The South is a brutal place, many feel — the birthplace of American racism. It is also a Black place, and a beautiful one: the music, foodways, spiritual life and family traditions Black Americans sustained throughout centuries of attempted erasure by the white ruling caste provides much of what makes this nation vibrant. The beauty is tied to the land, from coastline to mountains to delta. Adia Victoria, born in South Carolina with more recent ties to Nashville, locates the contours of her own body and being in the Southern earth, and this blues-driven oracular statement is her pledge to it, in love and fury.
“I stood up to the mountain, told the mountain say my name,” Victoria wails over a church-born organ line in the centre of this song. That image — her confrontation with monumental, historical oppression, simultaneously a mystical union with a landscape and Black heritage that welcomes her — epitomizes Victoria’s mission to refresh overtold Southern stories by finding herself in them. (She is a blues poet, after all.) A clear reckoning, “South Gotta Change” is also a love song — “I won’t leave you,” Victoria sings, her voice breaking. Instead, she tells the land that she considers a living being, she will “drag you into the light.” With “South Gotta Change,” Victoria offers a way to consider the region in all its complexity — an origin point worth fighting about, and for.
When I began my recording career I knew that my one true muse would be the south, her people, her stories, her beauty and her blues.
as a kid I would make up stories and recite them to my little sisters. because I never saw our stories being told—stories about black girls in the south, country girls growing up on this land.
I wanna re-center black folk’s experiences in my art. it’s what i do every time I pick up my guitar and write.
The south’s gotta change—and I believe artists are the folk that are gonna bring about that change.
David Ramirez was a great folk singer, but he hasn’t been for some time. To be clear, it’s not because he’s fallen off, but because he’s moved so far from the sounds of his early albums. That sound peaked with 2015’s Fables, a stunning collection of Americana. Ramirez followed that one up by listening to the Cure and releasing the surprising but equally good “We’re Not Going Anywhere” just two years later. Now Ramirez moves further away – consider the folk and country influences gone – with the complex, R&B-driven My Love Is a Hurricane. While the music surprises once again, it also keeps Ramirez’s strengths (his song writing and his vocals) at the fore, focusing the proper narrative on Ramirez’s career, not on his unexpected changes but the remarkable consistency at the centre of his art.
In a live setting, it becomes apparent how big Ramirez’s voice is; he sings more coolly on record much of the time. Here, “I Wanna Live in Your Bedroom” highlights that power. He’d be testing the song on the road since at least 2018. The music leaves plenty of space for Ramirez’s voice as he builds his longing, and the reverb on the vocals helps fill in the space. The cut would be effective with no instrumentation, and Ramirez makes the smart choice of leaving some piano primarily to create the frame for the song.
His vocals shine on every track, but most of the album focuses more on groove than “Bedroom” does. The title track brings a little gospel into the mix. The song uses dynamics to help articulate Ramirez’s passion. It stays under control throughout, but its surges show the tumult of the singer’s “hurricane”. The following track, “Hallelujah, Love Is Real!” turns that storm into a focused celebration, an epiphany of the possibilities of love despite a history that says otherwise.
“My Love Is a Hurricane” was initially conceived as a collection of love songs for David Ramirez’s other half. One abrupt breakup later, and it became a nuanced exploration of love and what comes after. It ranges from passion and dedication to desperation to doubt to resilience, all without simplifying an unnavigable emotional storm.
David Ramirez “My Love Is A Hurricane” (Thirty Tigers, ) David Ramirez is releasing his fifth album ‘ My Love Is A Hurricane ’ via Sweet World/Thirty Tigers, the second not self-produced after first using an outside producer on 2017’s ‘ We’re Not Going Anywhere ’. This time that role goes to Jason Burt (who has worked with Leon Bridges), and the album explores different musical influences moving away from the more traditional Americana of his earlier work.
Ramirez’s latest album began in the throes of a joyous romantic relationship but persisted through its demise. Even so, the album brings encouragement, even the track titled “Hell” brings some fire in its retro-R&B sounds. Ramirez resisted the impulse to turn dark and inward, maintaining an open-hearted approach to his pop record. The album opens with a question to a lover and closes with a call to prevail. Ramirez, in any form, doesn’t go small, and matching this romance with these sounds lets him fully express his unbowed feelings.
Falling Asleep at the Wheel, the debut EP from English singer/songwriter Holly Humberstone, is only four months old, but the project’s soothing indie sounds are as welcome as ever in the tail end of the longest year in human history. The warm guitar tones on tracks like “Overkill” feel particularly appropriate for the winter ahead, helping us to find comfort in the solitude we may be facing during a first holiday season spent away from family.
It’s this track Humberstone’s favorite from the EP and her most personal track “Deep End” that she chose to play for us in her “Neighborhoods” session filmed outside her house in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Under quickly moving clouds, and on what looks like a chilly early-winter afternoon, the songwriter plays through both tracks on electric guitar. Make sure to say hi to her mom between songs.
Singer-songwriter Holly Humberstone performs two songs from her debut EP ‘Falling Asleep At The Wheel’ outside of her home in Grantham, UK.
This month I’m releasing Deadstock: Uncollected Recordings 2005 – 2020, an album gathering up the songs no one got to hear: unreleased tracks and alternate versions from six studio records and scattered sessions, that form a kind of alternate history. ‘Here’s bunch of songs so good I never put them out,’ but these are as good anything I ever wrote, and we’ve played some of them on the road for years. They didn’t make it onto albums because I still think of albums as the unit of measure, and it’s more important to me to make a record work than it is to make sure a particular song sees the light of day. They tend to find their own way out the door anyway. Deadstock isn’t a documentary, it’s an album.
It’s arranged and meant to be heard that way, with seven new original songs – and two released prior only in Europe – as well as new full-band takes of back catalogue numbers like ‘Mesa, Arizona,’ ‘Ghost Repeater,’ and ‘Pretty Hands.’ Some of these are blood relatives, like ‘Real Love,’ ‘Any Town Will Do,’ and ‘Mesa, AZ’ (three songs written in three days driving around the desert southwest before the Ghost Repeater sessions) while some show the obverse side of the coin, like ‘Cold Late Spring Bark River’ (a less austere telling of a night I wrote about in ‘Heart to the Husk’ from Horse Latitudes), and ‘Crown of Smoke,’ the present-tense companion to the narrative flashback in ‘Little Warble,’ from Blood Brothers.
There’s a song I wrote for one of my heroes, the late great Rainer Ptacek of Tucson, and a song called ‘Jacaranda’ that I wrote while driving up the 101 in California years ago, feeling lucky; there’s a song called ‘Adios Mexico’ that I co-wrote with my friend Airon Kluberton – an airplane mechanic in Talkeetna, Alaska – when I was up there on tour, and there are two songs I always loved from the Cold Satellite collaborations with poet Lisa Olstein and guitarist David Goodrich, presented in new versions. The band is mostly the one you know from the last many years (featured on the Wolves and Blood Brothers records, and on the road), and then the Iowa boys from Ghost Repeater on two tracks, plus guest appearances by Kris Delmhorst, Pieta Brown, and Caitlin Canty on backing vocals. Deadstock won’t be streaming until 12/18, but you can pre-order copies for everyone you know right damn now to get it early, and in time for the holidays. To make that decision easier, you can go listen through all sixteen tracks right now, and hear/see the full single of ‘There’s a Destruction on This Land,’ (from the Salt As Wolves sessions).
All the older (in-print) albums from the back catalogue are available all this month 20% off, with the promo code JF2020. That’s right, I have a promo code. I’m having it tattooed on my ass. I’m not going to play a livestream concert this month, but I’ll be back in the new year to play through Blood Brothers, and maybe Deadstock too. In the meantime, keep an eye on the Store, as we’ll announce a few more things in the next few weeks. And then, if you would, please share the link for Deadstock around with your people, and add it to a playlist. I’m not hiring publicity or touring to promote this record, it’s just something to keep the party faithful amused, and a way to make a little cash in a lean year. You’re all deputized Junior Publicists now. Badges and hip boots will arrive by mail. I’m grateful to all of you out there, for taking care of each other, and for looking after us in a hard year. It’s meant the world. You’re all just aces.
Half Truths is out today! I’m excited to see the singles I’ve released have a little family around them, they feel like they are at home now. They were all written in a similar time and I see them as me throwing off expectations I had of who I am as a person, woman, what my music is meant to be, what life is meant to be. I hope they can bring something new and cathartic to your worlds.
Newcastle-singer songwriter based Grace Turner’s ‘Half Truths’ is a poetic six-song collection that cuts through the noise, making sense of her thoughts by simply singing them aloud.
Powerful and poetic is Grace Turner’s “Half Truths”, her first EP released August 7th, 2020. Written and recorded over the past three years in collaboration with good friends, this six-song collection sets Turner apart, cutting through the noise and making sense of her thoughts by simply singing them aloud. “I wrote ‘Disdain’ while driving and singing and crying – a terrible combination. I wasn’t driving anywhere in particular, just to feel like I was physically able to leave what I was going through in my life. The original opening line was ‘I want to watch the blood drain from my body’. I sung it live once and my Dad was in the crowd and I just couldn’t do it, so I found a new line which I think is better anyways.
Though based in Newcastle, Australia, Turner wrote and recorded Half Truths in a variety of locations, from bedrooms to studios. And even still, the EP is remarkably cohesive, with key embellishments from her friends Mat Taylor and Shanna Watson, among others; glueing it all together is Turner’s trademark lyricism and self-introspection. “I write music because of the continual untangling of mind, emotions, experience and trying to understand the world at all its micro, meso and macro levels. Sometimes I feel with this collection of songs I am earnestly screaming something at the world and at the same time trying to take it all back again,” Turner says.
Intensely personal, Half Truths echoes Turner’s sentiments and intent. The EP begins poetically and drum-driven with “Disdain,” sparking the vision of a late night drive, and the feeling of darkness dissipating, replaced by some sense of gratitude for the ordinary. ‘Disdain’ is such an intense word and meaning and I’m glad to have gotten it into a song. To think of oneself as unworthy. Eventually I took it to a jam with my drummer and he encouraged me a lot that it was a keeper. My guitarist wrote the killer riff for this one. We think it’s so good that when we were in the post production phase of making the record we decided to repeat it after every vocal chorus making it a kind of instrumental chorus. I think it really makes the song.
The chords don’t ever change in this one and melodically it’s pretty subtle in its movement. In post production we also decided to cut the band out in the bridge. I like bringing more intensity to the line ‘what a time to be alive, steadily walking towards our demise’. It feels pretty apt for 2020. I like having a heavy song lyrically that is up beat, it’s really cathartic to play this one with the band. It’s one of my favourite tracks off the record and I’m glad that it’s become a favourite for people too.”
Standout track “Half Light” is instrumentally steady, while Turner belts a brilliant kind of diary entry about the way life is often made up of parts that don’t always fit together. And triple-j featured “Dead or Alive” brings the EP to its most upbeat point; though the lyrics are relative dark, the danceable chorus acts as a push out of that darkness and into warmer, brighter days.
“I chose the title Half Truths as I was going through such a turbulent time and the songs were written whether I stood by what they meant or not, they were spat out of me. I was shedding off expectations of who I thought I was as a musician, woman, friend, lover; questioning it all,” Turner says of the EP. While the six songs on Half Truths do question the world extensively, they also powerfully declare hope for the future. Ending with these words on “Get Your Head Straight,” “try to be good try to be kind, do your best to find peace of mind,” Grace Turner leaves us, and herself, in the sunlight.
Experience Half Truths wherever you listen to music, and take a peek into the full EP
Grace Turner “Half Truths” Released on: 2020-08-07
“Way before I even started recording I had written an e-mail to Jim (James) saying ‘I want to make this album about compassion and empathy’. It was early 2017 so there had been a lot of major shifts, planetary and energy shifts all over the place. I had no idea how much I would need this record for myself when I was working on it. Just to put this positive vibration out into the world but also to hear and sing these songs back to myself was more important than I could have ever imagined.
I realized I had been writing all these songs with so many questions. Every single song on the record has a question in it except for the last one, which I had started initially as a bit of a mantra or meditation, a George Harrison influenced kind of thinking. Here’s a statement to choose love over fear, or over negativity, or over borders and walls. Even when it feels like the world is ending in the darkest place I’m going to promise myself that that’s what I’m going to choose. I didn’t even realize how much singing it would have that effect on me as well as that reminder. So it felt good to have that at the end after all these questions.
It’s really fun to play when it goes off into outer space in the rock section! Like I’m very insistent on this statement, like I mean it for real. Especially since we were working on it in the Joshua Tree it kind of feels like that moment of the day where everything’s quiet but all of a sudden the song has gotten down and everything goes straight off into the stars at that point. I had this idea for a crazy space rock solo at the end and that’s played by Jim. One of the benefits of having him around!” . Basia Bulat
Basia Bulat “Love Is At The End Of The World” from the album “Are You In Love?“
On his first album in almost four years, New York singer/songwriter Ben Seretan churns out stirring folk-rock with an impressive level of dynamism. The album highlight, “Am I Doing Right By You?” features layers of clamorous guitars and busy horns, but there are also bare passages that give way to Seretan’s hushed, introspective vocals. It’s an unpredictable thunderstorm—complete serenity one minute and ground-shaking bluster the next. With each listen, another sprinkle of intriguing, atmospheric sounds pours out, but its vast emotional capacity remains a constant.
“You will always be hungry / For something you can’t hold,” Ben Seretan sings in the opening minutes of his latest LP, an undeniably dynamic examination of how human beings seek meaning, whether in a higher power or in each other. The California-born, New York-based multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter longs for community on slow-blooming opener “1 Of” [prays] to the breeze / with asphalt in his knees” on the pedal steel-accented “Power Zone” yearns to properly honour a lover and/or deity on stunning centerpiece “Am I Doing Right by You?” harmonizes with his late friend, artist Devra Freelander, on the open-hearted “Shadow” (and others); and recalls being baptized on “Holding Up the Sun.” Youth Pastoral is a stunning album that draws its power from Seretan’s Neil Young-like vocals, his evocative, soul-baring songwriting, and a rustic, reverent hum befitting of its heavenward gaze.
A large, golden retriever puppy of a man who is frequently audibly delighted by the music that comes out of him. A secular youth pastor with high-fives at the ready who is most comfortable in cut-offs. Shreds hard, but not to show you that he can shred hard, but that life is wonderful. Proud subway commuter. Very gentle. He thanks you for listening.
Am I Doing Right by You? on Whatever’s Clever Released on: 2nd November 2020,
Probably best known as a member of Muncie Girls, Lande Hekt first caught our ear with last year’s EP, “Gigantic Disappointment”. That release was recorded in the Adelaide Hills, and when returning to Australia to tour earlier this year, Lande went back to the studio, and working with producer, Ben David, put down the tracks that make up her debut solo album, Going To Hell. The record will be released in January next year, and this week Lande has shared the first taste of it, in the shape of new single, “Whiskey”.
The first song that Lande has shared as an openly gay person, like much of Going To Hell, Whiskey focuses in on the experience of coming out. As Lande explains, Whiskey is, “about learning how to come to terms with being gay or, more accurately, realising that pretending you’re not gay can’t go on forever“. While there’s inevitable difficulties in coming out, here Lande seems to focus on the huge positives, think about, “how there were so many things that didn’t feel right“, and the realisation of the relief of living your own truth. Musically, Lande seems to borrow from a vast array of influences from the driving guitars that are pure Sharon Van Etten to the easy vocal style and the shimmering outro The Twilight Sad would be proud of.
The track concludes with Lande’s repeated pronouncement, “is it the feeling of not having to pretend?”, arriving like a striking realisation that happiness lies in understanding the freedom being yourself can bring.
Ahead of the release of her debut solo album Going To Hell, Muncie Girls’ Lande Hekt unveiled her knockout single Undone. The incredible harmonies, crashing drum cymbals and fiery riffs go hand in hand with the relatable, regret-fuelled lyrics. Describing the track, Lande says: ‘This one is about feeling sorry for yourself when you break up with someone that you weren’t even going out with.’
We’ve all been there.
Going To Hell is out January 22nd via Get Better Records.
With echoes of Laura Marling, Joni Mitchell and Bon Iver heard throughout her music, while still retaining her own very uniquely honed sound, Morgan Harper-Jones possesses a voice to stop you in your tracks. Rochdale’s Morgan Harper-Jones has already set her stall out as a confident, honest songwriter with her first two singles “Lie To Me” and “Breathe”. Continuing down that road, with a take-no-prisoners swagger on her third single, she demonstrates maturity and sure-footedness on her latest offering, “Typical”.
Creating atmospheric tension from the start with off-kilter chords and Morgan Harper-Jones‘ gravelly vocals, “Typical” relies on raw emotion and subtle strings to elicit fleeting moments of positivity in between darker episodes of self-doubt. With rhythmic piano keys ticking away in the background conjuring up a sense of foreboding, the overall result is a dramatic and deliberate track from the 23-year-old.
Explaining the feelings behind “Typical”, Harper-Jones said, “It’s hard to love someone who doesn’t want to be loved… So honestly don’t waste your time or energy. I wrote ‘Typical’ as an ‘eye roll and exit’ song, loosely inspired by activist Gina Martin’s wise words: ‘Loving someone shouldn’t make you feel like you need to make yourself more loveable. You shouldn’t have to work to convince someone to love you and want to spend time with you. Your relationship, like your friendships, should be your solace in this mad world. Do yourself a favour and take inconsistency, lack of interest or de-prioritisation as a no.’”
With “Typical”, Harper-Jones has another striking single under her belt, with her natural song-writing ability shining through.
‘I wrote this with my friend Rob [Milton],’ Harper-Jones says, discussing her single Lie To Me. ‘We both decided we wanted to write a song that was mostly carried by a vocal and vocoder. I was literally ranting to him about my love life when the chorus lyric was written. The majority of the lyrics came out very naturally and conversationally and stuck.’
“Lie to Me” by British singer/songwriter Morgan Harper-Jones is a beautifully intense experience! The song instantly grabs you, raises the hair on your arms in a good way, and makes you fall head-over-heels in love with this incredible artist. The song itself is carefully arranged, giving Morgan Harper-Jones’ vocals the room they deserve to shine, plus a little guitar strumming, mindful drums, and not much else. She starts her song with “I’m not one for sweet nothings”, and when asked about the inspiration for “Lie To Me”, Morgan Harper-Jones sums it all up with:
Harper-Jones adds a top tip for songwriters: ‘Avoid sending a song you wrote about someone to that same person as a means to convey your emotions because it’s creepy and weird.’
21 year old singer-songwriter Morgan Harper-Jones has a beautiful and uniquely soulful voice and is inspired by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Laura Marling & Alice Pheobe Lou.
There’s something comforting about the sound of familiar music. No matter how dark the outside world may seem, we can huddle by ourselves and play our favorite songs for consolation and reassurance. Nashville’s Molly Tuttle has taken this a process a step further. The multi-talented singer-songwriter and instrumentalist taught herself how to use Pro Tools digital audio workstation to record and engineer while stuck at home alone. She then sent them to producer Tony Berg in Los Angeles, who employed session musicians to fill in the parts from their home studios. The result, “…but I’d rather be with you” is a lovely, low-key, intimate affair.
In March 2020, Tuttle experienced the devastating tornado that tore through much of East Nashville, followed by the globalpandemic. While sheltering at home, she found solace by revisiting favourite songs in an attempt to “remind myself why I love music.” An idea for an album emerged, to be recorded with Los Angeles-based producer Tony Berg (Andrew Bird), despite being over 2,000 miles apart.
Tuttle’s list is esoteric and reveals the pleasures of having catholic tastes. She chose a wide range of material, including one track each from the National, the Rolling Stones, Arthur Russell, Karen Dalton, FKA Twigs, Rancid, Grateful Dead, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Harry Styles, and Cat Stevens. Tuttle keeps the arrangements simple and uncluttered. She plays flawlessly here without ever showing off. The same thing is true for her voice. She lets it sparkle and shine when the song calls for it, such as on her version of the Stones‘ semi-psychedelic “She’s a Rainbow” or in the giddy moments of falling love as on Arthur Russell’s “A Little Lost”.
The Fat Angel Sings 