“I’ve been driving through the darkness…through the smoke and fire on the ground”
Lingering at the remains of a campfire before dawn, with the politics of the personal burnt into ash, running his stick through what’s left, Wand singer/guitarist Cory Hanson is reflecting on moments of stepping further into himself, finding the ultimate big sky country on the inside of his skull. It’s a combination of songs and sounds that journey through bleak and broken territory and places of sweet, lush remove and it adds up to the best record he’s been involved in yet: his second solo album, “Pale Horse Rider”.
The session was loose and flowed onto tape well. First takes were mostly best takes. Fuelled with DNA lifted from country-rock cut with native psych and prog strands, Cory Hanson guided his craft toward the cosmic side of the highway, a benevolent alien in ambient fields hazy with heat and synths, early morning fog and space echo spreading the harmonies wide. Pale Horse Rider eyes the city, the country and the fragile environment that holds them both in its hands – a record as much about Los Angeles as it can be with its back to the town and the sun in its eyes; as much about nostalgia as new music can be with the apocalypse over the next rise…
On “Pale Horse Rider”, Cory Hanson moves ceaselessly forward. The old myths weave and waft, the shadows of tombstones flickering in the mirages and the light that lies dead ahead. Watch the video for “Paper Fog” now and get ready to saddle up and ride – reserve your copy before it touches down, on March 12th, 2021.
Hanson directed the “Paper Fog” video with Casey Hanson, and it’s a weird one. In the video, Cory Hanson stands on a sand dune, playing his acoustic guitar and looking nightmarish, with red face paint and unnatural contact lenses. Meanwhile, a disoriented Santa Claus wanders through the desert and then rips his own skin off.
Pale Horse Rider released March 12th, 2021 through Drag City Records
Listening back to this year’s Gold Record, is a sentimental journey; once again, one hears the intuitive coming together forming richly behind Bill Callahan’s titanic voice. Across the stereo spectrum, the gentle conversation of Bill and Matt’s guitars, the subtle percussion of bass and drums, striking notes both decorous and discordant, like the naturally occurring sound meant to accompany and express lives lived everywhere. A fitting addition to Bill’s encompassing vision of our lives together and apart is this new vid for Gold Record track “Breakfast”. Dave Bryant’s colour-saturated video footage vision of digitally distorted interactions plays like like art and life, and the static and disconnect on our screens acts as an unexpected visual analogue to Bill’s tale of a dissolute domestic partnership. Compare and contrast for yourselves! And don’t forget to eat your brekkie! It’s still the most important meal of the day.
“Breakfast” is a track from “Gold Record,” released September 4th, 2020 on Drag City Records.
White Fence’s “For the Recently Found Innocent” . After many years spent wringing all the warped psychedelic magic he could out of a four-track recorder, bedroom-style, White Fence’s Tim Presley moved his operation one step closer to the real world for his 2014 album, For the Recently Found Innocent. It was recorded in Ty Segall’s garage studio, Segall and live bandmember Nick Murray provided drums, and the record was mixed in a real studio. The big question before hearing a single track has to be something like “Does this mean curtains for the wonderfully oddball psych pop Presley has been churning out like a mad lo-fi scientist?” The short and definitive answer is no. The Presley and Segall team is in no rush to “fix” up the sound; at best it is mid-fi, and it retains all the intimate charm of previous records. Maybe it’s a little bit cleaner and easier to imagine hearing on the radio, but beyond that there’s not much change. Well, the occasional country-rock pastiches on the record (“Afraid of What It’s Worth” and “Hard Water”) are a bit different, but still psychedelic in a way Beachwood Sparks wish they could be.
Once you get beyond the trappings of recording styles and collaborators, the music is what’s left and this album is just as packed with gems as any White Fence album. Swirling, trippy rockers like “Wolf Gets Red Faced” and “Anger! Who Keeps You Under?” sit nicely next to relaxed pop songs like the very Donovan-like “Sandra (When the Earth Dies)” and the acoustic folk-rocker “Goodbye Law,” and hard psych blowouts “Paranoid Bait” and “Arrow Man” clear away the cobwebs. There’s even a track, the incredibly hooky “Like That,” that sounds like you could slot it into the middle of the Who’s Sell Out album and no one would think it odd. So basically, it’s another weird, great White Fence album, only the bass is a little clearer, the drums a bit louder, and there’s less tape hiss.
Only die-hard four-track fanatics could complain about that. Wide fends the big river of anglo-American pop music. Hits to the skies! Ears to the mind! A classique of LA underworld sunshine sounds and visions. For The Recently Found Innocent is the sixth studio album by American musician Tim Presley, who goes under the name White Fence. It was released in July 2014 under Drag City Records.
Here we are in 2020, exploding like a dream. Processing today’s numbed nation, considering mysteries of growing up and being older (like a memory of the future from your youth…Processing today’s numbed nation, considering mysteries of growing up and being older (like a memory of the future from your youth (not how you expected, but still your life)), Magik Markers rub upon their roots, art-noise jamming their way into non-linear song-sense and raw, beautiful music all at once. Magik Markers’ new album 2020, Magik Markers went quiet for a few years after releasing Surrender to the Fantasy in 2013, but, after the surprise release of Isolated From Exterior Time: 2020 in July, they’re back for another round with the new 2020 on Drag City Records. Bassist John Shaw trades riffs with guitarist and vocalist Elisa Ambrogio on tracks like “CDROM,” “Born Dead,” and “Machine.” Meanwhile, “That Dream (Shitty Beach)” features vocals from drummer Pete Nolan.
Track from Magik Markers digital EP “Isolated from Exterior Time: 2020”, released on July 3rd, 2020 by Drag City Records.
Knaresborough-raised troubadour Bill Callahan returns with “Gold Record” – an album made whilst he was preparing to tour his previous album Shepherd In A Sheep’s Vest. A lot of the album is culled from tracks he’d written over the years for other artists to sing – all recorded on the hoof in an intuitive and creative burst with some good friends helping flesh the sounds around that rich, warm baritone vocal. Called Gold Record and it’s out September 4th via Drag City Records. The 10-song album features a new version of “Let’s Move to the Country,” from Smog’s 1999 album Knock Knock, and a track named after Ry Cooder.
It’s the Gold Record we always knew Bill Callahan had in him! Last summer, he returned from a silence of years – now, he’s raring to go with another new one already. The abiding humanity of latter-day Callahan is highlighted by dark plumes of caustic wit upending standards of our everyday life and the songs that celebrate it: the job, the wife, the TV, the neighbors. Bill slips easily into his characters, whether they’re easy people or not – and the cross-hatch of their light and shadow is unpredictably entertaining in the manner that belongs only one singer in this whole wide world: we’re still talking about Bill Callahan.
His first record in….uh, well, just over a year, Bill Callahan gives us a Gold Record. They might not all be gold, and fortunately, they’re not all six years apart either. You could probably ALSO call it “Gold Records”: the songs all have a stand-alone feel, the way singles do, for you to have a deep encounter with ’em all of a sudden, a whole relationship, from the start of the song to the finish. And what do you got when you have a record full of singles – and let’s face it, hit singles, at that?.
For Bill, preparing to tour for Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest meant considering being away from home for long stretches of time – months, seasons, maybe as much as a year, who knew? Feeling his oats, Bill pulled out a few sketches from the notebooks and finished them up some. Before he knew it, he was recording them, and in the shuffle, new songs started popping up too.
It happened fast. Basics were recorded live, with Matt Kinsey playing guitars, guitars, guitars and Jaime Zurverza holding it down (then letting it go) on bass. Drums and horns were brought in for a couple songs. Spirits were high! Six out of the ten tunes were done first take; overdubs, when needed, came equally quickly. Listening, one hears the intuitive cohesion coming together richly, back of Bill’s titanic voice spread across the stereo spectrum: the gentle-yet-spirited conversation of Bill and Matt’s guitars, the subtle percussing of bass and drums and oddments of trumpet, woodwind and synth, striking notes decorous and discordant, sounding for all the world like the naturally occurring sound meant to accompany and express lives lived everywhere.
We know how you feel right about now, over midway through this tumultuous year: another week, another…. oh hold up, wait – it’s another Bill Callahan song! With 2020 chock-full of unprecedented, fundamental shifts, it’s only fitting that modern day Bill C would tackle the Gold Record reveal with a similarly conceptual yet seriously positive approach!. Bill’s latest offering, “Protest Song” details a singer-songwriter aghast at the unreality of the musical guest’s cartoonish protest POV on late night TV, leading to a protest song of its own kind. An apex of faux-noir, brooding in bluesy atmosphere up to his armpits, Bill flies in a touch of Bowery Boys-style comedic elevation to let everyone in on the joke, through song.
Releases September 4th, 2020 , Drag City Inc
Gold Record is the follow-up to last year’s Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, which marked Callahan’s first album in six years. He recorded Gold Record with guitarist Matt Kinsey and bassist Jamie Zurverza.
Bill Callahan will share a new song every week leading up to the full album’s release. The tracks arrive on Mondays, starting on June 29th.
L.A. noise-punk outfit No Age have shared Goons Be Gone, the full-length follow-up to 2018’s Snares Like a Haircut, which described as “motion, motion, motion, noise, noise, noise” and “the musical equivalent of burying your head in the sand.” Goons Be Gone is exactly the kind of layered, invigorating clamour we’ve come to expect from No Age, but it still feels fresh. Their offbeat, self-recorded samples mingle seamlessly with their rugged human elements—it’s a cacophonous album, for sure, but don’t discount the grace of its rhythms and mindfulness of its construction
Track from “Goons Be Gone,” available on LP/CS/CD/Digital from Drag City on June 5th, 2020.
No Age have shared a new driving, blissfully energetic punk anthem in their new single “Head Sport Full Face.” The song is accompanied by a video that uses archival footage shot by Aaron Rose (director of 2008’s Beautiful Losers) of the band from a decade ago—stitched together into a nostalgic ode to the blistering, anxious sentiments that still pulsate in their music.
“Head Sport Full Face” finds some cathartic escape in its virulent riffs and raw percussiveness, while singer Dean Spunt’s fading cries dip in and out of a pining dreaminess.
Based in Los Angeles, No Age is the noise rock creation of guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/vocalist Spunt, the former being the one who first pieces together the video when Rose emailed them out of the blue the archived video clips. The result is a poignant blending of the band’s past antics and the current uncertainty of pretty much everything around them—and yet the shots of them blasting through punk tracks under dim venue lights to equally voracious crowds is exactly the kind of tonic for such a mess.
“Head Sport Full Face” is already delirious with grimy-meets-melodic soundscapes, but the newly “discovered” video attached to the song pieces together an appropriate reminder of the kind of energy now missing from the world—of crashing together against the heady weight of that wall of sound with a crowd of people around you.
“He said he was going through old hard drives and he found a folder labeled “No Age”. He opened it and found all this footage from 10 years ago. Maybe he was thinking of making a video for us but never did? He sent us a a link to a whole bunch of footage and he had shot on a small hand held digital video camera. I edited it together for the video. After a few round of notes from Dean and Aaron, this is the video.”
How “Head Sport Full Face” music video was made:
Dean and I have known Aaron Rose for years, we played the wedding procession at his wedding.
A few weeks into the Covid 19 quarantine we got email out of the blue from Aaron. He said he was going through old hard drives and he found a folder labeled “No Age”. He opened it and found all this footage from 10 years ago. Maybe he was thinking of making a video for us but never did? He sent us a a link to a whole bunch of footage and he had shot on a small hand held digital video camera. I edited it together for the video. After a few round of notes from Dean and Aaron this is the video.
Los Angeles noisepunk duo No Age will release their new album, “Goons Be Gone”, on June 5th via Drag City and here’s the Fall-esque “War Dance” that may leave your ears ringing till the record’s actually out.
Drag City Inc. Track from “Goons Be Gone,” available on LP/CS/CD/Digital from Drag City on June 5th, 2020.
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:
You may remember way back in the mid-’00s all new indie bands were required to have the word “wolf” in their names, hence Superwolf, the 2005 collab between Will Oldham and Matt Sweeny. Fifteen years later, Will & Matt brought Superwolf out of retirement to help East Village vegetarian join Superiority Burger and Will’s label, Drag City, with this new jam.
From Superwolf’s home in the sea comes a new, long-awaited exclamation. “You’ll Get Eaten, Too” is a sunbaked song-comet streaking through our suddenly emptied, wide-open skies. Ostensibly a song about meat and the star-crossed destinies of us all, here in the chain of organic life, the song explores affirmations, impermanence and downfall for anything that can evolve and grow (like bacteria….or a virus), in a taut and purposeful three minutes of rock anthem. Atop burgeoning arpeggiation and soaring string bends, Bonnie Billy and Matt Sweeney get ever higher, voicing conflict, contradiction, acceptance and celebration in a manner that invites all to sing with them.
“You’ll Get Eaten, Too” dates from Superwolf’s long middle-period between their initial album release (2005) and the planned release of a new album, which is almost fully rendered, awesome and now awaiting the new world order to be sorted. Will music be marked any more non-essential than it already has? Matt and Bonnie certainly hope so. In the meanwhile, “You’ll Get Eaten, Too” is a (de)commissioned number from a decade back, recorded at the old Rove studio HQ in Shelbyville by Paul Oldham, and with Peter Townsend on hand to round out the sound. With such a message to send, and such energy, “You’ll Get Eaten, Too” has sat it out for too long, waiting to play a role – but the time is now, as a new organic growth spreads unchecked across the nations, truncating life as we know it everywhere. Faced with rallying support on any number of fronts, Bonny and Sweeney are throwing the profit from this single behind NYC’s Superiority Burger, as good a vegetarian/and sometimes vegan option as there is – as well as the beleaguered staff of Drag City, currently facing an uncertain future slinging their own patties. Sing for your support, please!
Featuring artwork with a timely new take on the original Superwolf artwork from original artist Spencer Sweeney, “You’ll Get Eaten, Too” is available for consumption on Bandcamp exclusively for 3 days, for $3 or more – and please note the ‘or more’ here, as anything extra you give will benefit disenfranchised workers struggling to get back to making alternative products for the world to consider (and consume).
GQ clothes-horse and man who saw a darkness Bonnie Prince Billy has his first album of new songs since 2011. This time, he brings the lightness, with help from a Louisville band including picker Nathan Salsburg, ex-Gary Burton Quartet drummer Mike Hyman and singer-songwriter Joan Shelley. Influenced by songwriters John Prine and Tom T. Hall and inspired by the state of Hawaii, I Made a Place finds Bonny using his considerable powers for good.
“This Is Far From Over” features and was edited by Captain Olivia O Wyatt. She just completed a solo transpacific crossing from San Diego to Hawaii on her 34 ft. boat, Juniper. The voyage lasted 23 days and was chronicled on her blog Wilderness of Waves . From Hawaii, she will sail around the world to destinations guided by humpback whale migration patterns. As Olivia traverses the sea, she is creating an ethnographic film exploring the mystery of humpback whale songs from the perspective of indigenous communities who revere them as deities.
The Fat Angel Sings 