Frontier Records’ third Lilys re-issue is here! This remastered edition of “A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns” features a previously unreleased track, “G. Cobalt Franklin,” replacing “Glosseder” from the original 1994 10” LP. The songs “Elsa,” “Coby,” “Timber,” and “Hymn” — originally recorded in 1994 during the demoing process for Eccsame The Photon Band — were shelved, and then quietly released in 2000 on the long-out-of-print Lilys/Aspera Ad Astra split EP. “Ginger” is as sweetly sung as any song written in the indie rock canon. These bonus tracks, etc, are also excellent. SOOOO glad to see this reissued!
Tracks 1-5 were performed by Harry Evans, Paul Martin, and Kurt Heasley. Additional vocals by Joey Sweeney. Tracks 6-10 were performed by Erik Sahd and KurtHeasley.
Ty Segall’s proto-metal-style power trio Fuzz were supposed to be on tour right now supporting their third album, including two February shows in NYC. Those dates, which had already been postponed from the summer, have been postponed again, but to tide you over they’ve taped a short live set at Gold Diggers Studio1 in Los Angeles and have shared it with the world.
The band, which feature Ty Segall on Drums/vox, Charles Moothart on guitar/vox and Chad Ubovich on bass/vox, plow through four songs — “Nothing People,” “Mirror,” “Close Your Eyes,” and “Loose Sutures.” Says label In the Red, “This performance will be available on our youtube page for a limited time only. From the Wolf Moon to the Snow Moon, to be exact (1/28/21 – 2/27/21).”
Surprise!! In The Red Records is proud to present to you a brand new live set from Fuzz, recorded here in Los Angeles at Gold Diggers Studio 1. Why? Simply for your enjoyment. This performance will be available on our youtube page for a limited time only. From the Wolf Moon to the Snow Moon, to be exact (1/28/21 – 2/27/21). Enjoy! Set list: Nothing People Mirror Close Your Eyes Loose Sutures
Fuzz have now rescheduled the dates for April, which also doesn’t seem very likely to happen, but who knows?
Fronted by guitarist-vocalists Sapphire Jewell and Ralph Torrefranca, Cuffed Up play a pleasing blend of post-punk and bullish rock. The Los Angeles band’s self-titled debut EP is set to get a physical release from Hassle Records in the coming weeks, and it offers an instant hit of roiling riffs and potent hooks that emerge from the maelstrom to frequently catch the listener off guard. They cite Sonic Youth and Pixies as influences and they don’t completely get blown out of the water, which is high praise indeed.
Our cover of “Politicians in My Eyes” is officially out everywhere! The original song is by a legendary Detroit band, Death, the first all black proto-punk pioneers of the 70s. All proceeds from the song on Bandcamp will be donated to the Detroit Justice Center
Cuffed Up was formed thru a chance encounter at Shab Ferdowsi’s Sunday Brunch (Blushh) where Sapphire Jewell and Ralph Torrefranca first met, connecting about their love for the UK punk scene with bands like IDLES and Shame. A few months later, Cuffed Up was formed along with Joe Liptock and Vic Ordonez, becoming a real passion project that has turned into a full time band.
The self-titled Cuffed Up EP is out now via Corduroy Recordings.
Babehoven are a band who featured on the site back in May last year, when they shared the single “Dissociative Tally”. That was originally penned as the first taste of an upcoming EP, “Yellow Has A Pretty Good Reputation”, a record that was subsequently delayed, and will finally see the light of day at the end of this month. The record is the follow-up to last year’s, “Demonstrating Visible Difference of Height”, both EPs being recorded in the band’s current home of Vermont.
Led by singer, songwriter and producer Maya Bon, Babehoven have gradually been growing a following as Maya wound her way between Portland and Los Angeles, honing her craft and using music as a way of, “externalizing my deepest, most vulnerable sense of self through song”. Discussing the inspiration behind Yellow Has A Pretty Good Reputation, Maya has described it as an exploration of, “dissociation, loss, and the quest for self-love”. Musically, this manifests in a certain warped quality, as the warm fuzz of tape-distortion adds a wobbly quality to both Maya’s lightly muffled vocals and the steady rhythmic quality of her guitar playing. Working with producer Ryan Albert, Maya seems to have created an insulated musical world, a place for us all to sit with our discomfort, and learn to come out the other side stronger and more sure of who we are. Keep this up and even yellow might have to bow down to Babehoven and their rapidly burgeoning reputation.
Johanna Samuels broadens the definition of pop music. The melodically and lyrically focused singer-songwriter stands on the shoulders of the great musicians of the 1960’s and 70’s she manages to create a sound and sense of musical place that is completely her own. Although Johanna Samuels has been sharing her music with the world since back in 2016, there’s a certain buzz around her of late that suggests an artist very much on the up. Back in October, Johanna shared a new single, “High Tide for One”, the first offering from her upcoming Sam Evian-produced album, due this Spring as a co-release between up-and-coming UK label, Basin Rock and Mama Bird Recording Co. The album was recorded in the Castskill Mountains alongside a small band of musicians, and features guest vocals from a stunning array of female singers, including the likes of A.O. Gerber, Lomelda and Courtney Marie Andrews.
Born in New York, and named after a Bob Dylan song, Johanna’s path to music was never really in doubt. After re-locating to Los Angeles, Johanna has spent the best part of a decade honing her song writing craft and learning to find a way to balance her inherent way with a melody while crucially finding plenty to say. Thankfully, High Tide for One was a particularly exciting example of Johanna achieving exactly that. The track was written in response to watching Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, as Johanna recalls, “it felt a bit hopeless. I felt exhausted, and for a while, I didn’t have the strength to explain it or try to talk it through with anyone who wasn’t working to change it”. These feelings are set to a perhaps contrastingly lush backing, as warm Rhodes-piano and a gorgeous-meander of slide-guitar, the breeziness of the musical backing set against the steely quality of the vocal, as she sings, “last night I saw that man on TV, his tears tasted like silver bullets and supremacy“. It may only be a single track, yet there was plenty within it to suggest Johanna Samuels might just be one of 2021’s most important musical voices.
Released October 27th, 2020 2020 Mama Bird Recording Co.
Though the band hails from Los Angeles, they do not partake in any sort of witchcraft. Yet their ability to conjure a specific time and place through their sound does suggest a kind of magic. On their eponymous debut album, L.A. Witch’s reverb-drenched guitar jangle and sultry vocals conjure the analogue sound of a collector’s prized 45 from some short-lived footnote cult band. The melodies forgo the bubblegum pop for a druggy haze that straddles the line between seedy glory and ominous balladry; the production can’t afford Phil Spector’s wall-of-sound, but the instruments’ simple beauty provides an economic grace that renders studio trickery unnecessary; the lyrics seem more descendent of Johnny Cash’s first-person morality tales than the vacuous empty gestures of pre-fab pop bands. This isn’t music for the masses; it’s music for miscreants, burnouts, down-and-out dreamers, and obsessive historians.
Songs: Drive Your Car Kill My Baby Tonight Baby In Blue Jeans Get Lost
Album opener Kill My Baby Tonight is the perfect introduction to the band’s marriage of ‘60s girls-in-the-garage charm and David Lynch’s surreal exposés of Southern California’s underbelly. Sade Sanchez’s black velvet vocals disguise the malicious intent of this murder ballad, with the thumping pulse of bassist Irita Pai, the slow-burn build of drummer Ellie English, and Sanchez’s desert guitar twang helping beguile the listener into becoming a willing accomplice to the narrator’s crimes. Brianfollows the opening track with a similarly graceful, if not somewhat ominous, slow-mo take on a well-worn jukebox 7”. It’s a vibe that permeates the entire album, from the early psychedelic hue of 13th Floor Elevators on tracks like You Love Nothing, through the motorik beat and fuzzed-out licks of Drive Your Car, to the grittier permutation of Mazzy Star’s sleepy beauty on Baby In Blue Jeans.
If you like your post-punk extra post-punk-y, then Moaning is maybe the band for you. The synths have just the right amount of glide, the guitars stab in all right parts (I will not use the term “angular,” thank you very much), and the vocals have the requisite sense of dispassionate detachment. This criminally underrated Los Angeles trio led by frontman Sean Solomon has been producing good music for years and “Uneasy Laughter” has mostly flown under the radar in 2020, but ignore this album at your own peril. Few bands have mastered the beguiling rock mixture of analogue and synthetic quite like Moaning.
What happens when an abrasive rock trio trades guitars for synths, cranks up the beats and leans into the everyday anxieties of simply being a functioning human in the 21st century? The answer is Uneasy Laughter, the sensational second Sub Pop Records release from Los Angeles-based Moaning.
Vocalist/guitarist Sean Solomon, bassist/keyboardist Pascal Stevenson and drummer Andrew MacKelvie have been friends and co-conspirators amid the fertile L.A. DIY scene for more than a decade. They are also immersed in other mediums and creative pursuits — Solomon is a noted illustrator, art director and animator, while Stevenson and MacKelvie have played or worked behind the boards with acts such as Cherry Glazerr, Sasami and Surf Curse. On Uneasy Laughter, they’ve tackled challenges both personal and universal the only way they know how: by talking about how they’re feeling and channelling those emotions directly into their music.
“Ego” from Moaning’s album Uneasy Laughter (Release Date: March 20th, 2020) Sub Pop Records.
“dirt” is the latest EP from Hand Habits, the song writing project of Meg Duffy. Sometime guitarist with Kevin Morby
Comprised of two songs, “4th of July,” a simmering swell of chaos and beauty and “I Believe in You,” a favourite of Duffy’s from the Neil Young canon, the EP finds the songwriter exploring themes of growth and finding ways to let go of the parts of their past that no longer serve them.
After cutting their teeth in the upstate New York d.i.y. music scene and several years of session and touring guitar work for Kevin Morby, and a long list of other artists, Duffy released their debut album “Wildly Idle (Humble Before the Void)”, a home-recorded, self-produced work that announced the project as a full-time affair.
While their follow-up album “placeholder” saw them working with producer Brad Cook at Justin Vernon’s April Base Studios and garnering praise from such outlets as NPR which called the work “their most fully realized statement” and the Los Angeles Times which praised the work as a “virtually seamless country rock album, with verses moving fluidly into choruses that travel unimpeded across sparkling, architecturally sophisticated bridges.” dirt showcases an artist returning to the fertile creative ground of their home.
However, this time around home-recording didn’t necessarily mean working in isolation. Duffy had relocated to a shared living situation in Los Angeles with musicians Sasami Ashworh and Kyle Thomas (King Tuff), which also housed Thomas’ studio. The resulting songs showcase this creatively collaborative environment, with Ashworh co-producing the lead single and Thomas co-producing “I Believe in You.” Such is the strength of this relationship, in fact, that this new single just may serve as a bridge toward a greater body of work the three will ultimately create together.
The resulting EP illuminates the songwriter’s attempts to evolve beyond the confines of their past. As they put it, “‘4th of july’ feels like trying again, rolling around in the wreckage of the past and finding new ways out of the maze of memory.”
The sonic texture of the song complements this lyrical journey, with a simple and sparse introduction marked by a slow burn crescendo hinting at the rupture to come, followed by an ecstatic wail of transcendent emotion. Fittingly, it concludes with a reprise of the beginning but this time altered by new sounds, suggesting a new perspective.
Similarly, Duffy breathes new life into the Young staple, adding a foreboding weight and impact to the long-familiar words. For Duffy, the process of recording and the song’s themes of growth through trust dovetailed perfectly.
As they note, “There’s a foundation, and when there’s a foundation there’s opportunity to reimagine structures; physical and otherwise.”
Also check out this Session Meg Duffy performed for “Aquarium Drunkard’s Lagniappe”
Wand frontman Cory Hanson is gearing up to release his second solo album, “Pale Horse Rider”, on March 12th via Drag City Records. An Los .Angeles native, he’s penned this pretty ode to the city he lives in, the city of angels. No bridges mentioned. The gorgeously animated video was made with help from his brother, Casey. Talented family!. A lifelong Californian, Cory Hanson has naturally found himself standing to the left of most of the country. The west may be only what you make it; these days, the roadside view looks exceptionally sun bleached and left behind.
His forthcoming long player, 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 it’s 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. Fuelled by DNA lifted from country-rock cut with native psych and prog strands, Cory guides his craft toward the cosmic side of the highway. Pale Horse Rider’s second single, “Angeles”, is an understated heartbeat thump of drums and folky acoustic guitar-driven tension, those steel strings echoing above Cory’s plaintive croon and impressionistic lyrics. The view of LA is exquisite from the high, lonesome peaks of the Angeles National, vibing with a foreboding mood of majesty and despair
Myths and truths of a country on the way down, viewed through a deep-focus lens trained on the city from the deserts on the east; a terminus of unoccupied residential parks and streets fading into craggy footpaths to nowhere, where our passage is seen as diligent, ephemeral and grotesque by turns, forgiven and made beautiful again by the sound.
“Angeles” is from “Pale Horse Rider,” to be released on LP/Cassette/CD/Streaming on March 12th, 2021, from Drag City.
One of the few bands on this list who’ve actually already released their case for being one of 2021’s most intriguing bands, Cheekface released their brand-new album, “Emphatically No”, through New Professor Music. The record finds the Los Angeles-based trio contrasting the mundane nature of everyday living to the background of a world in chaos, it takes a dark-side to find comedy in the face of the void, yet somehow Cheekface seem to manage it, on Best Life they note, “everything is normal”, with the conviction only someone who knows that to be a complete lie can manage.
Cheekface is a catchy band from Los Angeles with clever lyrics like “life is long like a CVS receipt.” Think Parquet Courts meets They Might Be Giants, maybe.
Musically, Cheekface seem to exist in the lineage of American talk-singers, from Jonathan Richman through to Stephen Malkmums, and more contemporary artists like Car Seat Headrest and Savage Mansion. This a record of strutting bass-lines, guitars with the angularity of post-punk, only without all the po-faced seriousness normally associated with the genre. At the centre throughout are the dual vocals of Greg and Amanda, trading comical lyrical barbs as they discuss geopolitics, mental health crises and narcissistic fascists, mentioning no names of course. If that’s all sounding a little self-congratulatory, worry not, like Jeffrey Lewis or Scott Walker, Cheekface aren’t looking down on the world, they’re very much part of the joke, as Greg notes, “no one else is the punchline of these lyrics…if me and Mandy are poking fun at anyone, it’s us”. If the current state of the world needed a soundtrack to poke a little fun at the darkness, then on “Emphatically No”, Cheekface might just have written a perfect contender.
Greg Katz: This is obviously a song about the negative messages your brain sends to you when you are suffering with a mental illness. It was the last song we wrote before we started recording stuff for this album. We recorded almost the whole album at New Monkey in LA with Greg Cortez recording and mixing, including this one.
I remember when me and Mandy were writing this one, getting the hook was pretty easy, but I was having a really hard time coming up with a melody for the verse. I must have improvised, like, 25 different ideas that didn’t work. Then Mandy was like, “Well, I think it should be this!” And she sang the first four notes of the song. I was like, “Why did you let me torture myself trying to come up with something when you knew what it was supposed to be the whole time?” I’m incredibly grateful to have Mandy as a writing partner, even though she sometimes likes to watch me suffer.
Amanda Tannen: I’m so thankful to have found Greg in Los Angeles after moving from NYC. From when we started the band up until March, almost every weekend we would get together to write songs. Whatever song came out that day normally would reflect how we were feeling that week. I remember while writing this one I was getting more comfortable with saying “no” in general. But also feeling judged by so-called “self help” fads. You can say “no” to anything supposedly good for you, or bad, reminding myself that only I can make that decision for myself.
2. “Best Life”
GK: This is one of three on the album that we recorded in Brooklyn with Jeff Berner at Studio G. The opening line, “Everything is normal,” had been in my notes for quite a while, and I’d written several songs trying to use that line. But that lyric finally found a home in this one. The guitar lick that plays eight bars in, that was what started the song idea. I think I was trying to channel the slippery lick from “Satan Is My Motor” by Cake.
AT: We were in Brooklyn in mid-February at the end of traveling to three cities to play. To top it off we recorded with Jeff at Studio G, at the end of the trip. I’m so happy we fit it in! It was so much fun for me to be back recording in Brooklyn. It had been over a decade since I had recorded anything in the city. We even started the day off with some good bagels. Perfect day.
3. “Call Your Mom”
AT: At the time of writing this one I think we had a handful of mid-tempo songs. For personal reasons, we needed a fast one. Punk songs are good for my mental health.
GK: The title lyric, “They want your attention 24/7? Resistance is easy, call your mom,” is about how the federal government tries to insert itself into our lives constantly and consume all our attention to consolidate power. Ignoring it is an act of rebellion, in my opinion. This song has a ripping guitar solo from Devin McKnight of Maneka (and ex-Speedy Ortiz) fame, and the laser gun sounds are him on guitar too.
4. “Crying Back”
AT: I consider this one a chill walking-while-wandering song, which I can always use more of in life. I remember my one mixing note was more shaker. Love the shaker in this one, it takes center stage. Echo’s got talent.
GK: My favorite part of this song is that the pre-chorus is the same chords as “Cruel to Be Kind” by Nick Lowe. That was not intentional. But we had learned the song at band practice once for fun, and Mandy pointed out that we ripped off the changes for this. The lyric “No pockets for your phone in your surgical gown” was written on my phone in a hospital emergency room after I got in a car wreck.
5. “Wedding Guests”
GK: We wrote this one with our friend Brijesh Pandya, who’s an amazing drummer and songwriter in LA. He was like, “I have this monster riff saved in my phone that I don’t know what to do with,” and it became this song. He also kicked in the lyric about “a man, a plan, a plain bagel, and an omelette” and a couple more of the good punchlines in the verses. I remember when we were recording this song we were listening to “99 Problems” and “Crazy in Love” to see how to give the song some more lift in the chorus, hence the bell loop that you hear there. That’s the Mellotron Hammond sound beaming through at the end. The other keys were a toy Casio.
6. “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Calabasas”
GK: One influence we came back to a lot while writing this album was Minutemen. They don’t get the credit they deserve as both an influential LA band and a thoughtful political band. This one is a pretty direct reference to them, down to the lyric “What makes a man want to be a referee” that references their What Makes a Man Start Fires? album title. This didn’t make it into the final version, but we also recorded some mariachi trumpet overdubs and Greg Cortez on nylon guitar as a nod to Calexico’s version of Minutemen’s “Corona.” Cooler heads prevailed and those ended up on the cutting room floor, i.e. a muted Pro Tools channel.
AT: While writing this, Greg had to explain to me where Calabasas was. The LA area is still new to me after nine years. I remember starting the lyrics by riffing off of bottled water brands.
GK: Calabasas is a place, but it’s also, you know, a metaphor.
7. “Original Composition”
GK: This one nods to Minutemen’s “History Lesson Part 2.” I thought the guitar solo should be one note, but Mandy said it should be two notes, and she was right. Echo really knocked the drum groove out of the park on this one, in my humble opinion. I improvised the whistling hook at the beginning and end of the song when I was waiting for the mic to come on to record vocals, but it ended up sticking, even though I don’t like songs with whistling in them.
AT: Another walking song. Whistle while you walk. I love guitar solos, this one needed two notes. Simple.
8. “No Connection”
GK: Another song where the Mellotron gets a look. That’s the Mello plucked strings at the top and the Mello harp glissando. Echo played the toy piano on that nine chord that opens the song. Before writing this one, we’d covered “Bad Liar” by Selena Gomez at a few shows, and it has a sample of “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads that plays through it. I think that really called our attention to the super simple disco kick drum pattern in “Psycho Killer” that gives it so much power. We used that kick drum pattern in the chorus of this song and in a few other places on the album, including the next song on the album, “Emotional Rent Control.” Also, I want to go on the record saying sorry that the guitar solo in this one is so long.
AT: When asked if the guitar solo was too long, I said no, should it be longer? And yes, up the fuzz pedal. If you can’t tell, I’m a huge Dinosaur Jr. fan. While recording this batch of songs we would take dinner breaks and eat vegan taco salads. Mmm, Cheekface taco night. We try to keep dinner light, combatting the dreaded food coma.
GK: In my old band, we lost a half day to burrito comas in one session. Never again! In my meandering experience, you forget to eat in the studio, then you overeat when you realize you’re starving. Terrible for the blood sugar flow, and it means you play worse as the day goes on. So now I always pull up to the studio with a fresh baguette, a couple bags of baby carrots, roasted almonds and a couple tubs of hummus. I spread them all out in the control room to start the day. Keeping a low-level semi-healthy nosh going throughout the session means that no one is ever tracking during a calorie crash. That’s our tip for the other productivity-conscious bands out there.
9. “Emotional Rent Control”
GK: This one we started writing a few weeks after Ric Ocasek died. We definitely wanted to give a direct nod to The Cars. There’s a lot of Cars-inspired moves in our songs, like the Moog solo in “Dry Heat/Nice Town.” So with this one we wanted to go straight for a “Just What I Needed” vibe to pay respects to the legend. Also I’d been listening to “Highway to Hell” a lot by AC/DC around the time we wrote this, so this one has the tom-tom thumping pre-chorus like that song, and also the bass dropout after the chorus that lets the air in. Last thought: every single one of Mandy’s bass lines is pretty great, but this one is especially nasty.
AT: Sometimes we write songs by looping a riff over and over—bass or guitar. After playing that riff a while, I end up picking what I think beat one is, but a lot of the time it’s not the same one Greg is thinking, it can make the interplay between guitar and bass have a push and pull in places, which I love.
10. “Big Big Friend”
GK: This was the last one written that went on the album, it was written at the top of 2020, and it was recorded last, in February 2020, and it kept evolving pretty much until we recorded it at Studio G in Brooklyn. The quiet guitar solo with the harmonics was in the original demo, but the loud guitar solo right after was added in the last band practice before we recorded it. It’s a song about how hard it is to thrive in a big bureaucracy like a university.
11. “Loyal Like Me”
GK: This one is the oldest song on this album—we wrote it before we recorded our first album, Therapy Island, but it didn’t make the cut for whatever reason. It was one of several efforts to do something like “Anything Could Happen” by The Clean, which is one of the greatest indie rock songs ever, but it didn’t come out very similar. The song is about how I take other people’s generosity for granted. It’s a sad song to me because I feel guilty about doing that, but I guess everyone else does it too. Echo does some pretty nifty drumming under the second verse.
12. “Do You Work Here?”
AT: We wanted to write a darker-sounding song, with some big distortion. I remember I was listening to a bunch of psych rock at the time—B.R.M.C., The Warlocks, Black Angels, and Autolux, who are one of my favorite LA bands. The effects to Greg’s voice were added at the end and fit so well.
GK: Oh yeah, Greg Cortez killed it with the reverb and delay throws in the mix. I think we were like, “Why don’t you try some delay throws?” And he was like “OK, where?” And we were like, “We don’t know, everywhere?” The stuff you hear was all his first pass.
13. “Don’t Get Hit by a Car”
GK: One day we came into our practice space to write, and I think Mandy had just watched a documentary about A Tribe Called Quest, and she was like, “All their songs have that same groove, can we try something with that feel?” So we started that new-jack drum groove and draped the chords from “Sweet Jane” on it. To me it sounds more like “Jack & Diane” than it sounds like either of the actual inspirations. Not gonna lie, I feel really exposed by the lyrics on this one, hence we buried it at the end of the album. But shouts to Lena Dunham, hope she doesn’t take us on The People’s Court for name-dropping her. It’s all love, Lena!
Originally Released August 12th, 2020 Music and lyrics by Cheekface
Amanda Tannen on bass guitar and backing vocals Greg Katz on vocals and guitar Mark Echo Edwards on drums and percussion
The Fat Angel Sings 