Tenille Townes. The Canadian-born country singer/songwriter and musician, first reached our ears a few years ago with the arrival of her hit song “Somebody’s Daughter,” which landed on many best-of-the-year lists. Her debut album The Lemonade Stand is finally here, after releasing a preliminary EP earlier this year, The Road to the Lemonade Stand. “The Lemonade Stand is a collection of songs that mean so much to me and are the way I see the world in this season of my life right now,” Townes said in a statement. “I want this music to be like a gathering place, where people can come and be filled up. I hope this record reminds people of who they are, that they are not alone, and reminds them of their dreams. You guys today is the day that I get to tell you that my debut album ‘The Lemonade Stand’ is coming out on June 26th!!. I really am just so excited I can’t even stand it as I’m typing this out to you. And this is what the cover of the album is!!! I can not wait for you to have this whole record in your hands to listen to in your kitchens or your cars or your headphones and I hope it makes you feel comforted, cheered for, seen and heard like there’s somebody sitting next to you going through the same things. I hope it makes you feel like a dreamer too. Because this record is the dream I had when I was a seven year old kid singing along to music in the backseat. She would really be freaking out right now ha.
This record is the dream that I had when I was a seven-year-old kid singing along in the backseat of the car. She would really be freaking out right now.”
I’m so proud to be from Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada and so thankful for all the ways it has shaped me and shaped my music. The community and love that surrounded me growing up will forever be the anchor of who I am. I will always hold on to home and hope to carry forward that spirit in my music.
Listen to the Road To The Lemonade Stand EP, featuring “Jersey On The Wall (Forgive Me I’m Just Asking)”, out now
Despite being only 22, Samia has a self-awareness beyond her years. The indie singer-songwriter is masterful in her sharp lyrics, which capture common anxieties and frustrations with a poet’s charm. She finds painful moments and leans into their messy, ugly details, transforming them into defiant common touchstones speckled throughout life. One breakup song ends mid-sentence, evoking the discomfort and anticipation of separation, while another is inspired by a high-school memory of boys groping her breasts, using the experience to inspect the politics and power of women’s desirability.
But, the New York singer offers more than poignant confessional lyrics. She also crafts striking compositions, which range from dramatic, wailing folk ballads backed by simple piano or acoustic guitar accompaniments to gritty and grungy rock anthems. Always at the forefront is her crystalline voice, carrying each number with its deft transitions between ranges and its emotional power.
Using this idea of two distinct selves as framework, the indie rocker teamed with director Nick D’agostino to craft a music video that illustrates the disparity. My first album is called “The Baby” and it’s coming out via Grand Jury on 28th August. made it with my friends caleb hinz, jake luppen, nathan stocker and lars stalfors kramer
2nd single off the record is called Fit n Full and i wrote it with Tom D’Agustino and it’s out now!!
Official music video for Samia’s “Is The Something in the Movies?,” from her debut album The Baby, coming August 28th.
Bristol-based musician Fenne Lily announces “Breach”, her second album and first for Dead Oceans Records, out September 18th. It presents a newly upbeat and urgent streak to her songwriting, immediately evident with lead single “Alapathy,” and its accompanying video directed by Benjamin Brook. Breach is an expansive, diaristic, frequently sardonic record that deals with the mess and the catharsis of entering your 20s and finding peace while being alone. It’s the follow-up to 2018’s On Hold, a tender collection of open-hearted songs written during her teenage years which deemed Fenne “a new and extraordinary voice capable of wringing profound and resonant moments out of loss” .
Fenne wrote Breach during a period of self-enforced isolation pre-COVID, after a disjointed experience of touring Europe, followed by a month alone in Berlin. The album deals largely with “loneliness, and trying to work out the difference between being alone and being lonely.” Although its subject matter is solitude, it sounds bigger and more intricate than anything Fenne previously released. She recorded with producer Brian Deck at Chicago’s Narwhal Studios, with further work at Electrical Audio with Steve Albini who helped flesh out her sound with vast, rich guitars.
The insistent percussion of the album’s first single, “Alapathy,” mimics the anxious racing thoughts Fenne deals with as an overthinker and chronicles how she “started smoking weed to switch off [her] brain.” The title is a made-up word that merges “apathy” and “allopathic” (as in Westernized medicine). “Western medicine generally treats the symptoms of an illness rather than the cause,” explains Fenne. For Fenne, taking medication to improve her mental health didn’t solve her problems — she felt like she was only treating the effects of her discomfort, not the reason for it. Its stylized accompanying video features Fenne enjoying solitude in various ways.
It’s that journey to find peace inside herself that underpins the whole of Fenne’s second album. Its title, Breach, occurred to Fenne after deep conversations with her mum about her birth, during which she was breech, or upside down in the womb. The slippery double-sidedness of the word – which, spelled with an “A”, means to “break through” – drew her in. “That feels like what I was doing in this record; I was breaking through a wall that I built for myself, keeping myself safe, and dealing with the downside of feeling lonely and alone. I realized that I am comfortable in myself, and I don’t need to fixate on relationships to make myself feel like I have something to talk about. I felt like I broke through a mental barrier in that respect.” Even though it also carries implications of awkwardness, rebellion, and breakage, it’s a wide-reaching word, representing new beginnings and birth.
“Alapathy” the new song by Fenne Lily off ‘Breach’ out September 18th on Dead Oceans.
Azniv Korkejian, the Los Angeles -based artist who records as Bedouine, makes soft, delicate, beautiful folk music. There’s a long, rich tradition of musicians using soft, delicate, beautiful folk-music as a forum for the left-wing rallying cry, and it seems like Korkejian is getting in touch with that tradition right now. Last month, Bedouine released her version of the Vietnam-era protest song “The Hum.” Today, she’s dropped a gorgeous take on the old folk traditional “All My Trials.”
“All My Trials” is an old song of unknown origins. It’s a stark piece of writing about how those without money are destined for harder, shorter lives than those with it: “If living were a thing that money could buy/ The rich would live, and the poor would die.” Over the years, a number of artists (Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez) have recorded their own versions of the song. A Paul McCartney recording of it was a minor UK hit in 1990. Today, we get to hear Bedouine’s.
Azniv Korkejian recorded her take on “All My Trials” at her home. She’s done it as a hushed lullaby, with softly fingerpicked guitars and glowing Fender Rhodes tones. I don’t know who sings harmonies on her version of the song — maybe it’s just Korkejian’s voice multi-tracked — but those harmonies are a killer.
Bedouine – “All My Trials” from Mexican Summer’s Looking Glass series.
Released May 19th, 2020
Written by unknown / traditional
Recorded and produced by Bedouine
Recorded at home April, 2020
Francesca Blanchard is a French-born songwriter based in Burlington, Vermont. Since the release of her bilingual folk debut Deux Visions in 2015, the genre-bending songwriter has been busy redefining her wheelhouse. Following a year of extensive touring throughout the US and Europe, Blanchard took some time to rediscover what she wanted to say — and how to say it. She gave rein to a growing interest in production, marking a departure from her acoustic roots. The result is melodic indie-pop bursting with bold vulnerability, cathartic relief and a refreshing dose of self-awareness — a direction that demonstrates the artist’s evolving critical consciousness and relish for catchy hooks. Francesca’s sonic intuition remains expert and beautiful, but her newfound sense of play makes this work her most daring and relatable yet.
Blanchard has a knack for fusing fuzzy pop sounds with her folk roots à la Maggie Rogers, crafting hooks as she goes. The title track from her new album (a follow-up to her 2015 bilingual debut Deux Visions) is a solid indie-pop number that tracks a private dance party turned public: “Whenever I’m in dire need of returning to myself, I’ll turn my face towards the sun and go climb a mountain,” Blanchard writes in a press statement. “Over the past year, I have danced alone to this song on mountaintops in my headphones, reliving the elation I discovered when I wrote it. It’s been a sort of private, secret celebration. Now that the song is no longer mine to keep, I wanted to share that dance with others, to bring it to life.”
The spectacular new single, “HUH,” from Grace Gillespie. This London-based artist and producer released her debut EP, “Pretending”, in June 2019 via Kaleidoscope and it was met with tons of praise across the music blog-o-sphere, including right here where it made my top albums/EPs of 2019 list. Her ability to blend multiple genres and styles to create her own musical identity grows by leaps and bounds with each new release.
The latest single questions why we allow ourselves to lose childhood wonder as we become adults and deal with the slog of 9-5 to life. On the song she says: “We become increasingly affected by external factors as we grow older and it becomes increasingly difficult to think like a child again. That innocence and curiosity is lost forever. But it’s still fun to think about, to try and look at things in different ways, as if through the eyes of someone else.”
Her sound takes influences from the folk, psych and dream-pop traditions, providing a backdrop to her intriguing vocal melodies, shifting harmonies and introspective lyricism.
“I grew up in Devon not far from the sea. Music was a big part of my life from very early on – I was lucky enough to attend a primary school where music was high on the agenda. I started studying piano very early, then sax and then drums for a year or so – but abandoned that pretty quickly.. too noisy for a tiny village. I’m a huge fan and you should be too! If you haven’t yet pick up her debut EP and get to know all about your new favourite musician.
Kaleidoscope Records Released on: 2020-05-29 Grace Gillespie
When you hear acoustic strum’s and harmonica, you possibily think Bob Dylan—especially when it sounds this much like Bob Dylan. But Tré Burt isn’t just trying to play copy-cat Dylan on his 2020 album “Caught It from the Rye”. He clearly takes Dylan seriously as an influence, yes, but Burt has his own thing going on, and, as pointed out in February, it’s distinguishable mostly for its vivid swath of Black emotions. “And Mother Nature, I guess she caters / To those with white skin / I don’t feel well anymore / To darkness I’m returnin’,” he sings on “Undead God of War,” a protest song of sorts.
But he also succeeds at singing from an even more personal perspective. “Real You” expresses a Leon Bridges-like yearning for vulnerability, and “Moth’s Crossing,” which sounds like Dylan more than any other song (seriously, it’s almost creepy!) is a lusty, lovely call to a potential mate.
Tré will hit home with just about any folk fan, but particularly those that long for a little bit of old fashioned folk revival sounds à la Joni, Joan, Bob and Leonard mixed in.
“Caught It from the Rye” from newly-signed Oh Boy Records artist, Tré Burt.
“After deciding I wanted to release the songs, I thought about maybe trying to make a music video for one of them. I thought that it would be good to pair the song with something that was uplifting in this strange time and hopefully made some people happy. I put out a post asking my fans to send me a video of something that is helping them through this time and bring them joy. Whether it’s reading, cooking, drawing, playing music etc.
Every video I have received has made me smile so much, they are so heart-warming and together have made a video that’s really meaningful to me. Making it has brought me a lot of happiness and I hope for those who are in it and watch it feel the same too.” – Lucy Rose
Jesse Malin had a shit year in 2018. His father, former guitarist, and producer all died. So his new album Sunset Kids, his first in four years, could have been a major bummer. Instead, it’s a celebration of survival that finds the New York City hardcore troubadour reflecting on life’s precious and fleeting moments.
“Shining Down” is inspired by Tom Petty’s final performance at the Hollywood Bowl in 2017, which Malin witnessed firsthand. “I act like nothing hurts/The bar becomes a church/A limousine or hearse and you don’t look back,” he sings over jangly Heartbreakers guitars and a euphoric chorus. In “Strangers and Thieves,” he teams up with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong to memorialize their punk glory days, delivering a blast of power pop that floats along on a curlicue guitar lick. And in “Shane,” Malin salutes the longevity of the hard-drinking Pogues singer Shane MacGowan, blending his nasally whine with that of Americana chanteuse Lucinda Williams.
It’s the presence of Williams, who co-produced the LP with her husband Tom Overby, that ties Sunset Kids together. A master lyricist, she helps Malin refine and focus his own words, especially on the introspective “Room 13” and on their duet “Dead On,” a slashing blues-rocker that evokes Williams’ own kiss-off “Changed the Locks.” The seemingly odd-couple pair — he’s from Queens, she was raised in Arkansas — slap their way through the verses. “You talk like an angel/You spit on the floor,” Williams growls, before Malin answers, “but you look just like the girl next door.”
There’s some repetition on the album, three of the 14 tracks, including “Revelations,” have appeared in various forms on past solo projects, but only fans who’ve followed Malin’s career closely will notice.
“Meet Me at the End of the World Again,” released as a one-off single in 2017, benefits from the redo. Elevated by Catherine Popper’s funky Lower East Side bass groove, it’s a soundtrack to the apocalypse, a command to reconnect before it’s too late, and makes you believe that the P.M.A. (positive mental attitude) that Malin has been preaching for decades just might be enough to save us.
Growing up in Queens, Jesse Malin was all of 10 when he made his first public appearance with a band, performing Kiss’ “Rock and Roll All Nite” at his public school—“I spit ketchup for blood,” he remembers with a laugh. He was a member of the Kiss Army in his teens but eventually graduated to punk, forming a band called Heart Attack—all of whose members were under 16—only to be told that punk had already peaked. “We went to an audition night at CBGB and they told us that we missed it all. Bad Brains had broken up, The Ramones were going power-pop, Blondie [was going] disco. They said, ‘Try something new like rockabilly or New Romantics.’ I said, ‘I’m not dressing up like a pirate.’”
He soon discovered that the genre wasn’t dead. It had simply sped up, grown more outspoken and morphed into hardcore, with bands like the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag and the Circle Jerks taking the music to the next level. Heart Attack stayed together for four years, after which Malin founded the band Hope, which carried on until 1989.
But it wasn’t until he joined D Generation that Malin truly became a force to be reckoned with. The band not only opened shows for Kiss but also those other Queens natives, The Ramones (Joey Ramone became a close friend). They released three full length albums, an EP and numerous singles during their initial eight-year run. It was while making their self-titled debut in 1994 that Malin first connected with Bianco, who produced and engineered it. (The second album, No Lunch, was produced by The Cars’ Ric Ocasek, and the third, Through the Darkness, was produced by David Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti.)
“We wanted to make D Generation into a band that we felt we missed; we felt music had become really safe and funky, with people dressed up like they were farmers from Seattle with no style. We wanted to be in a band that was like a gang,” Malin says. The band was respected but never did cut through commercially. “The people that liked us loved us, but we became more of a cult thing and an artist thing. We had a few bad breaks, but also internally it was so intense. It could be like a five-headed love affair or a five-headed war.”
Malin eventually started growing creatively restless. And punk was also moving in a direction he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. “People thought punk was about swastikas and fascism until the Dead Kennedys said, ‘Nazi punks fuck off.’ Sometimes people misunderstand things,” he says.
After the demise of D Generation, Malin cut an album with a band called Bellvue, To Be Somebody, before making the difficult decision to go the solo troubadour route. “It was kind of nervewracking to call it Jesse Malin,” he says. “I was used to hiding behind four other people and writing for four or five other people. But I think there’s a real connection between punk-rock and folk, from Woody Guthrie to The Clash to Bob Dylan to Crass or the Dead Kennedys. It’s about a message and a couple of chords and an attitude. A lot of my friends that heard me do louder stuff would be kind of surprised when I first did more acoustic-based music. I had people going, ‘What the hell?’ But my real friends knew that I had liked Jim Croce and Elton John since I was eight, and Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen since I was 15. I like songs, whatever they are—the craft.”
His highly regarded solo debut, 2002’s The Fine Art of Self Destruction, was produced by D Generation fan Ryan Adams, whom he’d met in 1996. “It was a very personal first record,” Malin says. He followed it with The Heat (2004) and thenGlitter in the Gutter, which featured a guest vocal by none other than Bruce Springsteen, who took note of Malin’s debut.
“I got into Bruce Springsteen late,” he says. “In the ‘80s, I got into Nebraska, and I was like, ‘This guy’s a millionaire and he’s speaking the truth. It’s real and it’s dark and it’s about people on the street, and it’s believable and it’s haunting and it’s so good. And it’s just him alone.’” Springsteen invited Malin to do some holiday shows with him and agreed to lend backing vocals to Malin’s track “Broken Radio.”
From there, Malin’s next move was an all-covers set, On Your Sleeve, featuring favourite tunes by classic rockers like Lou Reed, The Clash, The Rolling Stones, Elton John and Paul Simon, and a live album, Mercury Retrograde. His next full studio album, Love It to Life, arrived in 2010; that same year, he and the members of Green Day killed time with a short-lived band they called Rodeo Queens, releasing one song, “Depression Times.” His five-year break between solo albums was alleviated when a reunited D Generation released their first new album in 17 years. That band also embarked on a well-received tour with stops in London and the U.S., among them a couple of shows opening for Guns N’ Roses. One observer of the tour was Lucinda Williams, who had never seen D Generation during their heyday.
“It was a whole different side of Jesse,” Williams says, “and he was amazing. He had his shirt off, like Iggy Pop, and his microphone cord was long enough that he was able to go all the way to the bar from the stage and drink a shot of tequila and still make it back to the stage. He was great.”
Now 51, Jesse Malin still lives in Manhattan’s East Village. “I tried living in Los Angeles but, if you walk in LA, they think you’re a male prostitute,” he says. These days, he can often be found, wearing his trademark suspenders and newsboy cap, at one of the bars or clubs he owns a stake in. “We try to keep a little bit of old New York, New York going somehow,” he says about the establishments, which include popular destinations like Bowery Electric, Lola, Niagara and Cabin Down Below. “Going back to Queens and Brooklyn and places that I tried desperately to get out of, it’s strange to me that there’s now art galleries and gluten-free donuts. But I like that stuff, too. I just love making music and talking about music, then having a few drinks and talking even more.”
As Sunset Kids (titled after a children’s shop in LA—he liked the name, which nodded to his recent losses and nocturnal nature) began making its way out to fans, Malin was looking beyond his own neighbourhood, though. “We’re going to do a lot of touring behind this record,” he says. “It’s a privilege to play live after you’ve worked on a record; it’s an exorcism for me to get up there each night over some dirty microphone and spit out whatever it is. So I’ll be doing a bunch of touring around the world—Europe and Japan and the States—and then another record. I want to do something pretty quiet next time and really keep it intimate. And then I want to do a very physical record— something that can be played live. I want to make something that I can move my body to and that’s just completely fun and rhythmic but still aggressive. That’s what I’m thinking now. In between, as Warren Zevon said, I just want to enjoy every sandwich.”
“What’s New, Tomboy?” could be considered Damien Jurado’s finest collection of music to date, with songs exuding the inviting warmth of a lone porch light gleaming amidst the disorienting darkness. Though more stripped and grounded in their execution, songs like “Sandra”, “Ochoa” and “Alice Hyatt” are generous and candid in their vocabulary, eschewing the sometimes abstruse imagery of Jurado’s previous releases. “There is no hiding on these tracks.” Though What’s New, Tomboy? is the first Damien Jurado record that ends with a question mark, he has never sounded more assured and content in giving up his ghosts: “I’m only living sentences // That were long before I got here.”
The Fat Angel Sings 