Dreamy New Yorkers DIIV return with 17 track double LP ‘Is The Is Are’ on Captured Tracks.’Is the Is Are’ is an album years and many personal struggles in the making for its architect, Zachary Cole Smith. Recorded and mixed in various locations in Brooklyn, the album showcases everything you know and love about DIIV and many things you did not, all with an added nuance and depth. It’s a 17-song album statement intended to resonate with its audience in much the same way that ‘Bad Moon Rising’ or ‘Tago Mago’ has for Smith himself. An extension and deepening of the musical ideas first expressed on 2012’s critically-lauded ‘Oshin’,
‘Is The Is Are’ yields a multiplicity of textures, lyrical themes and moods. It is a more diverse world than ‘Oshin’, with different parameters and ideals. Dark and honest to a fault, the new songs are dynamic, loud, quiet, sad; they are songs that hiss and snarl; songs that, as Smith wrote recently, represent “the real me.” Smith’s vocals, too, are much closer to the foreground, layered legibly on top of tidal waves of shimmering guitar and melodic bass weaving in and out, leaving a distinct and indelible imprint.
2LP – Rough Trade Exclusive – 500 Copies on Coloured Vinyl. This is a different Colour to the US Version.
The young indie rockers of Mourn give a tour of Gràcia, talk about touring with their parents and play “Gertrudis, Get Through This!” and “Silver Gold”. When talking about these teenage Barcelona punks, PJ Harvey’s name is always going to be the first one that comes up. That owes to frontwoman Jazz Rodriguez Bueno’s strident, gut-ripping howl, one of the few voices on the indie rock landscape that could merit such a comparison. But while Mourn may challenge Ms. Harvey’s elemental ferocity, they also play with a sloppily simple basement-hardcore urgency that’s just overwhelmingly endearing. That voice, combined with the band’s juvenile bash-it-out force, makes for a potent combination.
3rd single off MOURN’s self-titled debut due out February 17th on Captured Tracks Records
If you’re wondering what the new DIIV album,Is the Is Are, will be like, the Brooklyn band have just given us the first taste. “Dopamine” is a little more produced, with vocals more forward in the mix, but otherwise is in DIIV’s signature hazy style. at last a new DIIV song!
Can’t believe it’s finally starting to happen. Here’s the first song we’re letting out from our upcoming album “Is The IsAre”, out soon onCaptured Tracks Records. This album has been a long time in the making, and I’ve poured so much of myself into it.DIIV is the real me. Also, don’t forget to get tickets for our tour next month with No JoyandSunflower Bean
DIIV are touring and about to play NYC’s Irving Plaza opening for Rideand then they’ll be back to headline Webster Hall in November on their tour with No Joy and Sunflower Bean .
A few days before Labor Day,Widowspeak will release their third full-length via Captured Tracks. It feels like an ideal time of the year to engage with the duo’s latest batch of patiently paced dream-folk, at least here in the Northeast: not swelteringly hot, but still warm enough to comfortably hang around outside long after dusk. The band has been regularly leaking songs from the album all summer long, and “Dead Love (So Still)” is the latest. Despite the depressing image its title conjures, the track itself is an optimistic-feeling swirl of twangy, textured guitars and dreamy-as-hell vocals.
“I wrote an early version of this song when I was 19,” singer Molly Hamilton. “It was one of those naive situations where I thought I was with someone and he didn’t, but the energy and emotion I’d invested in our non-relationship still made its inevitable end feel significant. The mood [of the album version] is a lot more lighthearted than the first. I’ve had so many more experiences since then that require letting things go, and I’m a lot more okay with closed doors that I used to be.” All Yours is out September 4th.
After leaving Brooklyn, the band relocated in the mellower region of Hudson Valley and planned to take things as they came, instead of banging their heads against the wall to capture a specific sound. The duo’s new song, “Girls”, is on the contemplative side of things. Hamilton’s vocal melodies feel soothing rather than urgent and Robert Earl Thomas’ instrumental arrangements are more light-weight and pleasant than heart-stopping. It’s no wonder that two members of Woods are involved in Widowspeak’s recent material – think of their new songs as Jeremy Earl’s band and Real Estate having an enchanting and quiet baby.
Widowspeak’s new album “All Yours” is due 4th September and will mark their third album – and their first release since 2013’s EP The Swamps. A presumed back to basics record, laying down tracks on phones as voice memos and jamming late at night. Woods’ Aaron Neveu and Jarvis Taveniere are set to help the already established line-up of Hamilton and Thomas with steady bass lines and drum playing –see sweet and catchy title track “All Yours” – providing firm rhythmical foundations to the delicate melodies that have proved successful for the band over the years.
If “Girls” and “All Yours” are anything to go by, we can rightfully expect Widowspeak to deliver their most tender album to date. If you’re a sucker for delightful melodies and gentle guitar strumming, you may have a new favourite band.
Widowspeak is a dream pop/dream folk duo from somewhere in the Catskills Mountains. They’d been operating out of Brooklyn for a while, and had as many as four members at one time, but now it’s down to just Molly Hamilton (vocals/guitar) and Robert Earl Thomas (guitar). After the 2013 album Almanac, they headed for the mountains and took their time with the new record. They’ve been on Captured Tracks for a few years, and have released two full length albums and an EP since 2011. The band’s third long player —All Yours— will be released on September 4th via Captured Tracks, and the label and the PR firm have already begun a promotional push for the album. When people write about Widowspeak, it’s almost inevitable for there to be a reference to Mazzy Star. I’ve never really seen a connection, That said, it would be fair to say that Widowspeak is slightly psychedelic, dreamy folk music. And obviously, the same is said of Mazzy Star, and of Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions. This has been an extraordinary year for new releases, and I’m always busy listening to stuff. Even though I’ve got the Bully record, the SOAK record, and the Courtney Barnett record on infinite repeat at home and in the car, This full album has gotten several repeated listens in the ten days that I’ve had it, It’s a very good song that gets better with each repeated listen. “Girls” by Widowspeak
I’ll admit that part of what makes me think of Cowboy Junkies is the fact that there’s harmonica and some sort of lap steel guitar, but there are other things in the album that make me think, even vaguely, of Cowboy Junkies. In the last minute of the song, when it’s basically just drums and organ, there’s some trick going on with the drums. I don’t know the track is doubled, or if there’s some sort of delay or something applied to the drum track, but it has a really cool Beatles-esque sound to it. It’s worth mentioning that on the new album, they employed Jarvis Taveniere (bass) and Aaron Neveu (drums) to hold down the rhythm section. Taveniere also produced the new album as well as the first Widowspeak album. He and Neveu both play in the Brooklyn-based freak-folk band Woods. They haven’t yet opened the pre-sale for physical copies of the album, but make a bookmark for Captured Tracks, and keep checking back.
Mac DeMarco has a new eight-song “mini-LP” Another One is out August 7th via Captured Tracks, and today, he’s shared a song from the record. It’s called “The Way You’d Love Her” listen above.
He’s also announced even more dates to his already lengthy tour
The Brooklyn-based record label Mexican Summer will celebrate five years in business with a two-day, indoor-outdoor festival featuring label artists, alumni, and friends at Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation in Red Hook. With a lineup that spans from living legends Spiritualized, Ariel Pink to underground mainstays like No Joy, the Fresh & Onlys to promising up-and-comers Happy Jawbone Family Band, Co La .
We’d expect nothing less from Mexican Summer, which has established itself as one of America’s premier indie labels since beginning as a vinyl-only subscription service spun off from Kemado Records in Autumn 2008. Since then, over the course of almost 200 releases — a mammoth 40 records per year on average — Mexican Summer morphed into a full-fledged label, dropped the vinyl-only policy and released records from some of the most visionary and respected names in underground music, developing a hard-to-define but easy-to-appreciate aesthetic along the way.
They put out pivotal early releases by Washed Out, Real Estate, Kurt Vile, and the Tallest Man On Earth. They’ve done buzzing garage pop with the Soft Pack, droning psych with Peaking Lights and dark synth-pop with Light Asylum. Software, their experimental electronic imprint directed by Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin, has showcased Autre Ne Veut’s blistering art-damaged R&B, Tim Hecker’s masterful ambient freewheeling and the galactic synthscapes of Fuck Buttons side project Blanck Mass. In Best Coast, they helped to launch a legitimate rock star.
It’s all pretty impressive for a company that began as, in co-founder and A&R man Keith Abrahamsson’s own words, a side project. Mexican Summer has surpassed its parent label in terms of cultural cachet and sales figures. It’s the primary focus of business at Kemado and Mexican Summer’s Greenpoint office, which also houses the label’s in-house recording studio, Gary’s Electric, and sits adjacent to the label-run record store Co-Op 87. The intention was never to relegate Kemado to a catalog label and bring Mexican Summer to the forefront, but by following their instincts, Mexican Summer’s founders ended up hitting a lot of other people’s sweet spots along with their own.
“The records that we were putting out just picked up momentum, and you could just feel that it was what people wanted to talk to us about,” Abrahamsson says. “More and more it became the focus, not just internally but from the outside. That’s what we were in touch with press about more. That’s what the sales were better on. You could feel the shift from all directions. It was pretty undeniable. We all knew it just was what was happening. We didn’t want to fight it.”
Mexican Summer was born during a Brooklyn label renaissance that also included brands such as Woodsist,Captured Tracks, and Sacred Bones. Rather than compete, the companies fed off each other’s creative energy, working with some of the same musicians and even sharing office space at times.
“The neighborhood is full pretty much with the majority of our peers, and each of us seems to be putting out records that have some significance,” Abrahamsson said. “We all work together in some capacity, or we have throughout the years. It’s a good thing.”
The magnetic camaraderie attracted locals and out-of-towners alike. Fresh & Onlys guitarist Wymond Miles should know; despite deep roots in San Francisco’s garage rock scene, his band released records on Woodsist,Captured Tracks, and Sacred Bones before linking up with Mexican Summer for 2012′s “Long Slow Dance” album.
That’s the approach Abrahamsson had in mind when he and Andres Santo-Domingo spun off Mexican Summer from Kemado five years ago. Since its inception in 2002, Kemado had operated under a traditional model that involved signing bands to multi-record deals and rolling out heavily structured long-lead press campaigns. Abrahamsson was starting to feel constricted by that business model and was looking for a way to merge his omnivorous music geek tendencies with his work.
“I think the whole idea of Mexican Summer really just came because I wanted to try to develop artists in a different way,” Abrahamsson says. “I think there are a lot of records that I was buying or records that were being released maybe out of a bedroom, you know? People that were just putting records out, whether it be a single or a 12-inch or whatever kind of format, and it just felt a little bit less — I don’t know, like maybe less structure and less pressure? And it felt like a good way to develop bands.”
Running the label on personal taste went hand in hand with basing it on personal relationships. Jasamine White-Gluz of Montreal shoegazers No Joy noted Mexican Summer’s “family environment,” while Tamaryn and Ariel Pink collaborator Jorge Elbrecht, who lives right down the street, says he was drawn to the label by his friendship with the staff and respect for their taste. (Elbrecht’s former project, Lansing-Dreiden, recorded for Kemado.)
“It’s a boring answer, but the criteria really is only that we’re passionate about the music — and also the people behind the music, Abrahamsson offers. “Those two things, they have to click for us to feel really behind the project… There is a sound or an aesthetic that exists, but I leave that to people’s imagination a little bit more.”
The result is a record label whose artists feel supported but not smothered by a staff that’s hands-on in the best way. Miles said Abrahamsson requests to hear every Fresh & Onlys demo because he’s so stoked on the band, yet the band is more likely to turn to him for advice than he is to issue imperatives about taking the music a certain direction. It all sounds less like subjection to helicopter parenting than recording for the president of your fan club.
“They’re the best,” No Joy’s White-Gluz says. ”We’ve never worked with a label before, but in your head, you think labels are these people that tell you what to do or kind of like the bad cop to give you deadlines or whatever… For this latest record we got to record at Gary’s Electric, which is the studio in their building, and it was like the best creative experience we’ve ever had.
Having Gary’s Electric available in-house to record projects increases the sense of connection between artist and label; it allows the entire process of creating and selling a record to happen under one roof. (It also doesn’t hurt as an income stream when non-label artists rent it out.) Abrahamsson, Elbrecht, and White-Gluz all rave about the low-pressure, creativity-inducing environment.
Elbrecht in particular was enthused about the results when he and Ariel Pink recorded their well-received 2013 single “Hang On To Life” at Gary’s Electric: “That thing was a pretty magical experience because it was written, recorded and mixed within a weekend, and I just love the way it sounds. We didn’t fuck over it too much, and I just think it was a good lesson for me because of the ease of execution and how happy everyone is with it.
If this all sounds like the platonic ideal of an independent record label, well, yeah. It is. It’s exactly how this whole “indie” thing is supposed to work, and in the case of Mexican Summer, it absolutely has worked.
There is also a commemorative hardcover book coming this December, a limited edition of 1,000 at Co-Op 87 and online. Mexican Summer: Five Years reflects the kind of enthusiasm and creative care that the label has become known for: 250 pages, bound with an embossed cloth cover, with screen-printed craft paper wrap and three interior paper stocks. Most characteristically, the book includes a 10-inch record full of music that won’t be available digitally, including collaborations from Bay Of Pigs (Spiritualized, Soldiers Of Fortune, and Neil Hagerty), Jorge Elbrose (Jorge Elbrecht and Ariel Pink), Autre Ne Veut and Fennesz, BobbTrimble and Quilt, and the Lonely Sailor and Renée Mendoza Haran (members of Total Control, LaceCurtain, and Ashrae Fax). It’s an ideal artifact for a company that continues to thrive on carefully curated quality, personal interaction and boundless enthusiasm for music.
The Fat Angel Sings 