Based on your current station in our technological age, Death Valley Girls’ fusion of feral proto-punk, ‘70s scuzz dirges, and third eye mysticism is either completely at odds with your worldview or utterly revelatory. Words like “retro” or “old school” convey a starry eyed nostalgia that do a disservice to the band’s harnessing of primal instrumentation and communal reverberations—if something in Death Valley Girls’ sound harkens to the past, it’s only in an attempt to dislodge us from the static of the present. That dedication to lifting the veil of modern illusions continues with their current single “Dream Cleaver”—a rousing anthem in praise of psychonaut and ethnobotonist Terrence McKenna, his research on “the spirit molecule” DMT, and the possibility of trans-dimensional travel. Lest one thinks that this is some blissed out cosmic ride on new age synth pads, be aware that “Dream Cleaver” is an unapologetic stone-cold rocker—an unabashed orgy of Farfisa organ hooks, Larry Schemels’ hypnotic and propulsive guitar chords, hallucinatory sax lines, and Bonnie Bloomgarden’s call-to-arms vocals. If you need to get elevated, take a three-minute dose of “Dream Cleaver”.
Moving a satisfying line between shimmering jangle pop and robust shoegaze, DIIV are to release their third full-length album “Deceiver”. The band crafts the soundtrack to personal resurrection under the heavy weight of metallic catharsis upheld by robust guitars and vocal tension that almost snaps, but never quite… the same could be said of the journey these four musicians underwent to get to their third full-length. out of lies, fractured friendships, and broken promises, clarity would be found. fans of Ride, Real estate and Ultimate Painting will love it!
Rebirth takes place when everything falls apart. DIIV—Zachary Cole Smith [lead vocals, guitar], Andrew Bailey [guitar], Colin Caulfield [vocals, bass], and Ben Newman [drums]—craft the soundtrack to personal resurrection under the heavy weight of metallic catharsis upheld by robust guitars and vocal tension that almost snaps, but never quite…
The same could be said of the journey these four musicians underwent to get to their third full-length album, Deceiver. Out of lies, fractured friendships, and broken promises, clarity would be found.
“I’ve known everyone in the band for ten years plus separately and together as DIIV for at least the past five years,” says Cole. “On Deceiver, I’m talking about working for the relationships in my life, repairing them, and accepting responsibility for the places I’ve failed them. I had to re-approach the band. It wasn’t restarting from a clean slate, but it was a new beginning. It took time—as it did with everybody else in my life—but we all grew together and learned how to communicate and collaborate.”
A whirlwind brought DIIV there.
Amidst turmoil, the group delivered the critical and fan favorite Is the Is Are in 2016 following 2012’s Oshin. Praise came from The Guardian, Spin, and more. NME ranked it in the Top 10 among the “Albums of the Year.”Pitchfork’s audience voted Is the Is Are one of the “Top 50 Albums of 2016” as the outlet dubbed it, “gorgeous.”
In the aftermath of Cole’s personal struggles, he “finally accepted what it means to go through treatment and committed,” emerging with a renewed focus and perspective. Getting back together with the band in Los Angeles would result in a series of firsts. This would be the first time DIIV conceived a record as a band with Colin bringing in demos, writing alongside Cole, and the entire band arranging every tune.
“Cole and I approached writing vocal melodies the same way the band approached the instrumentals,” says Colin. “We threw ideas at the wall for months on end, slowly making sense of everything. It was a constant conversation about the parts we liked best versus which of them served the album best.”
Another first, DIIV lived with the songs on the road. During a 2018 tour with Deafheaven, they performed eight untitled brand-new compositions as the bulk of the set. The tunes also progressed as the players did.
“We went from playing these songs in the rehearsal space to performing them live at shows, figuring them out in real-time in front of hundreds of people, and approaching them from a broader range of reference points,” he goes on. “We’d never done that before. We got to internalize how everything worked on stage. We did all of the trimming before we went to the studio. It was an exercise in simplifying what makes a song. We really learned how to listen, write, and work as a band.”
The vibe got heavier under influences ranging from Unwound and Elliot Smith to True Widow and Neurosis. They also enlisted producer Sonny Diperri [My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, Protomartyr]. his presence dramatically expanded the sonic palette, making it richer and fuller than ever before. It marks a major step forward for DIIV.
“He brought a lot of common sense and discipline to our process,” adds Cole. “We’d been touring these songs and playing them for a while, so he was able to encourage us to make decisions and own them.”
The first single “Skin Game” charges forward with frenetic drums, layered vocals and clean, driven guitars that ricochet off each other.
“I’d say it’s an imaginary dialogue between two characters, which could either be myself or people I know,” he says. “I spent six months in several different rehab facilities at the beginning of 2017. I was living with other addicts. Being a recovering addict myself, there are a lot of questions like, ‘Who are we? What is this disease?’Our last record was about recovery in general, but I truthfully didn’t buy in. I decided to live in my disease instead. ‘Skin Game’ looks at where the pain comes from. I’m looking at the personal, physical, emotional, and broader political experiences feeding into the cycle of addiction for millions of us.”
A trudging groove and wailing guitar punctuate a lulling apology on the magnetically melancholic “Taker.” According to Cole, it’s “about taking responsibility for your lies, their consequences, and the entire experience.” Meanwhile, the ominous bass line and crawling beat of “Blankenship” devolve into schizophrenic string bends as the vitriolic lyrics. Offering a dynamic denouement, the seven-minute “Acheron” flows through a hulking beat guided under gusts of lyrical fretwork and a distorted heavy apotheosis.
Even after the final strains of distortion ring out on Deceiver, these four musicians will continue to evolve. “We’re still going,” Cole leaves off. “Hopefully we’ll be doing this for a long time.”
Ultimately, DIIV’s rebirth is a hard-earned and well-deserved new beginning.
Official video for “Blankenship,” the third single from DIIV’s new album Deceiver, out October 4th,
Special Edition LP is pressed on tricolor vinyl in an edition of 2000 copies. It includes an inverse Obi Strip as well as a 12″ x 24″ double-sided poster. It will ship on or slightly before the album’s October 4th release date.
“There are no problems in the studio—there are only a million solutions,” says Local Natives’ Taylor Rice. The singer-songwriter is recounting crucial words of wisdom from producer/ engineer Shawn Everett, the acclaimed sonic guru who shepherded the indie-rock band through the left-field experiments that spawned their fourth LP, Violet Street.
The album, with its lush arrangements and signature three-part vocal harmonies, isn’t exactly a departure: The seductive, Fleetwood Mac-like grooves of “Café Amarillo” and heart-crushing, string-heavy balladry of “Vogue” could have fit snugly on 2013’s Hummingbird. But intimate listens reveal sparks of madness: the bizarre radio sample and ghostly vocal loops that haunt “Tap Dancer” the creaky percussion tracks and abrupt burst of noise in “Shy” and how the drums on “Megaton Mile” gradually decelerate to form the main groove of the atmospheric “Someday Now”.
“As musicians, sometimes you get into this logic puzzle, and you feel like you need to put everything together in this beautiful and wonderful way,” Rice says. “But our energy throughout [Violet Street] was staying connected to the idea that music is this magical thing that emerges more or less spontaneously. There are really no rules at all—and there’s a million ways a song can come together and finish.”
Local Natives planted the first seeds of Violet Street, shortly after their tour supporting Sunlit Youth. Exhausted from the road and ready to unwind at home, the quintet—Rice, fellow singer-songwriters Kelcey Ayer and Ryan Hahn, bassist Nik Ewing and drummer Matt Frazier received an offer to play a wedding in Mexico.
“It was a really intriguing offer, but it was like, ‘No, we have to focus. We’re really excited to be home and writing,’” Rice says. “Then they were like, ‘What if we give you a free month at our compound for a writing session?’ It was such a crazy offer, and we were like, ‘OK, that would make it make sense.’ We played the wedding and came back later and were there for a month. We were in this hut on the beach on the West Coast of Mexico. We were set up in the jungle on the edge of the ocean.”
They formulated most of their new songs in that month-long retreat, accumulating a collective pile of iPhone recordings. “That’s where we started the writing and got the vibe going for the record,” Rice says. “The biggest difference from before is that we didn’t do any generic pre-production. We can be methodical going into the studio [The National’s] Aaron Dessner was the first to help us crack out of it a bit [when he produced] Hummingbird. Yet, we took it to its most extreme for this album.
That’s also where the madness began. Everett briefly worked with Local Natives as an engineer on Sunlit Youth, leading the band to experiment by recording outside and on the studio roof. And in December, during a test run to lay down some initial ideas at his LA warehouse-studio, he proved just how weird he was willing to get in search of an original idea.
“We had these voice memos from Mexico, and we went in and were like, ‘Here’s ‘Megaton Mile,’ which is this song about the apocalypse, but it has this upbeat vibe like Talking Heads meets The Clash,” Rice says. Picking up on that thread, Everett decided to channel the Talking Heads’ approach on their 1980 track “Once in a Lifetime,” recording eight-bar loops that the band would then “perform” by pushing up the faders in real-time. Rice admits they were a bit skeptical. But the warped ideas kept producing quality results.
High on the thrill of the tape-loop madness, the band decided to trick out “Megaton Mile” even further by recording the percussive clank of glass Coke bottles, each filled up to achieve the appropriate pitch. “Then Shawn was like, ‘We should just use these drums for the next song [the much slower ‘Someday Now’],’” Ayer says. “And we were like, ‘What are you talking about?’” The producer then calculated how the percussion should be pitched to account for the difference in BPM and key between the two songs, splitting the difference between a music theory test and science project.
At this point, after being blown away by the results of their tinkering, Local Natives knew they’d found the perfect studio shaman to join them down Violet Street. “We all huddled together as a band and went, ‘OK, we have to lock him in as an engineer/ mixer/producer,’” Rice says. “He was game and wanted to do the whole record.”
From there, every day in the studio was built on that sense of childlike exploration. Everett’s bag of tricks included using the randomness of Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies” (cards labeled with cryptic suggestions aimed to guide musicians in a new direction), messing around with tape machines and samplers, and performing songs in dozens of styles to see which fit best. (The twitchy, anthemic “Gulf Shores” also existed in a more meditative, piano-heavy version, along with what Ayer calls a “jungle-y, insane, Animal Collective-y version.”)
In this special presentation of The Ringer Room, beloved L.A. band Local Natives perform three tracks from their latest record, ‘Violet Street’ and an old fan favorite from their debut album, ‘Gorilla Manor.’ In this stripped-down setup, these songs take on a new feel, highlighting the band’s signature vocal harmonies and heartfelt songwriting.
Set List: “When Am I Gonna Lose You” 0:07 “Café Amarillo” 4:02 “Megaton Mile” 7:45 “Wide Eyes” 11:17
Rice likes to playfully brag that he was the first band member onboard for that wild ride, with Ayer straggling behind. “I was the first in the band to jump on the Shawn rollercoaster,” he says. “I like razzing Kelcey about it now because he was the one dragging his feet, like, ‘I don’t know—we should just record it in a normal way.
“He’s right,” Ayer admits, fake-threatening his bandmate with a fight. “Shawn is so brilliant, but he has all these tangential ideas, . There were a bunch of times early on where I was like, ‘This is awesome,’ but he wanted to go further. I’d be like, ‘I don’t want to fuck with this thing we just did that’s so rad.’ I’d just want to work on a song in a normal way, and he never wanted to do that. Earlier on, we were pitching the songs, and he’s like, ‘We should record everyone’s instruments into the sampler, and everyone will play different samplers into the tape machine.’ I’m like, ‘Ugh, let us just play it!’ But whenever I’d get frustrated, everyone would be like, ‘No, no, let’s just try it.’ It ended up taking me a little longer but, after like four or five instances of doing that—and the end product being undeniably amazing.
Everett’s exploratory approach befitted a band desperate to record as a unit, to veer away from the fractured process that birthed Sunlit Youth.
“There’s an interesting cause and effect constantly happening,” Ayer says. “After Hummingbird, everyone was ready to feel really happy and fun again, so we wanted to lean poppier and a bit brighter. There were a lot of people in different rooms, producing songs and bringing them to the band. But we did that, and we were ready to be more of a band again. There was some sort of pendulum swing back [with Violet Street]. First and foremost, we just wanted to play together again.”
“There was a pendulum swing,” Rice confirms. “And we did have all these conversations before, even when starting to write the record, of, ‘Guys, let’s return to something that’s all five of us in a room performing off of each other, all the musicians in one space.’ That’s a big opposite of Sunlit Youth, where we wanted to be completely free of that. The other part of it was just pure luck that we were working with an absolute mastermind, genius producer.”
Both Rice and Ayer estimate that over 90 percent of their far-out experiments wound up on the album, but one notable exception is “Munich I,” a sprawling, eight-minute instrumental jam that was too unwieldy to crack the LP’s compact tracklist. In order to facilitate new ideas for the song, Everett pulled up the Radiooooo app, which generates random music after users select a country, decade and mood.
“We set up live in the room, playing off each other,” Rice says. We’d listen to the song for like 30 seconds to get the vibe then play for five minutes. We had the sweetest jam ever we couldn’t even believe it was us. It’s this incredibly ambitious project we were so in love with, but we just couldn’t make it work. It’s still alive somewhere in the back of our minds.”
“He’s a workaholic doing 14-hour days every day,” Rice says. “We forced him to go on vacation during the record. I booked his flight and accommodations in Greece. A lot of producers are like, ‘Here’s my huge bag of tricks,’ but Shawn always wants to try something he’s never done—possibly something nobody’s ever done.” Crucially, Local Natives weren’t just screwing around without a plan. They were armed with the hookiest, most poignant songs in their catalouge including “When Am I Gonna Lose You,” a number Rice wrote for his future wife in the early stages of their relationship.
“It’s probably the one I was most lost in the deep, epic journey of,” Rice says. “I think I drove the other bandmates a little nuts, but Shawn went with me. We explored 40 versions of the song before we hit the final one. Originally it was a slow, sad, very weepy acoustic song. A dark LA Fleetwood Mac vibe was one of the guideposts we had aesthetically. I thought it would be this slow ballad, and it turned into a driving groover on day one.
“Lyrically, it [came from the idea of ] having this incredible thing in your life that feels too good to be true,” he adds. “It’s a pretty sad name and idea for a love song, but it’s the idea that fate is going to intervene or I’m gonna mess it up. The whole thing takes place in Big Sur, and I heard the final mix of it driving up the 1 on [the Pacific Coast Highway] to Big Sur with my wife, whom I married in August of 2018. We heard it together for the first time, and that’s where the story in the song had begun. That was a really surreal, insane moment.”
Violet Streetis the polar opposite of Sunlit Youth’s gleaming, stadium-friendly tunes it’s grimier, darker and, like the recording process itself, full of fascinating detours. As Ayer reflects, it’s closer to the type of music they’ve always envisioned making.
The eleven tracks on Never Not Never Not Never Not go deeper than just twee sincerity, though. “Lauren” is a funny and heartfelt ode to a former roommate who used to hear Tucker’s songs through the wall and sing them back. But it’s presented as a fleshed-out, rip-roaring rock song that’s such a far cry from the acoustic, bedroom origins the lyrics reference. It’s a subtle, and perhaps unintentional writing technique. But it creates a real sense of time and place that nudges the listener to wonder if Lauren ever did write those songs that “queer kids with cute haircuts wanna tell their moms about.”
If I were Wolfy I’d know how to deliver a disarmingly funny & deceptively heartfelt thank you in ten words or less. Given that I’m stuck being myself, bear with … thank you to Wolfy for being objectively good at art, to Jessica Reed for being one take wonderful, to Anna Arboles for being the Tegan to my Sara and the Brandi to my Carlile. Greg Katz, thank you for insisting that these songs are worth the work. It’s all too good. Rosie Tucker is a clever, optimistic, rock-and-roll storyteller and each track has something to totally love
Rosie Tucker seems like someone who’d be really good at writing letters. The L.A. artist writes vivid, emotionally rich songs about the things they couldn’t say in person, but still feel the unquenchable desire to etch permanently into music. Sometimes, it’s the stinging regret of not flirting with their laundromat crush (“Spinster Cycle”), or feeling too silly to acknowledge the celestial beauty of their dance partner (“Gay Bar”). Other times, it’s the dull pain of wanting to apologize long after an interpersonal fallout, but holding back because of the perceived futility in trying to amend something that’s permanently broken. That latter song is called “Habit,” and the titular routine is in fact that tongue-holding instinct of theirs.
This album wouldn’t exist without Lauren Bruer, Sapphire Jewell, Talicat, Cecilia, Traci, Katherine and Chris’s Red Hook kitchen table, Oil Can Harry’s, Keith Armstrong, August, Daniel Oldham, Tyler, or the support of my wonderful family. This album wouldn’t have reason to exist without listeners like you. -Ro
Written and performed by Rosie Tucker
Produced by Wolfy
Guitars by Anna Arboles
Drums by Jessica Reed
Mixing on “Spinster Cycle” and “Fault Lines” by Daniel Oldham
Additional production on “Fault Lines” by Deanna Romo
Recorded at PieTown Sounds in Burbank, CA with additional recording at Defend Music, Inc in Los Angeles, CA. “Never Not” was produced and recorded by Tyler McCarthy & Rosie Tucker in Sylmar, CA.
We’ve made a video for No More Pennies from our album Devour You (due out October 11th)! Check it out here
For the video, we started with an archive of 16mm film that Gilbert Trejo shot with us on tour and at home over the last year. I (Arrow) was editing it together with Jonathan (King) and we were both drawn to a lot of the shots of us around Los Angeles. So we jumped in a car, and shot the video performances around town trying to capture the feeling we get when we’re all together back in the city. We had our friends with us – Gilbert, Annie Hardy (Giant Drag), Mary James, my uncle Jimmy and Jonathan’s chihuahua Earth Angel. It’s got a feeling that captures the dreaminess of the song.
The first single, Bet My Brains, was consistent with their debut. On the latest, No More Pennies, it kicks off an early 70s Stones vibe. Arguably my favorite track I’ve heard from them.
While much of the forthcoming Devour You dynamically captures the aggression of Starcrawler’s gloriously unhinged live shows, today’s sneak peek, “No More Pennies,” acts as the record’s country-tinged centerpiece, showcasing a more nuanced, and more grown up Starcrawler for the first time. The video was directed by singer Arrow de Wilde and Jonathan King.
There’s probably no sweeter SoCal sound circa 2019 than this band as the title track from their upcoming album, “Let It Burn,” It should come as no surprise that GospelbeacH sound is favorite for us, their 2017 offering wound up on many of our contributors’ best-of releases for that year, “The band’s debut album, 2015’s Pacific Surf Line, wasn’t shy about its Cali worship; two of GospelbeacH founder Brent Rademaker’s other groups, psychedelic warriors The Tyde and mystic Americana wranglers Beachwood Sparks, have shared similar sentiments.
We don’t like to disappoint, (the feckless leaders in D.C. have that role handled) so here’s a first listen of the song “Let It Burn,” the title track off the band’s soon to be released new LP. The song boasts a cameo by the brilliant, late Neal Casal who passed away just weeks ago.
“Let It Burn’ became a secret little mantra in my head while dealing with some heavy changes in my life, mainly loss. Letting go wasn’t good enough I had to burn those negative feelings before they killed me,” said singer-songwriter-guitarist Brent Rademaker.“Trevor [Beld Jimenez] and I came up with some verses to my open C-minor tuning and we cut it live with a cool flat dry 1970s production by Jonny Niemann. The great Nelson Bragg orchestrated the perfect So-Cal harmonies.
“Little did I know I would need to call on that mantra again, when just months after finishing the album we would lose our dear brother Neal Casal. Neal’s otherworldly guitar playing weaves this whole song perfectly together and the outro solo that closes the whole album says more to me than any lyric we could’ve written. Neal made GospelbeacH legit, when we told him we were making a “rock” record he just shook his hand and shushed me up, plugged in and played his guitar…no second takes, he just let it burn.”
Band Members
Brent Rademaker, Jon Neiman, Jason Soda, Neal Casal, Will Scott Ben Redell, Derek Brown w/ a cast of friends
GospelbeacH’s Let It Burn will be available October 4th
LA-based band, Kills Birds, have released their self-titled, debut album via KRO Records. A fuzzy, incendiary record of jagged guitar-driven melodies and slow-burning dynamics, they have marked the occasion with a brand new video for the track Volcano.
Watch it below and check out the previously released singles, Jesus Did, Worthy Girl andOw.
Kills Birds is a Los Angeles-based rock band. What started as a secret project between vocalist Nina Ljeti and guitarist Jacob Loeb, Kills Birds evolved into a band when Fielder Thomas (bass) and Bosh Rothman (drums) joined in 2017. Shortly after, the band began performing around Los Angeles. With Nina’s urgent and raw stage presence and Jacob’s feral guitar melodies, anchored by Bosh and Fielder’s monstrous drums and bass, the band quickly generated buzz for their thrilling and unpredictable live performances.
In 2018, they recorded their debut album with Justin Raisen in only eight hours, to capture the magnetism that their live shows are known for. In late 2018, they released their first single, “Worthy Girl,” which quickly garnered the attention of the legendary Kim Gordon, who gave it her stamp of approval. The response the track generated is rare for a first single, but Kills Birds has nabbed just that. Their unforgettable blend of emotionally charged performance and deliberate musicianship, is what makes their debut album mandatory listening.
Our debut record is out September 20th on KRO Records.
Los Angeles punk outfit Starcrawler’s remarkable sophomore album “Devour You” is a record that dynamically captures the essence and aggression of their gloriously unhinged live shows. Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, L7) at Sunset Studios, Devour You takes the feral intensity of their 2018 self-titled debut and twists it into something grander and more gracefully composed.
‘Bet My Brains’ is the lead single from Starcrawler’s forthcoming album Devour You, released on Oct 11th on Rough Trade Records. Blood, sweat and bruises, indeed—when Starcrawler first stepped out of Echo Park obscurity in 2017, the band quickly gained notoriety for their batshit and dynamic stage presence, which often involved frontwoman Arrow de Wilde spitting blood and snot-rocketing into the audience.
The band’s bizarro magnetism is carried over to the album’s newly debuted first single “Bet My Brains,” an anthemic cut with scuzzy, stadium-rock guitars, deadpan vocals and a riff reminiscent of a college football fight song.
“That song came from thinking about the tunnel people in New York and Vegas and the Catacombs in France, and the underground village of people who live in the sewers of the L.A. River,” frontwoman de Wilde said in a statement. “I was fascinated with the fact that there is a whole other world happening right under our feet.”
With its more elaborate and nuanced yet harder-hitting sonic palette, the result is a selection of songs radiating both raw sensitivity and untamable power, and a record that the band’s Arrow de Wilde says, “encapsulates all the blood, sweat, bruised knees, and broken fingers of a Starcrawler show.”
Release Date: 11th October 2019
‘She Gets Around’ is the latest single from Starcrawler, out now on Rough Trade Records.
Enamored with both shoegazers of the ’90s and new wave revivalists from the ’00s, Crescendo are perhaps best described as a cross between Lush and The Strokes. Their second album, 2016’s Unless, is shimmery and upbeat, yet it’s also somewhat soporific, driven by the subtle push-pull of jabbing guitars and chiming riffs atop a bed of insistent, electronic drums, galactic keyboards and understated male/female vocals. “Being labeled ‘dreamgaze’ has been consistent,” frontman Gregory Cole told the music blog When the Sun Hits. “However, based on the beats per minute in our songs, including the drum parts, we certainly make it a goal to inspire listeners to dance and disappear from reality via space travel.” While Crescendo continue to generate a buzz in the indie community, members Olive Kimoto and Jess Rojas split their time between the group and their electronic-based project Unbloom.
Crescendo’s music grows with intensity: the sounds swell, the emphasis moves to the heart, and then resonates throughout the rest of the body. It feels unstoppable, endless. Crescendo is a young quintet from Los Angeles: their sound is bright, clear shoegaze. To be more precise—it’s the most dreamy and ethereal of this genre. The most striking thing about the band’s second work, “Unless,” is the seamless collide of heavenly melodies and tight rhythm: an urgency that pervades every song on the album. The guitars are crisp, the drums are pushed to the max, the synths are engulfed in layers, and the voices of Gregory Cole and Olive Kimoto explode in some distant galaxy. The quintet declares bands like the Radio Dept. and Smiths as their inspirations, but it’s easy to find affinities with bands like DIIV, Craft Spells, and Wild Nothing as well. Definitely the feature that most distinguishes Crescendo is their brightness, an idea of music that travels beyond light, fast and relaxed, while explosions and flashes rumble and shudder all around it. The center of this album can be found in the title: “Unless”—a word which sums up the band’s attitude about this project: “Unless is the word you use to start the conversations that change obstacles or impossible feats, and that word connects sci-fi space romance and our music together.”
Wished Bone is the DIY-folk project of Ohio-based songwriter, Ashley Rhodus. Constructing music in her basements with, “borrowed instruments and broken tape machines”, Ashley’s songwriting creates a deeply human world of warm-afternoon sunshine and having nowhere to rush to, the sound of the small moments that make a life well led. Wished Bone’s second album, “Sap Season” is due out in November, and this week they’ve shared the first single from it, “Hold Me” the lovely lead single and opening track from her forthcoming new self-released record Sap Season, coming this fall. The swaying “Hold Me” once again displays what makes Rhodus such an intriguing and unique songwriter; she has a gift for making the ordinary feel poignant and profound, through her sort of effortlessly wry turns of phrase and low-key poetic non sequiturs, delivered warmly but matter-of-factly over a verdant bed of lilting folk-pop.
On first listen you could mistake Hold Me for something quite stripped back, there’s a gentleness and intimacy to it normally associated with acoustic-troubadour’s, yet scratch the surface and it’s a lot more interesting than that. The track is largely propelled by the glacial-paced bass-line, around which guitars, keys and gorgeous wood-wind flitter, like hummingbirds buzzing around a sloth. There’s nods to the likes of Cate Le Bon or Hand Habits, yet somehow Ashley’s musical vision shines beyond her influences, as the best songwriting always does. This instantly feels like an introduction into Wished Bone’s universe, a hand reaching out and guiding you to somewhere, don’t worry though, there’s no rush, music this good seems to have all the time in the world.
The Fat Angel Sings 