Recorded at Sear Sound in New York City and mixed by Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Lucius, Weezer), Margaret Glaspy‘s debut album ‘Emotions And Math’ – due out June 17th – sees Glaspy tackling topics of insecurity, love lost and found, and life on the road with clarity, honesty and a cutting sense of humor, all backed by gritty, fiercely performed electric guitar.
Margaret Glaspy has earned early praise from The New York Times, Stereogum and NME. Rolling Stone hailed her “hot barbs of electric guitar,” and VICE Noisey love her “complex, deceptively heavy riffs with vocals that really stand out and grab you at the throat.” Bob Boilen of NPR’s All Songs Considered “a great young singer-songwriter.”
Margaret Glaspy’s debut album, ‘Emotions and Math,’ is out June 17 on ATO Records!
Writing music can be hard. Writing music with far fewer years of experience may prove harder, but not for 16-year-old singer/songwriter Billie Marten.
The Yorkshire soloist has been writing songs for her latest EP, As Long As, admirably between studying for her GCSEs. Take that and another EP released last year (Ribbon, which saw airplay from the likes of BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6 Music, to name a few) and Marten’s creative output truly seems to belie her age.
On “Bird” we hear much of what of what the blogosphere has praised her for: a breathy, angelic vocal that resonates far beyond the notes it leaves behind. Here, poignant piano walks beneath Marten’s lyrics: “Hope is a distance unreached / ink on her skin incomplete / and the faint sound of friends / as she neared to the end she had peace”). It’s “a song about how words can truly affect people, not always for the right reasons”, she explains.
Daniel Bachman calls Durham, N.C., home now, but he grew up around the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg. It’s a quiet town in Northern Virginia that still has a pharmacy with cheap sandwiches and milkshakes; but, as Bachman pointed out to us, it has more tattoo parlors than music stores these days. That’s not a judgment, just the way things are.The 25-year-old has been at the solo-guitar game since he was a teenager, befriending folks like the since-departed Jack Rose and slowly finding his own way into the music. That’s why it felt right to bring Bachman back to the area that inspired his seventh album River, a record surrounded by history, but guided by hands and a heart that know its bends and bumps.Bachman drove an hour east to Stratford Hall, home to four generations of the Lee family, which includes two signers of the Declaration of Independence; it’s also the birthplace of Robert E. Lee. Bachman knows it well, not only because his dad works there, but also because he can’t help but bury himself in history books about the region.The Great House. Overlooking the rolling hills of Virginia, Bachman plays a version of “Song For The Setting Sun II” in what was the performance space at Stratford Hall. The song leaps boldly around the sunlit, symmetrical room, bouncing off walls decorated with paintings of buxom women and men in powdered wigs.
Isabella Sophie Tweddle (born 27 May 1999), who performs under the stage name Billie Marten, is a singer-songwriter and musician from Ripon in Yorkshire. She first came to prominence at the age of twelve when a video on she had made of her singing attracted thousands of views. She released her first EP at the age of fifteen in 2014, and her second EP a year later. At the end of 2015 she was nominated for the BBC Sound of 2016 award.
This now 16-year-old Yorkshire folk-rocker Billie Marten proved last year that she’s talented beyond measure and wise beyond her years. The new song “Milk & Honey” is Marten’s latest, and it continues showing us what an amazing talented young lady . What begins as a breathy acoustic swirl blooms into a lush arrangements topped off by triumphal brass. As ever, Marten sounds vulnerable yet in complete command of her considerable powers, Billie has the ability to become a huge important singer songwriter in the mould of Laura Marling , with the delivery and vocals talent to match Daughter’s Elena.
‘Bird’ was written with Olivia Broadfield and was a last resort sort of song. We hadn’t come up with anything all day until we switched from guitars to piano and I started singing nonsense words way up high and it sort of turned into this super sad song I guess about how words can really affect people, and not for the right reasons; how you can feel kind of trapped/caught in your own space all the time even when no-one is actually with you.”
Singer-songwriter Jacob March is said to have aptitude as a poetic lyricist and a skilled guitarist in his arsenal. But on his upcoming EP there are more talents to be discovered, taking on the mission of playing every instrument as well as recording, producing, mixing and mastering the EP himself.
For the moment there are a couple of tracks offering a nice teaser to the deep, introspective material that it might include. Kind Regards is a mellow, sombre number with the darkness speaking to loss and goodbyes. But with lashings of guitar paired with layers of vocals and sounds, the sullen mood makes for a stirring tune. The more recent Nightingale is hauntingly sparse and distant, shrouded with anguish, continuing a thread of contemplative material.
Typically, there will be usually quite a gap between an artist’s debut and their sophomore effort. After all, there’s all the promotion to handle, touring, not to mention the actual writing and recording portions. But Melbourne’sHayden Calnin had too much to say to wait longer than a few weeks. Just over two months on from releasing his debut record, Cut Love Pt 1 , Calnin is back with Cut Love Pt. 2.
“Continuing on from Cut Love Pt. 1, Cut Love Pt. 2 is an exploration into a very confusing time of my life where I was feeling a little lost and off the rails,” explains Calnin of the new album. “We’ve all been there at some point so I think much of the sentiment behind the album is something a lot of people will find relatable. Pt. 2 has a bigger sound than Pt. 1 and is also the first release that I’ve worked on with another producer. I’m really proud of what Tim Carr and I have created.”
What they’ve created are nine tracks of adventurous and alluring folktronica. Album opener “Caution Cares” brings to mind comparisons of both Bon Iver and the quieter moments of TV on the Radio, while a song like single “Ultra-Beast” highlights Calnin’s husk vocals in a neo-R&B setting. A surprising cover of Elvis Presley song “Hound Dog” turns the song on its head, swinging it from a rocking blues number to a smoky indie brooder. But the delicacy of “Dinosaur Stampede” perhaps best sums up the entire thread of the record, an effort that’s at once heartbreaking and redemptive, alternatively slight and momentously powerful.
Cut Love Pt. 2 is out this Friday, May 13th,
‘Cut Love’ gets a second outing as Hayden Calnin releases part two of his highly acclaimed album. Having graced us with part one earlier this year,
He is currently preparing to embark on an album launch tour of Australia, however we have been promised some European dates for later this year!
Oakland songwriter, Emily Jane White borrowed the title of her latest record, They Moved In The Shadow AllTogether, from the opening of a Cormac McCarthy novel makes a lot of sense. Both artists inhabit the eerie and somewhat bleak fringes of life, depicting both trauma and togetherness, and translating a feeling of the collective spirit that can be discovered in losing everything we know.
This week Emily has shared the track “Frozen Garden”, the first song to be lifted from her upcoming fifth album. The track is a bristling, haunted slice of doomy-folk, a world of ghostly harmonies, distant rippling floor-toms, and just the gentlest of melodic whispers from guitars and strings; it recalls the world of songwriters like Marissa Nadler and Bat For Lashes, and sounds equally beautiful and timeless. Five albums in her voice and songwriting have never sounded stronger, and we’ve got high hopes for Emily Jane White .
Hailing originally from Dorset, 19 year old songstress Fenne Lily has truly mastered the craft of making beautifully dainty alt-folk numbers, with a real understated elegance that belies her youth.
Lily’s first single ‘Top to Toe‘ is a subtle masterpiece, and is both thought-provoking and tranquil. Instrumentation on the track is intentionally bare, with only one swooping acoustic guitar present, making room for Lily’s confessional, heartfelt lyrics and dreamlike vocals, reminiscent of those of Julia Stone and Laura Marling.
Despite it’s relatively short lifespan, ‘Top to Toe‘ has gained mass critical acclaim since its release earlier this year, and has been championed by BBC Radio’s Huw Stephens and Lauren Laverne, among many others.
With her new single in tow, Fenne Lily is eagerly approaching the summer, as she gears up to perform an extensive array of notable festivals, such as Dot to Dot and The Great Escape. It’s definitely worth keeping your ear to the ground for this one…
Relying heavily on a folk-of-yesteryear sound, updated with his indie-rock tendencies, and hearty helpings of undeniable melodies, M. Ward has positioned himself as one of the brightest, well-received singer-songwriters out there today. Conor Oberst, Cat Power Sun, Beth Orton and Norah Jones have asked Ward to contribute his haunted vocals and ghostly guitar to their records.
It’s always a good day when we receive new music from Yorkshire teenager, Billie Marten and this time is no exception. While the title of her new single may suggest a raiding of the kitchen’s larder, here we find Marten overturning much deeper thoughts than ever before. ‘Milk & Honey’, as she explains is “a song about the greed of people [and how] we’re all sort of stuck in this consumerist frame of mind.”
Her words are spun into poetic observations, ‘milk’ and ‘honey’ in this context symbolise the gluttony of a culture that continually wants more and more, one that is never satisfied until the well has run dry. The song represents a brave moment of clarity, but aside from this potent message is Marten’s gorgeous, never brittle but always delicate, voice and a sweeping instrumental that frames her every word.
It is Marten’s wise beyond-her-years talent that will always shine the brightest and ultimately, it is what will keep a listener continually invested in her as a singer and a young songwriter, enough to follow her throughout her career and indeed to those much lauded live shows.
‘Milk & Honey’ is out now. Billie Marten will be performing at various festivals this summer, see below for the full list of dates.
Live Dates
Friday 1st July Blissfields, Winchester
Saturday 2nd July Barn on the Farm Festival, Gloucester
Saturday 16th July Latitude Festival, Suffolk
Sunday 17th July Citadel Festival, London
Sunday 24th July Secret Garden Party, Huntingdon
Friday 29th July Standon Calling, Herts
Saturday 30th July Camp Bestival, Dorset
Sunday 31st July Leopallooza Festival, Cornwall
Saturday 10th September Bestival, Isle of Wight
The Fat Angel Sings 