hellooooo hello HELLO! here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. drum roll please… our new song “come through” is out today! not only is our new song out today, but the video directed by the fantastic goddess angel claire vogel, is out as well. we are really proud of this one. For many of us, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a lot more representative of our high school years than Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.” Luckily for young adults, and honestly anyone who enjoys quality music, up-and-coming rock band The Regrettes is pumping out honest, relatable hits that don’t shy away from life-changing experiences, both good and bad. In fact, it’s those very experiences that inspire lead singer Lydia Night, 17, when she sits down to write.
you don’t have to be a teenager or young adult to get The Regrettes. The band — comprised of Night, GenessaGariano (20, guitar), Sage Chavis (20, bass), and Maxx Morando (19) — just released it’s dreamy, ’70s-inspired music video for “Come Through,” which is a song Night said is all about the sometimes messy power dynamics in relationships.
“It’s really easy when you’re in an insecure time in your life to let someone walk all over you,” Night said. [This song is about] how you get used to that without even realizing it. This was about realizing that was happening in my life and kind of standing up for myself. It’s really just about not being someone’s bitch.”
LA singer/songwriter Sunny War began her career as a busker, which is usually the kind of CV that results in loud, strummy songs that emphasize volume and ferocity over nuance and melody (see: those first few Billy Bragg records). So it’s a joy that War’s third album, With the Sun, is not a record of belted-out jeremiads, but instead a gorgeous, meticulously-constructed record that touches on folk and blues and country without ever owing a clear debt to any single one of them. It’s even more remarkable considering War spent her formative years kicking around the LA punk scene, playing house shows with rambunctious bands like FIDLAR. But she emerges clear-eyed and self-assured from the get-go, on the gorgeous album opener, “If It Wasn’t Broken.” War’s guitar fluttering down like falling feathers, and she delicately applies her voice to the spaces in between, delivering the song’s matter-of-fact chorus with wisdom and grace: “How would you know had a heart/ if it wasn’t broken?/ if it wasn’t broken?” When the songs do veer political, they’re handled not with blunt force but with a carefulness that makes the sentiment they express that much more powerful. “I get home and turn on the TV,” War sings on “I’m Human,” against a twitching guitar figure and gently-brushed snare. Then, she sighs out the verse’s dark kicker: “They killed another man who looks just like me.” With the Sun is a powerful showcase for a singer and lyricist who seems to have arrived fully-formed, with a natural gift for simple, gentle melodies and a knowledge beyond her years.
Sleepless Dreamer, is Pearl Charles’ second solo release, is a warm record full of breezy soft rock and quietly dramatic pop songs about love and loss, the kind that emanated out of California in the early to mid ’70s. You couldn’t find a better guide to this classic sound than Charles, who’s been working up to a record like this for years—she started out playing in old-timey duo the Driftwood Singers, then moved on to become the drummer for the Blank Tapes, a rock band with a fondness for softer, country-inspired sounds. Leaving behind the rock and psych-leaning arrangements found on her self-titled debut, on Sleepless Dreamer, Charles embraces a slicker pop sound. Still, despite the step up in production value, Charles writes folk songs. Their strength lies in their simplicity and Charles’ honeyed turns of phrase. The dusty roads Charles is traveling on throughout Sleepless Dreamer are familiar ones, “Charles‘ record takes cues from movements all over the American map. There are hints of Southern folk and alt-country, Midwest Americana, and West Coast acid rock.” –
Lord Huron’s new album Vide Noir will be out April 20th, but you can listen to two new tracks today – “Ancient Names Pt. 1” and “Ancient Names Pt. 2”. The gang will also be touring across the US this spring.
Lord Huron, the folk-adjacent rock band helmed by Michigan-born singer and guitarist Ben Schneider, will release their third LP Vide Noir on April 20th. With the announcement, “Ancient Names,” an eery, unresolved tale of a crystal ball vision that amplifies the band’s characteristic thematic darkness into distorted garage rock.
The new album was inspired by driving Los Angeles after dark, Schneider explained in a statement:
“My nighttime drives ranged all over the city—across the twinkling grid of the valley, into the creeping shadows of the foothills, through downtown’s neon canyons and way out to the darksome ocean. I started imagining Vide Noiras an epic odyssey through the city, across dimensions, and out into the cosmos. A journey along the spectrum of human experience. A search for meaning amidst the cold indifference of The Universe.”
Lord Huron’s previous album, the melodic and spooky Strange Trails, wasreleased in April 2015; they’ve spent much of the intervening three years on tour. Vide Noirarrives from Whispering Pines/Republic Records (a new arrangement for the band, whose previous two albums were released by indie label IAMSOUND).
Haunting dream goth. The group’s sound is characterized by its surreal lyrics, lush vocals, edgy post–punk, psychedelic andprogressive influences and use of sonic experimentation.
Established in 1999, Craig plays drums and bass. Clara plays guitar and sings. They both are dedicated to writing ethereal melodies and poetic lyrics which give the music its unique foundation and soundscape
The problem with January is that you always fall in love with bands that released albums the year before after reading the other bloggers albums that would have made it to my best of 2017 list, So it was no surprise when I heard about San Francisco five-piece Locus Pocus and their self-titled EP, released last May 2017.
I’m a fan of shimmering, organ-punctuated psych pop and thoroughly enjoy melodic, trembling vocals, gravelly yelps and howls, and swirling, distorted flourishes. Locus Pocus is one of those bands that you hear and think to yourself, “I just stumbled onto something here”.
Recalling other San Francisco band, Cool Ghouls, and Grand Rapids’ and the wonderful psych darlings Heaters, Locus Pocus has been building a name for themselves in their hometown through their energetic live shows. Beyond San Francisco , their debut single, “My Girlfriend Won’t Dance With Me”, got considerable listens in mid-2017, with over 130,000 listens since its debut.
The remainder of the EP is equally infectious. Beginning with the Stuck, the songs worm their way into your brain. Equally kaleidoscopic and twisting, Hey Sundance and Muscle Man round out the four-song EP, building to a dramatic crescendo that will leave you wanting more.
The band released a second single, “I’d Be Your Woman”, last August, complete with a cheeky music video that finds singer Nate Budroe in a glittery black dress and dramatic cat’s eye makeup, hamming it up with the rest of the band – Kyle Chapman (guitar), Daniel de Lorimier (bass), Michael Kipnis (drums), and Daniel Markowitz (organ & Rhodes).
I’d say that discovering Locus Pocus in early 2018 is a pretty good one to have. Check out Locus Pocus’ debut EP on Bandcamp
Swami John Reis and Rick Froberg have been making noises together since high school. The mean swagger of Hot Snakes. Reis and Froberg are responsible for some of the most turbulent rock and roll of their, or any, generation.
Hot Snakes streamlined Drive Like Jehu’s complex compositions and emerged as bona fide downstroke warlords. They have made 3 studio albums of high-velocity, slash-your-face, piss-punk: 2000’s Automatic Midnight, 2002’s Suicide Invoice and 2004’s Audit in Progress. The band ceased activity in 2005 but reunited for a triumphant world tour in 2011, planting the seeds for what would further happen.
Now, after a 14-year hiatus from the studio, Hot Snakes have kicked down the door back into our lives with their new album, Jericho Sirens, due out March 16th from Sub Pop Records. The new album blasts out of the speakers with the furious “I Need a Doctor,” inspired by Froberg’s experience needing a doctor’s note in order to miss an important work function. “Yeah, I had to be quick on my feet,” says Rick. “Luckily a friend had a stack of stationary from Planned Parenthood and I used that to forge a note relieving me of my obligation”.
Throughout Jericho Sirens, Froberg commiserates with the frustration and torrential apathy that seems to be a fixture in our daily lives, while also reminding us that we have no fucking clue. “Songs like ‘Death Camp Fantasy’ and ‘Jericho Sirens’ are about that,” he says. “No matter where you look, there’re always people saying the world’s about to end. Musically, the album incorporates the most extreme fringes of the Hot Snakes sound (the vein-bulging, 78-second “Why Don’t It Sink In?” the manic, Asian Blues on speed of “Having Another?”), while staying true to longstanding influences such as the Wipers, Dead Moon, and Suicide on propulsive tracks such as “Six Wave Hold-Down,” one of the first songs written for the project during a Mummer Parade 2017 session in Philadelphia. Other moments like the choruses of “Jericho Sirens” and “Psychoactive” nod to Status Quo and AC/DC with Froberg admitting, “I still flip bird and ride my BMX on top of cop cars.”
Jericho Sirens was recorded in short bursts over the past year, mostly in San Diego and Philadelphia with longtime bassist Gar Wood,Jason Kourkounis and Mario Rubalcaba, both of whom drummed on prior HotSnakes releases but never on the same one. For Reis, reactivating his creative partnership with Froberg was one of the most rewarding aspects of the process: “Our perspectives are similar. Our tastes are similar. He is my family. And what more is there to say? My favorite part of making this record was hearing him find his voice and direction for this record. I came hard.”
In tandem with a full back catalog reissue series and the new album, Hot Snakes will return to the road in 2018 to incinerate the villages, and they’re already looking ahead to more music. Says Gar Wood, “There’re already 2 more records written and recorded. We wanted to come out with this one using the more mainstream sounding stuff to give people a chance to catch up.”
Jericho Sirens (Release Date: March 16th, 2018) Sub Pop Records, Catch the band LiveTuesday, January 30th Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Having conquered a variety of genre albums in recent years, the genre this time around is that there isn’t a genre—just a dedication to the sanctity of the music and music alone.
Ty Segall has only tweeted once since 2014. He averages about one Facebook post per three months—and even then, it’s almost exclusively advertising a show. Every “Ty Segall” Instagram account is a fan-made page with a couple dozen photos or fewer. He’s not on Snapchat. His website is updated with only bare-bones contact info, a couple videos, and a simple discography. Even his current label, Drag City Records, doesn’t post its catalog to Spotify or Apple Music or Tidal, thereby making it impossible to hear the majority of Segall’s studio albums via any streaming service. TySegall indeed embraces an old-school rock and roll sensibility, from a firm belief in the sanctity of the full-length record to his fuzz-heavy analog aesthetic. But, more accurately put, he merely holds one specific thing in much higher regard than the influence of changing business models or technological advances: personal freedom.
Freedom’s Goblin is the latest among many Ty Segall albums: 19 tracks strong, filling four sides of vinyl nonstop, with an unrestricted sense of coming together to make an album. It wants you to get your head straight — but first, the process will make your head spin! Back in the Twins days, we talked about the schizophrenia of Ty’s outlook; today, it’s super-dual, with loads of realities all folding back on each other. On any given side, we’re tracking five or six full-blown personalities, unconcerned with convention or continuity.
This is Freedom’s Goblin — one track engendering, the next one oppressing, violence up in the mix — a look at everything around that Ty used to make the songs. The songs came in the flow of the year: days of vomit and days of ecstasy and escape too, and days between. The rulebook may have been tossed, but Freedom’s Goblin is thick with deep songwriting resources, be it stomper, weeper, ballad, screamer, banger or funker-upper, all diverted into new Tydentities — each one marking a different style. Freedom’s Goblin wears a twisted production coat: tracks were cut all around, from L.A. to Chicago to Memphis, whether chilling at home or touring with the Freedom Band. Five studios were required to get all the sounds down, engineered by Steve Albini, F. Bermudez, Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell and of course, Ty himself.
The goal was getting free, embracing any approach necessary to communicate new heights and depths, new places for the fuzz to land among octaving harmonies, dancefloor grooves, synths, saxes and horns, jams, post-Nicky-Hopkins r’n’b electric piano vibes, children-of-the-corn psycho-rebellions, old country waltzes and down-by-the-river shuffles. Basically, the free-est pop songs Ty’s ever put on tape. And one about his dog, too! .
We all want our Freedom. The freedom to love or to be alone; to be pretty or pretty ugly; the freedom to turn the other cheek or to turn up the volume. And of course, the freedom to make just about any kind of song you think will free people when they hear it. But there’s that goblin of freedom too — and once you let it out of the bottle, it can fuck with you, so . . . take it or leave it. Go away or go all the way in. Live free and die! BUT be careful what you wish for . .
1 Fanny Dog
2 Rain
3 Every 1’s A Winner
4 Despoiler Of Cadaver
5 When Mommy Kills You
6 My Lady’s On Fire
7 Alta
8 Meaning
9 Cry Cry Cry
10 Shoot You Up
11 You Say All The Nice Things
12 The Last Waltz
13 She
14 Prison
15 Talkin’ 3
16 The Main Pretender
17 I’m Free
18 5 Ft. Tall
19 And, Goodnight
Pretty much all you need to know about Death Valley Girls can be summed up by the line from the 1975 sexploitation film Switchblade Sisters that became the band’s unofficial slogan: “Everybody’s gotta be in a gang.” All those images of leather-clad, grime-covered, rebellious fun that such a phrase evokes are just what the Los Angeles quartet personifies. It’s slightly crazy, completely sexy, and just frightening enough that you want nothing more than to be inducted into the club.
Luckily, Death Valley Girls are sending an open invitation with their sophomore record, Glow in the Dark. On Burger Records, the follow-up to 2014’s Street Venomplays like a beacon from space sent to incite a cultural mutiny. Tracks like “Love Spell” and “Disco” beckon the listener to shed the chains of repressive modesty in favor of letting loose in the neon light of the night. “Horror Movie” and “I’m a Man Too” strike out at the definitions laid down by a society enslaved to consumerism and clearly delineated classifications. All of it bursts out in surfy proto-punk layered with sugary shrill harmonies that cut through the garage door like so many steel studs.
If the message of the album isn’t clear enough, this band delivers “Join the experience that will cosmically unite the living and turn on the dead. The battle is now, Be part of the revolution. Glow in the dark.
A Los Angeles /Santiago, Chile-based quartet lead by two sweet-singing girls who manage to combine the noisy darkness ofshoegaze with “scream-in-your-face” punk rock and ethereal-sounding pop – in a very original way.
We are Slowkiss – a 4-piece band – 2 girls and 2 dudes. We make alternative punk rock music, and we do our best to ‘bring it’ for our audience at every show we play and on every song we record. ULTRAVIOLET is our brand new EP – five explosive songs that will surprise you in the best of ways. Big drums, a wall of guitars, growling bass and aggressive-yet-sweet vocals that will melt your ears. The EP artwork was done on canvas by the great Chilean painter Juan Vade, and it turned out so beautiful and eye-catching that we feel it was meant to be printed.
Slowkiss has a series of tour dates in Southern California throughout October 2017!
The Fat Angel Sings 