction. Chrystia Cabral spent the summer of 2018 in her Berkeley studio reflecting on the thresholds of human progress and longing for a new and better tomorrow. She was struck by the way the same technologies that have given humans the ability to achieve utopian dreams of discovery have also brought the world to the precipice of dystopic global devastation. Despite the darkness of this reality, Mazy Flyis defiantly optimistic. It is a celestial voyage into the unknown, piloted by Cabral.
Each song on Mazy Fly enshrines distinct sentiments within this imagined voyage, from the deeply personal (“Hard to Please Reprise”) to the cosmic (aliens travel to Earth to hear music on “Real Fun”). “Haunted Water” is an intensely heavy song about the memories of colonial violence that haunt the historical slave ship routes of the Middle Passage. “Under the Sun” is a cosmic prayer for good fortune that sees the potential for radical newness in our own lives in the births of stars.
Los Angeles‘ Momma is the project of two life-long friends, navigating their way through high school (yep, they are that young) in exceptionally surreal vignettes on their debut album, Interloper. Songs like “Caterpillar” take a sparse melody and use it to imagine life as a confident bug with no vertebrae, while the relatively grungy warble of “Belong On The Bed” is built on self empowerment and washing machine metaphors. The entire album highlights the duo’s songwriting with bare compositions that rip just a little too much to call bedroom pop, and for that we’re thankful. Their songs are full of harmony (“Sidewalk”), bent pop (“Pipe Thing”), and dreamy indie rock (“Work”), making Interloper a truly impressive debut from a young band we hope to be hearing about for years to come.
Released May 25th, 2018
all songs written by Etta Friedman & Allegra Weingarten
Jessica Pratt – “This Time Around” from the new album ‘Quiet Signs’ Released by Mexican Summer and City Slang Records.
“Another Winter Alive” reflects on the GospelbeacH California rock and roll dream, and pays homage to friend and founding member Neal Casal by covering his most well known song “Freeway To The Canyon”.
The album features 5 previously unreleased studio tracks recorded during the band’s sessions for last years’ “Another Summer Of Love” plus 5 live songs recorded in London during their California Fantasy tour, revisiting stripped down live versions of songs from their debut album “Pacific Surf Line”.
Sweet, fun and utterly without pretence. – SHINDIG!
Tucked snugly in that happy place between cosmic country and neo-hippie bliss. – MAGNET
Makes you want to drive to the ocean and watch the sun go down. – MOJO
Girlpool full-band transformation has illuminated its raw sound in deep and unexpected ways, as heard on last year’s Powerplant. In addition to “Picturesong” — a one-off single with Blood-Orange” Dev Hynes Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker have continued to explore different textures in self-released solo recordings, which provide clues for a pair of new Girlpool songs out now.
“Where You Sink” first appeared on Tividad’s Oove Is Rare as a quiet acoustic track, but here gets transformed into dream-pop at a clop-along drum-machine beat. The song coos sweetly as it puzzles over human desire. Tividad writes in a press release:
“Where You Sink” explores our fixations on characters in our lives and the projections we create. It explores our natural human desire to be made special by another. I wrote it when I found myself looking at one person from various angles (emotionally); I found them to be beautiful in toxic but charismatic ways. It’s about loving someone who you don’t really have the chance to get to know fully because their time is spent trying to get out of their head, further from reality. It explores the complications of trying to get close to someone who ultimately wants to be far from themselves.”
“Lucy’s,” likewise, also appeared on a solo recording — now deleted — from Cleo Tucker. Girlpool’s version turns inward with big, jagged, Polvo-style guitar chords as Tucker ponders “stubborn feelings from a past relationship”
I wrote “Lucy’s” a couple of years ago to sort through some droning thoughts about hope, distraction and love. “I swear I’ll be all right / Although (you) are in the sky,” continues to resonate. These lyrics distinguish a time when my partner would check out from our relationship. I reassured myself that even when they were not present, and I was, that I would be all right. I was hopeful that my partner would find resolve from their struggles, which stifled their capacity to provide the kind of care and attention that I needed. I practiced nurture, and I hoped that they would find the ambition that I saw in them.
Girlpool is an indie rock band from Los Angeles, California. Its members are Cleo Tucker (guitar, vocals) and Harmony Tividad (bass, vocals). Their self-titled debut EP was posted on their Bandcamp account in 2014, and re-released on Wichita Recordings later that year. The band released its debut album, Before the World Was Big, in 2015, also on Wichita Recordings. Their second album, Powerplant, was released in 2017, via Anti- Records. They added a drummer, Miles Wintner, on their Powerplant album.
Premonitions begins with “Thingamajig” something you can’t quite recall the name of, but you know exactly what it means and what it feels like. Like the pull of desire that comes with not quite remembering fully. The magnetism of something just on the tip of your tongue. I wanted the album to feel like that thing.
I think a lot about about memory-making as an act of creation, the words we use to describe a memory give shape to and sometimes mutate the memory itself. I believe that the way we choose to describe the events of our lives is not only a means of creative fulfillment, but an absolutely vital part of creating the world we want to live in. When we are dishonest in the present, we create a dishonest future. When we are honest in the present, we create a more honest future. I wanted this album to be the vehicle for a hopeful, truthful, generous, and loving world. I tried not to posture or pretend. I wrote about my life as I’ve seen it and how I’d like to see it, as both memory and premonition.
The producers, Justin Raisen and Yves Rothman, and I spent months collecting organic sounds to fill the world of this record. We threw away everything that felt false and tried to keep the soul of each song alive. I hope Premonitions gives you comfort and joy. I hope it feels like all the mysterious details of your lives, all your massive and mundane glories. I hope it reminds you that there is beauty in the details. Rainbows in your sprinklers. Drinking water from a hose. The way it felt to make a friend for the first time. Locking yourself in a bathroom to avoid everyone. Dancing until your shins burn. Leaving your phone in an Uber and making your best friend drive you an hour away to knock on a stranger’s door after locating it on Find My Phone. Losing a friend. Losing yourself. Remembering.
Emily Brown is a Californian singer-songwriter and poet. Drawing comparisons to Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, her clear voice, and carefully crafted lyrics draw from personal experience and literature.
‘Unseen Girl’ possesses the type of chords and indie girl vocals that beat a path to our door on a daily basis. This time however it comes fitted with an urgency that suggests an artist up for the fight and in the process cuts a fine Sharon Van Etten dash. On this evidence Emily Brown could well be on her way, a soft edged juggernaut at full tilt where nobody but the bad guys get hurt. It grows and it blooms, if only falling in love with somebody was this easy. Emily Brown’s new album ‘Bee Eater’ is out at the end of August.
Releases August 31st, 2018
All songs written and performed by Emily Brown
Lindenfield: guitar, bass, upright bass, piano, Farfisa, drums, synths
Jaxon Williams: guitar
Aaron Hatch: clarinet
Stuart Wheeler: french horn, vocals
Alyssa Pyper, Mary Nielson, Anne Bennion: violin
Sophie Blair, Michele Gardiner: viola
Max Olivier, Paul Woodward: cello
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