Hazel English songs are far too easy to get lost in. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because the dreaminess of her shimmering aesthetic is supposed to have that effect, but you can easily gloss over some exquisite vulnerability because it’s expressed so plainspoken and unassuming. But she cuts through ever so gently and it registers much more forcefully upon a few listens. It’s a good thing her Never Going Home EP is easy to keep on repeat
Hazel English songs are far too easy to get lost in. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because the dreaminess of her shimmering aesthetic is supposed to have that effect, but you can easily gloss over some exquisite vulnerability because it’s expressed so plainspoken and unassuming, enveloped by that transcendent glimmer. But she cuts through ever so gently and it registers much more forcefully upon a few listens. It’s a good thing her “Never Going Home” EP is easy to keep on repeat.
Make It Better is the second track off my EP “Never Going Home”
Hazel English is a 25-year-old Oakland-based artist who makes beautifully blurry indie-pop music powered by transcendent melodies and caked in layers of Californian sunshine and redolent reverb.
Featured tracks here are taken from her new EP Its her debut 12-inch vinyl EP, Never Going Home, collating a brilliant snap-shot of her DIY creations to date.
Those that have followed her ascendance through the blogosphere so far will recognise the title track, but to commemorate this EP announcement it’s now complete with an accompanying video trailing her mountaintop journey through local idyls. Never Going Home is the title track and first single from the new EP
Oakland’s Happy Diving make the kind of catchy, riffy sludge pop that should appeal to fans of Dinosaur Jr or Torche, or a newer band like California X. They’ve been around for a few years, with a album and a EP release under their belts, and they’re set to release their second album titled “Electric Soul Unity” on August 19th via Topshelf Records. We’ve got the chance to hear “Don’t Be Afraid Of Love” from that album, which you can listen to below.
Ever since the band’s scintillating debut, they’ve been making frequent appearances on year-end lists from the Music Blogs and more importantly growing sharper with each successive release. Recently, there was a post that spotlighted “Holy Ground” a towering single from the band’s forthcoming , “Electric Soul Unity”. Opening with “Bigger World” a winking nod towards their outstanding debut album. The band makes no bones about the fact that they’ve dramatically increased the size of their scope. Everything from the production to the songwriting indicates the band’s set loftier goals for themselves from the very outset of this record. It’s an extraordinary effort from a band that’s more than ready to take on any challengers and it won’t go down without putting up an unforgettable fight.
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Emily Jane White is a musician, songwriter, and poet from Oakland, CA. She began performing under her own name in 2003 and released her first album “Dark Undercoat” in 2007, with “Victorian America”, “Ode to Sentience”, and “Blood/Lines” following. White has cultivated a dedicated audience in Europe and North America.
The title of Emily Jane White’s fifth album, “They Moved in Shadow All Together” (out in France & mainland Europe april 29th, 2016, England and North America, june 10th, 2016), is a play on the opening line from Cormac McCarthy’s novel “Outer Dark” which hauntingly depicts a group of uncanny travelers descending a hill in the Appalachian Mountains. Recorded at Tiny Telephone studio in San Francisco, CA, and New and Improved studio in Oakland, CA, between December 2013 and September 2015, the 11 songs focus conceptually upon the symptomatology of trauma, a pattern of experiences marked by a fragmentation of the self.
White’s polyvocal arrangements mirror her manifold focus, and are the defining stylistic element of the album. Multi-instrumentalist Shawn Alpay’s bass accompaniment firmly supports White’s steady guitar and piano playing by providing subtle rhythmic movement beneath her overlay. His cello sits closely below and curls around the vocals, lending definition to key dramatic moments, while Nick Ott’s visceral and tom-heavy drumming assertively mark the ebb and flow of each track. White: “I wanted to make an intimate album that had bombastic moments. The bass and drums helped define that. Cello is my instrument of choice when it comes to strings. It’s the instrument most capable of sadness and melancholy. The cello is the veil, the fog, and at times the guiding light – the drums the heart and blood.” White’s vision was aided by mixing engineer Mark Willsher, whose background in classical music and film score engineering complemented her spatial and stylistic sensibilities.
Emily Jane White is a musician, songwriter, and poet from Oakland, CA. She began performing under her own name in 2003
Created in 2001 and found in the wine country of Bordeaux, France, Talitres houses an eccentric roster of wordly indiemusicians from Britain, France, Scandinavia, Australia, Canada, and the US.
The label has been known for releasing the music of bands like The Walkmen, The National or The Organ and more recently for the acclaimed debut albums of Ewert & The Two Dragons & Motorama.
Oakland songwriter, Emily Jane White borrowed the title of her latest record, They Moved In The Shadow All Together, from the opening of a Cormac McCarthy novel makes a lot of sense. Both artists inhabit the eerie and somewhat bleak fringes of life, depicting both trauma and togetherness, and translating a feeling of the collective spirit that can be discovered in losing everything we know.
This week Emily has shared the track “Frozen Garden”, the first song to be lifted from her upcoming fifth album. The track is a bristling, haunted slice of doomy-folk, a world of ghostly harmonies, distant rippling floor-toms, and just the gentlest of melodic whispers from guitars and strings; it recalls the world of songwriters like Marissa Nadler and Bat For Lashes, and sounds equally beautiful and timeless. Five albums in her voice and songwriting have never sounded stronger, and we’ve got high hopes for Emily Jane White .
“Frozen Garden” from Emily Jane White’s fifth album “They Moved in Shadow All Together“.
I’m telling you about Night School right now. Their record doesn’t come out on Graveface Records for over a month, but you can mark it in your diary so you don’t forget.
If you like Dum Dum Girls or Honeyblood, you’re also will love Night School. Alexandra Morte (Whirr) fronts the Oakland-based trio with a Ronnie Spector-ish vulnerability that belies the heavy guitar and drums surrounding her voice. With harmonies from drummer Baylie Arin and bass by Cheyenne Avant they make an undeniably sweet sound.
The opening guitar riff on “Casanova” might be my favorite track on Blush. It’s a very simple kind of thing, but when it’s joined by the other instruments it creates such a joyful noise. “Last Disaster” the album’s lead single, but the best song on the record. Morte’s lyrics show us a woman in a downward spiral: “It must be nice to hold your head so high, to see a breaking heart and not even wanna cry. It doesn’t matter anymore, I put my guts out on the floor, and for what?”
The songs fit very well into the style they’re going for with Blush. Tunes about love and heartbreak that could have easily come out in the heyday of The Shangri-La’s or The Shirelles. None encapsulates the feeling like “Teen Feelings,” a jaunty romance that finds the right balance of näiveté and sincerity. “Telling stories at my parent’s place, unintentional smile when I see your face, I wanna grab you by the hands and take away the space between your lips and mine.”
You can pre-order the record here (I got the colored vinyl)
One of the most popular artists on Hype Machine this year, Oakland-based Astronauts, etc, began as a bedroom project for Anthony Ferraro, following years of classical music training. A chance meeting with Chaz Bundick then led to his gig as touring keyboardist for Toro Y Moi. By the time he came to finally record a debut full-length, Astronauts, etc,had formed into a proper five-piece band, laying down these tracks live-to-tape in the pure analog surroundings of SF’s Tiny Telephone studio. Funky, smooth and chilled-out, The 405 says, “it will send you drifting back in time with its warm, vintage sensibilities.”
astronauts, etc. – mind out wandering
september 18th (hit city u.s.a.)
Anthony Ferraro has seen his exploratory outlet into the realm of pop music grow from a solo project to a full-band endeavor. already armed with a quartet of impressive singles, Astronauts, etc. should offer up a strong and nuanced debut full-length with mind out wandering.
Anthony Ferraro’s work as Astronauts, etc. has blossomed into a full-band effort; the Oakland outfit will release their debut album, mind out wandering, on september 18th via hit city usa. we’ve been anticipating this album for the better part of the calendar year, and the band’s prospects only improve with their latest offering, “Shake It Loose.” the track sits squarely on the front of the beat, in contrast to previous spaced-out offerings, and finds astronauts, etc. exercising their knowledge of pop mechanics, but “shake it loose” really flourishes once its melody disappears behind a curtain of psychedelic haze at the half-way mark
Since emerging out of Oakland in 2011, Bonnie & the Bang Bang has been crafting its own brand of music that burns with western vibes, though not necessarily in the same way prescribed to genres like Americana, blues or country. Bonnie’s sound is western is a way that summons imagery of both dusty boots and polished oxfords, endless desert highways and dimly lit bars, sometimes the swanky kind and other times the smokey kind.
When asked how he would describe his band’s sound, bassist Robby Cronholm offers “thrash folk,” which may invite notions of aggression and shredding guitar parts,
Lead vocalist Patrick James explains, “The name ‘Bonnie & the Bang Bang’ reflects the types of songs we write. There are parts that are polished and smooth, and there are parts that are aggressive and heavy. So the name represents a duality in the music and alludes to the classic story of Bonnie and Clyde.”
With velvety vocal stylings that switch between sounding soothing and surly, Patrick lends the band much of its rough-refined flavor while also adding tough twang with a 12-string guitar. He remembers, “When we arrived as a band two years ago, we were typecast as another indie-folk/Americana band in the vein of Mumford and Sons or The Devil Makes Three.”We utilize a lot of Folk/Americana instrumentation. One of our musicians, Jake Dineen, plays several classic Americana instruments including banjo, 12 string guitar and mandolin,” adding, “I feel like we’ve grown into something much more complex than indie folk.”
While there are indie folk elements woven into the fabric of the band’s sound, the sweetness of the words “indie” and “folk,” when put side by side, does nothing to highlight the grittier, witty tones that Bonnie’s music can take on, particularly on its brand new debut LP The Dark Dream has the basic song writing elements that we exhibit as a band with more raw power then anything we’ve put out previously.”
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