Olden Yolk is a New York-based group whose penchant for dystopian folk, abstract poeticism, and motorik rhythms have enveloped them in a sound uniquely of-the-moment yet simultaneously time-tested. The project is currently led by songwriters, vocalists, and multi- instrumentalists Shane Butler and Caity Shaffer, whose interlaced vocals are found guiding each composition on their enlivening self-titled debut. The project was initially conceived in 2012 by Butler as an outlet for one-off songs and visual art while touring and releasing albums with the band Quilt (Mexican Summer). Following the release of a split-record with Weyes Blood in 2014, Olden Yolk became a collaborative entity.
Olden Yolk’s debut ruminates on questions surrounding love, self-doubt, and locating autonomy amidst burgeoning unrest. Wrought with hazy melancholy and halcyon joy, Butler and Shaffer’s lilting vocals play off one another through a devotional dialogue, taking form in haunting choral melodies and candid rock n’ roll. These songs are ecstatic odes to the life of the city; to the subway platforms, kiosks, and monuments which enliven and encompass our collectivity, elevating into an urban-psychedelia.
On the album, Butler and Shaffer are joined by drummerDan Drohan (Tei Shi, Uni Ika Ai) and guitarist JesseDeFrancesco who round out the studio sessions and live-band. Drohan’s deep passion for jazz, hip-hop, and experimental percussion come to fore while Defrancesco’s minimal yet powerful guitar ambiences are heard swelling in the peripheries of each song. The album was recorded at Gary’s Electric in NYC by Jarvis Taveniere (Woods) with co-production, electronics, and mixing by Jon Nellen (Ginla, Terrible Records). Other guests, such as multi-instrumentalist John Andrews (Woods, Quilt, The Yawns) and violinist Jake Falby (Mutual Benefit, Julie Byrne), add to the mercurial nature of the record, creating a landscape tinged with beatific songwriting and transgressive underpinnings.
All songs written & recorded by Olden Yolk (ASCAP) Olden Yolk is:
Shane Butler:
vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, fx, keys, bass, production
Caity Shaffer:
vocals, piano, keys, bass, percussion
Dan Drohan:
drums, percussion
Jesse Defrancesco:
electric guitar, keys
NYC’s Lake Ruth was formed in 2015 by multi-instrumentalist Hewson Chen of The New Lines, drummer Matt Schulz (Holy Fuck / Enon / SAVAK) and vocalist Allison Brice (The Eighteenth Day Of May, The Silver Abduction).
Their debut LP, Actual Entity, was released in 2016 on The Great Pop Supplement (UK). A second album, Birds of America, is due February 2018 on Feral Child (UK). Lake Ruth have crafted an absolutely radiant follow up to their brilliant debut album. Each track is like a perfectly cut gemstone, and the ten songs make up an album that is a joy to listen to from start to finish ! Get hold of the vinyl if you can, its a rare thing to find an album this perfect
If, like us, you have a thing for dystopian folk, abstract poeticism and motorik rhythms then Olden Yolk can happily tick those boxes for you. This has echoes of the Arthur Lee’s Love .
The New York-based group led by songwriters, vocalists, and multi-instrumentalists Shane Butler (of Quilt) and Caity Shaffer, are set to release their self-titled debut album on23rd February via Trouble In Mind.
We previously shared tracks Takes One To Know One and Vital Sign, and now we have latest single, Cut To The Quick, which the band describe as being, “about reclaiming oneself when the pressures of the outside world seem to close in around you. The video was largely shot in NYC and Austin, TX; two places that have been homes to us at one time or another. It plays with abstraction, memory, and the simple acts we go through on a daily basis to construct some semblance of identity.”
From debut album out February 23rd, 2018 on Trouble In Mind Records
There’s a danger that pushing everything through the Trumpian prism collapses some of the intricacies and nuances of art. After all, The Donald is a product of the disaffection CraigFinn is exploring here, not the cause. The problem is deeper and more complex than any government-related trouble, and Finn is too wise to offer much in the way of an answer. Instead, he suggests we shift the focus of our questions. Because We All Want the Same Things is an album about relationships, but not in the usual sense. Not the transcendental, star-aligned love of Billboard hits and Hollywood flicks but coupling based on common needs. Not life-changing answers but life-preserving strategies. Luckily, in the hands of Craig Finn, this version of ‘romance’ feels somehow more fulfilling, the opposite of cynical, for better or for worse, genuinely human. Perhaps the revolution in the conclusion isn’t some violent revolt or epiphanic break, rather a gradual yet constant commitment to challenging our own expectations. To stop wanting too much for ourselves and to start being sympathetic to others. A comeback story, of sorts.”
Half Waif brims over with sounds: underwater echoes of Celtic melodies; mossy, blinking electronic soundscapes; the ultra- sad chord changes of 19th-century art music; and eternal, unending bhajans. A finely crafted glass menagerie of song.
On April 27, our new full-length album Lavender will be released via our fam at Cascine Records. Today, you can hear & watch the first single, “Keep It Out.” It was directed by Celina Carney and choreographed by 2nd Best Dance Company and features a whole lot of talented folks – a huge thanks to the brilliant cast & crew for bringing this song to life.
Songs written by Nandi Rose Plunkett
Produced & arranged by Nandi Rose Plunkett with Adan Carlo & Zack Levine
After wowing audiences in New York and LA, Uni are anew group with CharlotteKemp Muhl of The GOASTT)The band is heading out on its first tour! They will be joined by Atlanta-glam band, Starbenders , they’ll be playing clubs in Philadelphia, DC, Richmond, and Chapel Hill.
Kemp, the brain of Uni! …Nico Fuzz, the heart of Uni!...David Strange, the balls of Uni! They wore high heels embroidered with stars to elevate them above the filth the enemy had spread like fecal peanut butter on planet earth. Kemp was the half crazed Boudicca who piloted the spaceship with her Orpheus rock riffs and led their armies into battle. David Strange was the warrior poet who could build anything with his bare hands and write lyrics to mesmerize the harpies, while summoning the devil on his double neck. Nico had flowers in his hair and broken glass under his nails. He wanted to heal the tectonic plates and could speak to insects. He sung like Orpheus and had one foot in the underworld, one foot in the future. Those who heard their music saw through the neckties of lying politicians and the banality of modern pop stars, freeing themselves at last from a digital prison. So Uni was immediately black listed from the radio and issued a warrant for indecent exposure charges which forced them to go permanently underground. It’s unknown where or when Uni will strike again. They appear without warning and claim responsibility for miracles in the strangest corners of the world. The number of followers that Uni has is rumored to be growing although few will actually admit to being a follower of this controversial cult.
UNI – “Mushroom Cloud” Live at JITV HQ in Los Angeles, CA 2018.
Acid Dad first appeared in the New York scene in 2016. After spending the year self-releasing demos recorded at their studio in upstate New York, the band garnered local praise from the likes of Oh My Rockness, Consequence of Sound, BrooklynVegan, Stereogum and more. At the outset of 2017, the band began writing, demoing and recording with the intention of creating their debut full length. Now part of the Greenway Records family, their debut LP is slated for a March 2018 release followed by a world-wide tour. NYC’sAcid Dad are following 2016’s Let’s Plan A Robbery EP with their self-titled debut album on March 9th via Greenway Records . As their name hints, Acid Dad are a psychedelic rock band, but they don’t get too trippy. Lead single “2Ci” is just a catchy dose of guitar pop, and you can check that one out now.
The Self Titled Debut LP from NYC freaks Acid Dad
Out March 9th, 2018 via Greenway Records
Amen Dunes (aka the project of New York-based Damon McMahon) will release his fifth album, Freedom, on 30 March via Sacred Bones Records.
Amen Dunes last released an album in 2014. The album was called Love . The tune below is called “Miki Dora” . Here’s what McMahon has to say about the track.
“Miki Dora was arguably the most gifted and innovative surfer of his generation and the foremost opponent of surfing’s commercialization. He was also a lifelong criminal and retrograde: a true embodiment of the distorted male psyche. He was a living contradiction; both a symbol of free-living and inspiration, and of the false heroics American culture has always celebrated. With lyrics of regret and redemption at the end of one’s youth, the song is about Dora, and McMahon, but ultimately it is a reflection on all manifestations of mythical heroic maleness and its illusions.”
On the surface, Freedom is a reflection on growing up, childhood friends who ended up in prison or worse, male identity, McMahon’s father, and his mother, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the beginning of recording. The characters that populate the musical world of the album are a colourful mix of reality and fantasy. Each character portrait is a representation of McMahon, of masculinity, and of his past.The lead single “Miki Dora”, and its accompanying video, which features 17-year old Boomer Feith with McMahon appearing as both the story’s narrator and its subject.
Of the track, McMahon says, “Miki Dora was arguably the most gifted and innovative surfer of his generation and the foremost opponent of surfing’s commercialization. He was also a lifelong criminal and retrograde: a true embodiment of the distorted male psyche. He was a living contradiction; both a symbol of free-living and inspiration, and of the false heroics American culture has always celebrated. With lyrics of regret and redemption at the end of one’s youth, the song is about Dora, and McMahon, but ultimately it is a reflection on all manifestations of mythical heroic maleness and its illusions.”
On every record, Damon McMahon’s project has transformed continuously, and Freedom is its boldest leap yet. On the surface, the album is a reflection on growing up, childhood friends who ended up in prison or worse, male identity, McMahon’s father, and his mother, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the beginning of recording. The themes are darker than on previous Amen Dunes albums, but it’s a darkness sublimated through grooves. The music, as a response or even a solution to the darkness, is tough and joyous, rhythmic and danceable. The album comes out March 30th.
The video for the first single from Freedom, “Miki Dora,” is out now.
The first LP, D.I.A., was a gnarled underground classic, recorded and played completely by McMahon in a trailer in upstate New York over the course of a month and left as is. The fourth and most recent LP Love, a record that enlisted Godspeed! You Black Emperor as both producers and backing band (along with an additional motley crew including Elias Bender Rønnenfelt of Iceage and Colin Stetson), featured songs confidently far removed from the damaged drug pop of Amen Dunes’ trailer-park origins.
Love took two years to make. Freedom took three. The first iteration of the album was recorded in 2016 following a year of writing in Lisbon and NYC, but it was scrapped completely. Uncertain how to move forward, McMahon brought in a powerful set of collaborators and old friends, and began anew. Along with his core band members, including Parker Kindred (Antony & The Johnsons, Jeff Buckley) on drums, came Chris Coady (Beach House) as producer and Delicate Steve on guitars. This is the first Amen Dunes record that looks back to the electronic influences of McMahon’s youth with the aid of revered underground musician Panoram from Rome. McMahon discovered Panoram’s music in a shop in London and became enamored. Following this the two became friends and here Panoram finds his place as a significant, if subtle, contributor to the record.
The bulk of the songs were recorded at the famed Electric Lady Studios in NYC (home of Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, D’Angelo), and finished at the similarly legendary Sunset Sound in L.A., where McMahon, Nick Zinner, and session bass player extraordinaire Gus Seyffert (Beck, Bedouine) fleshed out the recordings.
On the surface, Freedom is a reflection on growing up, childhood friends who ended up in prison or worse.
The characters that populate the musical world of Freedom are a colourful mix of reality and fantasy: father and mother, Amen Dunes, teenage glue addicts and Parisian drug dealers, ghosts above the plains, fallen surf heroes, vampires, thugs from Naples and thugs from Houston, the emperor of Rome, Jews, Jesus, Tashtego, Perseus, even McMahon himself. Each character portrait is a representation of McMahon, of masculinity, and of his past.
The themes are darker than on previous Amen Dunes albums, but it’s a darkness sublimated through grooves. The music, as a response or even a solution to the darkness, is tough and joyous, rhythmic and danceable. The combination of a powerhouse rhythm section, Delicate Steve’s guitar prowess filtered through.
It’s a sound never heard before on an Amen Dunes record, but one that was always asking to emerge. Eleven songs span a range of emotions, from contraction to release and back again. ‘Blue Rose’ and ‘Calling Paul the Suffering’ are pure, ecstatic dance songs. ‘Skipping School’ and ‘Miki Dora’ are incantations of a mythical heroic maleness and its illusions. ‘Freedom’ and ‘Believe’ offer a street tough’s future-gospel exhalation, and the funk-grime grit of ‘L.A.’ closes the album, projecting a musical hint of things to come.
Jesse Marchant is the artist formerly known as JBM, It could almost be inferred that Jesse Marchant wrote the songs for his new album over a period of months in New York City during which a lot of his world had come out from under him, in what he has described as “a general period of falling outs, absence and abuse, both of self and of what should or could have been surrounding”. But in the process of finding an end to that Marchant feels to have grown. One is not left to wonder why he chose to drop the moniker of his former releases (his initials JBM) for the use of his proper full name, nor why his voice and lyrics, recorded with a mouth-to-ear intimacy, emphasizing his deepening and wearying baritone, sit loud and naked atop the widescreen backdrop of the deep synthesizer and orchestral pads and arrangements, often reminiscent of “I’m on Fire” era Springsteen. There is a sense of wanting to take responsibility and a desire to have things seen and said clearly for what they are, directly.
The production of the record reflects that same growth, balancing a new, vivid sound with matured control and rootedness. The lyrics were written later in that same year, when Marchant toured the country twice alone, on early mornings in motel rooms and for a period that he spent following, in a rented house far into the desert around 29 Palms, CA. The tone and image of this is carried throughout the record – drenched in a blinding white sunlight, in the heat, in a dream.
The songs that make up this eponymous album are menacing, dreamy worlds of their own, each one unique for each listener, instantly relatable and surprisingly therapeutic: Marchant’s revelations are infectious. He is processing internal and external problems that aren’t just personal but feel like signs of our times, and in doing so has created an album that feels particularly important, relevant, and powerful. Starting with the ambitious 6-minute, lyrically dense album opener “Words Underlined,” Marchant quickly establishes this tone. “Where were you,” he asks, “when all of this was fucked and on it’s side?”
“I am on your side,” he sings in the very next song “All Your Promise”, with a feeling like the dilemma has been resolved. But this is not an album of resolution; it’s an album of disillusion. Even the album’s poppiest song, “The Whip”, contains a biting social commentary: “everybody likes to feel they’re holding the whip.”
But for all its philosophical, world-weary tendencies, the album is really based in themes of lost love and failed relationships. Not in a conventional sense, but in the decidedly 21st century conundrum of looking for love in the age of disconnection. Marchant’s disillusionment is rooted in this disconnection, and ironically, it exists in opposition to his uncanny ability to articulate himself through music and, in turn, connect with listeners. But when focused on an individual, these theoretical ideas become painful realities.
Later in “The Whip” he sings, “I felt the sun…then I lost you…and I never got it back.” In “Every Eye Open,” he continues, “I’ve been living in lies too… and the secret sin that I’ve loved you for more than a little while.” And in “Stay On Your Knees,” “love was real, but the meaning was wrong.”
Whether at odds with the outside world or the world within him, the battles Marchant fights on this record are such that any intuitive, conscientious listener will relate. Perhaps the entire notion is contained in a single couplet from “Snow Chicago,” that feels at once exhausted and revelatory: “I just wanna feel at ease / And that for once I do belong.”
Sunflower Bean made a late play for putting out one of 2017’s best songs when they released “I Was a Fool” in November, the first new music they had released since their acclaimed 2016 debut Human Ceremony. Today, the New York trio have done us one better by announcing their second album Twentytwo in Blue, due out March 23rd via Mom + Pop Records.Jacob Faber, Julia Cumming and Nick Kivlen will each be 22 years old at the time of the record’s release, which comes almost two years and two months after that of Human Ceremony. See what they did there?
Twentytwo in Blue’s second single is “Crisis Fest,” an urgent, yet upbeat call to arms that warns, “If you hold us back, you know that we can shout / We brought you into this place, you know we can take you out.” The track feels of our time and timeless at once, a heartening and defiant reminder of rock ‘n’ roll’s power to galvanize. “2017—we know / Reality’s one big sick show,” sings vocalist/bassist Cumming. “Every day’s a crisis fest.” “Crisis Fest” also received an Andy DeLuca-directed music video,
Sunflower Bean say of their new song:
This last year was extremely alarming, traumatic and politically volatile. While writing this album, we often reflected back on the people we met while on tour. We felt a strong kinship with the audiences that came to see us all over the country, and we wanted to write a song for them—something to capture the anxieties of an uncertain future. “Crisis Fest” is less about politics and more about the power of us, the young people in this country.
Indeed, the band is unafraid to address the many anxieties of our modern moment on their new album, which was co-produced by Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait (who also mixed the record) and Matt Molnar of Friends.
Says vocalist guitarist Kivlen:
This has been such an unbelievable time. I can’t imagine any artist of our ilk making a record and not have it be seen through the lens of the political climate of 2016 and 2017. So I think there’s a few songs on the record that are definitely heavily influenced by this sort of—whatever you want to say what the Trump administration has been.
“A shit show,” answers Faber.
Listen to “Crisis Fest” below ,Twentytwo in Blue is out March 23rd on Mom + Pop Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 