Even if we weren’t living through extraordinarily troubling times, there is nothing quite like a Teenage Fanclub album to assuage the mind, body and soul, and to reaffirm that all is not lost in this world. Endless Arcade follows the band’s ninth album Here, released in 2016. It’s quintessential TFC: melodies are equal parts heart warming and heart aching; guitars chime and distort; keyboard lines mesh and spiral; harmony-coated choruses burst out like sun on a stormy day.
“Even if we weren’t living through extraordinarily troubling times, there is nothing quite like a Teenage Fanclub album to assuage the mind, body and soul, and to reaffirm that all is not lost in this world. The new record is quintessential TFC: melodies are equal parts heart warming and heart-aching; guitars chime and distort; keyboard lines mesh and spiral; harmony-coated choruses burst out like sun on a stormy day. Such is life. But the title track suggests: Don’t be afraid of this endless arcade that is life. “I think of an endless arcade as a city that you can wander through, with a sense of mystery, an imaginary one that goes on forever,” says Raymond McGinley, one half of the band’s songwriters for this album alongside Norman Blake. “When it came to choosing an album title, it seemed to have something for this collection of songs.”
Teenage Fanclub will release their anticipated new album “Endless Arcade” on April 30th and they’ve just shared a fourth song from it. Penned and sung by Norman Blake,“The Sun Won’t Shine On Me” is one of the Fannies’ most gentle songs ever, a pretty waltz-time folk ballad. “With a troubled mind, I am in decline,” Norman laments as the band’s signature harmonies cascade overtop.
Endless Arcade is Teenage Fanclub’s first album since Gerard Love left the group and it will be their 11th album overall. The band will play a few late summer festivals this year but save touring for the album for next year, with spring 2022 UK dates announced.
From the forthcoming album Endless Arcade released Apr 30th 2021 on PeMa and Merge Records .
In 1978, The Clean were the seeds of New Zealand punk. In the years since, they have carved out a big sandbox for everyone to play in, and their influence resonates not only in NZ but around the world. A group that thrives when free of expectations, The Clean’s Robert Scott, Hamish Kilgour, and David Kilgour are, as Tape Op described, “a casually wonderful band.”
This is a double reissue on the Merge label from The Clean’s ‘Unknown Country’ and ‘Mister Pop’ on vinyl. Originally released in 1996 and 2009, respectively. The Clean – one of the most overlooked yet influencial acts of the 1980’s with bands such as Pavement, Guided By Voices and Yo La Tengo acknowledging their debts to the New Zealand group. This track (‘Wipe Me, I’m Lucky’) comes from their 1996 release ‘Unknown Country’ (Flying Nun Records.)
“The Clean have always exuded a casual grace that suggests they’d still be making the same records even if no one was listening, employing the same set of devices ramshackle locomotive rhythms, buoyant basslines, swirling organ lines, and wide-smile melodies irrespective of prevailing fashions, technological developments, or geopolitical unrest. And yet, the Clean’s periodic resurgences serve as a reminder that, in a world of uncertainty, there are still some things you can rely on.”
David Kilgour on Unknown Country: “The Clean always wanna try something different, but on this LP, we were obsessed with the idea. Tracks like “Wipe Me, I’m Lucky” and “Franz Kafka at the Zoo” are fine examples of the approach, I reckon. Quite a long way from “Tally Ho!” and “Beatnik”!
I remember we generally left vocal ideas to last, after the tracks were recorded, so we never really knew where we were headed. Might also explain all the instrumentals! Made during the Balkan War, hence the reference. And for the freaks, I think “Balkans” is the only Clean track ever to not actually feature The Clean playing. It’s all Alan Starrett, as we removed the backing track.”
Robert Scott on Unknown Country: This album is very different from our other albums. We didn’t go into the studio with many “song” ideas—a lot of it was written on the spot. I really enjoyed recording this as it was free of expectation. We weren’t playing much live at the time. It does contain some of my favourite Clean songs such as “Twist Top,” “Wipe Me, I’m Lucky,” and “Valley Cab.” Certainly our most experimental album.
Home-recorded DIY punk rock does not have to sound like aural dogshit. Case in point: Katie Crutchfield and a couple of friends rented a house in Long Island, played around with the acoustics in different rooms, and knocked out a handful of songs about longing and frustration. They walked away with a huge, gleaming song-cycle, a towering heap of melodies and feelings. And if they can make something they did on their own sound this amazing,
Waxahatchee, the solo musical project of Katie Crutchfield, is named after a creek not far from her childhood home in Alabama and seems to represent both where she came from and where she’s going. Ivy Tripp drifts confidently from its predecessors and brings forth a more informed and powerful recognition of where Crutchfield has currently found herself. The lament and grieving for her youth seem to have been replaced with control and sheer self-honesty. “My life has changed a lot in the last two years, and it’s been hard for me to process my feelings other than by writing songs,” says Crutchfield. “I think a running theme [of Ivy Tripp] is steadying yourself on shaky ground and reminding yourself that you have control in situations that seem overwhelming, or just being cognizant in moments of deep confusion or sadness, and learning to really feel emotions and to grow from that.”
Over the years, Katie Crutchfield has proven herself a master of the form: ’90s-inflected, nasally, home-recorded punk. Ivy Tripp is yet another subtle but meaningful step forward from what she’s been doing in various iterations for a decade now. It’s the perfect fall record: the crunch of leaves, the crisp morning air can be felt in every note. It’s the sound of stumbling and brushing the dirt off, feeling like shit, not knowing where to go or what to do next. It’s a record for wanderers, for those of us who are unable to or refuse to settle down
Recorded and engineered by Kyle Gilbride of Wherever Audio at Crutchfield’s home on New York’s Long Island—with drums recorded in the gym of a local elementary school—Ivy Tripp presents a more developed and aged version of Waxahatchee. “The title Ivy Tripp is really just a term I made up for directionless-ness, specifically of the 20-something, 30-something, 40-something of today, lacking regard for the complaisant life path of our parents and grandparents. I have thought of it like this: [Waxahatchee’s last album] Cerulean Salt is a solid and Ivy Tripp is a gas.”
Hiss Golden Messenger has detailed the forthcoming release of their next studio album, “Quietly Blowing It”, due out June 25th on Merge Records. Yesterday I set the song “Sanctuary” free out into the world, accompanied by this beautiful video created by KidEthnic. This is just the beginning of what’s to come this year. I hope this song does something for you.
The 11-track album—written primarily by bandleader M.C. Taylor—will act as the band’s full-length follow-up to their 2019 Grammy-nominated Terms of Surrender. The album features a song entitled “Painting Houses” which was co-written by Gregory Alan Isakov, and will also hear guest contributions from Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Zach Williams (The Lone Bellow), Buddy Miller, and Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman).
The band released Quietly Blowing It‘s lead single earlier this year with “Sanctuary”, and have now followed that up with “If It Comes in the Morning”
“Initially, I didn’t know how much hope to include in the song—I wasn’t feeling particularly hopeful myself in that moment—but I felt that it was important to remember that whatever happened, most of us were going to be fortunate enough to be given another day in which to enact what I feel are the most important and fundamental parts of being alive: joy, love, peace, the willingness to keep moving forward whether the cards fall in our favour or not,” Taylor said of their latest song, which was written last summer at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I suppose it became a song of hope. The Staple Singers and Curtis Mayfield were very good at writing these kinds of songs, and I suppose I was looking to their music as inspiration for ‘If It Comes in the Morning’. When I got stumped on a verse, I called my friend Anaïs Mitchell, and she got me straightened out. I’m very thankful for her help.”
All songs written by M.C. Taylor with the exception of “If It Comes in the Morning” by Taylor and Anaïs Mitchell and “Painting Houses” by Taylor and Gregory Alan Isakov.
Every Hiss Golden Messenger release is a cause for celebration and, although MC Taylor is such a prolific songwriter, it’s seemingly never at the expense of the quality. each accomplished addition to the Hiss Golden Messenger catalogue is lavished with critical acclaim and fan praise alike. for a long time, it’s felt like hiss golden messenger are ready to find an extended audience and now just might be the time!. Steeped in country and americana traditions, these songs go way beyond those parameters & pull in gorgeously languid gospel and soul vibes of the kind that Matthew E. White & his Spacebomb crew has an affinity for (not to mention the purple one, prince). there are winding blues vibes, too, which pay homage to Dylan but end up in a similar terrain to fink’s recent mesmerising output. indeed, ‘quietly blowing it’ is a distillation of the rolling
If It Comes in the Morning available on Merge Records Released on: June 25th, 2021 written by M.C. Taylor Composer: Anaïs Mitchell Lyricist: M.C. Taylor .
Out in the Storm, Katie Crutchfield’s fourth album as Waxahatchee and the follow-up to her Merge debut Ivy Tripp, is the blazing result of a woman reawakened. Her most autobiographical and honest album to date, Out in the Storm is a self-reflective anchor in the story of both her song writing and her life. Katie Crutchfield’s southern roots are undeniable. The name of her solo musical project Waxahatchee comes from a creek not far from her childhood home in Alabama and seems to represent both where she came from and where she’s going.
The album was tracked at Miner Street Recordings in Philadelphia with John Agnello, a producer, recording engineer, and mixer known for working with some of the most iconic musicians of the last 25 years, including Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth. Agnello and Crutchfield worked together for most of December 2016, along with the band: sister Allison Crutchfield on keyboards and percussion, Katherine Simonetti on bass, and Ashley Arnwine on drums; Katie Harkin, touring guitarist with Sleater-Kinney, also contributed lead guitar.
At Agnello’s suggestion, the group recorded most of the music live to enhance their unity in a way that gives the album a fuller sound compared to past releases, resulting in one of Waxahatchee’s most guitar-driven releases to date.
John Darnielle has written almost 600 songs now, and some of them are very sad, dealing with hard drugs and tragic ends, hurting yourself and others, sicknesses of both body and brain, off-brand alcohols. They are told in beautiful, unnerving, specific detail because he is a very good writer, and also some of them are just true stories about his own life.
The Mountain Goats released this live collection, The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 1 And 2, on Bandcamp today via Merge Records. The recordings come from a pair of virtual concerts the band conducted at Manifold Recording in Pittsboro, North Carolina in August of last year.
The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volumes 1 And 2 follow The Mountain Goats’ 2020 studio release, “Getting Into Knives”, which arrived in October. The new live collection — featuring John Darnielle (vocals, guitar, piano), Peter Hughes (bass), Matt Douglas (keyboards, guitar, saxophone, piano) and Jon Wurster (drums) — contains 36 carrer-spanning songs the band recorded over the course of two virtual concerts on NoonChorus, which became one of the livestream platform’s highest-attended online concerts to date.
Like a lot of bands, we thought, we have to figure out some way to play together, it is unnatural for us to not be playing together, it feels weird and wrong, and it also feels weird and wrong to not be playing for the people who dig what we do, that is a huge part of who we are, it’s a circuit, you know, an energy transfer, it’s the coolest thing and we’re lucky to have it and then the pandemic came in to remind us just how lucky. And also there’s the I-try-not-to-be-talking-about-this-stuff issue of how playing live is our paycheck, it is how we make ends meet, it’s the gig. So we booked a studio that had cameras, and I put together a couple of set lists, and we played two shows in two days and then we put the shows up on sale; and the Mountain Goats Massive showed up, in truly humbling numbers, and the whole groove felt really emotional for us—and, it seemed to me, for the audience, too. There is an immense loss for me in this time away from the stages and rooms which are, in many ways for us, home. I miss the people who bring our music to life, so much.
And so a lot of people, like a lot, in the chat during the show, and in various @’s across social media, said, Hey buddy, what if there were a live release of some kind, I’d buy that, and I thought, well, cool, I’ll look into it; and we did indeed do that, and here it is, but I wanted to make it “pay what you like” on release day: because you people who already paid to see these shows, you are the people who literally put food in our children’s mouths this year. If you feel like you’re done paying for these shows, then we are cool with that, zero pressure. But!! if you’re in good shape, and your own job has figured out a way to let you report to the workplace in 2020, and you’re in a position to pay for these shows, then we are deeply grateful, it has been pretty harrowing to be banned from all clubs for a whole year. The news on the wire however is that a vaccine is coming which will unban us from clubs around the world, and, friends, when that viral ban is lifted, please know that there will be few places to hide from the Mountain Goats. We will rock them in the steel towns, and in the coastal towns, too; and on the cities of the plains, and in the oases of the desert, lo, we shall rock them, and then rock them even harder, at serious Deep Purple levels of rocking, the head-nodding, hair-flying style, at which many will say, I have been rocked, and indeed I wondered if my time of rocking were past, but it has returned this day with gale force. May that day speed hither with all due haste! Finally, if you are a reclusive Howard Hughes type reading these words, and thinking, What if “pay what you like” means I just throw an absurd amount of money at the Mountain Goats, well, friend, we’re glad to meet you. Please be assured that your gesture will be met by JD with similarly absurd gestures, as for example fulfilling his dream of commissioning a translation of the book Elfriede Jelinek got the Nobel for, but which still hasn’t been published in English twenty years later, for crying out loud.
Anyway that’s the news! Here’s two shows! We’re proud of them! If you wanna pay us for ’em, we won’t complain! We will see you next year!
Released December 4th, 2020
John Darnielle – vocals, guitar, piano Peter Hughes – bass Matt Douglas – keyboards, guitar, saxophone, piano Jon Wurster – drums
Recorded live in studio at Manifold Recording in Pittsboro, NC, on August 8th & 9th, 2020
In 1978, The Clean were the seeds of New Zealand punk scene. In the years since, they have carved out a big sandbox for everyone to play in, and their influence resonates not only in NZ but around the world. A group that thrives when free of expectations, The Clean’s Robert Scott, Hamish Kilgour, and David Kilgour are, as Tape Op described, “a casually wonderful band.”
If the Clean were motivated by anything other than a seemingly pure love of music, “Mister Pop” would have been a very different album. Since the last time the band made a record, scores of new bands have discovered the awesome early work the Clean recorded back in the ’80s and have incorporated the raw, scratchy, and energetic feel of those records into their sound. The group could have easily tried to capitalize on its newfound icon status and made an album that harked back to its early years. No one would have blamed them for cashing in; nobody would have begrudged them a few minutes of near fame. Instead, the band — still the brothers Kilgour (David and Hamish) and Robert Scott have made a laid-back, hazy, and thickly psychedelic album that sounds more like something the band might have made in the ’90s.
This is a double reissue on the Merge Records label from The Clean’s ‘Unknown Country’ and ‘Mister Pop’ on vinyl. Originally released in 1996 and 2009, respectively.
The Clean have always exuded a casual grace that suggests they’d still be making the same records even if no one was listening, employing the same set of devices ramshackle locomotive rhythms, buoyant basslines, swirling organ lines, and wide-smile melodies irrespective of prevailing fashions, technological developments, or geopolitical unrest. And yet, the Clean’s periodic resurgences serve as a reminder that, in a world of uncertainty, there are still some things you can rely on.”
Originally released in 1996, The Clean’s “Unknown Country” makes its debut appearance on vinyl . Recorded and mixed in two sessions during 1996, The Clean yet again prove to be masters of musical innovation, three guys who can only amaze when they come together and throw all their ideas down on tape. And as a mood of supreme grooviness is all-pervading on Unknown Country, this is The Clean at their most timeless.
The odd pop songs focus on the tension and the release that characteristic of psychedlic rock although Champagne and Misery stays close The Clean’s canon, Wipe Me I’m Lucky experiments shyly, and Walk Walk is warped like a cartoon soundtrack.
David Kilgour on “Mister Pop”: “Mister Pop began in Brooklyn, NY, at Gary Olson’s Marlborough Farms studio and was completed in the basement hall of First Church Dunedin. There is more synthesizer on this album than the others, mainly an old Juno synth. I do remember having a bath in Brooklyn while Robert was downstairs singing and writing. I thought he was singing “he’s a factory man,” so I dried off and went down and wrote “Factory Man” while thinking heavily of The Kinks. Rainy and Geva from Haunted Love did some great work on backing vocals for “Loog” and “Dreamlife.” And old friend and long time Clean collaborator Alan Starrett makes an appearance on “Moonjumper.”
Of this album, The Clean’s David Kilgour writes, “The Clean always wanna try something different, but on this LP, we were obsessed with the idea.” Bandmate Robert Scott agrees, saying, “I really enjoyed recording this as it was free of expectation. Certainly our most experimental album.”
‘Unknown Country’, the third LP by New Zealand indie band TheClean, was originally released in 1996. Whilst they are generally known for their jangle-pop nuggets, this sprawling masterpiece is the result of studio experimentation and spontaneous recording sessions. Gorgeous instrumental tracks such as ‘Wipe Me, I’m Lucky’ and ‘Franz Kafka at the Zoo’ are interspersed with wonky pop gems such as the Pavement-esque ‘Twist Top’. For fans of The Bats and The Chills.
On March 26th Merge Records will reissue The Clean’sUnknown Country and Mister Pop on vinyl Originally released in 1996 and 2009, respectively, this marks the first time each of these albums will be available on vinyl in the U.S. (they’ll also be available worldwide).
Robert Scott on “Mister Pop”: “I remember thinking at the start of the NY sessions with Gary Olson, “Is this the start of a new album?” We were coming up with quite a bit of new stuff, and of course, Gary is great to work with. We carried on at Burlington St in Dunedin with (engineer and Heavy 8) Tex Houston at the controls, good fun from what I remember, lots of mucking around with keyboards and synths. We were going for that Krautrock groove and we sure got it on “Tensile,” one of my faves along with the pure pop of “Dreamlife.” “Loog” was a fun song to put together. “Asleep in the Tunnel” is written about being stuck in traffic in a tunnel under the Hudson River in NY.”
In 1978, The Clean were the seeds of New Zealand punk. They carved out a big sandbox for everyone to play in, and their influence resonated not only in NZ but around the world. This fall’s Mister Pop sees The Clean continue the great pop pastiche. Circus ragas (“Moonjumper”), hazy sunset anthems (“In the Dreamlife You Need a Rubber Soul”), and the loose Dada approach to word-smithery continue alongside “proper” lyrical forays and a few Autobahn-referential instro moments to boot (“Tensile”).
The Kiwi Pop giants and lo-fi all-stars return with, incredibly, only the fifth LP in their storied career from 2009. In 1978, The Clean were the seeds of New Zealand punk. They carved out a big sandbox for everyone to play in, and their influence resonated not only in NZ but around the world.
Mister Pop sees The Clean continue the great pop pastiche. both albums are out in March, through Merge Records
The Pet Parade marks a milestone for Eric D. Johnson, who celebrates 20 years of Fruit Bats in 2021. In some ways still a cult band, in other ways a time-tested act, Fruit Bats has consistently earned enough small victories to carve out a career in a notoriously fickle scene.
While many of the songs on The Pet Parade were actually written before the pandemic, it’s impossible to disassociate the record from the times. As an example, producer Josh Kaufman (The Hold Steady, Bob Weir, The National, and Bonny Light Horseman, in which he plays with Johnson and Anaïs Mitchell) was brought in for his deep emotional touch and bandleading abilities. However, Johnson, Kaufman, and the other musicians on The Pet Parade—drummers Joe Russo and Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Fleet Foxes, Muzz), singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels, pianist Thomas Bartlett (Nico Muhly, Sufjan Stevens), and fiddler Jim Becker (Califone, Iron & Wine)—were forced to self-record their parts in bedrooms and home studios across America.
“This was definitely not a coronavirus record,” Fruits Bats’ Eric D. Johnson says of “The Pet Parade”, his indie-folk project’s ninth album. “What I mean by that is that I think everyone who writes songs is going to be coming out with a quarantine record at some point in the next five months, but about half of these songs were written before the pandemic. Then again, the record couldn’t not be informed by what was taking place, and a few of the songs I had already completed were weirdly prescient.”
Beyond colouring Johnson’s lyrical content, the pandemic certainly played a role in the process of creating the album. In early March, producer Josh Kaufman visited Johnson in LA for prep work, and the pair planned to re-group for some more formal sessions a few weeks later in Kaufman’s native New York. However, COVID-19 scuttled those plans and, when the two resumed work on the album, they did so remotely, enlisting drummer Joe Russo, The Walkmen/Fleet Foxes drummer Matt Barrick, singer Johanna Samuels, keyboardist Thomas Bartlett and bassist Annie Nero, who is also Kaufman’s wife, to record individual tracks from their home locales.
Though “The Pet Parade” marks the first time that Kaufman had produced a Fruit Bats record, the project immediately proceeded their collaboration with Anais Mitchell as Bonny Light Horseman.
Johnson is quick to note that while Thom Monahan had served as producer of his three previous Fruit Bats albums, 2011’s Tripper, 2016’s Absolute Loser and 2019’s Gold Past Life, that “Thom had gotten really busy as of late.”
“We’re always going to work together; he’s one of my closest friends and we already have plans for other stuff,” he continues. “So when I finished the Bonny Light Horseman record, I was like, ‘I want to keep living in this world. I would love to see what Josh does with some of my other original songs.’ I just wanted to see what his touch would bring.”
As for working with the personnel on The Pet Parade, Johnson likens the experience to “hiring a film director who has his own cast of actors. He brought in the Josh Kaufman Players, all of whom are friends of mine or became friends through Josh. Everyone was in a different room in a different city but, thankfully, all of them had home setups. Then there’s Josh himself. Some of the songs are just the two of us playing everything, which was fine by me because I adore the guy and he is an absolute monster of a multi-instrumentalist.”
The Pet Parade
Josh and I both independently had this idea that we should do a song that was a hypnotic invocation of some sort. We were thinking about Astral Weeks. Now I don’t think it sounds like that album, but the idea was something with two chords that we could float over the top of in some way. The song was originally conceived like that, and then it became something else.
Josh pushed to open the record with it, but that was a scary decision for me to make. I’m a guy who wants to top[1]load the record—not because it’s some Spotify thing but because, going back to The Beatles, that’s just what you do. So even though I think it’s a wonderful song, it’s seven minutes long, it’s slow, you can’t dance to it and it has two chords. But Josh was like, “During this moment in time, you can’t write a song where the first line is, ‘Hello from in here to all you out there/ It feels like it’s been years’ and not open an album with it.”
I realized he was right. With this record, I’m inviting people to be patient rather than giving them a two-and-a-half-minute banger at the start to suck them in. It’s kind of like telling people: “Do you trust me? Come on in.”
One of my great musical mentors, Jim Becker, plays fiddle on the song, which was a real joy. He’s an old Chicago pal of mine and probably best known these days as a member of Iron & Wine. He’s played on records of mine in the past, but he’s somebody that I hadn’t made music with in a long time. That’s him playing those gorgeous Cajun-y fiddles.
Cub Pilot
This is one of the earlier demos that I had written. I guess you could say it’s a pre-quarantine song. Originally, in a way, it fell into the lyrical thematic territory that I dug into on Gold Past Life, which was kind of like talking to someone and being encouraging to that person. In this case, it was kind of a love song, and as I was writing it, I was either going to be singing it to someone, to you, or I was going to put it in the third person. But when we were putting the song together, all the stuff was going down with the George Floyd protests. Now for better or worse, I’m not a topical songwriter. I love that other people do that and, although my music is on the side of righteousness, it typically exists outside of that in a different world.
So while this song is in no way about the protests, I changed the lyrics from “you” to “we” so that it became sort of a love song to the world. That sounds very grandiose but it felt weird, at that moment, to be writing to an individual. I didn’t want to be talking to just one person.
Discovering
This is the oldest song on the record. A few years ago, before we had even conceived of Bonny Light Horseman, I went out to New York to work with Josh. I wasn’t really thinking of him as a producer. It was just an excuse to hang out and write something together. We did this song and it had mumble lyrics on it, which happens sometimes. I put it aside for several years but once Josh agreed to produce this record, I was like, “Oh, we should do that one,” because I always really liked it, although it was never finished.
Now, sometimes, mumble lyrics can be actual gibberish but, in this case, it was real words and the first line was “He has lived through another night and is quite likely to wake up again.” It seemed weird to have that first line in this moment with the spectre of death feeling close.
“Discovering” is kind of a song about isolation, but isolation in which you can take yourself outside. So it’s about walking around alone outside. I’m not trying to write about it in a romantic or starry-eyed way; it’s a little more like a neutral Zen song about just getting yourself outside and breathing in the air.
The Balcony
This song is about a dream location, which is the balcony of my grandmother’s apartment. We moved around a ton as a kid, but my grandma lived in the same place. She’s no longer with us but my aunt lives there now.
It’s an apartment on the ninth floor and it’s been in my life forever. I often dream about the balcony there, which overlooks a very mid-century stone rec centre. There’s an outdoor pool that is sometimes this lonely, drained thing in the Chicago winter, and then off in the distance is a sliver of the Chicago skyline. I found it to be a very evocative place when I was a little kid for a million reasons, and it exists in my dreams forever.
The song is not really about that, but somehow it just worked its way into the song. It’s a song about patience and it’s probably informed by the quarantine. We almost left it off the record but it’s the most legit up-tempo song we had. So it ended up getting back in, and I’m glad it did.
Here for Now, for You
“Here for Now, for You” is a pretty sad song with some references to suicide, having lost a few friends like that. It’s another one where I kind of spit out the first line, sort of as a mumble off the top of my head. It was, “I feel sometimes like I want to get off the ride, like, you know, that I’m getting called home,” which is a pretty dark line.
I wrote it a long time ago. The music portion of the song has gone through a lot of permutations. At one point, there was a crazy ‘80s pop jam in there, with Joe Russo shredding on drums, but it continued to evolve. It’s a sad song but it’s also about devotion.
On the Avalon Stairs
“On the Avalon Stairs” is probably my favourite vocal performance that I’ve ever done for one of my own records. Singing is always the most intimate and strange part of record-making. I’ve produced other people’s records, I’ve guested and I’ve been there for other people’s processes. It can be hard and I can be very self-critical about it.
I was a singer before I could play any instruments and I’m aware that it’s probably my strong suit. I’m not going to come guest on your record and shred lead guitar—that’s just not what I do. But I can come and sing harmonies and maybe something good will come of it.
In this case, it was very strange being in a room alone, kind of comping my own vocals. That’s the easiest way to get into a wormhole of your own brain; those sounds are coming from close to your brain. I did a couple of takes and I wasn’t feeling it, but then I did one take that was a breakthrough moment. I remember being happy with that vocal take and I don’t usually feel that way.
Eagles Below Us
This is a song about wanting to climb in someone’s head, which is something that we all believe we can do. It sort of sounds like a love song, and it is in some ways. But it’s also a platonic love song, which all of my love songs are—you can sing them to a friend. The great Annie Nero is on bass and Joe Russo is on drums.
When we were on the Bonny Light Horseman tour, we were driving somewhere in the mountains. There was a cliffside to the right and, when I looked down, there was an eagle flying 20 feet below us. I thought it was such a great image.
“Eagles Below Us” was also the working title for the album because I really like that notion. However, it ended up losing out to The Pet Parade, which kind of came in at the last minute and was more elemental sounding.
Holy Rose
“Holy Rose” might be the most direct song on the record as far as being about something. I wrote that one about the 2017 Sonoma County Tubbs Fire. It was one of the first songs we worked on and, as we continued from summer into early fall, these fires started happening again. My wife is from Sonoma County and it’s about her experience watching her childhood burn away.
I realized, after the fact, that each verse and chorus is written from a different character’s perspective. Some of the song is saying, “Get out of there,” and some of it is saying, “I’ll never leave.” I’ve seen the heartbreak of native Californians watching their lives burn. There’s a symbolic notion in the line about “the ghosts of everyone you’ve ever known.”
The original arrangement was going to be a soft sort of waltz, but Josh and Matt Barrick interpreted it as very angry, which I thought was cool. So it’s still a waltz, but it hits hard and kind of feels like a fire.
All in One Go
“All in One Go” was a late add. I wrote it all in one blast— which I may have had in mind when I was working on it—and then named the song.
It seems like all my records always have a song toward the end that takes the form of a gentle acoustic guitar track. I’ll sit down with an iPhone and an acoustic guitar and do something that’s sort of informed by the record as a whole. It’s a little bit of a denouement, which is how “All in One Go” ended up in that position as the third to last song.
Gullwing Doors
Sense of place is huge for me. In fact, that was one of the working titles for Gold Past Life and the original theme of that album. I’m nomadic. I kind of live everywhere and nowhere, too, but for the past 15 years, it’s mostly been back and forth between LA and Portland. When I leave one city, I always write a love song to the other.
“Gullwing Doors” is somewhat about the back[1]and-forth drive up Interstate 5 between LA and points north, which can be the world’s longest and bleakest drive. It’s a driving song, like my song “Absolute Loser” [the title track to his 2016 album], although that one was about driving between Portland and Seattle in the rain. This one is more about driving around Stockton at dusk.
There are also some thematic tie-ins to the other songs on this record. It has a similar theme to “Eagles Below Us” in that it’s a song about human connection. It’s also a little bit related to “Holy Rose” with that sense of deciding between letting go of a place or holding onto a place.
Josh brought a lot out of this one. At first, it was more of a double time, almost disco-y song, but he saw it as a half[1]time kind of epic thing. Josh laboured over all these songs, but I have good memories of him being excited about this one. He did a number on it in a good way.
Complete
Here’s my theory about the last three songs on a record. It’s different than the first couple songs on a record because there are a lot of different ways to look at those. You might put a couple of super jams up front to get people invested or, like in this case, put a floaty song up front so that you can get people in a meditative mood.
But while there are a few ways that you can treat the beginning of an album, I always see the end the same way. I feel like the second-to-last song is the last song because the last song is kind of like the epilogue. The album is done and now you’re watching the closing credits. So that makes the third-to-last song really the second-to-last scene. That’s how I’ve always envisioned it. The second-to-last song is really the end, and the last song is the closing credits.
“Complete” is just me singing and playing guitar at the same time in a room. There are no overdubs, I’m just playing to a click track. I tried to make it an invocation, a little bit of a prayer and a wish for everyone: “You shall be complete.” I know we’re all feeling like there are holes in us right now, so it’s a prayer for good, as best as I can say it.
Fruit Bats is back with their second studio album on Merge Records,The Pet Parade, out March 5th.
A rich modern acoustic album from the main driver behind alternative rock legends Sebadoh. Lou Barlow is a terrific singer-songwriter who has been crafting innovative tunes under various guises since the mid-1980s. He has released music with Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, Sentridoh, The Folk Implosion as well as under his own name. He is in many ways the poster child for all things “Indie Rock,” even before Guided By Voices became a thing.
Before I discuss the first time domestic vinyl reissue of Lou’s 2005 album called “EMOH”, lets talk about the notion of the independently made record and whether it could possibly sound genuinely really good, possibly even “demo-worthy.”
One of the hallmarks of modern home digital recording is that it breaks down the economic barriers of the recording studio so most anyone can make music on the go where they live and play. Before the digital revolution, the Tascam Portastudio cassette multi-track recorders in particular opened the flood gates in the early 1980s for affordable independent music making. Remember, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska was recorded on one of those things! But that was something of an anomaly. Fast forward, last year newcomer Billie Eilish swept the Grammy Awards with her debut album that was essentially recorded in her bedroom! Home recording has clearly come a long way…
For many years, however, there were loads of great but pretty rough sounding “indie” and “LoFi” (aka intentionally low fidelity) albums being released, as young artists learned how to become recording engineers as well as performers. Much good came of this period as artists made albums in unusual environments where natural acoustic reverb laden environments might exists such as kitchens and living rooms and bathrooms. Heck, one of my favourite Guided By Voices tracks (“I’ll Replace You With Machines“) sounds like it was recorded to match the rhythms of a washing machine.
In a way, this is getting back to the roots of studio recording as pioneered by no less than a Les Paul who made his own home studios in the 1940s and ’50s. Having a studio at home allowed him to innovate new sounds simply by running microphone cables around the house where he needed them. For example on the 1953 song “Walking and Whistling Blues” you can hear the sound of someone walking around the kitchen in rhythm in time for the music (I think it was his wife and performing partner Mary Ford).
So, back to EMOH, this album is technically Lou Barlow’s first full solo album, released under his own name just before he re-joined Dinosaur Jr. (so he never really got to promote this album properly). It was recorded across a bunch of different scenarios, from a 16-track recording studio in Nashville to four-track Mini-Disc (!) and elements recorded in his home. In some instances the recordings were started in one location and added to in another so all that contributes to the distinct sound on this record.
When EMOH was released in 2005 it was a CD-only release here in the United States. There was a small run of vinyl in the European market but those were next to impossible to find here.
In celebration of the 15th anniversary of EMOH — which coincided with the birth of his first child Merge Records has put out a lovely two LP gatefold version of the album for the first time here in the US. It spreads the full album across four sides so there’s plenty of room for the tracks to breathe and it sounds quite wonderful on thick, well pressed, quiet vinyl.
Largely revolving around Lou’s acoustic guitar sometimes it sounds like a nylon string guitar or even a Ukulele at times this record has a hushed beauty to it even when it has moments of rocking out. Some of the guitars sound like they are recorded very closely so there is at times a wonderful sense and feel of the wood of the instrument and the strings coming through the speakers. One of the first things you’ll hear on EMOH‘s opening track, “Hold Back The Years” is the sound of the room in which Lou is recording. As you can see from pictures included in the album I suspect that we are hearing the natural sound of the room he was in – a bathroom — a great place for natural reverb which makes for a very interesting production texture.
Lou Barlow’s voice and song writing grabbed me from the get-go when I first saw him on a late night program on MTV — an acoustic set with Husker Du’s Bob Mould. His music won me over that night. I soon thereafter picked up an early album by his group Sebadoh and was absolutely blown away by the song “Soul and Fire” a production which in some ways is a loose template for this album – a raw, emotional tale of a failing love.
Lou has explained in materials promoting EMOH that it is basically documenting the break up of his first marriage. Accordingly, there is a lot of baring of the soul going on — love and heartbreak, soul and fire. Some of my favourite songs here include the stunning “Mary” which tells the story of Jesus from the perspective of an imagined secret lover. “Confused” is another great tune which (to my ear) channels at points no less than classic 1972-73 Grateful Dead sounds, mining similar spaces to their classics “Wharf Rat” and “Dark Star”
“Round & Round” has such a strong chorus hook, in a different production it might have been a pop hit but here its a sparse, airy acoustic guitar and piano arrangement that is powerful.
EMOH is a wonderful record and you should check it out. It’s a rich, round and rewarding as the new vinyl edition.
Now I hope that Lou can get his fantastic Folk Implosion album “One Part Lullaby” issued on vinyl.,
News breaks today of a new album from Eric D. Johnson’s Fruit Bats. “The Pet Parade”, an album that emerges in troubled times, living within what Johnson refers to as the beauty and absurdity of existence, is due for release by Merge Records on 5th March.
Ahead of the album’s release, comes ‘Holy Rose’ a song that introduces itself as a ballad but soon blossoms with fuzzed-out guitars and organ. Johnson on this new song: “Holy Rose” is possibly the most “direct” song on The Pet Parade. I wrote this about the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Sonoma County and was finishing it up right when fire season was raging in California. My wife grew up in Sonoma County and just had to sit there and watch her childhood burn down. This is a love song to the native West Coasters.”
While many of the songs on The Pet Parade were actually written before the pandemic, it’s impossible to disassociate the record from the times. As an example, producer Josh Kaufman (The Hold Steady, Bob Weir, The National, and Bonny Light Horseman, in which he plays with Johnson and Anaïs Mitchell) was brought in for his deep emotional touch and band-leading abilities. However, Johnson, Kaufman, and the other musicians on The Pet Parade—drummers Joe Russo and Matt Barrick (The Walkmen, Fleet Foxes, Muzz), singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels, pianist Thomas Bartlett (Nico Muhly, Sufjan Stevens), and fiddler Jim Becker (Califone, Iron & Wine)—were forced to self-record their parts in bedrooms and home studios across America.
At times upbeat and reassuring and at times quietly contemplative, The Pet Parade marks a milestone for Johnson, who celebrates 20 years of Fruit Bats in 2021. In some ways still a cult band, in other ways a time-tested act, Fruit Bats has consistently earned enough small victories to carve out a career in a notoriously fickle scene.
And Johnson himself—who has played in The Shins, composed film scores, gone solo and returned back to the moniker that started it all, and recently earned two Grammy nominations with Bonny Light Horseman—doesn’t take this long route of life’s pet parade for granted. “I’m still really excited to make records,” he says. “Lucky and happy and maybe happier that things went slower for me. I’m savouring it a lot more.”
From the album The Pet Parade, out March 5, 2021 on Merge Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 