On first listen , ‘Cigarette’ has far more in common with debut album Marika Hackman than anything else she’s shared from ‘I’m Not Your Man’ so far. Taking a hefty drag of delicately plucked acoustic guitar, and watching the melodies tumble away in wisps of smoke, it’s a thoughtful, reflective song.
Still, while ‘Cigarette’ might mark a step back from the bombast of the other tracks previewed so far in ‘Boyfriend,’ ‘My Lover Cindy’ and the climactic, crashing surge that ends ‘Violet,’ it’s actually got little in common with her debut ‘We Left At Last’. Lyrically it’s a stark affair, painting the scene of an argument in a carpark; with minimal brushstrokes. “Turn to the headlight glare, cry and pretend you care, I love it when we make a scene,” Marika sings, her verses thin on detail and letting the gaps do the talking. “Something to talk about, rather than fuck and shout, maybe we could go to sleep.” A brilliantly spare song, that captures all the frustration of two people who can’t quite spit their words out, ‘Cigarette’ might seem elusive at first, but it’s got all the welly of her other singles.
Welsh songwriter Bryde has attracted plenty of international acclaim in recent months and on recent single ‘Less’ she’s somehow reached another level. With the backing of BBC Radio 1’s Huw Stephens and support from the Sunday Times, The Line Of Best Fit and Consequence of Sound momentum is increasing rapidly and her capacity show at The Great Escape last weekend has done nothing to suggest otherwise. Praise for the Welsh songwriter aka Sarah Howells has been well-bestowed since deciding to go solo from the band Paper Aeroplanes.
Leading the UK collection of rock revivalists and sparking obvious comparisons to acts including Mitski, Angel Olsen and Whitney with her heartfelt lyricism, Bryde’s reputation is growing .
New Zealand songwriter Aldous Harding released her new album, “Party”, . Featuring the singles ‘Horizon’ and ‘Imagining My Man’, her second long-player has been universally applauded. She will make her debut TV appearance next week, performing ‘Horizon’ on the BBC’s Later…with Jools Holland.
Party was produced with the award-winning John Parish (PJ Harvey, Sparklehorse) in his hometown of Bristol, taking Harding away from her New Zealand base for an intensive two-week immersion in the studio. As well as a raft of musical contributions from Parish, Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas lends vocals to recent single ‘Imagining My Man’ and Party closer ‘Swell Does The Skull’.
Like her record, Harding speaks slowly, in deeply considered sentences, her chin perched on books as she smoked a cigarette. Harding’s roots are in New Zealand’s almost bizarrely fertile folk scene — a former roommate, NadiaReid, has also drawn international eyes — but some time early in the creation of the songs for Party, something shifted, she says. Going over the record song-by-song, Harding says that the turning point arrived while she was writing what would become the album’s title track, a song with that slowly swells into a chorus that cracks its shell of restraint, emerging as something almost operatic. “When I heard the chorus [of ‘Party’] in my head I kind of went, ‘I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that,'” she says. “I’ve done something different, and it feels much better. Fits better. And I… went for it, by the sounds of it,” she laughs. “I just got stuck in it, Party’s velvet-soft sound is a bedding for a gifted weapon-of-a voice. Harding puts on so many masks throughout the album — the shriek, the sullen smoker, the concerned love — but there’s something calmly self-assured behind the costume changes. She’s always wearing the same shirt. As we spoke, she thought aloud that, maybe, the record is a document of self-imposed isolation in some way, a reckoning with ambition and the costs of trying deeply. Have you ever exiled yourself in order to try and be completely yourself and see what magic may come of it?.
Imagining My Man
“It’s just about all of the… tender and frightening thoughts that come with being in love. And growing up, and trying to figure out what the hell it is that you want. And trying to love another person, when you’re constantly pushing your own plate away, isn’t easy. It’s no one’s fault, that’s just how it happens sometimes. You’ve just got to ride it out.”
Horizon
“Good-bye — and not necessarily for any reason at all other than… I’ve got to go. I’m showing that person two things; their life, and their life with me. And I’m taking one of them away. And that’s me.
“In a lot of ways it was me choosing art over a person, which I didn’t necessarily know at the time. And feeling like, in order to do it how I need to do it, I need to be on my own. There are people who like to sit at a dining table with six other people and listen to John Coltrane, [Blue] Train and pour wine. I love that too, but I’m the kind of person who if you give me a plate of food, you give me money or… alcohol…. I want to take it in to the dark on my own, so no one has to see how I approach it. Maybe that’s an insecurity, I don’t know. I don’t feel particularly insecure about it.”
Swell Does The Skull
“Yeah, it’s closer to the first record in the sense that it’s got that kind of… back. It’s not so… modern. It’s got an arc. There’s still an archaic fume to that one.”
What If Birds Aren’t Singing They’re Screaming
“The song is quite humorous, but at the same time I think it’s kind of Randy Newman-esque — there’s like, a deep sadness inside that jolly sound.
“For like four or five months of my life I was too scared to like, move around and reach out for things because I was worried that I’d my hands would run into glass, like I could reach up and if I reached up and knocked on the air it would make a noise. I couldn’t look at the sky because I was worried that I see a crack. And like, light would start to come. Not nice light — like, someone else’s sunlight. I didn’t like that.
“It was pretty… rough, coming up with it. Because questions like that are what keep people frightened. Not trusting that things are real. This is stuff you think about when you do drugs, this is the stuff that will drive you nuts. I guess that’s why I kept it kind of upbeat and humorous, because I don’t want to frighten people, just wanted to remind them that that’s normal. And it’s real — as real as the stuff you worry isn’t. And just don’t f****** worry about it. Because at the end of the day it’s actually quite funny.”
Itinerant Arias finds Stelling backed by a band, electrified if you will. It is a record inspired by movement and travel. The album cover a photograph taken by Stelling himself depicting an arrangement of found objects on his table. With a little more than a week before returning to the road, he retreated to a friend’s Connecticut cabin out in the woods with some musician friends. They slept there, ate there and didn’t leave for the next eight days, recording the haunting and powerful record.
“We would wake up in the morning, make coffee and record. The idea was just to live together, eat together and make this record. Having been alone and on the road, it was great to make a home with these musicians for those eight days. These songs were minimally demoed, arranged on the spot and recorded together live.
The album begins with the bittersweet ode to battered perseverance in “Destitute. As Stelling explains, “We begin at rock bottom. When all the layers of self pity are pealed away and all we have left to do is remind ourselves that it gets better from here. It’s a song about putting one foot in front of the other, about looking up. A nice place to start.”
Later Stelling addresses the plight of the refugee with the lilting and soulful“Sleep Baby Sleep.” He explains, “I became aware of the Syrian refugee crisis first hand a couple years back when crossing the English channel from Calais to Dover. Seeing the camps, driving right past them, looking at me from behind the fences, desperate to find a home… and me able to pass, with the right passport, the right nationality, the right look made me feel ill. I’ve gotten to know some wonderful displaced Syrians in my travels and they are some of the dearest people I’ve met. This is a song for them.”
The politically charged appropriately raucous “BadGuys” rages righteously against the ones who create turmoil, “Those nightmares creep into your reality,” Stelling says. “You’re reading about them in the papers. Who are these monsters and where do they come from? They’re just terrified little children hell bent on destroying the world, but you and your people got some home-made and there’s a second line coming down the street, everyones faces painted up like skeletons and you join in, because fuck it.”
The record ends with the intimate acknowledgement of life’s unavoidable uncertainty featuring Stelling’s melodic guitar picking backed by strings and a moving vocal chorus on “A Tempest.” “If we go, we’ll go together. To think of life as many voyages that tumble into one. Each new journey informing the next, but there’s always surprises and beautiful distractions along the way. We are on a ship out at sea, unsure if we are on our way back home or leaving for good. Who knows where we are headed? Nobody. So enjoy it.”
“Oh, River” (Live at Echo Mountain) by Christopher Paul Stelling from the album ‘Itinerant Arias,’ available May 5th
Julia Christgau – vox and percussion
Kieran Ledwidge – Violin
Matthew Murphy – Bass
It’s been a minute since we last heard from the Los Angeles-based Miya Folick, whose slow but steady stream of folk- and punk-infused releases have amounted to some well-deserved buzz and anticipation towards a full-length debut. You’ll have to keep being patient for that one, but in the meantime, Folick has put together the “Give it to Me” EP, its a follow up to the 2015 “Strange Darling” EP.
The new project Miya Folick’s first release on Terrible Records also takes a page from that decade, though here it’s a decidedly louder, more ruthless one, a la last year’s standalone releases like “Pet Body” and “God Is a Woman”—to say nothing of her and her band’s shredded-up live shows.
You know a song is great when you want to hear it again straight after your first listen, Miya Folick’s “TroubleAdjusting,” , is one of those songs, and that recall might have as much to do with its unhinged grunge hooks as with its subject matter .
“No underwear / I went to the laundromat / I just stood and stared / I’m sorry Mom / I’ve lived alone for so long / but I’m still having trouble adjusting,” she sings, her quiet anxiety unraveling into screams. “How am I to do it again / If I can’t recall how I was in the beginning?”
Here’s what Folick says about the new song and EP, due out later this summer:
“I was writing an album and realized there were a group of songs that didn’t seem to fit, but were also songs that I had been playing live with my band for a while,” she says. “I wanted a proper documentation of the particular sound and energy of our live show, to share but also for myself. My life has changed a lot in the last couple years and that has so much to do with these songs and the people who have been playing them with me. I didn’t even consider myself a musician two years ago. This song is probably a bit of a reaction to that—new people, new environments, new experiences all flooding into my life at top speed, and me trying to navigate them without losing myself. I’m very grateful for the life I have, but sometimes I’m not very good at living it.”
Listen to the Miya Folick’s “Trouble Adjusting” below.
Julie Byrne is one of the most itinerant artists around right now. The Singer Songwriter Not only has moved around the U.S. living in places like Buffalo to Pittsburgh; Chicago, Seattle and New Orleans they have all been temporary homes , but that all leads to some wonderful, varied music. Someone so keen to see new places and different environments writes beautifully about the natural world – as one might imagine. Double rainbows are featured in the gorgeous Follow My Voice; Natural Blueis about the waking dawn and new day. Scattershot themes run right through – it is one of the most adventurous records you’ll hear from a thematic perspective but is all bonded and fantastic because of Byrne’s exceptional, luscious voice. If you are looking for a singer that can buckle the knees and take you somewhere special then there are few as qualified as Julia Byrne. Synths, dreamy melodies and finger-picked songs might not sound like the ingredients to pull in the hardened Rock elite. The great thing about “Not Even Happiness” is how wide-ranging and universal it is.
Julie Byrne performs “Sleepwalker” live at The End Of the Road Festival.
An artist of rare calibre, Aldous Harding does more than sing; she conjures a singular intensity. Her body and face a weapon of theatre, Harding dances with steeled fervor, baring her teeth like a Bunraku puppet’s gnashing grin.
Her debut release with 4AD Records, “Party”(produced with the award-winning John Parish; PJ Harvey,Sparklehorse) introduces a new pulse to the stark and unpopulated dramatic realm where the likes of Kate Bush and Scott Walker reside.
Comprising a formidable clutch of songs, 2017’s Party sees Harding shape-shift through a variety of roles: chanteuse, folk singer and balladeer – all executed with her twisted touch of humour, hubris and quiet horror. In other words, she’s having a good time. Stretching her limbs with playful cunning; every note, word and arrangement posed with intellect and inventiveness.
Created in Parish’s hometown of Bristol, “Party” saw Aldous Harding depart her New Zealand base in the antipodes for an intensive two-week immersion in the studio. Articulating her ambitions for “Party” to Parish was a galvanizing process for Harding, met with stunning results. The pair developed a near non-verbal shorthand, audibly evident in a raft of musical contributions from Parish. Alongside such special guests as Perfume Genius’Mike Hadreas (having worked with Parish and toured with Aldous, it only took asking once), there is an exhilarating sense of risk throughout the record as Harding’s muscular wingspan extends. Teased out with inflections of experimental instrumentation and arrangements; “Party” is always anchored by Aldous’s intimidating command of her own songs.
First single ‘Horizon’ is a lover’s call to arms, powerful for its brutal simplicity and rawness of feeling, love and loathing colliding to devastating effect. “Aldous Harding repeats the line as a mantra, as a truth, as a reality. It’s as if the gift of life is right here, with all its beauty and its limitations”, said NPR.
‘Imagining My Man’ commands an air of delicacy as Aldous explores the curiosity of a lover’s idiosyncrasies; steering listeners into a state of intense intimacy laced with hyperactive shots, dirgey saxophone and Harding’s aching voice. The track is one of two that Mike Hadreas lends his inimitably sultry vocals to, the other being the intimate Party closer ‘Swell Does The Skull’.
‘Blend’ sensitively ushers the mood of Harding’s flourishment throughout Party. Its opening lines a nod to the mood of Harding’s last record; sameness is quickly quashed with an electronic drumbeat and the announcement of Aldous Harding as an artist of stirring ambition and trajectory.
The album’s eponymous single ‘Party’ harks to Aldous’ earlier work; delicately pulling at the threads of a seemingly late-night love affair. Again, it’s not long until the rug is pulled out, with a searing chorus – Harding’s electrifying vocal accompanied by a choir of women and waves of percussive bass clarinet – piercing the balloon of expectations around Harding’s new record with effortless vigour.
Big Bad Luv – the new album from John Moreland – is an honest, bruising experience. A record about love, faith and the human condition, it’s his debut for 4AD Records and the first full-length released to worldwide anticipation on May 5th 2017
His fourth album and first with international ambition, Big Bad Luv, was recorded in Little Rock, AK, and mostly with a crew of Tulsa friends: John Calvin Abney (piano and guitar), Aaron Boehler (bass), Paddy Ryan (drums), Jared Tyler (dobro) and Lucero’s Rick Steff (piano). Coming together in three sessions over ten months, which were sandwiched between touring dates and life, the final album was then mixed by GRAMMY winning Tchad Blake, who has worked with iconic acts from Al Green to Tom Waits.
Having whetted appetites with not one but two increasingly well received EP’s last year, Illinois’ Trevor Sensor is set to release his debut album later this year.
As ever with Trevor Sensor it’s the heartfelt vocal and clever lyricism that shines. If the rest of the album sounds this good, it could just be one of the year’s finest and most intriguing debuts.
Ahead of his upcoming album Kids in the Street, Nashville native Justin Townes Earle has released his fourth single, “Maybe a Moment” accompanied by a new video. It comes as half of a two-song release, which also includes a cover of Paul Simon’s “Graceland”
The son of Steve Earle enlisted Bright Eyes’ Mike Mogis to produce the record, due May 26th
“Maybe a Moment” is the story of one of those nothing-to-do small town days in your teens. Why not drive to Memphis to just “get out of town,” Earle sings. He knows a place where a guy “sells anything to anyone / But I don’t know what time he closes up.” The rocking Americana track captures the impulsiveness of being young, when everything feels so important and critical. It’s Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” ten years earlier, before that insistence gets dark.
Directed by Alicia J. Rose, who also helmed First Aid Kit’s “Walk Unafraid,” the video was filmed in Portland, Oregon and follows two young women early in their romance, overcoming the hate their attraction brings from a couple of ignorant men. Kids in the Street, the follow-up to Townes Earle’s 2015 Absent Fathers, comes out May 26th and was recorded in Omaha, Nebraska .
The new song “Maybe A Moment”. You can now download this song along with the B-side cover of Paul Simon’s “Graceland” when you pre-order the new album .
The Fat Angel Sings 