Melbourne’s The Shifters are quite possibly my current favourite purveyors of your guitar-based rock-and-or-roll,” commented Captured Tracks label head Mike Sniper upon its release. “In fact, they come from the best scene of that genre, the one in mullet-ravaged young Australia”.
“Left Bereft” sounds like it could be set in a post apocalyptic world or today. According to the band it’s “an overly simplified rabble-rouser that people who maybe use English as a second or third language can understand and maybe feel a bit of solidarity. I like to imagine drunk students in France listening to it whilst wrestling on the kitchen table.” Their Fall-ism’s abound here, but it’s so good (and Mark’s gone) that I’m just happy there’s band doing similar stuff at such a top level quality while putting their own stamp on it.
Back in March, the band released a 26-track rarities collection titled ‘Open Vault’ comprised of unreleased studio material, early demos, live renditions and solo home recordings from between 2016 and 2019. The collection also features covers of songs by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Ray Davies and Death in June.
Melbourne, Australia. The Shifters released a new 7″ vinyl single – ‘Left Bereft’ – via New York label Captured Tracks.
It is universally agreed that New Zealand’s Wax Chattels are a must-see live act; their hypnotically sinister debut captured this perfectly. Released in 2018 and supported by relentless touring, the eponymous album reached #7 on the Official New Zealand Album Charts, and release week saw the title feature as #1 in Rough Trade’s Top 20 New Releases. Tastemakers like NPR and A.V. Club came on as early champions. The album’s success at home and abroad led to the well-deserved nomination of Best Alternative Artist at the 2018 New Zealand Music Awards, as well as the band’s inclusion in the coveted shortlist of finalists for the Taite Music Prize and Auckland Live Best Independent Debut Award. After a knock-out entrée, the anticipation that surrounds their sophomore album, ‘Clot’, is immense.
Much like ‘Wax Chattels’, the writing process for ‘Clot’ took the best part of a year. While some songs were written on the road, the bulk of the album was workshopped throughout 2019 across bedrooms and storage containers. Demos were fine-tuned before taking them to the studio to be recorded by James Goldsmith (Aldous Harding, Mermaidens). Wax Chattels maintained the use of only the barest of ingredients — bass guitar, keyboard, and a two-piece drum kit — but the group spent more time experimenting with and finding new sounds. They wanted to maintain the same live element as in their debut, but, this time, heavier — for which they enlisted the help of mixing engineer, and fellow noise-maker, Ben Greenberg (Uniform, Destruction Unit, The Men). The keyboard sounds are noticeably thicker and the bass more intense. A marked step-up, this new record keeps the visceral energy of the debut, only this time they dig deeper into cathartic noise.
Clot’s inspiration — or, rather, frustration — came from the doomy, gloomy corners of Auckland’s underbelly, and the theme of confrontation is central. “Mindfulness” is about willingly tricking yourself into band-aid solutions; merely accepting the status quo rather than kicking up a fuss and forcing tangible change. The vitriolic choruses of “Cede” are in Cheng’s native language — Taiwanese Hokkien — and are an indignant confrontation about Cross-Strait relations and self-determination. The experience of being a first generation immigrant and not having a personal relationship with extended family is expressed in the melodic single “No Ties”. The song touches on cultural differences and the parental sacrifice of careers and support systems to provide a “better” future for their children. The explosive arc of “Efficiency” describes knowing when to bide your time, and when to push, in which the band treads a line between the explicit and intuitive. “Less is More” fumes with the frustration caused by the selective memories of others. The violent fantasies in “Spanners & Implements” suggest a more literal interpretation of these themes. This is carried through “An Eye”, in which the band stresses the physical harm and psychological breakdown emanating from the escalating racial and political uproar throughout the world.
Still, though the band seethes and boils throughout, ‘Clot’ concludes with a message of hope. On the final track, “You Were Right”, Ruddell expresses an aspiration toward alternative viewpoints: wading through the noise and chatter, ultimately being able to accept the opinions of others, albeit after careful consideration. Perhaps it’s this capacity for self-awareness that makes Wax Chattels one of New Zealand’s most treasured independent exports.
Becca Mancari returns with her new album The Greatest Part. Mancari explores her childhood experiences on the single “First Time,” and it focuses on her religious upbringing. The lyrics are raw and intrepid, peeling back old scars to explore the emotional and psychological turmoil Mancari weathered growing up gay in a fundamentalist Christian home, while at the same time examining the ties that continue to bind her to the family she loves. This image is the opening line of Becca Mancari’s “First Time,” a somber song that takes an intimate look at the true story of Mancari’s coming out to her parents. A lot of people were introduced to Becca Mancari as a member of Bermuda Triangle alongside Brittany Howard, but Becca had also released her debut solo album Good Woman right around the same time Bermuda Triangle put out their first single, and Good Woman proved Becca was a worthwhile artist in her own right. It’s one of the past few years’ true gems; an alt-country record with an indie rock edge and truly timeless songwriting. Becca hasn’t abandoned her folk/country roots, though, and the fusion of all of these sounds makes for an album that breaks down even more musical boundaries than Good Woman did. The sounds that Becca experiments with on this album are new, but what hasn’t changed is how impactful her song writing and delivery is. She still has a knack for wrapping powerful storytelling in warm melodies, and delivering each word in a way that captures your attention and doesn’t let it go.
Powerful and explicit, yet warm and nuanced, the song is an excellent encapsulation of the record it’s from: Mancari’s sophomore album, The Greatest Part, which dropped on June 26th via Captured Tracks. Recorded with producer Zac Farro (of Paramore fame) at The Fatherland Studio in Nashville, the record is a tremendously beautiful, intimate and expressive personification of Mancari’s artistry as a whole.
Mancari first splashed onto the indie scene as a solo artist in 2017 with the release of her debut record, Good Woman. At the same time, she was a member of Bermuda Triangle, a supergroup featuring Mancari along with Jesse Lafser and Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard. At that point in time, Mancari was going hard and fast — she was doing a ton of touring and was fighting a seemingly uphill battle trying to sustain her career. There’s backing vocals on “First Time” and “I’m Sorry” by Julien Baker.
The instrumentals echo hesitantly until the steady guitar solo offers something concrete in all her wandering. The music video then cuts to shots of same-sex couples, symbolizing that she found chosen family with people like her The Greatest Part is more of an exercise in joyous catharsis. The meaningful lyrics are expertly juxtaposed by charmingly catchy melodies and ethereal indie rock dreamscapes. In short, if you listened to this record without paying too close of attention to the lyrics.
Gemini was released as part of the 2010 guitar-pop mini-boom, but it could just as easily have been recorded in 1989. Jack Tatum’s first album as Wild Nothing is full of songs that exist just outside the margins of your memory: Haven’t I heard this before? Isn’t this guitar part familiar? Didn’t an ex-boyfriend make me a mixtape with “Drifter” sandwiched between Cocteau Twins deep cuts?,
The Version is a new, limited edition of the vinyl. Pressed on translucent blue vinyl, the album is housed in a silkscreened jacket with hand-stamped numbering and includes new liner notes from Tatum along with a 11″ x 17″ show poster from 2010.
From Jack Tatum:
“It’s fitting that listening back [to Gemini] now feels like a dream to me. I know I wrote these songs, but the memories of making them have become as blurred as the music,” says Tatum. “It’s such a rare thing to have this kind of living document of your youth and I think that’s what Gemini will always be for me: a part of my life that is at once so familiar and so unrecognizable.”
Tatum put Gemini together while studying at Virginia Tech, and its amateurish charm separates the album from his more expansive, polished later work. When songs like opener “Live in Dreams” and the chiming “Our Composition Book” fade in slowly, it’s easy to imagine hearing them streaming from a dorm room window overlooking a verdant quad. And while there isn’t much lyrical depth to Gemini, that’s a feature, not a bug. You can listen to “Summer Holiday” or the gloomy, glamorous “Chinatown” and fill in the blanks with your own memories of being young, sad, and in love.
“Summer Holiday” · Wild Nothing “Gemini” Released on Captured Tracks
Online music marketplace Discogs has just launched the Discogs Daily Dig, an initiative to support indie record labels during the coronavirus pandemic. Each day they will focus on a different indie label that will sell rarities, test pressings, out-of-print releases, and back catalouge through Discogs. It started today (5/5) with Numero Group and here’s the first week’s schedule:
On Laughing Gas, the third EP from Wild Nothing, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jack Tatum delves deeper into the territory where he thrives: namely, the synth and sophisti-pop of the 1980s. Working within a more mechanical and synthetic framework than his previous releases, Wild Nothing continues to delicately toe the line between the organic and the unnatural. These are still pop songs, but there’s an underlying sense of uneasiness that threads the music together.
Recorded in Los Angeles, CA and Richmond, VA with the help of Jorge Elbrecht, these five songs were originally imagined alongside last year’s Indigo and were written and tracked simultaneously with the album. When work on the full-length was nearing completion, Tatum set these ideas aside; they seemed to fit better on their own. In spare moments between tours, Tatum began to look back and piece the songs together at his home studio in Richmond, reconnecting with Elbrecht to mix the EP. With Elbrecht in Denver and Tatum in Richmond, the two went back and forth on the final touches, molding a common thread from the Lo Borges inspired new wave of Sleight Of Hand to the propulsive, icy synth funk of Foyer.
Often considered a secondary or transitional format, Wild Nothing has always used the EP to further explore new ideas and influences. Laughing Gas is no exception.
This May we’ll also be celebrating the 10 year anniversary of our first record “Gemini” with a string of shows with our friends Beach Fossils. Both of us will be playing our first records in full!
DIIV have just released a new album, “Deceiver”, on October 4th via Captured Tracks. This week they shared another song from the album, “Blankenship,” via a video. The tight track is akin to a shoegaze version of Sonic Youth’s “Titanium Exposé,” especially in the guitar sounds. Stout directed the video, which intercuts between the band performing the song indoors and a woman (Savannah Macias) seemingly lost in the desert.
Previously DIIV shared Deceiver’s first single, “Skin Game” . Then they shared another song from it, “Taker,” a somewhat languid shoegaze cut that grows with intensity as the track ends.
Deceiveris the band’s third album and the follow-up to 2016’s Is The Is Are. The band’s current lineup features Zachary Cole Smith (lead vocals, guitar), Andrew Bailey (guitar), Colin Caulfield (bass), and Ben Newman (drums). The album was recorded in Los Angeles in March 2019 with producer Sonny Diperri (My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, Protomartyr), which is the first time the band has used an outside producer.
We’re big fans of Drahla’s queasy, hypnotic psych rock and their choice to cover Psychic TV’s 1985 gem Godstar seems like a match made in musical heaven.
Leeds trio Drahla take on Psychic TV ‘s ‘Godstar’, a track which pays homage to Rolling Stone Brian Jones whilst hinting his death may not have been quite as accidental as first appeared. Psychic TV was formed by Genesis P. Orridge from the ashes of Throbbing Gristle and Godstar was their only hit from their most commercially successful album Allegory and Self. Of course, P. Orridge was never one for conventional thinking, was convinced that the track should have been a much bigger hit, and rather than accepting that chart position was based on other peoples poor taste and electing to buy more copies of other records he alleged there was a conspiracy. Namely that the BBC had been coerced by the Rolling Stones management not to play the track.
Psychic TV’s more ‘tune based’ approach after some to their more impenetrable experimental music was surprising given that Throbbing Gristle’s ethos had always seemed to be all about deconstructing and annihilating rock n roll, using ear bleeding, aural and visual art terrorism rather than feeding into the mythology. Instead, they often produced sounds devoid of melody, or anything resembling a tune.
A homage to Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, I remember buying the original 7″ in Woolworths, and playing it on repeat.
A homage to Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, I remember buying the original 7″ in Woolworths, and playing it on repeat. Times change, but this version more than does justice to the original. Available thru CapturedTracks Released on: 18th September 2019.
B Boys’ meaningful punk vibe sees them fall in line with a growing number of bands who recognise that rock n’ roll has always had a role to play in subverting the most destructive aspects of mainstream political discourse. B Boys’ particular method of critique is artful enough to avoid the traps of being considered preachy; it’s more about leaning in close to see just how much they have something to say. B Boys’ anarchic, anti-capitalist analysis of ‘I Want’, which is plucked from the press release, is particularly helpful in steering us to where their head is at:
“’I Want’ was inspired by the frustration of having to demand for the things you innately deserve. It’s about overconsumption and dissatisfaction, as well as the infinite process of personal improvement” ”
Emphasising their allegiance to critical thinking further is the fact Veronica Torres of politically riled post-punk band Pill, is a guest on this track. Sonically, it’s adorned with complex rhythms underpinning commanding riffs with The Wire, Talking Heads, and The Clash great reference points.
Official music video for “Energy” by B Boys off their album, Dada. on Captured Tracks
Directed by Jarod Taber, it’s an artsy, tongue-in-cheek visual and loosely explores the single’s central theme of capitalist greed. Acted by B Boys frontman Britton Walker, the main character is a besuited, lonely man unblinkered in his adherence to the daily grind and desire for things. But the amount of agency the protagonist has is left up to question if we consider the following quote from the band about ‘I Want’ from the press release: “Sometimes life puts you in an ill-fitted suit, but you still have to wear it.” This leaves us some sympathy towards him and questioning of the power structures surrounding us.
The second single from Drahla’s debut album, ‘Useless Coordinates’, out May 3, 2019. Drahla have already answered all the boring questions. In the video for their prickly single “Stimulus for Living” the droll Leeds punks elucidated the whens and the whys and the particulars of their formation and their motivation as a band. Sort of. Fuzzy tape rolls as a droll voice intones a series of questions (“How did the band form?”; “Drahla, what does it mean?”) and the band answer in cryptic abstractions (“In holy matrimony”; “It’s just letters from the alphabet”). This goes on a little over a minute; throughout the bit, their intentions remain opaque.
“The interview at the start of the video asks standardized questions, that have the same copy and paste answers every time,” says singer/guitarist Luciel Brown. “There’s far more interesting things to explore. Within the lyrics, the same [idea] has been applied to the everyday [observations] and points of interest that have stood out to me in regular situations, highlighting that there’s interest everywhere, you know, there is a stimulus.”
This mentality is part of what’s made them work as a band over the last couple of years. They work in a pretty traditional format—guitar, bass, and drums—but they’re able to wring a little more out of it because of their insistence on digging deeper. Browns riffs are abstract and pointillist, like something you might expect from the great grayscale post-punk records of the late 70s, or no wave’s idiosyncratic squalls. The muscular monochromes of Rob Riggs’ bass work are unpredictable and elastic. Mike Ainsley’s geometric drum work is reliable, but reactive, pushing the other players into woolier territory. They’re able to take familiar parts but push at their edges. It’s all part of trying to find access magnificent in the mundane.
“Pyramid Estate” Released by: Captured Tracks Single release date: 9 April, 2019
The Fat Angel Sings 