Born out of the ashes of The Firebird Band, comes Sunset, the newly-formed two-piece band featuring ChrisBroach of BRAID and The Firebird Band and Steve Znavor of The Firebird Band and Life At Sea. While its forthcoming debut album (which will see a 2017 release) started out as a new record for The Firebird Band, Znavor and Broach decided to put the past to bed and begin fresh with this new body of work that takes the best parts of New Wave, electro-pop & indie and wraps it underneath a shiny new moniker.
“National Monument,” the first piece of music being released from the band’s debut album that was produced, recorded, and mixed by Will Yip (Nothing, Circa Survive, Pity Sex) at Studio 4. With his immediately recognizable vocals over lush, danceable pop, “National Monument” is a fresh and impressive first offering with a dark Halloween-themed video (which pays homage to Poltergeist and Stranger Things, among other things) to complement.
“The thing about this band is that Steve and I share a very similar musical aesthetic – and we approach this band the same way with what we’re trying to achieve,” said Broach about the process of writing these new songs and his longstanding creative relationship with Znavor. “This music is where the real me sits – I’m able to express myself in the way that I want to, the way that I mean to, and together we’re able to explore new ideas without being held to some standard of what someone might expect.”
Sunset’s “National Monument” is the first single off the forthcoming new album (2017).
Chicago scuzz-mongers Twin Peaks have always been heavily indebted to the ’60s — their second album, 2014’s Wild Onion, even referenced the Beach Boys album title in its artwork — but with their third album, Down inHeaven, which came out on Grand Jury Records, they’ve narrowed their focus to one year in particular: 1968. “I’ve been particularly drawn to records that have a more personal feel,” singer-guitarist Cadien James explains in the album’s press material. “Not necessarily lyrically, but in sonic aesthetic, like the Kinks’ Village Green Society, Beatles’ White Album,and Rolling Stones’ Beggar’s Banquet.” All three of those albums were ’68 releases, and indeed, much of Down in Heaven shares the sort of intimate,morning-after feel of those records and guitar sounds of those aforementioned bands.
Twin Peaks an American indie band from Chicago. The band’s musical style is regarded as a mixture of “’60s Garage Rock the band “spends half their time as a chugging power chords and half as a winsome power pop band. The band’s musical style on their debut album has been described as a “sloppy, Replacements inspired rock” while the band’s second album features “a garage-rock sound that touches on everything from fuzz-soaked psych and punk. The band consists of Cadien Lake James (vocals, guitar), Clay Frankel (vocals, guitar), Jack Dolan (vocals, bass), Colin Croom (keys, vocals, guitar) and Connor Brodner (drums).
Like fellow Chicago rockers Twin Peaks’ latest release “Down in Heaven,” Flesh Panthers are taking a step back from brash garage energy in favor of something a little more “mature” (heavy emphasis on the quotes). With more atmospheric moodiness in the album lead-in and outro, “Willow’s Weep” is much more meticulous and coherent than straight garage rock assault, bringing to mind late-60s Rolling Stones more so than 70s punk. It surprises me every time I listen to it, because they’ve made such a remarkable transition from their high-energy garage punk into these really beautiful, compelling rock songs.
Like fellow Chicago rockers Twin Peaks’ latest release “Down in Heaven,” Flesh Panthers are taking a step back from brash garage energy in favor of something a little more “mature” (heavy emphasis on the quotes). With more atmospheric moodiness in the album lead-in and outro, “Willow’s Weep” is much more meticulous and coherent than straight garage rock assault, bringing to mind late-60s Rolling Stones more so than 70s punk. It surprises me every time I listen to it, not because I didn’t think they were capable (their live versions of some of my favorite songs by the likes of Velvet Underground and Bob Dylan showcase their tightness and versatility), but because they’ve made such a remarkable transition from their high-energy garage punk into these really beautiful, compelling rock songs.
I really love Flesh Panthers. They’re a brilliant inside secret of the Chicago rock scene that deserves far wider exposure. With “Willow’s Weep,” they’re proving they’re a force to be reckoned with beyond our city walls.
They’re—in a word ’twinkly.’ They have these complex guitar parts and very piercing guitars and riffs. You can tell that Ratboys grew out of screamo house show music culture. They have little vestiges of that. But they also have a very matured alt, almost country sound. There’s definitely some folk thrown in there. But Julia’s voice takes on this Best Coast, art-rock quality. She was telling me about how she loves Jeff Tweedy. We ended up talking about that for a while, because damn, I love Wilco so much. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is an alt-country record, and I see that same experimental vibe in Ratboys. And I love it so much. Watching them perform is just insane. They’ll have one song that’s a vibey, low dynamic song, and close with one that’s just feedback and chaos. They were engaging with the audience so much. You could tell the crowd was perpetually surprised by what was happening—just like I was when I listened to this record the first time. There’s a lot going on, and I really love it.
Chicago-born-and-bred singer-songwriter Michael McDermott, who released his major-label debut 620 W. Surf back in 1991. Michael has a new song and album titled “Willow Springs,” the forthcoming album of the same name, which drops June 17th
Writer Stephen King is a mega fan of McDermott’s,even going so far to say, “Not since I first heard Bruce Springsteen singing “Rosalita” had I heard someone who excited me so much as a listener, who turned my dials so high, who just made me feel so fucking happy to have ears.”
“Willow Spring” is a place that I had moved to in order to extricate myself from the things that were killing me. To confront myself: my morality, my mortality, fatherhood, losing my own father, addiction, sobriety. It’s for the hustlers, the harlots, the harbingers, the foolish, the forsaken, the underfed, the lost, the downtrodden, the misdirected, the resurrected, the confused, and the abused. For those who are just dog-tired of feeling dog-tired and those who come to the realization that at the heart of it all, the answers were right there all along.”
Chicago garage band (and Hype Hotel alums) Twin Peaks announce their third album, which—if this poppier, Americana-infused single is any indication—finds them “shaking off their rough edges to embrace a more classic, polished sound,”
From the forthcoming 3rd LP from Twin Peaks, “Down In Heaven.”
To be released May 13th on Grand Jury (N. America) / CommunionRecords(ROW)
As the Chicago-based quintet gears up for gigs and festival appearances abroad, here is a look at material from their latest album, The Catastrophist , The ghost of Barbara Lewis’ Hello Stranger haunts the melody and melancholic sentiment of Yonder Blue, one of the jazz-inflected highlights of Tortoise’s latest album, The Catastrophist. The still sense of sorrow is expertly expressed by Yo La Tengo’s Georgia Hubley on vocals, and now in its video, premiered below.
“When I listened to Yonder Blue over and over again I felt a sense of longing and melancholy,” said its director Joe Martinez. “[I have] a feeling of infinite want or a yearning. So I decided to personify this feeling into a character for the song’s video. A person in pursuit of her identity and a journey that has the feeling of being incomplete; a snapshot of an existential journey and a moment to revel in the undefined qualities of life.” Tortoise’s 2016 European tour includes a sold-out gig at Village Underground, on 23rd February, and appearances at Primavera Sound festival in June and ATP Iceland festival in July.
While he was writing The River in early 1979, Bruce Springsteen went through a crisis with no real solution—a paradox that happens to any 30-year-old ready to let go of his ego and start thinking about the world at large. He knew that being a creative person and singing these songs just wasn’t enough. He wanted more to become the stories he was telling, and immerse himself in the history and spirit of this world he was building. “I don’t want to be an observer,” Springsteen said in the HBO documentary The Ties That Bind, which shares the name of the just-released and expanded version of The River. “I want to be an active part of it some way. How do people come together, fall apart…Part of The River was trying to find the courage to put my feet in, jump in with both feet, and experience those things myself.”
Bruce recorded 53 songs in total during The River sessions, 20 of which wound up on the original album, which could be easily divided between “the fast ones” and “the slow ones”. Before the ballads, Springsteen would offer some background about the songs; for the gutting “Independence Day”, he said he wrote it when he became “startled by his parents’ humanity. All you can see is the adult compromise they had to make. All I could see was the world they seemed lock into. All I could feel was the desire to escape that world.”
During these moments, you felt the struggle that Springsteen felt when he wanted to do more than just write about these things. “I wanted this album to be big enough to be like life,” he said during the show, and the moments whereThe River reached that size were its slower ones like “Stolen Car” and “Point Blank,” during which the scope of love felt larger than ever. Springsteen’s focus performing these songs was unwavering, and it was impressive to see the bandleader linger on such mature melancholy.
The E Street Band covered the album’s dynamic range. There was the doo-wop intro to “I Wanna Marry You” with sidekick Steve Van Zandt, who was Springsteen’s trusted foil all night. “Cadillac Ranch” burned fossil fuels with impunity until it drove right off a cliff, belching smoke. “You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)” brought Eddie Cochran swagger and “Sherry Darling” a touch of the Coasters’ humor. “I’m a Rocker” with its roller-rink organ riff suggested an outtake from the ’60s garage-rock collection “Nuggets,” and “The Price You Pay” evoked the ringing 12-string guitars of the Byrds. The slow-burn soul of “Drive All Night” crashed into the Hank Williams-like plaintiveness of “Wreck on the Highway.”
Springsteen hewed strictly to the sequencing of the original album, though for the purposes of an arena concert the pacing might have been better served if he went into shuffle mode. But Springsteen was keen to revisit the album’s themes, and they have not faded with age. If anything, the issues that obsessed the singer — faith, family, fidelity — loom larger than ever.
Just as Bruce Springsteen paid tribute to his early supporter David Bowie with a cover of “Rebel Rebel” at his River Tour 2016-opening gig in Pittsburgh last week, the E Street rocker also remembered Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey Tuesday night at Chicago’s United Center with a moving, acoustic rendition of “Take It Easy”...
Soundcheck:
Take It Easy
Meet Me In The City
Human Touch
The Ties That Bind
Setlist:
1. Meet Me In The City
2. The Ties That Bind
3. Sherry Darling
4. Jackson Cage
5. Two Hearts (W/ It Takes Two ending)
6. Independence Day
7. Hungry Heart
8. Out in the Street
9. Crush On You
10. You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)
11. I Wanna Marry You (W/ Here She Comes intro)
12. The River
13. Point Blank
14. Cadillac Ranch
15. I’m A Rocker
16. Fade Away
17. Stolen Car
18. Ramrod
19. The Price You Pay
20. Drive All Night
21. Wreck on the Highway
22. Night
23. No Surrender (False start twice)
24. Cover Me
25. Shes The One
26. Human Touch
27. The Rising
28. Thunder Road
29. Take It Easy
30. Born To Run
31. Dancing in the Dark
32. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
33. Shout
SideOneDummy Records has been on a roll the last couple years, having put out some of my favorite records . Their latest release comes in the form of Delusion Moon, a series of surf- and pysch-rock influenced jams from a Chicago trio who just seem to get more and more weird and beautiful every time I hear something by them. What’s most striking about Meat Wave is their high caliber of innovative songwriting, with moments on Delusion Moon more closely resembling something from the brain of the Beach Boys than the Misfits. But, in the end, it’s the band’s aggressive performances and politically-enraged tunes that make this one of the year’s finest punk efforts.
The Fat Angel Sings 