The Black Angels are back after a four year hiatus and are now part off the acclaimed Partisan Records roster. “Death Song” will be their debut album release. Here’s some info on the album.
Written and recorded in large part during the recent election cycle, the music on ‘Death Song’ serves as part protest, part emotional catharsis in a climate dominated by division, anxiety and unease. “Currency,” a strong contender for the heaviest song the band has ever put to wax, meditates on the governing role the monetary system plays in our lives, while slow-building psychedelic earworm “Half Believing” questions the nature and confusing realities of devotion.
From Death Song – The new album from The Black Angels out April 21.
Eagulls have been one of the more interesting bands to emerge from the recent post-punk renaissance. Originally purveyors of quite spiky punk, their sound has mellowed a little over the past few years and their second album Ullages also an anagram of Eagulls marks a definite move forward from the band’s impressive self-titled debut of 2014. George Mitchell’s vocals are a little more defined, but retain their early Bob Smith quality, slightly stretched and pleading, reaching out for answers that never come, leaving only bewilderment and frustration. “Each night’s like the needle slipped, does existence have much more than this?”, “Is our future grey as the slabs on our drives?”, “Why don’t I ever stop and start to think?” – there are more questions than answers for Eagulls in the bleak world they inhabit, the desolate city scapes mirroring their inner desolation and helplessness.
If anything, there is less hope on Ullages than on their first album Eagulls, the tone is more resigned, the music less of an attack and more of a blurred soundscape. Emptiness, Eagulls
Eagulls delivered a daring follow-up that transformed George Mitchell’s vocals from echo-drenched hollers to sharp, wry observations. ‘Heads or Tails’ is an almost folky opener, while ‘Velvet’ and ‘Psalms’ sound like wandering alone into a dark alleyway, not sure whether you’ll make it out the other side.
Tony Wilson once said post-punk is about moving on from saying ‘fuck you’, to saying ‘I’m fucked’. Eagulls have encapsulated this perfectly in two albums.
Though the band describe the record as positive with a glass half-full mentality, it is a curious mind that would find positivity only in the fact that things couldn’t really get any worse. Sonically, there is a marked change, with more thoughtful backdrops framing the vocals, often slighty warped in an MBV style, though with plenty of picked notes and a clattering drum attacks straight from the Birthday Party. It’s a beautiful amalgam of all that has been good in music over the past thirty-five years, with jumping Cure basslines, plangent guitars, the occasional power chord and even some ambient flickers. There’s a very limited indies-only green vinyl edition, so get in quick, and all housed in a sleeve by cult photographer Peter Mitchell. Near enough the perfect package.
Among my favourite albums of 2016 was the Leeds post-punkers Eagulls their debut in 2014 album had been an angry struggle of Joy Division pastiches. But they amped up the poetic melodrama (and their songwriting chops) for this second album titled after an anagram of their own band name Ullages, taking cues from the windswept sookiness of Disintegration-era The Cure as much as the sonic cathedrals of Simple Minds and Cocteau Twins.
Massive singalongs “Velvet” and “My Life In Rewind” (a widescreen stadium anthem which I’ll bet The Horrors wish they’d written).
Earlier this month, in addition to the release of new song “Lemontrees”, post-punk collective Eagulls hinted that their sophomore LP was on its way. Today, they’ve formally announced details of the follow-up to their 2014 self-titled debut. It’s titled Ullages and expected to hit shelves on May 13th through Partisan Records .
The 11-track effort was recorded in a converted church in the band’s hometown of Leeds. Mixed by Craig Silvey (Nine Inch Nails, Depeche More), it’s said to recall “the shimmering opulence of Cocteau Twins, the guitar lines of Smiths-era Johnny Marr, and the ominous gloom of Disintegration/Pornography-era The Cure,” according to an official statement.
In an interview in January, drummer Henry Ruddell discussed one of the main differences between Ullages and its predecessor: “It’s still all from George’s [Mitchell, frontman] viewpoint but whereas on the last album it was his own personal outlook, this time we tried to step away from that a bit and look outwards and how he gets on with other people. It feels like it’s more to do with relationships, not in a romantic way, but more as in your relationship with the person you might bump into on the street, or the person you work with..very brief encounters and how odd they can be.”
In advance of the full-length, Eagulls have let loose “My Life in Rewind”. Mitchell here is a yearning presence, his vocals enveloped by a cloud of muggy shoegaze guitars like a memory that’s struggling to stay alive.
Katie Monks and Liz Ball first moved to Toronto in search of “restless punks and somewhere to go and fuck shit up.” What they found, however, was a crushing disappointment.
“There was this weird indie folk thing going on and it was really boring,” lead singer Monks says of the Canadian scene of 2010. “Our music was way louder – and there were no hand claps or tambourines.”
Having grown up listening to Radiohead and The Libertines (“They were like fuck everything and let’s carve out a place in this world where we can truly be ourselves. There was something very punk about that”), Katie and guitarist Liz eventually found the paradise they craved. “We had to find people who shared the same amount of aggression as we did. That’s when we found Jimmy [Tony, bass] and Ben [Reinhartz, drums]. That was huge.”
Operating under the mantra of “Simplicity is powerful”, Dilly Dally’s music is aggressive and immediate in a way Pixies and Sonic Youth fans will adore. Monks’ voice sets them apart from being mere revivalists, though. Ragged and pained, she howls her way through the songs on debut album ‘Sore’ and writes lyrics like an unfiltered live journal.
“I’m always exploring my voice,” she says. “A lot of women sing very soft and sweet and it feels hard to relate to. Expressing your anger is positive. My influences are male singers: Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen, Wolf Parade, Frank Black, Sonic Youth. I like music where I just think, ‘Fuck, this is me’.”
check out ‘Know Yourself’ – Their cover of the Drake hit is monumental, taking it somewhere completely new. It’s a feedback-flecked, punk-rock roller coaster.
Pure Bathing Culture – Pray For Rain Portland duo Pure Bathing Culture follow 2012’s self-titled debut with this, a record richer than its predecessor in every sense. There’s not much going on, but the band’s knack for warm melody means you can get lost in every track. ‘The Tower’ and ‘Clover’ charm most, timeless pop songs that move slowly, as if they’ve been out in the sun for too long.
Last month, Pure Bathing Culture put out their glistening sophomore effort Pray For Rain, and today the title track has gotten a remix courtesy of Sylvan Esso. Somehow, the two feel like compatriots, even though they’re not very sonically similar — I guess it’s because they’re both duos, wrangling with sounds that are just a little bit past their peaks. Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn — who just put out a solo EP recently as Made Of Oak— proudly evades the characteristically boring remix route and creates something that can actually stand on its own away from the original track, using its basic structure as more of a guideline than a rule.
“Sometimes when you get asked to remix a song you already love, it can be tough to find a good angle without completely changing the vibe,” Sanborn “So it was really cool of Pure Bathing Culture to give Amelia and I so much leeway on this stylistically. If there are any house DJs out there who ever get down to 105bpm, this one’s for them.”
When I hear a couple of tunes from a band like Toronto’s Dilly Dally and I am reminded of a time when I might not have been cool, but at least my body didn’t hurt as much. Dilly Dally is a sonic blast, heavily influenced by all things Deal. Here’s a little snippet from lead singer KatieMonks, “Sore is an album about rebirth,” she says, “hence its disgusting guitar tones and constant moaning. What can I say, happiness is a struggle, but the last thing I’d ever want you or anyone else to do is give up that fight.” Sore will be released on October 9th via the fine folks at Partisan Records. In the meantime, enjoy a couple of tracks below at a very loud volume
New Album May 5, 2015 // May 18, 2015 [UK/EU] via Partisan Records,
“Sprinter,” the title track from Torres’s career-making new album, to be released in May, reveals this child: how she suffers, and finally, willfully thrives. Belittled and betrayed within the not-so-safe space of her religious upbringing, Scott’s sprinter runs in circles, gets into a lather. The song’s lyrics are both particular and philosophical. Whether it’s straight-up biography from Mackenzie Scott’s Christian youth in Macon, Georgia only matters if truth-telling is what it took to achieve the tight perspective that makes “Sprinter” both dizzying and forcefully clear. This kid who runs away and runs back and finally decides to outlast what endangers her — “if there’s still time, I’ll choose the sun” — could live in any town whose main roads are lined with overlit parks and recently constructed churches.
“Sprinter” rises and falls like a pubescent mood. Scott is playing in a quartet with three masters of dynamically complicated rock — producer/drummer Rob Ellis and bassist Ian Oliver, frequent collaborators with Polly Harvey, and guitarist Adrian Utley of Portishead. The grinding guitar riff that frames the song’s narrative embodies the push to achieve that every parentally-monitored child internalizes and dreads, an airier, spookier guitar line shows how that drive unravel. The distortion that overtakes the song midway feels like questioning, self-doubt, refusal. But the quietude that descends, that sunset feeling, as Scott modulates her fighting wail into a murmur. The moment has the impact of a chatty kid going silent, looking an adult in the eye.
Originally in a band called Deyarmond Edison with Justin Vernon, Field Report’s Chris Porterfield the first album folky and dark was released in 2012. The new album “Marigolden” due out in October with a lot of the album dealing with loneliness and drinking.
Bird originally a three piece band from liverpool songs are dark and atomospheric,with a type of Gothic beauty. the album titled “My Fear and Me” is out now
The Fat Angel Sings 