If 2020 was a year for flexibility, then 2021 is the year where everyone will be showing off what they’ve been up to. Wolf van Elfmand has a head start — the author of the sweetly earnest tune “Flexible Cowboy Man” has his new album “All Blue”, to show for his quarantine pains. Van Elfmand is also from NYC, leaving cowboy yoga behind in Denver for whatever path awaits him here in the five boroughs. I talked the album up in last week’s podcast episode, but I wanted you all to get another listen to the bluesy “Way Down in Denver.”
While most of the album is comprised of sweet folksy blues, All Blue picks up when Van Elfmand is giving vent to a little spleen.
“This is the first full-length record that I wrote, produced and mixed. The conception of the album occurred when I started to learn how to sequence drum parts on my recording software. I was listening to artists like JJ Cale who frequently used drum machines and wanted to take a stab at it,” Van Elfmand . “At the onset of quarantine I had written a bunch of new songs in April. Without being able to play with other musicians, I wanted to find a project to give them life. This record is truly a product of 2020. While shacked up at a house in Northwest Michigan I spent the month of May recording the majority of the album. The bass parts and pedal steel were done remotely and the backing vocals were then added for a final touch. It’s a guitar-heavy album that lends itself more to a vibe than other lyric-centric stuff I’ve released.”
Indeed, the album is best experienced on a foggy day with a nice cup of tea: Van Elfmand’s hazy sadness truly captures those early days of spring 2020, and the solace we all continue to need.
Wolf van Elfmand writes songs and plays the guitar. His music explores genres within the Americana realm from finger-pickingfolk to alternative country to good ol’ fashioned rock & roll. As a solo artist and producer, Wolf’s albums contain different ensembles and players. With no touring in sight, Van Elfmand has plans to release some new music in 2021 so keep your eyes peeled and ears perked.
“All Blue” · Wolf Van Elfmand Released on: February 12th, 2021
With recording as basically the only medium in which to experience new rock bands these days, the full-throated belting and high energy antics which work on-stage aren’t always the way to tap into an audience’s feelings. The truth is, the opposite tactic does the trick. Today, from our homes, we seek connection, communion, and acknowledgement that all this isolation is hard. And giving into the gloom – even just for the length of one, intimately recorded EP – can be more of a cure than ignoring the darkness by pumping your fist.
“All Night” was fully recorded and produced in Loveland, Colorado, though IsadoraEden’s residential history includes New Orleans, Brooklyn and her current home, Denver. The soft elocution in her young, muted alto reflects this well-travelled soul; one who’s stories we believe regardless of how few words they contain or how many years they took to accrue. Together with co-writer/band-mate Sumner Erhard, Eden builds thoughtful musical structures and well-woven instrumental textures throughout.
All Night’s producer, mixer and mastering engineer Corey Coffman (Gleemer, Slow Caves, Corsicana) should be given due credit for framing Eden’s minimalistic, melodic exhilations with just the right amount of dramatic rock beauty. Like a shoegaze-y Soccer Mommy cloaked in timid sincerity, Eden’s voice offers sad solidarity to those who will listen, while she, Erhard and Coffman carry her shy messages on the shoulders of stately guitars, dignified drums and echoey atmosphere.
Fire Talk is excited to announce the signing & new EP from Cindygod, the project which saw Gauntlet Hair’s Andy Rauworth and Craig Nice reuniting, are announcing their second effort, following their 2018 Demos EP, under the new name with EP2 out August 14th on the label. The lead single “Rhys” takes a darkly sinister route, with Rauworth’s ghostly vocals flickering between Nice’s driving rhythms, culminating in a potent post-punk-meets-new-wave warped reverie. “Rhys” establishes the new direction Cindygod are taking with confoundingly pummeling rhythms cut with oscillating riffs that lend a sonic unease to the lyrical unease at the heart of the first single. EP2 is full of familiar yet skewed sonics, simulacrums of dream pop sit atop menacing angular guitars while the occasional yelps from Rauworth agitate between dreamy synths. The sublimely idiosyncratic amalgam of genres on Cindygod’s EP2 points not only to how far the duo have come since disbanding Gauntlet Hair in 2013 but the new EP succinctly soundtracks our ongoing descent into a fully realized dystopia.
EP2 is the second EP from Cindygod the new project is due out July 10th 2020 on Fire Talk. Stereogum noted 2018’s EP1 filled with “new wave shimmers and hooks… a sort of ramshackle and scrappy charm.” The new EP doubles down on the hollowed-out saccharine sound of Rauworth’s recent work, while retaining glitchy agitated electronics that pierce together the best of dream pop, post-punk and indie nostalgia. Fans of Gauntlet Hair rejoice! Cindygod is an honest creative extension of some of those original ideas, a little darker & sinister around the edges.
Conveniently enough the only song available at this moment(“Rhys”) happens to be absolutely stellar, though if you’re lucky enough to have already heard “Not Right” you might agree that it combines the magic of “Simple” and “Top Bunk” into yet another banger from Andy and Craig. Impossible to pick a favourite track but then if you’re a longtime fan of Gauntlet Hair it’s a familiar and welcome problem to have. Demos B-Sides in due time?.
As Midwife, Denver-based multi-instrumentalist Madeline Johnston plays what she describes as “heaven metal,” or emotive music about devastation. Johnston began developing the experimental pop project in 2015 while a resident of beloved Denver DIY space Rhinoceropolis. The venue/co-op started in the early aughts and nurtured local artists until 2016, when its doors were shuttered due to high tensions surrounding the safety of DIY spaces (not coincidentally following the horrific Ghost Ship fire in Oakland). Residents were displaced around Denver and artists like Midwife were forced to start over.
However, it was at Rhinoceropolis that Madeline became close with Colin Ward, an artistic confidant and friend to whom her new album, “Forever”, is dedicated. Madeline comments, “He was my roommate and was the embodiment of that place [Rhinoceropolis] in a lot of ways. We became really close friends there. I was always learning so much from him, about life and being an artist. He was an amazing teacher and friend to me.” When Ward passed away unexpectedly in 2018, she turned towards sound to express the indescribable feelings that partnered with her grief.
These mournful sounds ultimately developed into her new album, “Forever”. The 6-song LP is a latticework of soft focus guitars and precise melodies– anthems of light piercing through grey clouds of drone. On the track “C.R.F.W.,” we hear Colin Ward reading a poem that speaks of a leaf falling from a tree in autumn: “imagine the way a breeze feels against your leaf body while you finally don’t have to hold on anymore.” Johnston responds with slowly radiating tones, branches stretching out to hold the leaf one last time. “I wanted to write him a letter. I wanted to make something for him in his memory,” Madeline says of Forever.
With sometime on his hands ever since he recognized the riskiness of scheduling a tour with Crazy Horse in the current climate, Neil Young has used that time to create an updated version of his song “Shut it Down,” from their 2019 album,” Colorado” On April 9th, he released a video for “Shut it Down 2020.” In announcing the video, Young wrote: “These are uncertain times. I wish you all the best as you care for our sick, the young and old who we love so much.
“Sending the best wishes to all the health care and government workers all over the world, to all the scientists who will learn and share with us the best ways to ensure survival in our world challenged. Let’s all work together and stay positive that we will find a way. With love to all, in all walks of life, all political persuasions, all colors. We will succeed working together for the good of our world as we are here together, hanging in the balance of nature.”
In early March, just two weeks after indicating that he was considering a 2020 tour with Crazy Horse, the classic rock legend indicated that the “barn tour,” as he described it, was on hold, due to these “uncertain times.” Young was referring to the Coronavirus outbreak.
According to a March 7th post on his website https://neilyoungarchives.comNeil Young Archives site, the veteran singer-songwriter-musician noted, “We are looking at this uncertain world with our fully booked Crazy Horse Barn Tour, ready to announce the first stage.
“The last thing we want is to put people at risk, especially our older audience. Nobody wants to get sick in this pandemic.” Young closed the post by writing, “Sending best wishes to all of the health care and government workers in all of the world, to all the scientists who will learn and share with us the best ways to ensure survival in our world challenged.”. From Young’s late February description, the shows would take place not in actual barns but in “old arenas.” The news of the possible tour came only days after announcing that he would not be touring at all in 2020.
Young’s full statement in late Feb. was as follows: “We have been looking at booking the Crazy Horse BARN Tour,” Neil wrote. “Many of the old places we used to play are gone now, replaced by new coliseums we have to book (sp) year in advance and we don’t want to go to anyway. That’s not the way we like to play. It sounds way to much like a real job if you have to book it and wait a year, so we have decided to play old arenas – not the new sports facilities put up by corporations for their sports teams. Largely soulless, these new buildings cost a fortune to play in.”
“We wanted to play in a couple of months because we feel like it,” Young added. “To us it’s not a regular job. We don’t like the new rules.” Young then listed a number of arenas in which he used to perform but have since been demolished, and then listed arenas still in existence. “If you are looking for us on our Crazy Horse Barn Tour, we will hopefully be in one of the existing arenas,” he said at the end of his statement.
Hi, this is Neil. Link to the NYA info-card for this song with press, documents, manuscripts, photos, videos. Look around NYA for fun and listening! ALL my music in high resolution at https://neilyoungarchives.com/info-ca.
Official Movie Trailer for the new Neil Young Film – ‘Mountaintop’ IN THEATERS ACROSS NORTH AMERICA ON OCTOBER 22, 2019 AND IN EUROPE AND SOUTH AMERICA ON NOVEMBER 18TH.
The documentary goes behind the scenes of the making of ‘Colarado’, Young’s first album in seven years with Crazy Horse. Earlier this year, the singer-songwriter announced that he would be postponing the rest of his 2019 tour plans to focus on completing 15 unfinished film projects.
One of those films was a ‘making of’ documentary that was filmed to tie into the release of ‘Colarado’, which will be Crazy Horse’s first new album since 2012’s ‘Psychedelic Pill’, and according to Young, the record will stand up to some of his previous classics albums.
“We believe we have a great Crazy Horse record and one to stand alongside ‘Everybody Knows This is Nowhere’, ‘Rust Never Sleeps’, ‘Psychedelic Pill’ and all the others,” he said back in April.
Neil Young first revealed Crazy Horse’s return to the studio in April. He announced ‘Colorado’ would arrive in October, and feature “10 new songs ranging from around 3 minutes to over 13 minutes.” Besides CD and digital versions of the record, there will also be a double vinyl release comprising three sides of music and a 7” exclusive single not on the album.
Following songs ‘Rainbow of Colors’ and ‘Milky Way’, Neil Young and Crazy Horse released a short instrumental called ‘A letter from us’ last month.
With Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s new album “Colorado” arriving on October 25th, the reunited rockers have shared “Rainbow of Colors,” the second preview from the upcoming LP. It’s a bright, optimistic tune calling for unity in the age of Trump. Much like the previous Colorado single “Milky Way,” it is quite mellow by the usually loud standards of Crazy Horse.
“The idea of the song is that we all belong together,” Young wrote on his Neil Young Archives website. “Separating us into races and colors is an idea whose time has passed. With the Earth under the direct influence of Climate Chance, we are in crisis together needing to realize we are all one. Our leaders continually fail to make this point. Preoccupied with their own agendas, they don’t see the forest for the trees.”
Colorado is the first Neil Young and Crazy Horse album since 2012’s Psychedelic Pill, and the first since guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro retired from the group. He has been replaced by Nils Lofgren, who has played with Young going all the way back to After The Gold Rush in 1970. This new lineup of the band first played together on a California theater tour in 2018 and they cut Colorado at Studio in the Clouds near Telluride, Colorado earlier this year.
An arena tour was originally booked for later this year, but Young said he was pushing it back so he could focus on a series of archival concert films and documentaries. And in a recent note, Young hinted that he’s already looking ahead to Crazy Horse’s next record. “Another one is coming,” he wrote. “I can feel it. It’s a new generation for the Horse. Long live the Horse!”
Official Audio for “Rainbow of Colors” from ‘Colorado’ the new album from Neil Young with Crazy Horse available on October 25th.
Yes, Neil Young has returned with his legendary backing band Crazy Horse, for their first album together since 2012’s well-received Psychedelic Pill. “We believe we have a great Crazy Horse album,” Young wrote recently on his Archives website back in April. “One to stand alongside the albums Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Rust Never Sleeps, Sleeps With Angels, Psychedelic Pill and all the others.” Big talk, but based on first taste “Milky Way” — almost as haunted and vulnerable as Young’s unnerving recent New York Times profile — it’s at least got a shot at living up to it.
Official audio for Milky Way from Neil Young with Crazy Horse from their upcoming new album ‘Colorado’ Available on October 25th.
Ten years into the life of Quaker City Night Hawks, David Matsler and Sam Anderson had to stop and think about what they were doing. After three albums of fuzzed-out blues-rock, the last of which — 2016’s El Astronauta — was a sci-fi-themed concept record, Quaker City Night Hawks needed a new drummer and bassist. So they did what any self-respecting rock band would do: They got heavier — and weirder.
“We have a completely different set of weapons now and that opens so many doors for us,” says Anderson, who shares singing and guitar-playing duties with Matsler, from a hotel room in Wichita, Kansas. He’s sitting between Matsler and the band’s new drummer, Aaron Haynes, all three of whom are wearing sunglasses, even though the blinds are drawn behind them. “As many different genres as we touch on — as scatterbrained as we are — it’s going to get even worse. I’m excited about that.”
There are no overt themes on Quaker City Night Hawks latest LP, titled simply QCNH, other than that of a band that’s found its literal and metaphorical grooves. But the album, the band’s second with Nashville label Lightning Rod Records, is the Forth Worth, Texas, quartet’s most musically ambitious, scrubbing away the overdriven guitars of records past for a cleaner, rougher sound. There may be fewer UFO sightings, but Quaker City Night Hawks stretches into several spaced-out interludes. It even includes some honest-to-goodness ballads.
Those last two additions should come as no surprise for a pair of guys who got their start playing open-mic nights in Lubbock a decade and a half ago. “We were pulling our hair out on the songwriter circuit, getting paid in soup and coffee instead of cash,” remembers Anderson. He and Matsler eventually migrated east to Fort Worth, where, after playing in separate projects, they came together to form QCNH. “You do that songwriter stuff so long that you get this pent-up aggression where you just want to be fucking loud for a little bit and not care if people can talk over it — because they can’t,” says Anderson.
That, in essence, has been the band’s driving influence ever since. Getting started, however, meant learning how to stretch things out, with weekly residencies that lasted three or four hours at a time. Anderson remembers one particular “shithole” bar where they had one of their first recurring gigs. “We’d do two hour-and-a-half to two-hour sets with wet T-shirt contests and turtle races in between. They’d have 30-cent hurricanes,” he says, laughing and shaking his head. “We really got to test how badly we wanted to be in a rock & roll band at that point.”
Though Haynes, who also plays drums for the Texas Gentlemen, is new to the lineup since El Astronauta, he’s hardly new to QCNH. “I have a weird perspective because I was there when this band started,” he says, pointing out that he’d played with Anderson in a previous band. Not surprisingly, Haynes has slotted in with ease. “It’s fun to play drums in a slightly more primal way. Really, that’s how they were intended. The nuance of drums is great, but sometimes you just need to tell ’em what you’re thinking, and the one way to do that is to play hard, play heavy.”
Together with new bassist Maxwell Smith, Haynes has helped lock in a tight rhythm section on QCNH, one that swings as well as swaggers. As a point of reference, the new lineup reprises “Fox in the Henhouse,” originally the leadoff track to their second album, Honcho. Haynes’ fills and hi-hats are especially prominent on the sludgy “Hunter’s Moon,” but never is the new dynamic more apparent than on “Suit in the Back,” a souped-up boogie about the unglamorous side of being a touring band — i.e. getting busted for drugs. “That, for me, is the closest we’ve gotten to this dance-y, even disco-type thing, mixed with rock & roll,” says Anderson.
Life on the road pops up on a far different song, “Colorado,” a dreamlike ballad written by Matlser that weaves in and out of border crossings and desert wastelands, tinged by the enticing, far-off mirage of packing it all in and heading for California. Matlser stretches things out even further on the surreal “Elijah Ramsey,” a dystopian prog-rock epic that gets turned inside-out by its companion piece, the comparatively jagged “Grackle King,” which together form a 10-minute suite on the back end of the record.
Not that the band is about to retreat from the pure, unadulterated fun of making lots and lots of noise. If anything, they’re ready to double down, feeling all the more emboldened by their first trip to Europe, where they played in support of fellow Southern rockers Blackberry Smoke and will be returning later in the year. Playing overseas, they found audiences who weren’t so quick to compare them to ZZ Top or to call them Lynyrd Skynyrd lookalikes.
Through their first three albums, the group divined a signature style what Pitchfork described as “an expansive vision of rock ‘n’ roll, one that cherrypicks from various folk traditions: punk, rockabilly, blues, whatever they might have on hand or find in the trash.” The sound is a front-heavy, groovy, fire & brimstone punk-blues overlying a dynamic and metaphysical roots rock. On their fourth album “Human Question”, the Denver trio zooms out to a more vast and accessible stylistic and spiritual universe. The 38-minute thrill ride generates growth and cathartic self-reflection for audience and performer alike. If there was justice in this world, the Yawpers would be the savior that rock-n-roll didn’t know it was waiting for.
Following their critically acclaimed and meticulously plotted concept album Boy in a Well (set in World War I France, concerning a mother who abandoned her unwanted newborn), the Yawpers created Human Question with a contrasting immediacy. The album was written, rehearsed, and recorded over a two-month period with Reliable Recordings’ Alex Hall (Cactus Blossoms, JD McPherson) at Chicago’s renowned Electrical Audio. The band tracked live in one room, feeding off the collective energy and adding few overdubs. Through the new approach, ten songs connect with an organically linked attitude and style.
On Human Question,lead singer and guitarist Nate Cook writes his way out of trauma, rather than wallowing in it, as was his self-destructive formula in the past. “I wanted to take a crack at using these songs as therapy, really,” Cook said. “I think I’ve always been inclined to write more towards the dregs of my psyche, and explore my depressions and trauma, rather than describe a way out.” The self-reflection engages the band’s trademark dangerous, emotionally fraught choogle, and the listener is constantly kept on edge, not knowing when to brace for a bombastic impact or lean back and enjoy the ride.
The band skillfully balances that Jekyll and Hyde formula. In “Child of Mercy” guitarist Jesse Parmet revs the engines with a disintegrating blues guitar framework, backed by a breakneck beat by new drummer Alex Koshak. Eventually, the tune whips into a cyclone of distortion and Cook’s sustained falsetto, as he howls, “Won’t you please wake me up when the night is over.” For such a raw and kinetic sound, the Yawpers are never stuck in one gear for long. They deftly navigate shifting dynamics and moods, and if you squint your ears, the Sun Studios’ Million Dollar Quartet transmogrifies into the ghosts of Gun Club, Jon Spencer, and Bo Diddley.
“Dancing on my Knees” is the direction that Dan Auerbach could’ve taken Black Keys: raw yet poppy, outsider while mainstream, danceable while thought-provoking(lyrics include “It wasn’t what I asked for / But it’s exactly what I need / You’ve said there’s growth in agony / And we finally agree”). There are moments of blunt Stooges raw power (“Earn Your Heaven”), shaker rhythms behind ‘70s psychedelic rock(“Human Question”), and the salacious boogie of Zeppelin (“Forgiveness Through Pain”). Through it all, Human Question is impossible to confuse with anything else—it’s distinctly the Yawpers.
“Man As Ghost”, “Can’t Wait,” and “Where the Winters End” reveal a softer and contemplative side, blending touches of modern Americana and folk music. In these moments of sonic respite, Cook and company display their range through acoustic guitar strums, relaxed and aired-out tempos, and big yet dialed-in vocal runs. But, no song exhibits the band’s extended capabilities like “Carry Me,” a Gospel-soul burner that builds from hushed to impassioned, with the lead singer begging for salvation in full open-throated fervor by song’s end.
Human Question isn’t meant for the meek or casual listener. It will make you dance, mosh, sing along, and dig deep into your soul. Some people lament that rock-n-roll is dead. They just haven’t heard the Yawpers yet.
The Yawpers Are:
Nate Cook , Jesse Parmet , Alex Koshak
The Fat Angel Sings 