Posts Tagged ‘Secretly Canadian Records’

SONGS: OHIA – ” Love and Work: The Lioness Sessions “

Posted: November 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Lionsesh

The Lioness is the first Jason Molina project to fully turn away from the battlefield folk and deconstructed Americana of earlier Songs: Ohia recordings. At the dawn of the 21st century, the album felt modern. It aligned Molina with a new set of peers – Low, Gastr del Sol, Red House Painters and, most importantly, the influential Scottish band Arab Strap, whose producer and members were crucial in the creation of The Lioness. The avant-garde tones and arrangements of Arab Strap are absorbed here into Molina’s songwriting to create what would become, for many acolytes, the archetypal Songs: Ohia sound. Love and Work: The Lioness Sessions, the box set reissue, will serve as the seminal log of the era, complete with lost songs, photos, drawings, and essays from those who knew Molina best.

We know Molina was diligent in both love and work. He treated songcraft like a job at the mill, and his approach to romance was not so different. We know that when he fell in love with his wife, he was dutiful in his adoration. There were strings of love letters and poetic gesture. Included in this edition are replicated examples of this relentless love – an envelope with a letter from Molina, a photograph of Molina and his to-be wife, a postcard, a Two of Hearts playing card, and a personal check for one million kisses. Some of these items were gifts he would send to his new love from the road; others, like the 2 of Hearts, were totems he’d carry with him around this time as a symbol for his burgeoning love.

And so, the head-over-heels album that is The Lioness has its workman counterpart. Nearly another album’s worth of material was recorded in Scotland during the album sessions. While similar in tone and structure, the songs seem to deal in the grit and dirt of being. These are songs for aching muscles getting soothed in the third-shift pub. But they’re also examples of Molina’s diligence as he constructs what would be the essential elements of The Lioness. In addition to these outtakes, we also have a 4-track session made weeks earlier in London with friend James Tugwell. Comprised of primarily guitar, hand drums and voice, these songs are raw experiments that mostly serve to illustrate Molina’s well of words and ideas. But then, there is the devastating Sacred Harp hymn Wondrous Love. While he may have had his new love in mind, one can’t help but think of Molina’s legacy as he softly warbles “Into eternity I will sing / Into eternity I will sing.” You don’t have to try too hard to mythologize Molina. He did all the work for you.

CHERRY GLAZERR – ” Stuffed And Ready “

Posted: November 20, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Stuffed & Ready

After releasing 2016’s critically acclaimed “Apocalipstick”, Cherry Glazerr spent the next 18 months touring the world on their own steam.

Btween diy all ages venues, rock clubs, large festival stages, and massive theaters with some of the world’s best and most beloved bands (the pixies, flaming lips, slowdive, and the breeders, among others), the band has really only stopped to work on their follow up, ttled “Stuffed & Ready”. while furiously building the band’s sound and ideas, With the amazing front person Clem Creevy she enlisted Carlos de la Garza to be the band’s studio co-collaborator as they evolved the songs and refined the recordings.

The LA-based trio Cherry Glazerr have released this song. Now I hope you understand what all the fuss is about. Led by 21-year-old frontwoman Clementine Creevy, the band have just announced this their fourth album, Stuffed & Ready, wll be out February 1st. Iggy Pop has been a fan of these guys for ages, so they’re definitely doing in the  right direction.

“Wasted Nun” from ‘Stuffed & Ready’ by Cherry Glazerr out February 1st, 2019 on Secretly Canadian

CHERRY GLAZER – ” Daddi “

Posted: November 10, 2018 in MUSIC
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Cherry Glazerr return with the mature 'Daddi' from their new album

Cherry Glazerr‘s last album Apocalipstick was an absolute blast of a record, that saw the Clementine Creevy-led act exploding into a more well-rounded sound. They’ve now announced the follow up: it’s called Stuffed & Ready and comes out on February 1st through Secretly Canadian. Speaking about the development between records, Creevy says: “With Apocalipstick, I was an over-confident teenager trying to solve the world’s problems. With Stuffed & Ready, I’m a much more weary and perhaps a more cynical woman who believes you need to figure your own self out first.”

That weariness is certainly audible in lead single ‘Daddi’, where a relatively restrained Cherry Glazerr weave through an bruised blue, electronics-imbued verse, Creevy asking all sorts of worrying and untoward questions. This turmoil comes rocketing to a head in the chorus, where the band gives us their trademark guitar detonation, but this time the message is clear and confronting: “don’t hold my hand/ don’t be my man.” It’s a coercive sign of what’s to come on Stuffed & Ready.

‘Daddi’ also comes with an animated video, created with Danny Cole, the creative director for Portugal. The Man.

ALEX CAMERON – ” Studmuffin96 “

Posted: April 22, 2018 in MUSIC
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Image may contain: 1 person, stripes

Thing about my current occupation is I’ve gotta keep moving. I’ve been living out a suitcase for 3 years. And this is my 2nd one. The other was hucked into a canal in Amsterdam. What I’m saying is I lose things. Whole styles worth of clothing. Months of medication. I even had whole hard drives of valuable digital documents and data stolen from a backseat rental in 2016. Rado can vouch for that. So once I started losing my virtual belongings and having my potential intellectual property poached I decided enough was enough. I needed something instant and permanent and forever to carry with me. Something to document the people and the places I’ve been called to work with and in. I also wanted to be able to produce instant nude photographs of my girl for safe storage in my backpack

Available now for your viewing (dis)pleasure, the Jemima Kirke-directed video for “Studmuffin96” is a dark, comic observation of one girl’s instant obsession with an older man which, by sheer chance, culminates in a seedy night in a motel room many years later. As Kirke describes it, “It’s a coming of age story about the bleakness of a fantasy realized. A young woman is reunited with a man from her past, and an attempt at romance ensues. But regardless of their efforts, their only common ground is a laundromat and a motel room.”

’Studmuffin96’ from ‘Forced Witness’ out now on Secretly Canadian

SUUNS – Felt “

Posted: January 11, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Montreal band Suuns are pleased to announce their new album, “Felt”, coming out on March 2nd through Secretly Canadian. Singer/guitarist Ben Shemie says, “This record is definitely looser than our last one [2016’s Hold/Still]. It’s not as clinical. There’s more swagger.” You can hear this freedom flowing through the 11 tracks on Felt. It’s both a continuation and rebirth, the Montreal quartet returning to beloved local facility Breakglass Studios (where they cut their first two albums [Zeroes QC and Images Du Futur] with Jace Lasek of The Besnard Lakes) but this time recording themselves at their own pace, over five fertile sessions spanning several months. A simultaneous stretching out and honing in, mixed to audiophile perfection by St. Vincent producer John Congleton (helmer of Hold/Still), who flew up especially from Dallas to deploy his award-winning skills in situ.

The album’s lead single “Watch You, Watch Me” debuts today  in the form of a Ruff Murphy-directed video. The song showcases an organic/synthetic rush that builds and builds atop drummer Liam O’Neill‘s elevatory rhythm. O’Neill exclaims, “It was different and exciting. In the past, there was a more concerted effort on my part to drum in a controlled and genre-specific way. Self-consciously approaching things stylistically. Us doing it ourselves, that process was like a very receptive, limitless workshop to just try out ideas.”

Suuns are hugely proud of their roots in Canada’s most socialist province, whilst not sounding quite like anything else the city has produced. Quebecois natives Shemie and Joseph Yarmush founded the group just over a decade ago, the latter having moved to Montreal from a nearby village. The only member not to be formally schooled in jazz, guitarist Yarmush studied photography and utilized his visual training to help realize Shemie’s novel concept for the eye-catching album artwork.

“I was at a barbecue last summer and there were balloons everywhere,” recalls the singer. “I like this idea of pressure, resistance, and pushing against something just before it brakes. And there is something strangely subversive about a finger pushing into a balloon. It seemed to fit the vibe of the record we were making. We made plaster casts of our hands, going for a non-denominational statue vibe. Joe came up with the colour scheme, the sickly green background, and shot the whole cover in an hour.”

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It’s a suitably outre image for Felt, which breaks with Suuns’ earlier darkness for a more optimistic ambience. The record’s playful atmosphere is echoed by its double meaning title. “Some people might think of the material,” muses Shemie. “I like that that could be misconstrued. Also it’s to have felt and not to feel a little introspective, but that feeling’s in the past.”

JASON MOLINA – ” The Black Sabbath Covers ” EP

Posted: November 27, 2017 in MUSIC
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Since Jason Molina‘s death in 2013, there have been some memorable and intimate releases. In 2016, Secretly Canadian released The Townes Van Zandt Covers (I’ll Be Here In the Morning/Tower Song). It came as no surprise that Molina should be drawn to these songs. His melancholic sad tones seemed well suited to those Townes songs who, like Molina, also battled with alcoholism.

The latest offering from Secretly Canadian may be a less obvious connection – The Black Sabbath Covers 7″.  Although Molina was in the punk band Spineriders in the late ’80s and early ’90s this isn’t a return to those days, instead, the two tracks Solitude and Snowblind were recorded in the late ’90s, with just voice and acoustic guitar. He makes them both his own although they are no sooner started then they’re over – combined they come in at just under 3:30 minutes but this does allow the b-side to be adorned with an etching of a black ram by the brilliant Rhode Island artist and musician William Schaff.

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When Jason Molina took on another artist’s song, he willed his own universe into it, his own personal and artistic mythology. Be it Conway Twitty or Townes Van Zandt, their blues were infused with Molina’s own entrancing blues. This pair of newly discovered, home-recorded Black Sabbath covers is no different. Molina, a through-and-through fan of metal (seek out his high school metal band the Spineriders‘ album if you haven’t yet) peels back the sinister and stoned elements of Sabbath, zeroing in on the loneliness and brooding. He takes “Solitude,” from 1971’s unfuckwithable Master of Reality — and one of Sabbath’s more mystical, near-proggy songs — and doubles down on the title. Molina extracts Ozzy Osbourne’s gorgeously cooed vocal performance and transforms it into a high and lonesome sound, a desert campfire howler. And on his cover of “Snowblind,” from 1972’s Vol. 4, it becomes obvious what a guitar hero Sabbath’s Tony Iommi was for Molina.

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ALEX CAMERON – ” Strangers Kiss ” with Angel Olsen

Posted: August 7, 2017 in MUSIC
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Aussie synth pop artist Alex Cameron has been steadily building a profile since his celebrated debut solo LP “Jumping the Shark” was issued as a free download on his website in 2013.
Receiving a huge boost via a release through respected indie label Secretly Canadian (The War On Drugs, Jens Lekman) last August, Cameron was invited to support US alt. rock duo Foxygen after the band described his live show as ‘One of the most memorable, moving concerts I have or will ever witness’.
An engaging, idiosyncratic performer, backed by saxophonist Roy Molloy, Cameron supported The Killers at their Hyde Park gig this Summer.
Approvingly described by US punk icon Henry Rollins as being ‘Right out of a David Lynch hell dream!’ Pitchfork stated ‘Cameron’s efficient, minimal compositions create the type of songs that penetrate deeply and linger in your consciousness long after you’ve stopped listening to them’.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4C-Lw-YaWg

’Stranger’s Kiss (Duet With Angel Olsen)’ from ‘Forced Witness’ out September 8th on Secretly Canadian Records 

ALEX CAMERON – ” Candy May “

Posted: July 6, 2017 in MUSIC
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If you haven’t listened to Alex Cameron’s work before, you should know Cameron has never shied away from less-savory topics in his music. On Jumping the Shark, his Secretly Canadian debut, the 28-year-old Australian native inhabited the psyches of wild, far-out characters, crafting a bleak, immersive world. His forthcoming LP, Forced Witness, due out September 8th, continues in that same vein: a danceable and dangerous earnestness, a sense of honesty that heals and relieves, even as it cleaves us or makes us laugh in self-defense. Once again, Cameron offers us vivid portraits of misfits who look at the world without illusion.

Discovering the album Jumping The Shark last year was truly one of the greatest discoveries I’ve made, and Alex Cameron is amongst the most electrifying and mesmerising characters in music right now.

Recorded in Berlin, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, and produced by Cameron along with Foxygen‘s Jonathan Rado, these tracks at first seem shamelessly entertaining, the driving rhythms and rousing melodies embellished at every turn by Roy Molloy‘s warm horn work. But the love songs and anthems of personal resilience contain as much raw humanity as they do a savvy grasp of the impossible loneliness of the times, especially apparent in the song, “Stranger’s Kiss”  Cameron’s affecting duet with Angel Olsen (who also sings backup on lead single, “Candy May”).

‘Candy May’ from ‘Forced Witness’ out Sept 8th on Secretly Canadian Records

The WAR ON DRUGS – ” Holding On “

Posted: June 5, 2017 in MUSIC
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2015 Landmark Music Festival - Day 1

Three years after 2014’s standout album “Lost In The Dream” Philadelphia favorites The War On Drugs are looking for new terrain. Spinning classic riffs into a haze of classic radio rock, the band has long locked-in on a lush, guitar synth-drenched formula spanning their trio of past releases on the indie label Secretly Canadian Records. But then signed to a major label and unveiled a new single “Thinking Of A Place” the band seems set on something bigger this time.

The second track from their forthcoming album A Deeper Understanding, “Holding On” stretches the band’s meditative formula into a 6-minute track starts with a splash of stoned synths, quickly teasing in slide guitar and glockenspiel cut straight from Springsteen-esqe Born to Run or Tunnel of Love.

Adam Granduciel voice has the haunting low-end grovel, which slaps against the staccato bassline with a bright, up-beat bounce. As the chorus hits, the track ascends to a soaring, anthemic spiral with voice and guitar overlapping in a messy, monophonic ecstasy.

What once began as a bit of a simple “Springsteen plus reverb” punchline, the band has now expanded the palette into something transformative and newly striking.  ‘A Deeper Understanding,’ the new album from The War On Drugs, available soon

Three years after 2014’s standout Lost in the Dream, Philadelphia favorites The War On Drugs are looking for new terrain. Spinning classic riffs into a melancholic haze of classic radio rock, the band has long locked-in on a lush, synth-drenched formula spanning their trio of past releases on the indie label Secretly Canadian. But after signing to a major and unveiling their dreamy and crystalline new single “Thinking of a Place,”  the band seems set on something bigger this time.

The second track from their forthcoming album A Deeper Understanding, “Holding On” stretches the band’s meditative formula into crisp, streamlined hi-fi. The 6-minute track starts with a splash of stoned synths, quickly teasing in slide guitar and glockenspiel cut straight from Born to Run or Tunnel of Love. Adam Granduciel voice has the haunting low-end grovel, which slaps against the staccato bassline with a bright, up-beat bounce. As the chorus hits, the track ascends to a soaring, anthemic spiral with voice and guitar overlapping in a messy, monophonic ecstasy.

What once began as a bit of a simple “Springsteen plus reverb” punchline, the band has now expanded the palette into something transformative and newly striking. Years after 2011’s Slave Ambient betrayed its namesake with a liberating hypnogogia, “Holding On” lets go of the past with an elegy of mutating soundscapes.  But as it slowly drops back into its last wisps of spectral echo, the track pangs with something familiar, the future taking shape through reflective introspection.

Our new album ‘A Deeper Understanding’ is officially arriving on August 25th, 2017. Listen to ‘Holding On’ now.

WHITNEY – ” You’ve Got A Woman ” Lion Cover

Posted: May 4, 2017 in MUSIC
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Whitney’s cover of Lion’s poppy 1975 song “ You’ve Got A Woman” from their recently announced covers EP, is a sumptuous take on the Dutch duo’s tune that’s also one of Whitney’s more sensual efforts.

The same can be said for their new video, which pares images of afternoon swimming and dimly lit lovemaking with the Chicago band’s indie-pop slow jam. It’s all fairly low-key and a lot of the images are fleeting, but they’re fairly illustrative in showing a whirlwind romance that has as many ups and downs as your standard episode of a soap opera. The video’s duo might not actually spend a lifetime together, but there’s enough going on to make it feel that way.

“You’ve Got A Woman (Lion Cover)” from the upcoming 12” out June 2nd, 2017 on Secretly Canadian Records.  
Available on 12” and Digital: https://whitney.lnk.to/covers

Ever since they wrote Light Upon The Lake as Chicago froze around them during winter 2014, Whitney have tried to make the kind of songs they’d be jealous of if someone else got there first. “You’ve Got A Woman,” released on the B-side of Dutch duo Lion‘s 1975 psych-pop 7″ But I Do, is precisely one of those songs. “As soon as I heard it, I wished I’d written the vocal melody; it’s so catchy and powerful,” says singing drummer Julien Ehrlich. Whitney’s version is rich, instantaneous and deep in groove. There’s trademark brass from Will Miller, wandering lead from guitarist Max Kakacek and bursts of strings. Like “No Woman,” “Golden Days,” and the rest of last year’s debut, it’s brushed with longing, nostalgia and serves to slow down time.

Unlike Lion, Whitney make it their A-side. Flip the 12″ and you’ll find Dolly Parton‘s “Gonna Hurry (As Slow As I Can),” a short, tearful love song hewn from piano, brass, guitar and Julian’s falsetto. You’ve heard him sing it before, live, sat on the lip of the stage accompanied by Max on guitar.

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