Jenny Owen Youngs grew up in the forests of northern New Jersey and now lives in Los Angeles, where she spends much of her time writing with and for other artists, making podcasts, and working on her next record. Her songs have appeared in Bojack Horseman, Weeds, Suburgatory, Switched at Birth, and elsewhere. If you need her, she’s probably in Skyrim right now.
Okay so I recorded a cover of “Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry because it’s one of my very favourite modern love songs, and it has been making me feel feelings for the full duration of its decade upon this earth.
It was my great pleasure to record this (remotely, in quarantine, via Zoom hangs and shared Pro Tools sessions) with John Mark Nelson, who produced and mixed the song with great instincts and great sensitivity. Mastered by the wonderful Jett Galindo at The Bakery.Canada’s sweetheart Devan Power designed the artwork, and incorporated a photograph made by America’s sweetheart, Tucker Leary.
Marilyn Manson returns with his eleventh studio album We Are Chaos via Loma Vista Recordings. Co-produced by Manson and Grammy Award winner Shooter Jennings [Brandi Carlile, Tanya Tucker], the ten-track opus was written, recorded, and finished before the global pandemic.
Manson’s painting, Infinite Darkness, which can be seen on the album cover, was specifically created to accompany the music. His fine art paintings continue to be shown all over the world, including gallery and museum exhibitions from Miami to Vienna to Moscow.
Manson says of the album, “When I listen to We Are Chaos now, it seems like just yesterday or as if the world repeated itself, as it always does, making the title track and the stories seem as if we wrote them today. This was recorded to its completion without anyone hearing it until it was finished. There is most definitely a side A and side B in the traditional sense. But just like an LP, it is a flat circle and it’s up to the listener to put the last piece of the puzzle into the picture of songs.
“This concept album is the mirror Shooter and I built for the listener – it’s the one we won’t stare into. There are so many rooms, closets, safes and drawers. But in the soul or your museum of memories, the worst are always the mirrors. Shards and slivers of ghosts haunted my hands when I wrote most of these lyrics.
“Making this record, I had to think to myself: ‘Tame your crazy, stitch your suit. And try to pretend that you are not an animal’ but I knew that mankind is the worst of them all. Making mercy is like making murder. Tears are the human body’s largest export.”
Lomelda—the indie project of Hannah Read—has shared her new full-length LP “Hannah”, out now via Double Double Whammy. Hannah follows her 2019 album “M for Empathy” as well as her covers EP with Hovvdy. In usual Lomelda fashion, lead single “Wonder” is cathartic and vulnerable. It’s soft, but it builds into something powerful and poignant, clocking in at just over two minutes. The album was recorded in a studio in Silsbee, Texas, over a period of a year.
Last year, Lomelda (aka Texas-born, L.A.-based singer/songwriter Hannah Read) released an out-of-the-blue album called “M for Empathy”. As its title suggests, the 11-song project explored empathy in all its forms through various sung stories and mini vignettes. But the album was lacking something—perhaps time: At only 16-minutes-long, it felt like we didn’t really receive the full scope of Read’s studies on the topic. Thankfully, there’s Hannah, Read’s charming M for Empathy follow-up that arrived last month. Where M for Empathy was shadowy and finicky at times, Hannah is more assured and robust (though it wouldn’t be “robust” compared to most other rock music today—Read’s voice is as hushed and restrained as ever). Hannah again finds Read thinking about empathy, compassion and human understanding. But this time, there’s more for the listener to unpack.
Performed by Hannah Read, Tommy Read, Andrew Hulett, Charlie Martin, Andrew Stevens, Zachary Daniel, Adan Carlo and Cody Green
Tomberlin, the Los Angeles via Lousiville, KY artist, has announced a new EP titled “Projections” with a Busy Philipps-directed video for its lead single “Wasted.” The EP, which was produced by Alex G (Alex Giannascoli) and his bandmate Sam Acchione, continues the arc of her critically acclaimed 2018 debut, At Weddings. The rich vocal harmonies and guitar lines that made At Weddings so riveting still provide the EP’s foundation, but new percussive backing and instrumental flourishes open the path forward for Tomberlin.
What hides in the fog that keeps people apart, and what does it take to cut through it? These questions hang heavily over Sarah Beth Tomberlin’s music, whose hushed and intimate tones orbit answers as much as they savour the unanswerable. To be in relation to another human being is to engage with a deep mystery: We are all fundamentally alone, siloed into confusing bodies, and yet occasionally we find someone who lets us feel as if we weren’t. Tomberlin, the Louisville native who recently relocated to Los Angeles, delights in articulating and amplifying that mystery, picking out its details and marveling at its scale. In singing her aloneness she soothes it, and extends a hand to others reckoning with their own solitude–a paradox that warms her spectral songs.
Tomberlin’s new Projections EP continues the arc of her critically acclaimed 2018 debut At Weddings, weaving new collaborators and new techniques into her signature dusky milieu. Since the LP’s release, Tomberlin has toured with Pedro the Lion, Andy Shauf, American Football, and Alex G, played a Tiny Desk concert for NPR, and given a riveting performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! The five-song EP, capped with a cover of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone’s stunning “Natural Light,” reflects this period of intensive growth and self-discovery. “I wrote these songs while getting to know myself outside of people’s perceived notions of who I was,” says Tomberlin. “I just started being like, What am I interested in? What do I want out of relationships and friendships? What am I looking for that I don’t have in myself already?”
The rich vocal harmonies and guitar lines that made At Weddings so riveting still provide the EP’s foundation, but new percussive backing and instrumental flourishes open the path forward for Tomberlin. After touring the US with Alex G and playing new songs for the band in their shared green room, Tomberlin reached out to Alex Giannascoli and bandmate Sam Acchione to produce the EP’s four original tracks. She recorded her new songs in Giannascoli’s Philadelphia apartment alongside Acchione and frequent collaborator Molly Germer. The fleshed out sound lends a sense of urgency to tracks like “Wasted,” an uptempo romp across the kind of thorny relationship that withholds as much as it gives, and “Sin,” a song that applies reclaimed Christian imagery to an unorthodox romantic partnership. “I don’t mind sinning if it’s with you,” Tomberlin sings against washes of violin and brushed cymbals. “Say a prayer/Lay your hands on me/I just wanna be clean.”
“I wrote ‘Sin’ while living at my parents’ home and exploring my queerness, but afraid to make it too obvious,” Tomberlin says. “It’s definitely using imagery that gets used against queer people, but making a joke out of it. That’s a thing with queer people. We all use humour to deflect our pain.”
Tomberlin’s ability to pan across the general disaster of human relationality and then zoom in on an effervescent moment of pure intimacy is one of her greatest strengths as a songwriter. Queer people get shuttered under the label of sin by the wider world, and yet despite that brand they steal moments of love and healing for themselves. Love is, generally speaking, a wellspring of pain and dysfunction, but look at the moments where it works. “It’s all sacrifice and violence, the history of love,” Tomberlin sings on EP opener “Hours,” “But remember when we stayed up/And took turns playing songs?” The camera zooms in, and magic alights on the people who suddenly take up the whole frame.
You can refuse the mystery of how people manage to be among each other, or you can delight in what it offers, no matter how fleeting. Tomberlin opts for delight every time. Hers are songs for people who, despite the turmoil of the world at large, despite the weight of its sadness, unshield themselves and fall into wonder.
New EP out October 16th. Produced by Alex G and bandmate Sam Acchione.
“£Projections” comes out digitally on October 16th, with a picture disc vinyl pressing following on November 13th. You can pre-order the limited run picture disc today at the Saddle Creek Records Store.
Harmony Tividad and Avery Tucker aka Girlpool have shared a new remix EP featuring versions of their song “Like I’m Winning It” that dropped earlier this year.
The EP is titled Touch Me (It’s Like I’m Winning It), and it features three different remixes from Dev Hynes, Porches and Lydia Ainsworth. Each collaborator brings new life to the song, from dark and moody with Ainsworth to loop-heavy with Hynes, transforming breaths into beats.
“The Fountain” was supposed to be a full length album but as the songs took shape, I realized that there was something cohesive going on with a smaller batch. They all focused on the theme of platonic love with a sense of gratitude. I think that traditionally, I had mostly written yearning, romantic odes and it was nice to focus on what was right in front of me and have a record be about that for a change. A big part of this project for me is about trying to reflect on the years I’ve spent touring and playing in different bands, mostly punk bands who played in warehouses and never released records. I want this project to be a part of that legacy.
So much of those old scenes were about celebrating the time we were living and the friendships we were forming and so this is sort of my older take on those excited sentiments. Basically, what does a punk song about friendships look like 20 years later? Probably a little slower, a little softer and a little more melancholy.
The Night Shop is the Song writing project of Justin Sullivan (Kevin Morby, The Babies, Flat Worms). Songs from the cafe of eternal youth.
Justin Sullivan: vocals, guitar Tiffanie Lanmon: drums Jarvis Taveniere: bass, guitar, piano Anna St. Louis: vocals
Death Valley Girls are an indie rock quartet from Los Angeles, Calif. Through their punk-infused, fuzzy garage rock sound, they’ve caught the attention of Iggy Pop, who’s called the group “a gift to the world.” He even starred in their video for the single “Disaster (Is What We’re After).” While singer and multi-instrumentalist Bonnie Bloomgarden and guitarist Larry Schemel knew their intention for the album before a single note was written, the actual nature and direction of the music was a mystery. The initial inspiration for the record came from the jubilant spirit of Ethiopian funk records the band had been listening to on tour, but once they began to channel the songs it seemed like the music came from somewhere not in the past but in the future. In the weeks leading up to recording, Death Valley Girls relied on their subconscious and effortlessly conjured Under the Spell of Joy’s eleven tracks as if they’d tapped into the Akashic Chronicle and pulled the music from the ether.
The rockers have teamed up with the legendary shoe company Dr. Martens for a special mini-doc as part of their new Dr. Martens Music & Film Series. In the video, vocalist Bonnie Bloomgarden, guitarist Larry Schemel, bassist Nikki Pickle and drummer Rikki Styxx give a brief summary of their mission as a band, and there are also clips of the energetic live performances.
Death Valley girls recently released their new single “Dream Cleaver,”
“Making music and being in a band is like a religious conviction,” the band said in a Q&A with Dr. Martens. “We are nomads for most of the year, and a gang, and that’s the way we like it! When you travel around spreading the good word of rock and roll you are like a missionary!”. The album opens with “Hypnagogia,” an ode to the space between sleep and wakefulness where we are open to other realms of consciousness. The song slowly builds along a steady pulse provided by bassist Pickle (Nicole Smith) and drummer Rikki Styxx. Tripped out saxophone bleats from guest player Gabe Flores swirl on top of the organ drones laid out by guest keyboardist Gregg Foreman.
The band’s choral objectives for Under the Spell of Joy are established right off the bat, with Bloomgarden’s melodic invocations bolstered by a choir, giving the album a rich and vibrant wall-of-sound aesthetic. The song ominously builds on its hypnotic foundation until it opens up into a raucous revelry at the four-minute mark. The portentous simmer of the opening track yields to the ecstatic rocker “Hold My Hand,” where verses reminiscent of Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting For The Man” explode into big triumphant choruses. From there the band launches into the title track, which marries the griminess of The Stooges with an innocence provided by a children’s choir chanting the album’s primary mantra “under the spell of joy / under the spell of love.”
Death Valley Girls have always vacillated between lightness and darkness, and on “Bliss Out” they demonstrate their current exuberant focus with a patina-hued pop song driven by an irrepressibly buoyant organ line laid down by keyboardist The Kid (Laura Kelsey). A similar cosmic euphoria is obtained on “The Universe,” where alternating chords on the organ help elevate soaring saxophone and keyboard lines out beyond the stratosphere. If you’re looking for transcendental rock music, look no further.
Death Valley Girls Under the Spell of Joy out October 2nd, 2020, on Suicide Squeeze Records
What hides in the fog that keeps people apart, and what does it take to cut through it? These questions hang heavily over Sarah Beth Tomberlin’s music, whose hushed and intimate tones orbit answers as much as they savor the unanswerable. To be in relation to another human being is to engage with a deep mystery: We are all fundamentally alone, siloed into confusing bodies, and yet occasionally we find someone who lets us feel as if we weren’t. Tomberlin, the Louisville native who recently relocated to Los Angeles, delights in articulating and amplifying that mystery, picking out its details and marvelling at its scale. In singing her aloneness she soothes it, and extends a hand to others reckoning with their own solitude–a paradox that warms her spectral songs.
Tomberlin’s new “Projections” EP continues the arc of her critically acclaimed 2018 debut “At Weddings”, weaving new collaborators and new techniques into her signature dusky milieu. Since the LP’s release, Tomberlin has toured with Pedro the Lion, Andy Shauf, American Football, and Alex G, played a Tiny Desk concert for NPR, and given a riveting performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! The five-song EP, capped with a cover of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone’s stunning “Natural Light,” reflects this period of intensive growth and self-discovery. “I wrote these songs while getting to know myself outside of people’s perceived notions of who I was,” says Tomberlin. “I just started being like, What am I interested in? What do I want out of relationships and friendships? What am I looking for that I don’t have in myself already?”
The rich vocal harmonies and guitar lines that made At Weddings so riveting still provide the EP’s foundation, but new percussive backing and instrumental flourishes open the path forward for Tomberlin. After touring the US with Alex G and playing new songs for the band in their shared green room, Tomberlin reached out to Alex Giannascoli and bandmate Sam Acchione to produce the EP’s four original tracks. She recorded her new songs in Giannascoli’s Philadelphia apartment alongside Acchione and frequent collaborator Molly Germer. The fleshed out sound lends a sense of urgency to tracks like “Wasted,” an uptempo romp across the kind of thorny relationship that withholds as much as it gives, and “Sin,” a song that applies reclaimed Christian imagery to an unorthodox romantic partnership. “I don’t mind sinning if it’s with you,” Tomberlin sings against washes of violin and brushed cymbals. “Say a prayer/Lay your hands on me/I just wanna be clean.”
“I wrote ‘Sin’ while living at my parents’ home and exploring my queerness, but afraid to make it too obvious,” Tomberlin says. “It’s definitely using imagery that gets used against queer people, but making a joke out of it. That’s a thing with queer people. We all use humour to deflect our pain.”
Tomberlin’s ability to pan across the general disaster of human relationality and then zoom in on an effervescent moment of pure intimacy is one of her greatest strengths as a songwriter. Queer people get shuttered under the label of sin by the wider world, and yet despite that brand they steal moments of love and healing for themselves. Love is, generally speaking, a wellspring of pain and dysfunction, but look at the moments where it works. “It’s all sacrifice and violence, the history of love,” Tomberlin sings on EP opener “Hours,” “But remember when we stayed up/And took turns playing songs?” The camera zooms in, and magic alights on the people who suddenly take up the whole frame.
You can refuse the mystery of how people manage to be among each other, or you can delight in what it offers, no matter how fleeting. Tomberlin opts for delight every time. Hers are songs for people who, despite the turmoil of the world at large, despite the weight of its sadness, unshield themselves and fall into wonder.
Violin: Molly Germer
Electric guitar: Samuel Acchione
Acoustic guitar: Sarah Beth Tomberlin, Samuel Acchione
Bass guitar: Samuel Acchione
Vocals: Sarah Beth Tomberlin
Drums: Samuel Acchione, Sarah Beth Tomberlin
Keys: Sarah Beth Tomberlin, Samuel Acchione
Father John Misty’s “To S.” b/w “To R.” is the singer’s double A-side contribution to Sub Pop Singles Club Vol. 5, and his first new, original, studio material since his acclaimed 4th album, 2018’s “God’s Favorite Customer”. These gorgeous, meticulously rendered tunes were recorded at Fivestar Studios and Funky Monkey Soundhaus NoHo in Los Angeles, produced by Dave Cerminara and The Haxan Cloak, mixed by Cerminara, and mastered by Adan Ayan at Gateway Mastering.
“To S.” and “To R.” follows Father John Misty’s “Off-Key In Hamburg”, his first live album, released in March of 2020, and Anthem +3, a collection of covers of songs by Leonard Cohen, Yusuf/Cat Stevens, and Link Wray was released July 2020. Combined, Off-Key In Hamburg and Anthem +3 raised over $100,000 for multiple causes including The Recording Academy’s MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund, CARE Action and Ground Game LA. Father John Misty is also selling his infamous “Poem Zone” t-shirt via his official webstore, with August proceeds from the store benefitting his touring crew.
Los Angeles-based band Young Jesus have shared their new album, “Welcome to Conceptual Beach”, which follows 2018’s The Whole Thing Is Just There. They do a lot with just seven tracks their improvisational jams span jazz, math rock and haunting folk-rock, but nothing is set in stone. It’s blissfully conscious and unconscious, and at times, they sound more like conjurers than musicians. Their abstract, impressionistic lyrics heighten the beautiful recklessness of their music. Young Jesus met at Pea Soup Andersons and the rest is history.
Imagine a shoreline alone, carved from the continent, without land or water to border it, a rind of possibility, a moon-coloured border between land and sea, knowing and unknowing. This is Conceptual Beach, a place John Rossiter, vocalist/guitarist of Los Angeles-based Young Jesus, describes as his long-time mental refuge, where he imagines himself living. Their new album, Welcome to Conceptual Beach, first took form as a physical zine in 2016, when the four members of the band were on their first tour together. At that time, it was still somewhere Rossiter inhabited alone, protective of his solitude. Now, he is allowing others to join him there. “The reason it’s called Welcome to… [Conceptual Beach] is because I’m inviting other inner landscapes into it,” Rossiter explains as he describes the transformation of the beach’s terrain into a whole varied emotional world.
Coming in at over 10 minutes, “Magicians” is the latest single off of “Welcome to Conceptual Beach”, the newest Young Jesus album, out next week via Saddle Creek Records. “Magicians” acts as the larger than life closer for Welcome to Conceptual Beach, an album based on, well, the conceptual beach that is the mental escape of frontman John Rossiter.
“Faith,” the opening track, runs parallel to the album as a whole: dynamic and groovy and psychedelic and emotional. Each musician has a moment to shine and to speak. Opening with Kern’s version of the Purdie Shuffle, to Marcel’s polyrhythmic bass, to Eric’s organ solo, and held together by John’s whispered prayer that, “we just might grow,” Young Jesus offer a music uniquely in service to emotion. “(un)knowing” is a “meditation celebration,” a song about the confusion and pain of re-examining a life—of committing to a life of experience and curiosity. Mixing the spirit and experimentation of OK Computer with the sincerity of Bon Iver, “Root and Crown” is the first song that offers a way out of the traps and patterns of a life. A commitment to grieving, listening, and growing. A devotion to spring, sung from the depths of winter.
Young Jesus previously released two other singles from the album: “Root And Crown” and “(un)knowing.”Welcome to Conceptual Beach follows their 2018 release The Whole Thing Is Just There. The band also features bassist Marcel Borbon, keyboardist Eric Shevrin, and drummer Kern Haug.
On Welcome to Conceptual Beach, Young Jesus pries our sobs from parentheticals and wields them with a brutal but tender force. They take these elements and translate them into a spacious ground for growth, for ourselves, our communities, our world. They affirm that change starts with how we reckon with ourselves as individuals, that we are all magicians, as the closing track of Welcome to Conceptual Beach suggests, “making love and doing dishes,” capable of conjuring new worlds for ourselves, and to live in others’.
Release Date: August 14th, 2020
Band Members
John Rossiter (Guitar/Vox)
Kern Haug (Drums)
Marcel Borbon (Bass)
Eric Shevrin (Keys/Vox)
The Fat Angel Sings 