Here is the third track from Dr. Dog’s upcoming, much anticipated, upcoming record Critical Equation. The hazy psychedelia and slow burn of Buzzing In The Light boasts some beautifully layered harmonies and is another massive appetite whetter for the album! . The Philly indie rockers Dr. Dog have been readying their new Critical Equation for a month or so now.
Philadelphia’s beloved Dr Dog are today sharing their new single, ‘Buzzing In The Light’, the latest to be taken from their forthcoming albumCritical Equation, due for release via We Buy Gold Records/Thirty Tigers on April 27th, 2018. This new cut follows in the footsteps of the track ‘Go Out Fighting’ and is the third to be taken from the Gus Seyffert-produced (Beck, Michael Kiwanuka, The Black Keys) album. Dr Dog will support the new release with a full UK tour throughout autumn 2018 with dates to be announced imminently.
Check out “Buzzing In The Light” below, and grab Critical Equation when it is released April 27th.
What kinda 24-year-old can writes lyrics as light-hearted and fun as, “Sittin’ at the swim club stretchin’ my quads, everyone wants to be a part of my squad”, and brutally honest as, “She doesn’t wanna see me tonight, not for a minute, not for a second, she says ‘nothing here for you to make right’”? (Sandy) Alex G, that’s who. While those in certain circles are probably crying out that he’s far from an undiscovered act, we believe the multi-instrumentalist from Philadelphia is someone everyone should know. Discovered largely via his releases on Bandcamp, and now signed to Domino, Alex G began his career making music in his bedroom, and he’s still there (only ’cause he’s uncomfortable relinquishing control of the songwriting process in a typical studio setting). Give him a listen, you won’t regret it.
(Sandy) Alex G – “Proud” from ‘Rocket’, released 2017 on Domino Record Co.
Shamir has released a surprise 8-track album called Resolution. A heavy, guitar-leaning effort, the album follows Shamir’s recent “double A-side” single “Room,” which is now also available on his Bandcamp. Last year, Shamir released his album Revelations on Father Daughter Records after a dispute with XL Records.
He also shared his new previously-announced 7″ EP called Room. The latter features the title track on the A-side and “Caballero” on the B-side. Listen to both projects below. Resolution marks the singer’s third album in two years, following last November’s Revelations and last April’s Hope (which was also surprise released). Shamir and Mac DeMarco are set to release a joint 7″ vinyl for Record Store Day 2018(April 21st), featuring their respective covers of Beat Happening songs. Its pointedly political and personal. The opener, “I Can’t Breathe,” paints a chilling picture of police brutality and the lack of consequences perpetrators often face with heavy allusion to Eric Garner and Tamir Rice. “Panic” and “Dead Inside” deals frankly with anxiety and depression, and Shamir made sure mental health has been at the forefront of conversations about his new music.
Since self-releasing Hopeon SoundCloud in April 2017, Shamir has improved as a songwriter across each project, tackling heavy topics both personal and social with deftness and grace. The guitar tone and production on Resolutionare gritty and textural, a perfect juxtaposition for his feathery falsetto, making it a fascinating record both thematically and sonically.
Shamir has returned from whence he came, with two new songs that celebrate this one of a kind artist’s love of country music. Out now on Father/Daughter Records both as a limited 7” vinyl and digital release, Room features the first two new tracks from Shamir since the DIY darling’s critically acclaimed November 2017 album Revelations. The two songs onRoom are produced by Big Taste, the Los Angeles based songwriter, producer, and vocalist who has worked with Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa, and Adam Lambert.
The A-side is the twang tinged title track, which has the accidental popstar self-harmonizing in an upbeat ode to the stillness & confusion depression can bring. It’ll move both your heart and your hips wildly in unison. The B-side is the galloping “Caballero” with a guitar riff that runs like a wild stallion off into the sunset. Shamir kicks-up desert dust with relatable lyrics like “Cuz I don’t wanna be in like with you because it turns to love and all lovers do is fall out of love, cuz everything ends and you’re stuck having to begin again.”
Released March 9th, 2018 Shamir , Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rock and roll is sort of my consolation prize for wanting to have been a writer,” says James Alex. It’s a humble admission from the frontman of Philadelphia’s Beach Slang, a fiery punk quartet whose raucous gigs often find the songwriter’s earnest lyrics bellowed back at him. Beach Slang’s “Play it loud, play it fast,” goes the mission statement that is the opening to “Future Mixtape For The Art Kids,” “Play me something that will always last.” Everything about Beach Slang is loud, from the guitars to its attitude to Alex’s weathered rasp.
Considering that, his newest project : Quiet Slang. As the name implies, Alex is embracing minimalism, smothering the fuzz in favor of a cello, a piano, and his voice. In October, Quiet Slang released We Were Babies & We Were Dirtbags, an EP comprised of two Beach Slang songs and two covers from The Replacements and Big Star. Consider it an introduction to what Alex calls “chamber pop for outsiders,” because it simply serves as prelude to Everything Matters But No One Is Listening, a collection of 10 Beach Slang covers that’s set to drop on May 18th.
The project’s seeds were planted just six months afterBeach Slang’s formation, when Alex was asked to a solo Tiny Desk Concert for NPR. “That was just me, my guitar and a clumsy excuse for charm. But, yeah, the response was beautifully unexpected and really nudged my thinking,” he says. “Even now, at almost every show we play somebody’s like, ‘I got turned onto your band from that NPR thing. You should make a record like that.’” A successful solo tour last year solidified the idea in Alex’s mind, but he says he wasn’t content to make a “campfire record,” elaborating that he “wanted it to have more weight than that.”
That’s when he turned to the project’s key influence: The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt. Merritt’s influence lent itself not only in his heartrending use of cello and piano via his work with the Fields, but also in one of his most famous lyrics. “Why do we keep shrieking/ When we mean soft things?” goes the final lines of “100,000 Fireflies.” “We should be whispering all the time.”
“That just always stuck with me,” Alex says, “how quiet can sometimes be more powerful.” He continues, “If BeachSlang is me fawning over The Replacements, Quiet Slang is me head-over-heels for Stephin Merritt.”
Alex linked up with longtime co-producer Dave Downham for the project, who worked with him in bringing on cellist Dan Delaney and pianist Keith Giosa. Rounding out the crew were Stacey Downham, Matt Weber, CharlieLowe and New Jersey quartet The Warhawks, who lent their voices to evoke what Alex describes as a “back alley choir.”
The songs that spoke first and foremost to Alex were songs that he feels never quite achieved the vision initially had for them: “Future Mixtape for the Art Kids” and “Warpaint,” both from 2016’s A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings.
“I was really proud of those things when I wrote them, but, once they left my home studio, something sort of slipped away. When they went loud, they never quite found the emotion I knew was tucked inside of them. For those two, specifically, I knew I wanted another crack.”
A good thing, too. “Future Mixtape For the Art Kids” is a rousing document of rebellion on A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings, but the subdued strings and soft piano of Quiet Slang reveal a love story among outsiders, a midnight connection in dim streets as beautiful as they are cruel. And while the gritted teeth of “Warpaint” remain in its quiet rendition, the empathy coursing through Alex’s call to strength and spirit here conquers his anger.
“Warpaint,” and the album itself, closes with the last verse being played in reverse, a choice that helps to further distinguish Beach Slang from Quiet Slang. If the former is concerned with living as presently as possible, the latter feels like a spiral of memory, an attempt to remember the rush through the bleary eyes of a hungover morning after. It’s the walk home after a night that you know you’ll never live again, and the confusing mess of triumph and melancholy that covers it.
“I wanted the record to end not with a word, but a feeling,” he says, “even if it’s uneasy or hopeful or whatever. Just some weight of feeling.”
Though a new Beach Slang record is next up on Alex’s docket, he’s open to the possibility of more Quiet Slang. The project’s sophomore release, he notes, would contain original songs. “I guess I wanted to chase reinterpretation first. I dug the challenge of it. But, yeah, Quiet Slang deserves its own voice.”
Regardless of its future, however, he hopes the project can convey one simple thing: “Tenderness. I suppose that sounds overly simplified. But, still, it makes it no less sincere. Look, I’m trying to soften the world a little bit—there’s worse ways to be remembered.”
What was once a solo project for principal songwriter Matt Scottoline has evolved into the band Hurry, a power pop trio from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania composed of Scottoline, Rob DeCarolis (Univox), and JoeDeCarolis (Psychic Teens). The DeCarolises are cousins and they are both very talented
Hurry’s fourth album is packed front to back with breezy, beautiful songs that will please anyone who loves the classic, strummy power-pop of Teenage Fanclub, Tommy Keene and the Power Pop bands that we have recently featured. “Heatwave” sits in the center of the album and captures the band’s sweet ‘n’ sour sound. “Waiting For You” offers a subtle surf-rock vibe alongside main man Matt Scottoline’s lyrics about loneliness and screen addiction. “Read Between the Lines” is a tightly wound bundle of jangling guitars and reticence, while “On the Streets” is about as close as Hurry gets to punk pace.
Hurry’s album ‘Every Little Thought’ out on Lame-O Records out now.
The songs on Every Little Thought can handle the spotlight. They share a bunch of great qualities: mostly clean-sounding rhythm guitars, aching vocal melodies featuring lots of extended notes, a persistent sense of melancholy. Hurry’s rhythm section—cousins Joe and Rob DeCarolis on bass and drums, respectively—is prominent and invaluable, providing Scottoline’s songs with a sturdy backbone and some extra momentum.
“Waiting For You” appears on Hurry’s 2018 album “Every Little Thought,” available via Lame-O Records.
With the title of their 2017 release, Dirty Pictures (Part 1), Philly rockers Low Cut Connie had already telegraphed what was on the way.
“What a schmuck I would be if I didn’t have a part two, right?,” frontman Adam Weiner says,
The songs on Part 2 were largely conceived along with the band’s brothers and sisters on Part 1 – but the new batch is less a continuation than a mirror image; a flip side of the coin.
Over the course of four albums since 2011, Low Cut Connie has been hailed as carriers of rock ‘n’ roll’s torch, drawing comparisons ranging from Jerry Lee Lewis in his piano-arsonist prime to the New York Dolls, the Replacements, and others voted most likely to go completely off the rails. The reputation for true analog danger was earned by putting on wildly physical live shows, where Weiner was as likely to climb his battered upright as pound its keys, and where everyone involved, onstage and in the crowd, wound up drenched in sweat.
Dirty Pictures (Part 1), still for the most part barreling full-tilt, veered into introspection, both commentary (“Death and Destruction”) and mourning (a passionate cover of Prince’s “Controversy”). Recorded at Memphis’ Ardent Studios, Part 2 digs deeper into emotional complexity, with inward cuts like “Beverly,” a propulsive heart-buster about intimacy; the yearning, propulsive power ballad reveals the gulfs of space that can grow between people, pushing them worlds apart even when they might be in the same room.
“I had an idea that there were two different vibes, two different kind of groups of songs, but you never know what happens until you get in there and start swinging away,” Weiner explains. “About halfway through the process, I knew that it kind of had an A and B trajectory, in my opinion. Like there were all these songs that felt really grimy and dirty, and then there were these other songs that felt a little more emotional, a little more fully realized in a way.”
Part 2, he says, is more “character driven, exploring the way people and their emotional lives are a little more than this bar-culture thing that we had been doing for a while.”
The push toward interiority is no tone-down for Low Cut Connie. “Beverly” leaves its spare, poignant string intro quickly behind, snowballing downhill into a glam-tinged piano plea for re-connection and recovery of what’s been lost. Stretching songwriting muscles to encompass the wider, complicated spectrum of human emotion, after all, need not preclude a breathless rager of a performance.
Dirty Pictures (Part 2) comes out May 18th via Contender Records.
Palm has been in the list of 2018’s most anticipated albums for a reason; the band’s new tunes have consistently delivered on the fun and frenetic pop front. The Philly art-rockers will release Rock Island on February. 9th, but their latest is the lush, eccentric single “Composite.”
“Composite” is fidgety and sprawling, opening with an anxious guitar scratch before plunging into a ever-shifting landscape of opulent psych-pop. “You only like me in my most peculiar state on Saturdays,” singer Kasra Kurt discerns, “But I can’t harvest all the soft delusions central to your game.” The jittery melodies of “Composite” add colorful perplexity to his worry.
Rock Island is out February. 9th on Carpark Records.
Self-proclaimed “dark-pop” band Corey Flood, named for a Say Anything character, tackle disappointment and disillusionment with a sarcastic wink on their debut EP, Wish You Hadn’t. Led by Ivy Gray-Klein, who plays bass in the Philly band Littler, Corey Flood cite influences from Liz Phair and Helium, but add more wistful melodies, methodical rhythms and faint, whispery vocals to achieve a misty elegance. The EP’s latest offering, “Soft,” is balmy and delicate, but cutthroat in sentiment. Gray-Klein is deadpan in her vocal delivery as she skewers the hypocrisies that lie at the center of a very modern male archetype: the “Soft Boy.”
Developing its musical roots in Philadelphia, Mt. Joy ,one of the new class of bands set to release its self-titled debut album on March 2nd. Founding members Matt Quinn (vocals/guitar) and Sam Cooper (guitar) have been making music since the early 2000s. However, it wasn’t until several years ago that the two came together and began to write songs that would form the foundation of their debut album. Mt. Joy combines old-school classic rock and touches of rootsy acoustic music with vibrant, well-crafted songs that overflow with hooks, tenderness and singalong moments.
In the wistful and nostalgic “Jenny Jenkins,” from Mt. Joy’s forthcoming debut, Quinn’s emotional phrasing leaves him pleading and quivering with desire. While not a rendition of the traditional folk song of the same name, Mt. Joy’s tune does have a connection to the cover of it by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman.
“‘Jenny Jenkins’ is a song I wrote about moving to Los Angeles,” Quinn writes via email. “Growing up in the Philadelphia area, I feel like I was exposed to a lot of ‘real’ grounded people. L.A. was kind of a culture shock — a lot of people offering meetings that don’t materialize and just a general culture of false promises. I even found out the palm trees were imported, and was just feeling pretty down on myself and the city. The song was put together as a song of appreciation for my girlfriend, who was my only real ally in the city at that time. As a tip of the cap to some of my heroes, I used the name of one of my favorite folk songs from a record my dad always used to play by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, ‘Jenny Jenkins.'”
Mt. Joy – Jenny Jenkins Recorded Live: 1/16/2018 – Paste Studios – New York, NY
The Fat Angel Sings 