Kristin Slipp, also a member of Dirty Projectors, is the voice of Brooklyn– and Philadelphia-based collective Cuddle Magic, who recorded their new album Bath in a bathroom. You can preview its twinkling, understanding “Working On Me” here.
Big news: we have a new song out today, “What If I,” and we’ll have a new album out soon. It’s called ‘Bath’ and it’s coming out on July 3rd on Northern Spy.
Please take a moment right now to pre-save the album, follow us on your chosen streaming platform, and listen to “What If I” (the link below should let you do all three of those things). It’s the first song we all wrote together and we’ve been wanting to release a recording of it for a long time. We love how it turned out and hope you do, too!
Band Members
Benjamin Lazar Davis, Alec Spiegelman, Kristin Slipp, Christopher McDonald, Cole Kamen-Green, David Flaherty
The album is released on July 3rd by Northern Spy Records, and you can pre-order the digital version of it by visiting the band’s Bandcamp page now.
AVC Sessions: House Shows, our new series where we’ll invite some of our favourite artists to perform a show you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home. Frances Quinlan, lead singer and guitarist for Philly indie rock band Hop Along, performs a few songs from her debut solo album, Likewise. In the full session—which you can watch over on our Instagram stories, Facebook page, and YouTube channel—Quinlan details the creative challenge of producing an album without her bandmates, and how she’s adjusting to life in quarantine.
The cover of Frances Quinlan’s debut solo album features a self-portrait. Her eyes are wide, she’s looking directly at you and her expression is almost nervous – like she’s been caught and exposed. And in a way, that makes sense. After fronting the Philadelphia act Hop Along for 15 years, Quinlan is stepping out on her own, playing the personal, sometimes revealing songs on her new album
This album is nothing less than transcendently beautiful. The heart and soul of everything that made me fall in love with Cymbals Eat Guitars now lives on in the form of Empty Country with new twists and complexities that make EC it’s own clearly unique entity as well. A great transitional document for Joseph D’Agostino as he moves on from Cymbals Eat Guitars (still sad they are over). This album is great in that it’s not a huge departure , yet it is still distinctly D’Agostino’s own thing. It’s got the great melodies and catchy hooks of Cymbals Eat Guitars with that characteristic melancholy. But with more acoustic guitar, Empty Country sounds more personal.
Up there with Joe’s best work, it feels like it pulls from every record he’s done before while still being completely distinct from any Cymbals record in the way it combines the psychedelia and accessibility with some of the lushest, most ornately arranged music I’ve heard. Plus the guitars still rock, the solos fucking slap, and the ballads somehow slap just as hard. The narrative based lyrics also hit a sweet spot in Joe’s lyricism — direct but inventive, descriptive and endlessly compelling.
Empty Country is the first album from Joseph D’Agostino since the dissolution of his other project, Cymbals Eat Guitars, one of the most perennially underappreciated indie-rock bands in recent memory. The album lets D’Agostino’s unique song writing and raspy voice take center stage: The gorgeous “Marion,” for instance, weaves a multigenerational epic through its spacious, slightly shambling indie rock, while “Ultrasound” finds D’Agostino yelping atop a thick wall of guitars and distortion. One of the most straightforward songs on the album is “Becca,” a seemingly jovial acoustic character sketch that tells the somewhat disturbing story of a woman selling fraudulent eclipse glasses to unsuspecting tourists. Empty Country thrives in its simplicity relative to the last few Cymbals albums, getting back to the heart of what makes D’Agostino such a compelling artist.
released March 20th, 2020
Music and lyrics by Joseph D’Agostino
Recorded September 14th, 2019 before a packed and enthusiastic hometown crowd at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia, Peoples Motel Band catches Chris Forsyth with Garcia Peoples (plus ubiquitous drummer Ryan Jewell) re-imagining songs from Forsyth’s last couple studio albums with improvisatory flair.
Forsyth and Garcia Peoples played a number of 2019 shows together, beginning with a semi-legendary jam set at Nublu in NYC in March (see NYCTaper.com), through a couple dates on Forsyth’s month-long weekly residency at Nublu in September and concluding with a five-date tour of the Northeast in December. The chemistry between the players is tangible.
As is often the case with Forsyth shows, the gloves come off quickly and the players attack the material – much of it so well-manicured and cleanly produced in the studio – like a bunch of racoons let loose in a Philadelphia pretzel factory.
Recorded and mixed with clarity by Forsyth’s longtime studio collaborator, engineer/producer Jeff Zeigler, the record puts the listener right in the sweaty club, highlighted by an incredible side-long take of the chooglin’ title track from 2017’s Dreaming in The Non-Dream LP (note multiple climaxes eliciting wild shouts and ecstatic screams from the assembled).
This is not the new Chris Forsyth album, exactly, but then again, it kinda is because whenever he sits down to play, he makes it new.
Released March 20th, 2020
Chris Forsyth: guitar/vocal Tom Malach: guitar Danny Arakaki: guitar Peter Kerlin: bass guitar Pat Gubler: organ/synthesizer Cesar Arakaki: drums Ryan Jewell: drums & percussion
Recorded by Jeff Zeigler 9.14.19 at Johnny Brendaʼs, Philadelphia
The modern post-punk landscape was in danger of becoming a reductive cliche of itself as it softened its spikes, but Philly trio Control Top are razor-sharp and full of fire in their delivery with their debut full-length Covert Contracts. It’s an extreme case of the personal, political and technologically terrifying converging at the forefront of the conversation as well as attacking your senses, with lead singer and bassist Ali Carter acting as the live wire mouthpiece with a maximalist current from drummer Alex Lichtenauer and guitarist Al Creedon downloading a surge of dark truths from their secret server. In the age of information overload, Control Top are here to tear down capitalist walls and the algorithms set up to pocket millions off of it one piece of the hate machine at a time. When it’s over, Covert Contracts has hopefully hacked a staying power in your brain as well.
If Siouxsie Sioux decided to join the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to make frayed-edge dance-punk, it would probably sound like Control Top. Ali Carter’s voice maintains the ethereal and haunting style of her predecessors, but with a channeling a contemporary aggressive force when she commands: “Quit your job today!” Diligently releasing new music for the past three years has paid off with their 2019 breakthrough tantrum Covert Contracts, and they summarized early 2020 by releasing the one-off single “One Good Day,” as in wishing for one. In light of the recent national protests, they’ve spread awareness about Black issues and raised proceeds for the Philly Community Bail Fund and the Black and Pink Bail Fund. But it’s their feral tunes that make them Philly’s best contemporary punk band, so the Dead Milkmen better watch their backs.
“Betrayed,” from Covert Contracts, sums up everything you want to scream at the top of your lungs in 2020: “Betrayed by the nation, betrayed by the fight / Betrayed by the cronies on the left and the right.
Field Mouse are a quintet of singing guitarist Rachel Brown, guitarist Andrew Futral, bass player Saysha Heinemann, drummer Tim McCoy and keys, backing vocalist and general instrumentalist Zoë Browne. They’re joined on “Episodic”, their latest album, by guest appearances from Sadie Dupuis (Speedy Ortiz), Allison Crutchfield (Swearin’, Waxahatchee) and Joseph D’Agostino (Cymbals Eat Guitars).
Field Mouse deal is the sort of guitar-pop that has us reaching for words like glistening, shimmering and jangling. They’re a cool breeze on a hot summer’s evening, the first breath of air when you re-emerge from the ocean, what we imagine driving down a fast road in a convertible feels like, only we can’t drive and we’ve never been in a convertible. It is articulate, melodic alt-rock, with plenty of poppy hooks and in Rachel Brown, a true superstar front woman with a stunning, effortless vocal.
Field Mouse are from Pennsylvania’s largest city, Philadelphia. With a population of 1.5million, Philadelphia is the fifth most populous city in the United States. Famously the city in which the Declaration Of Independence and the American constitution were signed, Philadelphia was briefly the capital of the US whilst Washington DC was under construction. Philadelphia is a famously medical city, being the site of the first specialist children’s hospital and first specialist cancer hospital in the country, and it is estimated that one in six American doctors are trained in the city. Like many large American cities, the diversity of Philadelphia has given it an eclectic and varied musical heritage, a major centre in the growth of hip hop, classical music and rock’n’roll; famous acts from the city are as versatile as Chubby Checker, John Coltrane and Kurt Vile. Field Mouse were originally formed in 2010 by Rachel and Andrew, and they self-released their debut album, You Are Here that year. They then signed to Topshelf Records, who in 2014 released their second album, Hold Still Life. On their new album, Episodic, the band have for the first time written and recorded as a five piece, which came out last week again via Topshelf Records.
It’s almost a bit clichéd to say at this time of year, but they really are a spectacularly good summer band. Bright and breezy, they seem to fall effortlessly into perfect sun-drenched pop-punk and wistful indie-pop. Whether it’s the Jimmy Eat World meets Rilo Kiley alt-rock of The Mirror, the soaring Alvvays like Beacon or the vivid 1980’s pop of Out Of Content, they’re never anything less the perfectly produced and sublimely melodic.
Lyrically, the band have suggested that the songs explore both deteriorating relationships and sudden family illness, but they’re delivered not with any grand emotive gesture, they are more subtle and nuanced. Some tracks have a touched of the bruised romantic about them; Rachel coming across as a wide old head who’s seen all the signs but still can’t quite bring herself to give up on the fading embers of a relationship. The album’s quiet pain is bookended by its contrastingly tough and broken opening and closing lines. Opening track The Mirror begins by snarling, “what a way to say fuck off, through your teeth”, but by the time Out Of Context draws the album to a close, Rachel simply ends it by repeating a heartbreaking, heartbroken refrain, “it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.” It’s a record that feels deeply personal, but also winningly guarded, this is no plea for help, it’s just real life, in all its bruising reality.
There are highlights throughout the record, but the exquisite The Order Of Things leaps out, it’s a perfect single, memorable and affecting. Rachel’s vocal is stunning, it’s just a beautifully controlled performance, she comes across as a very natural singer, and her control and tone are perfectly suited to their alt-pop sound. Lyrically it seems to be a call to arms, a plea for people to not give up on their dreams, “make the sound you hear in your head, even if it puts you in the ground.” Advice we whole heartedly agree with, on an album we can’t help but be thoroughly impressed by.
Occasionally you want them to be less Field Mouse and more, if not as far as roaring lion, then at least angry ferret. You just want a bit more bite and a bit more bark to cut through the beautiful musical landscapes, which by the second half of the album have lost a bit of their charm. On another note militant Los Campesinos! fans (if such a thing exists) might be a bit miffed at how much of their track You! Me! Dancing! has been lifted into Field Mouse’s, A Widow With A Terrible Secret; a complete coincidence we’re sure.
There’s a palpable joy and freedom to these recordings that make it the most appealing Son Little album to date. The songs themselves benefit from a lack of spit and polish, as Aaron Livingston has always been a bluesman at heart. His compositions here are raw, unvarnished extrapolations of old country-blues and early rock and roll tropes, and they’re all the better for sounding a bhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpcl0_4cPnsit shaggy. And if Livingston has an old soul, he’s by no means stuck in the past, something evident from the SoundCloud-style naming conventions in some of these songs (“bbbaby,” “about her. again”).
“Letting go can be a scary prospect,” says Son Little. “But there’s beauty in it, too. Everything you leave behind opens up space for something new in your life.”
That was certainly the case with Little’s remarkable new album, ‘aloha.’ Written in only eight days and recorded at Paris’s iconic Studio Ferber, the entire project was an exercise in letting go, in ceding control, in surrendering to fate. While Little still plays nearly every instrument on the album himself, he put his songs in the hands of an outside producer for the first time here, collaborating with French studio wizard Renaud Letang (Feist, Manu Chao) to create his boldest, most self-assured statement yet.
“I’d always produced myself in the past,” explains Little, “but it’s easy to get caught up in an endless quest for perfection when you do that. Working with Renaud let me see my work from an outsider’s perspective, and that helped me get out of my own way.”
Philadelphia based Maya Bon, frontwoman of Babehoven, released her first musical delicacy of the new year with “Only So”. Bon carries pain like a wounded songbird, making beauty out of the despondency of life. Crooning vulnerabilities such as, “There’s only so much I can take of this destruction,” Bon invites her listeners into a sacred space of learning exactly how much she can take, and how much she will no longer allow to be set upon her. Clothed in a simple instrumental accompaniment, her lyrics are the apex of the track, pointing all attention toward them.
She uses her songwriting as a way to process the struggles of daily existence, of familial trauma, of the processes of letting go. Her music is lyrically driven, but held together by intentionally minimalistic chord progressions. By singing songs painful in subject, though simple in sound, Babehoven rides the line of comfort and strain, pleasure and pain, that is palpable to the listener.
On February 7, Babehoven will be releasing an EP called Demonstrating Visible Difference of Height.
It’s the beginning of November, and the thirty-three-year-old Hop Along Frances Quinlan is sitting in her living room, having just come from voting in a local election. She’s originally from North Jersey, and while careful to emphasize that she’s not a native Philadelphian, the affection for her adopted hometown is evident. “Philly is an incredible city full of people doing their best, who’ve lived here all their lives, and who want it to be a happy, healthy place. It’s cool to be around that.”
Quinlan’s new album, Likewise, is set for release January 31st, and while fans might regard it as her debut solo effort, that distinction actually belongs to 2005’s Freshman Year. Credited to Hop Along, Queen Ansleis, the self-released album—recorded in her parents’ basement—now serves as an overture to the spectacular trio of Hop Along albums that followed. Though a few friends played drums and banjo on some tracks, the record was effectively a solo endeavor, and if it doesn’t sound like one, that’s by design. “I just wanted so badly for it to sound like a band,” she laughs, “so I literally played bells and whistles, and tried to make it sound like more than just me.”
A decade later, Quinlan supervised a new vinyl pressing of Freshman Year, which proved tricky—though it wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as the initial release. “I was stamping burned CDs,” she recalls, “and the stamp I’d made was so bad, I decided to paint back onto the CDs with the same ink and a brush, because I wanted so badly for them to be special, to have meaning for people.” She has no idea how many of those hand-made treasures exist, but in the fifteen years since she assembled that first recording, she’s still enamored with experimentation.
On Likewise, Quinlan enlisted the help of longtime bandmate and producer Joe Reinhart, who helped her flesh out the arrangements, and she’s animated as she describes the sessions. “Collaboration is so different when it’s you, the songwriter, and a producer, and you’re kind of producing together,” she explains. “For this project, we could do whatever we wanted—I even play drums on a couple of tracks,” she laughs before admitting, “I can’t play bass.” The pair’s crackling chemistry is apparent in every note, and across nine songs, a bevy of strings, chorals, and electronic elements telepathically track Quinlan’s magical, mercurial cadence.
As a lyricist, Quinlan is a poet, and reading through the verses which comprise Likewise, it’s tempting to see the tracks as a loosely connected narrative. Squint, and you can make out the telemetry of a rocky relationship. But Quinlan says the stories here are all abstract bits—which isn’t to say there’s no overarching theme. “A common thread would be attempts at discourse between loved ones,” she explains. “The people you’re closest to, you want them to understand you the most, right? And that can be so harrowing. It’s a hard thing to let go of who you were before, and not feel a sense of regression, not feel held back by the perception that others have of you. I don’t think it’s a hopeless record, by any means. But I do think it’s a challenge to speak your mind to the people you’re closest to.”
On the lead single “Rare Thing,” she recalls a surreal dream where barbs like, “I know there is love that doesn’t have to do with taking something from somebody” sting against a stippled synth. For “Detroit Lake,” she conjures images of a hawk striking prey, blooming algae, and words left unspoken, while the plaintive notes of “A Secret” mirror her lyrics’ portrait of geographical and emotional distance. At times, the syncopation between her vocals and the instrumentation is so effortless that it feels like she’s dynamically bending the instruments to her will. During the sessions, “I was thinking, in a different way, what the song needed,” Quinlan says. “I had no concrete, instrumental goal, and that kind of left the songs room to really wander and get strange.” She may call them “strange,” but overall the tracks are compulsively captivating, and with the spotlight on her fantastic voice, it seems like she’s present in any room where they’re played.
Likewise closes with a cover of Built to Spill’s“Carry the Zero,” a song Quinlan has adored for years. As she relays that Doug Martsch is “cool” with her interpretation, our conversation shifts to the singers who’ve influenced her, and after quickly citing Kate Bush, Fiona Apple, and Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum, she turns pensive. “It’s tough, because you have people you love, but you’ll never in a million years sound like,” she considers. “There are so many vocalists I revere, that I wish I could emulate.
Babehoven is the full-band vehicle for the songwriting of Philadelphia-based songwriter Maya Bon. The band are currently gearing up for the release of their upcoming EP, “Demonstrating Visible Differences of Height”, and have this week shared the latest offering from it, “Only So”.
On Only So, Maya seems to grapple with struggles both personal and global, finding similarities in the battles and attempting to find a way to carry on when things get too much. As Maya sings, “there is only so much I can take of this destruction”, attempting as she explains to, “draw a line in the sand, to set intentions for my healing and boundaries for my struggle”. Even if the tales here are deeply personal they can easily resonate with anyone wanting to find a path towards moving on and starting to heal the universal wounds. The whole thing is set to a subtly crunching musical backing, full of rattling cymbals and crunchy, flourishes of guitar, none of which gets in the way of Maya’s impressive cracked vocal delivery.
One of those songwriters who seems to instantly command your attention, Babehoven might be one of the year’s most important new musical voices. Demonstrating Visible Differences Of Height is out February 7th.
The Fat Angel Sings 