March 2021 American singer/songwriters Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy (who seems to sleep with his guitar lately. He’s everywhere) joined forces in 2005 for a long player release called “Superwolf” .They got together again to can another LP, titled, “Superwolves” due out 30th April 2021.
Billed not just as a follow-up but a direct sequel to its predecessor. It’s perhaps no surprise that they’ve managed to recapture that same energy – their nearly 25-year-old friendship has only sharpened their ability to play off each other’s strengths, becoming the sole constant character throughout the album’s loose and ambiguous narratives. But Superwolves is also marked by a newfound sense of vitality and purpose: these are crisp, buoyant songs that eschew the introverted, solitary qualities often associated with the singer-songwriter tag without stripping away the unique intimacy that can arise from it. There’s still a lot to unpack, but the ease with which the two artists exchange ideas is accompanied by song writing that, at its core, is stronger and more direct than before, relying on emotional impact rather than ambivalence. “Got no friends, got no home/ There must be a someone I can turn to,” Oldham sings on highlight ‘There Must Be Someone’; Sweeney steps in for a brief solo halfway through, but his playing remains less an answer than a constant, reassuring presence. Read more: The 30 Best Albums of 2021 (So Far) – Our Culture https://ourculturemag.com/2021/06/10/the-30-best-albums-of-2020-so-far
One of the 14 tracks is MY BLUE SUIT. A characteristic troubadour ballad. Smooth, mellow, and romantic.
Track from the Matt Sweeney & Bonnie “Prince” Billy album “Superwolves,” out on Digital & Streaming on April 30th, 2021 and LP/CS/CD on June 18, 2021 from Drag City/Palace Records and Domino Recordings.
Last month, Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy announced their new album, “Superwolves”, out digitally April 30th and physically June 18th. Today, they release a new single “My Blue Suit,” with an accompanying video directed by Geoff McFetridge, and announce their first tour together since 2014. The tour will see the duo return to their ancestral lupine roots in Big Sur, the site of one of their first live performances, and beyond. “My Blue Suit” follows previously released singles/videos “Make Worry For Me” and “Hall of Death.” Where “Hall of Death” featured a full band (courtesy of Tuareg guitar giant Mdou Moctar), “My Blue Suit” presents the duo at their core with Sweeney on acoustic guitar and Bonny (aka Will Oldham) on vocals.
McFetridge elaborates on the video below: “I started this video by painting. The work I created, in response to the song, was large scale figures I could use in scenes filmed on camera. All the images in the film are done in camera, there are no digital effects. The graphic sequences were done with paintings wrapped around a garbage can placed on a Techniques 1200 turntable. The tools used to create the effects were knives, glue, paint and tape. The pieces created for the film are nearly life size portraits done with acrylic on paper. These works, the film and the animated elements will be shown in the project space of Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto, opening May 1st.”
Track from the Matt Sweeney & Bonnie “Prince” Billy album “Superwolves,” out on Digital & Streaming on April 30th, 2021 and LP/CS/CD on June 18th, 2021 from Drag City/Palace Records and Domino Recordings.
Margo Price’s album is the work of a singer ready to shake up preconceived notions. The Nashville musician has been doing that all along to a degree, but That’s How Rumors Get Started is a conscious—and sometimes self-conscious step out from under the shadow of all the “bright future of country music” buzz that surrounded her previous solo work. That’s How Rumors Get Started is Price’s third LP as a solo artist, after three previous albums fronting the Nashville band Buffalo Clover. If that group had a shaggy late-’60s blues-rock bent à la Big Brother and the Holding Company, Price certainly leaned more toward the sound of fiddles and pedal steel guitar on Midwest Farmer’s Daughter in 2016 and All American Made in 2017. The latter even featured a duet with Willie Nelson. This time around, there’s as much blustery rock and hard-edged soul as there is country twang. Margo Price has paid her dues, both professionally and personally. Whereas she honours those challenges, she rejects singularity as the underlying factor in defining her music and identity. In That’s How Rumors Get Started, Price reimagines Americana’s sound as well as her position within the genre.
Some of that change is probably due to Price’s old pal Sturgill Simpson, who produced the album and assembled a band to play on it, in place of Price’s usual road band. On the other hand, the mix of sounds is more in line with what Price presents onstage in concert. When it works here, she demonstrates a certain amount of breadth as a performer. Yet it doesn’t always work. There’s a difference between upending expectations and contrarian posturing, and the song writing on That’s How Rumors Get Started isn’t consistently sharp enough to strike the right balance. Price goes for broad strokes on these 10 songs, musically and lyrically.
“That’s How Rumors Get Started”, an album of ten new, original songs that commit her sky-high and scorching rock-and-roll show to record for the very first time. Produced by long time friend Sturgill Simpson (co-produced by Margo and David Ferguson), the LP marks Price’s debut for Loma Vista Recordings, and whether she’s singing of motherhood or the mythologies of stardom, Nashville gentrification or the national healthcare crisis, relationships or growing pains, she’s crafted a collection of music that invites people to listen closer than ever before.
Margo primarily cut That’s How Rumors Get Started at Los Angeles’ EastWest Studios (Pet Sounds, “9 to 5”). Tracking occurred over several days while she was pregnant with daughter Ramona. “They’re both a creation process,” she says. “And I was being really good to my body and my mind during that time. I had a lot of clarity from sobriety.”
While Margo Price continued to collaborate on most of the song writing with her husband Jeremy Ivey, she recorded with an historic band assembled by Sturgill, and including guitarist Matt Sweeney (Adele, Iggy Pop), bassist Pino Palladino (D’Angelo, John Mayer), drummer James Gadson (Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye), and keyboardist Benmont Tench (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers). Background vocals were added by Simpson on “Letting Me Down,” and the Nashville Friends Gospel Choir, who raise the arrangements of “Hey Child” and “What Happened To Our Love?” to some of the album’s most soaring heights.
Margo Price and her steady touring band – Kevin Black (bass), Jamie Davis (guitar), Micah Hulsher (keys), and Dillon Napier (drums) – will perform songs from That’s How Rumors Get Started at dozens of shows with Chris Stapleton and The Head & The Heart this spring and summer, in addition to festival appearances and more to be announced soon.
“That’s How Rumors Get Started” follows Margo’s 2017 album All American Made, which was named the #1 Country/Americana album of the year by Rolling Stone, and one of the top albums of the decade by Esquire, Pitchfork and Billboard, among others. In its wake, Margo sold out three nights at The Ryman Auditorium, earned her first Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, and much more.
Released July 10th, 2020
New album, “That’s How Rumors Get Started” out now
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).
The Fat Angel Sings 