For much of 2020, Bandcamp has hosted the wonderful Bandcamp Friday initiative, which involved them waiving their share of the income they usually receive from sales on their platform on some Fridays, so artists ultimately come away from the transaction with more money. The endeavor has been a great success, but it looks like it’s coming to an end. In a recent post, Bandcamp noted they will “continue to hold Bandcamp Fridays on the first Friday of every month until the end of the year.” They haven’t publicly committed to continuing Bandcamp Fridays in 2021, so today’s, the last one of the year, is the final one that’s officially scheduled.
The silver lining is that Lucy Dacus is helping to send Bandcamp Fridays off (potentially) with a bang: Today, she shared a cover of Hinder’s 2006 classic “Lips Of An Angel.” Dacus’ rendition of the track, which she says she recorded “a few months ago,” eschews the raspy, post-grunge edge of the original version and turns it into more tranquil folk a la Dacus.
Andy Shauf has shared a new song “You Slipped Away,” It was a demo recorded during the sessions for his 2020 album The Neon Skyline. “You Slipped Away” is a sombre song filled with Shauf’s subtle-but-stunning layered harmonies.
“You Slipped Away’ was a song that I wrote shortly after moving to Toronto, right after I’d just moved into an apartment and had acquired an 80s Yamaha CP60 stage piano,” Shauf says. “This song was an attempt to write something that sounded like an old standard, using big general metaphors and universal themes.”
Few artists are storytellers as deft and disarmingly observational as Andy Shauf. The Toronto-based, Saskatchewan-raised musician’s songs unfold like short fiction: they’re densely layered with colourful characters and a rich emotional depth. The The Neon Skyline 11 interconnected tracks follow a simple plot: the narrator goes to his neighbourhood dive, finds out his ex is back in town, and she eventually shows up. While its overarching narrative is riveting, the real thrill of the album comes from how Shauf finds the humanity and humour in a typical night out and the ashes of a past relationship. For The Neon Skyline, Shauf chose to start each composition on guitar instead of his usual piano. Happy accidents like Shauf testing out a new spring reverb pedal and experimenting with tape machines forced him to simplify how he’d arrange the tracks. Over the course of a year-and-a-half, Shauf had ended up with almost 50 songs all about the same night at the bar.
“You Slipped Away” by Andy Shauf, available now Through Anti Records
British singer-songwriter Laura Marling has accomplished a lot across seven studio albums and 12 years recording music. She’s garnered Mercury Prize and Grammy nominations, collaborated with Ed O’Brien of Radiohead, Blake Mills and others, and she’s even started teaching online guitar lessons, which she details below. This all to say, she’s a supremely talented artist who moves in dynamic ways within the folk-rock lane.
Her new album “Song For Our Daughter” was scheduled to come out later this summer but she found an opportunity to connect us all during the COVID crises by releasing it early. Marling said in a statement regarding the change of date, “In light of the change to all our circumstances, I saw no reason to hold back on something that, at the very least, might entertain, and at its best, provide some sense of union.” The album is a nod to Maya Angelou’s collection “Letter To My Daughter.” Marling herself is not a mother but she takes us there through her delicate song writing writing for a girl who needs confidence and hope.
ALAS, I CANNOT SWIM (2008)
Laura Marling is an alt-folk singer-songwriter from a small village just outside of Reading. The story goes that she came to London with nothing but her guitar and a handful of songs. Still just a teenager, her talents were soon noticed at early Way Out West (who released her debut single) and Blue Flowers gigs. On her debut album for Virgin records she shows astonishing ability to spin heart rending tales of love and loss for someone so young. She has a breathtakingly pure voice that’s equal parts Regina Spektor, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. She is an extraordinary talent – voice, lyrics, music, presence. no wannabe celeb, aspirant popstar-babe. Rather a determined woman with an overwhelming desire to communicate through word and music. If you have a heart you need Laura Marling in your life right now.
Marling’s debut, produced by Noah & The Whale’s Charlie Fink, We had four weeks at Eastcote Studios, two weeks doing my record and then a further two weeks back-to-back doing the Noah & The Whale record. We laid down the bass, drums, guitar and vocal all at once, and then we did overdubs – this is the same for all albums I’ve done, pretty much. My dad ran a recording studio which shut down when I was quite small, but I remember growing up around all of that outboard gear at home. So I guess I was slightly more familiar with the studio than the average 17-year-old, but still it was my first proper session.
These were all my first songs, written from the age of 16-17. There was a batch of songs before that that were on an EP, “London Town” – I didn’t like them very much by the time I got to making this. I haven’t listened to this for a long while, I very rarely play any of those songs live, so it’s a bit of a distant memory to me now. And the production was very much of the time I guess, that ‘new folk’ world – glockenspiels and banjos and whatever – which is good, that’s what it was supposed to be then. I don’t really think of this as part of my catalogue.
I SPEAK BECAUSE I CAN (2010)
UK songstress Laura Marling releases her sophomore album, “I Speak Because I Can”, on Virgin Records. Produced by Ethan Johns (Kings of Leon, Ryan Adams), I Speak Because I Can is the follow up to Marling’s lauded, mercury prize-nominated debut, Alas I Cannot Swim. I Speak Because I Can is Laura Marling’s coming of age album, if such a thing can be said about the brilliant songwriter whose compositions belie her age (for the record, she’ll be twenty this year it was released). Recorded in 2009 at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in outside London, and featuring the talents of her backing band Mumford and Sons, I Speak Because i Can reveals a new side to Laura Marling, whose debut was released when she was only seventeen years old. Its ten songs are imbued with a new richness, ripeness and sophistication, marked by homespun tales and sparse instrumentation. I Speak Because I Can showcases not only Marling’s ability to tell one hell of a story, but her incredible guitar playing, which has grown more intricate since her first album. Marling chose Ethan Johns to produce her new material, as she credits many of his earlier records (among them albums by Ray Lamontagne, Kings of Leon, Emmylou Harris, Sarabeth Tucek and more) with kindling her interest in music. She had long admired his way of working – his use of reels; his quiet, traditional methods of production; the warmth found within the records he produced. he gave her the space to find her own identity; as such, the record reveals a new maturity, and at points, Marling’s voice sounds a little harder, a little world-wearied, while still showcasing her impressive range not heard on previous recordings. and while I Speak Because I Can is, at times, a darker album than its predecessor, it is a brilliant step forward from a young artist who continues to keep us awe-struck at her talent.
A leap forward, with Marling inspired by British folk and The Odyssey, and working with producer Ethan Johns The difference between being 16 and being 19 is quite a shift, isn’t it? Ethan was very intimidating, but I quickly realised it was nothing but a type of shyness. He turned down the first record, but I tried again with the second one – he seemed to be more impressed with the song writing. I went down to meet Ethan at Real World Studios, where he was working at the time. He came and picked me up from the station, and he was wearing triple denim and circular pink sunglasses, like John Lennon, and he had his crazy California hair. I thought he looked completely mental. I was very shy still, I didn’t really say much. As we were walking around Real World, he said, “It’s never really worked out for me, working with female artists, I seem to not do well with it.” So, being in my tomboy/late teenage years, I was like, “Well, I’m not like every girl, it’s going to be a totally different experience”, and it was. We started at Eastcote, but Ethan didn’t like the sound of the room, so we moved to Real World.
I took my band with me, and we all stayed there at probably horrendous expense. We got driven in our splitter van from Glastonbury to Real World, we stayed there for two weeks and it was really magical. I’d read The Odyssey, and I obviously thought I was quite clever because of that, so a lot of it was based around Penelope and Odysseus, and Hera – there’s a lot of Greek mythology and Classics, I was really into it then. I had discovered tunings after the first album too, and a lot of I Speak Because I Can was in major and minor open-D tunings. I was also going through the unbelievable intensity of anybody’s late teenage years, I was so full of fucking hormones and excitement. I remember writing a lot, it was a good time.
A CREATURE I DON’T KNOW (2011)
The follow-up to 2010’s ‘I Speak Because I Can’. like it’s predecessor, the new record was produced by Ethan Johns. the vibe here is looser, the rhythms more adventurous, her vocals are more soulful, more sexual and more assured. marling has found a new intensity on her deeply impressive third album. she has come a long way in a short time, and has undoubtedly got further to travel. The more expansive third record, again produced by Ethan Johns, I went from touring I Speak Because I Can straight into the studio to make this. That was the cycle that I was on then – I made the album, put it out, toured it for a year and then went straight back into the studio with a new crop of songs.
It was a natural progression; the sound of this album was dictated by my touring band at the time, as we had been playing all these songs in soundchecks for the previous six months. We did all the pre-production away from Ethan because everybody was too scared to play in front of him. My drummer and my keyboard player, they’re proper musicians who’ve been playing with me almost since the beginning, they’re proper trained incredible musicians, but everyone else in the band didn’t really consider themselves a musician.
So I had a slightly ragtag band. Of course Ethan’s got the little black book of every musician you might want, but I only wanted people that I loved on the records, that I knew were on my side. Maybe that was a bit paranoid of me, but I was a bit paranoid then of everybody, and I wanted to make sure that ultimately I had control of everything. It was also very important for me to keep my musicians employed, which I did manage to do for those four or five years, which felt like an achievement. So what I was doing was because of a mix of paranoia and economic anxiety!
LIVE FROM YORK MINSTER (2012)
Marling’s only live album, including a cover of Jackson C Frank’s “Blues Run The Game”, There are a lot of churches to play in Europe, but we decided to supersize that to cathedrals. We organised it through some quite intense logistical negotiation, literally talking to the bishops and persuading them it was a good idea, because I don’t think they do it very often, particularly somewhere like York Minster. It was such a spectacularly beautiful venue. We were bringing in our own sound system, and the acoustics in some of the cathedrals were much more tricky than others – Liverpool was completely wild and very hard to tame, but we were in a smaller room in York Minster, not in the main atrium, and luckily it was a good one to record.
A completely stone room with wood on the ground has a particular quality to it. I think Charlie Fink had played “Blues Run The Game” to me, and I figured it was in the same tuning as “Goodbye England…”. I added it to the set because it was such an unusual tuning that there were not many songs I could play in it.
ONCE I WAS AN EAGLE (2013)
A stunning 16-track folk-rock epic, and Marling’s own favourite, I discovered smoking weed before this album, that’s the reason the first four songs are one. It’s like a nice lull, where you’re off on another planet. I’d had some intense emotional growth since the previous album, and I’d started to feel like I very much wanted to be on my own and not with a band. Though they’re still my band and I love them very much, it felt like I couldn’t get any time on my own, like I was always on tour or in the studio, and it started to feel like people recognised me a little bit, and it all overwhelmed me. So with this album I went back to Ethan on my own. It was a really amazing experience. I think he had wanted to get his hands on my music without all of those people around, so he could do with it what he really wanted. By that point we were friends, and I entrusted him with this really emotionally intense album.
“Once I Was An Eagle” is Laura Marling’s fourth album in five years, and she’s still just 23 years old. It’s been an accelerated artistic growth but Marling hasn’t put a foot wrong yet. Once I Was An Eagle features a reduced cast of – predominantly – Marling and regular producer Ethan Johns. The English Joni ruthlessly dissects her love life on this confessional album. It’s a beautifully melodic collection that hits engaging heights.
I went and recorded everything for him, in order, at his house – just me and a guitar with his engineer Dom Monks, who’s also brilliant – and then I went away for a week. When I came back he’d done most of the instrumentation on it, and he’d started to paint around the tracks.
I still think of it as a magical happening. People were trying to say it could have been shorter, and maybe a couple of songs could have been B-sides, but that was the story I wanted to tell. Ethan was into it too, he wanted to do a double record.
Ruth [de Turberville, cellist] came to play on the record towards the end. There’s a bit in “Pray For Me” where her cello line sounds like it’s rising above me, wrapping itself around my neck and pulling me down – there was some emotional quality to it, just as what Ethan did on it had an emotional quality. There was a sense that something was about to peak, it did feel like that. I felt like it was the best record I’d ever made, and I could sense that it would be harder to carry on from then.
SHORT MOVIE (2015)
Self-produced in London, Marling’s fifth was the quickest she’s ever written and recorded, The funny thing was that the magic from “Eagle” didn’t last, because Ethan and I ended up making a record afterwards that we threw in the bin. It was a big financial mess, and that was quite a shock to me. I don’t have a lot of money to play with, I’m not a multi-million selling artist, so scrapping an album was a big deal. There were a couple of reasons for it, it wasn’t totally the song writing. I was living in Los Angeles, so Ethan had come over to do it, we rented Sunset Sound which was also really expensive. The nice thing is that on that record we had Jim Keltner, so I got to hang out with him for two weeks – he was amazing. It took me a little while to get over the shock of that, and the disappointment that me and Ethan felt.
Laura Marling has released four albums in only seven years – and she’s only just turned 25 now. Working on fresh material, fifth album Short Movie Self-produced, the songwriter worked extensively alongside drummer Matt Ingram and studio engineer Dan Cox during recent sessions. Short Movie has a cinematic wide eyed joy, and Marling’s writing seems freer. False Hope, inspired by the experience of being tapped in a New York airb’n’b during hurricane sandy, swirls round in a sea of electric guitars. Gurdjieff’s Daughter pulls a huge chorus out of its back pocket with the ease of somebody producing a lighter. There’s a strain of playfulness, too. Strange Love sees Marling adopt the kind of stilted, burning delivery that should come free with a bit of wheat to chew on. Short Movie is wonderfully unlike anything Marling has attempted before.
I came back to London and said to my drummer [Matt Ingram], “I need to do an album for cheap.” He said, “Come and do it at my studio.” I ended up producing it with him, and that was an amazing experience. “Short Movie” was a very quickly written batch of songs, because I’d scrapped everything from the album that we threw away. So this was a very concise timespan, just a very short period in my life. I actually don’t really like the album, but I get why I wrote it and why I had to write it. I needed to keep moving or I was going to drown in the sorrow of having failed. It’s the first time I played electric guitar on a record – a friend had a bungalow in Joshua Tree that they weren’t going to be in for a couple of months, so I took all my guitars out there. I had guitar amplifiers all around the house, and there were no neighbours so I could play as loud as I wanted. That’s how that sound arrived.
SEMPER FEMINA (2017)
A return to form, produced by Los Angeles wunderkind Blake Mills, It was so interesting working with a different producer, he couldn’t be more different to Ethan. And I was such a huge fan of Blake’s already, so it was weird to go in and be so in awe of somebody. He’s my age too. The main thing he inspired in me was that if you worked hard enough you could be as good as him – there was no mystical quality as to why he was so good, other than that he worked really fucking hard. Ethan is from an older time where there was more money in the music business, so he works from midday until nine o’clock and he doesn’t work at weekends, which is fine; but Blake works from 10am until it’s done! I took three members of my band with me, because I was a bit worried that Blake would intimidate me to the point where I wouldn’t be able to get my point across. I’m glad I did that because it just about kept it from becoming a Blake Mills record, which it could have easily become.
In those three weeks, I’d come back home at like 3am every night and play guitar in my backyard – I’d practise every night so that the next morning I’d come in and he wouldn’t be able to play my parts better than I could. I just couldn’t believe that someone could work so hard for someone else’s music, it was amazing. He’s quite a force to contend with, though, he doesn’t fuck around and he doesn’t banter, he just works. Blake literally seems bored when you’re playing him a song, when he feels it’s not sonically interesting. On “Soothing”, he started changing the chords so they were more interesting inversions, and then he orchestrally arranged this three-piece bass part for it.
Semper Femina is Laura Marling’s sixth album – an intimate, devoted exploration of femininity and female relationships, and among her finest work to date. Written largely on the tour that followed 2015’s Short Movie and recorded in Los Angeles with production from Blake Mills, it is at once a distinctive and musically compelling collection of songs, run through with Marling’s fierce intelligence; a keen, beautiful and unparalleled take on womanhood.
SONG FOR OUR DAUGHTER (2020)
Laura Marling’s exquisite seventh album ‘Song For Our Daughter’ arrives almost without pre-amble or warning in the midst of uncharted global chaos, and yet instantly and tenderly offers a sense of purpose, clarity and calm. As a balm for the soul, this full-blooded new collection could be posited as Laura’s richest to date, but in truth it’s another incredibly fine record by a British artist who rarely strays from delivering incredibly fine records.
Taking much of the production reins herself, alongside long-time collaborators Ethan Johns and Dom Monks, Laura has layered up lush string arrangements and a broad sense of scale to these songs without losing any of the intimacy or reverence we’ve come to anticipate and almost take for granted from her throughout the past decade.
Marling’s classic-sounding latest, returning to her roots with Ethan Johns co-producing, I didn’t enjoy producing Short Movie myself, and I didn’t feel like I wanted to do that again – you can’t get a good enough perspective on your own, being both inside and outside the record at the same time. I thought Dom Monks and Ethan Johns as co-producers would just give me that security, but I think it was challenging for Ethan to change his role. I’d had to do a lot of random admin stuff earlier in 2019, which meant I’d sat on these songs for a while, which was hellish for me. But in that time I’d also moved back to London, set up my own studio, demoed everything extensively, contacted everyone I wanted to play on it… Ethan was the last part of the puzzle actually. He wanted to use this studio in Wales because he likes to record to tape, but I’m not a purist in that way. Dom Monks is the zen master between two nutbags, though, so he held the sessions together.
I wrote the album while I was travelling around Europe for about four months, mainly the south of France and Italy, living in a campervan and staying on farms, very late twenties. It was really nice. I always feel like my albums are on/off – I Speak Because I Can was good, A Creature I Don’t Know was OK, Once I Was An Eagle was good, Short Movie was whatever, Semper Femina was good, and I sort of felt this one might be whatever… I don’t know, though! I never know what people are going to think, but people seem to really like it. I wasn’t expecting it to do so well. I thought I’d lean back into just being a songwriter which is all I really want from Laura Marling, from my solo stuff. And then Lump provides me with this whole other experience.
Laura Marling performs “Song For Our Daughter” at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall in London as part of the Mercury Prize 2020: Album of the Year.
LUMP – LUMP (2018)
A collaboration with Tunng’s Mike Lindsay created Marling’s “greatest pleasure”. We were doing some Neil Young support shows and at the London one my guitarist Sam said, “Oh, my friend Mike’s coming down after the show, he’s quite weird and he wants to ask you a question.” He is a weird guy, in the best possible way, and he’s got an unusual manner. He said quite bluntly, “I need you to come into my studio in Shoreditch, I have something and only you can do it.” I was recently single at that time, feeling quite free about possibilities, so I said yes. I was renting a flat in Dalston, so I walked down on a very hot day to his basement studio in Shoreditch. It was absolutely boiling, no natural light. After a bit of awkward small talk, he played me 36 minutes of music without stopping. I had just started reading the Surrealist Manifesto and I’d underlined a bunch of words, and I started singing them over the top – Mike had demarcated where he thought songs were, and verses and choruses, and after the first day we’d done “The Curse Of The Contemporary” and “May I Be The Light”, and by the third day we’d almost finished the record.
I knew when we were making it how special it was – there was no buddiness or communication, just like when Ethan worked on Eagle… and I left for a week. Lump had that quality too. Mike and I have now made two albums and toured, but we don’t really know each other too well, and are paranoid about maintaining that distance between the two of us, so we don’t lose that quality. Lump is the greatest pleasure in my life now, because it doesn’t feel like mine. There’s a second album done, it’s probably coming out this year but I don’t know when.
With Short Movie this Hampshire native has, for the fifth consecutive time, made the strongest album of her career, expanding her palette to include electric-guitar-led alt rock (‘False Hope,’‘Don’t Let Me Bring You Down’) and percussive drones (‘Strange’, ‘Short Movie’) while retaining the English-rose folk that made her name (‘Walk Alone,’ ‘Easy.’) There’s a clear through-line to her earliest work, yet a clearer progression that points to an evolving artist – which is how it’s supposed to go, of course, but is rarely the case with a Brit-winning major-label star… This is Marling at her finest, but as she’s proved five times in a row, the best is always yet to come.”
Following in the dusty, sun-baked footsteps of 2013’s mesmerizing “Once I Was an Eagle”, Laura Marling’s fifth studio outing feels even more rooted in the California desert, doubling down on the former’s penchant for pairing breezy, American west coast mysticism with bucolic, Sandy Denny-era English folk, but with a subtle shift in architecture. Marling’s gift for gab and deft finger-picking are still front and center, but with the self-produced “Short Movie”, she’s expanded her sonic palette by plugging in.
While by no means a straight-up electric guitar album, Short Movie does bristle with a current of nervy energy, and that coffee-black, post-midnight buzz is the fuel that gives cuts like “False Hope,” “Don’t Let Me Bring You Down,” “Gurdjieff’s Daughter,” and the hypnotic title track their swagger. That said, Marling is an unrepentant folkie, and those late-night blasts of tube-driven self-evaluation and raw verisimilitude eventually give way to bleary-eyed mornings spent assessing the wreckage, and the album’s best moments arrive via the aged wood and steel of her trusty acoustic.
The dreamy, psych-tinged opener “Warrior” invokes Nick Drake’s “Road” with its bluesy, open tuning and refrain of “I can’t be your horse anymore, you’re not the warrior I’m looking for,” while the equally Drake-ian “Feel Your Love” offers up a less defensive, but no less weary stance toward potential suitors, positing “you must let me go before I get old, I need to find someone who really wants to be mine.” Avoiding complacency has always been the light that guides the precocious singer/songwriter (only 25 at the time of release, this is Marling’s fourth album in just five years), and Short Movie does little to temper that restlessness. It may lack the cohesion of her last outing, and her steadfast derision of anything resembling a hook can be taxing, but it makes up for its meandering with a strength of character that eludes many of her contemporaries. An old soul to say the least, Marling continues to evolve as both a musician and a writer, albeit subtly, and we’re all the better for it.
Burr Oak is the new project of Chicago based singer-songwriter Savanna Dickhut who merges together brutally honest, story– driven lyrics with raw, dreamy vocals. With just two singles out this past year, the Chicago Tribune wrote her songs “show the promise of a songwriter sure of her voice and sound, one that is piercing and deeply relatable and authentic.”
Discussing the track, Savannah has suggested “Flower Garden” is a reflection on, “a past relationship, one from a few years ago that only lasted a couple of months but had a lasting effect on me”. Here the former lover is cast as a flower garden, “so beautiful and lush at first sight”, yet as the seasons turn and the days draw in, what once seemed so positive loses its sheen, yet leaves you still questioning, “why did you have to go away?” The shifting of seasons are reflected perfectly in the tracks musical threads, what starts off as an almost genteel dreamscape gradually swells and towards the end builds to a wailing crescendo of guitar-soloing, reminiscent of Squirrel Flower or Big Thief.
Flower Garden is lifted from Burr Oak’s upcoming debut album, Late Bloomer. released November 18th, 2020.
Endless thanks to my band that is, Anthony Mest [drums], Jeffrey Sullivan [guitar], and Jacob Gordon [bass]. Thanks to Nicholas Papaleo for playing synth & keys on Flower Garden and Luke Otwell for playing lap steel.
I have some great news for you that I’ve been excited to share with you for some time. I am able to re-release The Author on ALL streaming sites for you to finally be able to listen to. I’ve finally got it back! To celebrate this I would love to invite you all to The Author party on 18th Dec. The Author will come out again on 25th December 2020. I wanted this to be a Christmas gift to you all.
Originally from Blackpool, Singer Songwriter Karima Francis burst onto the scene over a decade ago with her acclaimed debut album, “The Author“. Since then Karima has gone on to release a further two albums, perform with the likes of Paul Simon and Amy Winehouse and work with acclaimed producer Flood. Some four years on since her last album, 2016’s Black, Karima has been inspired by a somewhat different coastal city, Los Angeles, where she worked with Tim Carr on a series of recording sessions. This week Karima has shared the latest offering from those sessions, in the shape of new single, “Carelessness Causes Fire”.
Like much of Karima’s latest material, the track seems to deal with the difficulties of pressure and expectation, as she explains, “when the pressure is too much an explosive eruption can happen, which can be dangerous and destructive“. The track seems to take aim at the industry that put so much expectation on her and offered so little support to go with it, “in the smoke of the industry, I’m building a home around all my dreams”. Musically, the track pairs Karima’s distinctive husky vocals, to a lush, wide-screen backing that wouldn’t sound out of place in the back catalogue of Horse Thief or The War On Drugs. This feels like something of a redemption for Karima, a songwriter who has seen both sides of life as a musician, and now is coming out the other side with her best material to date.
Ani DiFranco will release an new album in early 2021 that she hopes will bring people optimism and hope. Her upcoming LP, “Revolutionary Love”, follows her 2019 memoir No Walls and the Recurring Dream. Many of the songs were written while DiFranco was on her way back home to New Orleans in February. With the global pandemic looming over everyone since then, the album has personal and universal themes meant to inspire.
“I felt very strongly that I needed a horse to ride to try to help get out the vote—to get people inspired and get them believing in democracy, believing in each other and in themselves,” DiFranco said I’m a statement.
She also released the title track of the new LP, which is a seven-minute melodic message to encourage love and compassion. “It’s about carrying the energy of love and compassion into the centre of our social movements and making it the driving force. It’s about finding it within ourselves to stay curious about our opponents instead of shutting down,” she said.
Revolutionary Love releases on January. 29th, 2021, via her Righteous Babe Records label.
The British singer-songwriter’s lockdown-created debut EP “Falling Asleep at the Wheel” has marked her out for big things on both sides of the Atlantic. Everything about this year is different. So when Holly Humberstone made her recent US late night talk show bow with a set on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, she leaned into that. Standing in for the studio glare of Los Angeles, witness the headlights of a creaking Range Rover on the farm back home. In place of a stage, find the car’s bonnet and the Lincolnshire countryside retreating into the night.
After tumbling from an opening slot on Lewis Capaldi’s European tour into COVID-19 lockdown, Holly Humberstone has spent recent months figuring out how to be creative under the current circumstances, playing online sessions (including an atmospheric offering for Guitar.com Live) and assembling music videos with her sister while gradually settling into the idea of writing new music. “It’s been so weird,” she says. “A lot of the creative stuff that I’ve been forced to get into during lockdown, I wouldn’t have been at all good at before, or even had the chance to do.
“At first I was really uninspired. I’m most prolific when I’m really busy, and seeing my friends, cramming my days full. It was really hard going from that to doing absolutely nothing, and finding it hard to write. I put quite a lot of pressure on myself as well. I felt like everyone was like, ‘There’s going to be so much creativity coming out of lockdown with all these creatives stuck inside…’ After I chilled out a bit, I had to see it as an opportunity.”
Humberstone released her debut EP “Falling Asleep at the Wheel” in August. It’s an artful collection of studied, serious indie-pop songs, fusing some luminescent melodies with searching lyrics that are hitting home with people in real time. She sees the title track – Maggie Rogers via bummer house keys and a War On Drugs lead break – as one of its anchors, having emerged at a time when she was tuning in to what sort of artist she’d like to be.
I wrote this song a while ago whilst still unsure of who I wanted to be and where I wanted to head musically. Writing this song was probably the first time I felt like I knew who I was within the music I was making. The track is about losing momentum and feeling like your emotions will slowly destroy the relationship you’re in and you altogether. I think the dark, wonky sonics define who I am musically, which is why Falling Asleep At The Wheel is such a milestone track for me, and has taught me so much about myself as a musician. We created the song at the house I grew up in, which is very old and falling apart, in the middle of the countryside. You can almost hear the weird sounds of the house within the track. It’s where I feel the most me and love that this is all coming from that one place.
“I remember writing the song and it being a real milestone for me,” she says. “I wrote the whole EP over the course of two years. It took me ages to figure out who I was within the music I was making, what I wanted to do with it, what kind of sound I wanted to make, what I wanted to say. It took loads of shit songs, loads of experimentation, before realising how I wanted to come across. Falling Asleep And The Wheel was a lightbulb moment.” Falling Asleep At The Wheel was largely crafted alongside Nottingham-based producer Rob Milton, and it’s an interesting blend of small town, late teen reality and widescreen could-be-massive songwriting. Humberstone is an open, insightful lyricist who prizes direct access, utilising her music as a communication tool even between the people closest to her.
“Deep End”, the EP’s striking opening song, was written for one of her sisters as Humberstone struggled to understand exactly how to help during a difficult time. “I’ll be your medicine if you let me, give you reason to get out of bed,” she sings over desolate guitars. “Sister, I’m trying to hold off the lightning and help you escape from your head.”
This song is quite a personal one. It came out pretty naturally, as one of my sisters was going through a difficult time and I was struggling to know how best to help. This song is my way of telling her that I’m always here. It feels like a lot of people are going through something similar or suffering themselves and don’t have an outlet to express it. It’s a difficult conversation but really important to let those around you know that you care for them and will always stand by them.
“I’ve been getting messages saying, ‘This is mine and my sister’s song’ or ‘I’ve felt the same way about my best friend’,” Humberstone says. “A lot of the stuff I write might connect with people because it’s universal. I’m never going to be the only one who’s feeling like that. We had a plan to release Falling Asleep at the Wheel first, but then I wrote Deep End. I think it’s the most vulnerable I am on the EP, that’s why it’s a good first track. I’m baring so much of my soul. When I wrote that song it needed to come out. I love that.”
This emotional honesty is a recurring theme on Falling Asleep at the Wheel as Humberstone interrogates anxiety, self-doubt, love and other big hits. She does so without so much as a lick of varnish, choosing instead to speak plainly wherever possible. “I really like songs that are conversational, and not trying to be poetic,” she says. “Like, ‘This is what I’m saying’ or ‘These are my unfiltered thoughts.’ I love listening to music that has personal detail in there, and rambling thoughts – people like Phoebe Bridgers or Damien Rice or Lorde.
“I feel like I know them personally from listening to their stuff. Also, a lot of the time I’m writing for myself. I’m just trying to get my words into a simpler format. I find conversations really hard to have, especially if they’re awkward ones about mental health or telling someone you like them or whatever. I think putting something into a song is easier for me to do and it’s genuinely a simpler format than having it all confusing up in my head. It helps me so much to work through my feelings. It helps me just as much as someone listening to it.”
The EP’s palette is a bracing, entirely trend-appropriate blend of traditional instrumentation and shimmering electronic textures. Humberstone manages to thrive in this arena, relying on sharp, unusual melodies and gutsy delivery to add blood and heart to a space that is rapidly filling up with identikit artists. Tracing things back to the start, she views her song writing approach as a sort of stylistic scrapbook, with multiple jumping off points. Unsurprisingly, emotion-first is a general rule.“ Sometimes it’s a guitar, sometimes it’s a piano,” she says. “I find if I’m writing on my own then I can usually just jot a load of stuff down and see what sounds nice. Some stuff stems from the title. I thought of Falling Asleep at the Wheel before I wrote the song. Sometimes when I’m co-writing with other people, it’s so important to have people in the room I can trust and who I can offload on first about how I’m feeling.
I wrote “Drop Dead” about a troubled & manipulative relationship that despite how bad it is, you can’t get out, because love can often be blinding. I think a lot of people have been through something where you’re with someone that was no good and for some reason all they have to do is look at you and you go straight back. I wanted the video concept to echo that feeling of something making you want to drop dead… when the rug is pulled from underneath you and you’re falling. I kept thinking about my failed driving tests and how awful they made me feel, so I decided to cover my dads car in learner plates and burn it down. My way of saying up yours to the driving tests !!
Some of the songs on the EP were written before the production [ideas], like Drop Dead and Deep End, but I also love going into a room with Rob and jamming, making something sound cool. That’s really inspiring as well. With Overkill l we were listening to loads of Fleetwood Mac and Haim, and it came from there. It’s different every time. I really love music that has that blend of real, natural instruments and cool, wonky electronic bits as well. Rob is so good at that, he’s got loads of vintage, weird, synthy, arpeggiated things. I love all those odd sounds.”
“Overkill” is probably one of my favourite songs. I was going through at a really happy time towards the end of last year. Before this, I’d never really been one for relationships, they just weren’t something I was looking for, but I’d recently started seeing someone and I was excited about it all for the first time. I realised I was falling for this guy and just wanted to know if he felt the same way about me, or if telling him how I felt was just going to freak him out and scare him away! I can be quite full on. I wanted Overkill to capture all the thrill and uncertainty and confusion and the many other emotions that come with falling for someone for the first time.
Milton also provided the guitar that Humberstone sees as vital to the EP’s overall sound. Accenting a handful of Fenders – Humberstone has been playing a Player Lead III and Mustang 90 of late – is an Airline Map baritone from Eastwood, modelled on a National Newport.
“I love an ambient, reverby electric guitar,” she says. “It just does something to me. I didn’t know the baritone existed before we wrote Deep End and now I’m obsessed with it. I play it all the time. I also play quite a lot of Fenders, but my first few guitars were Epiphone Les Pauls that my dad got second hand on eBay. They were great to learn on, but I dropped one on tour and snapped the neck in half. I’m scarred from that experience.” Having introduced her to Damien Rice’s O, Regina Spektor, Radiohead (be sure to look up her cover of Fake Plastic Tree) and Led Zeppelin, Humberstone’s folks are also behind the loops that have lit up her recent sessions. “I’ve got a really over-enthusiastic dad who’s down for getting new equipment that I have no idea how to use,” she laughs. “I think he’d seen.
“My parents are really supportive and I think he bought a beginner loop station, and I’d not really touched it. I still play solo, and when I went on the Lewis Capaldi tour at the beginning of this year I realised that if I’m going to be playing rooms that are a bit bigger I’m going to need something else to fill out my sound. I incorporated the loop pedal, but I still don’t really know how to use it. I’m so awful at the technical side of stuff. Honestly, anything could happen on stage. I hope for the best.”
As strategies go, hoping for the best isn’t exactly bulletproof. But you get the feeling that, even at this early stage in her career, Humberstone has enough talent and melodic smarts on hand to make it work. “Writing Falling Asleep at the Wheel, I’ve made a little world for myself,” she says. “I understand who I want to be. It’s really fun to explore that world, push some boundaries, and I’ve really enjoyed writing on my own. I have a few songs for the second EP that are things I’ve worked on solo, which is really important to me. That’s how I started out. I’m waiting for one or two more songs, but I’m so excited.”
Holly Humberstone’s “Falling Asleep at the Wheel” is out now.
Ali John Meredith-Lacey, better known under the moniker Novo Amor, is a Welsh multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, sound designer and producer. The past three years have been a burst of creativity from Aberystwyth-born singer/songwriter Novo Amor (AKA Ali Lacey). In 2017, he dropped debut album ‘Heiress’ which first introduced us to his unique pop/folk infusion followed a year late by second record ‘Birthplace’ – and now he drops stunning third instalment ‘Cannot Be, Whatsoever’.
Bright yet contemplative, Lacey describes his latest LP as “a shift towards the light” across the ten tracks which he self-produced. The optimism shines through as he deeply reflects upon the most important moments in his life and their meaning. When Ali Lacey was 20 years old, he had his heart broken. “As clichéd as it sounds, I wrote love songs about the whole situation,” he recalls. “You’re in those formative years when everything just feels more emotionally charged. But looking back, I kind of cringe about the way I acted.” He grimaces. “I was writing the songs as soon as things happened and then I would send them to her. Argh, I wish I didn’t. The lyrics are just so obvious.
Novo Amor will be playing headline dates during Spring 2021 to show off his new material, Official video for ‘I Feel Better’ by Novo Amor Lifted from the album ‘Cannot Be, Whatsoever’, out now.
“Whether it’s the reminder that aloneness isn’t singular or a simplistic jolt of motivation that is far from cheesy, Novo Amor delivers an album with complexity and subtlety all at once. At a time when chaos and pain seem next to impossible to look away from, Novo Amor gently reminds us of all the possibilities and ways of being true.” – Clash
Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Riley Pearce tackles his current dilemmas head-on with the new single and visual for ‘Electricity’. Always one to portray working-class love and big picture philosophy over a magnetic alt-folk melody, Riley Pearce’s latest offering is another deep-dive into life’s uncertainties. Lifted from his forthcoming EP, “Love and Other Stuff”, out March 19th, 2021, Pearce says the song deals with a young couple faces as they pursue their passions and careers.
My girlfriend and I have these dreams of one day owning a home and starting a family, but there’s a lot of uncertainty involved and a lot of distance between ourselves now and reaching the eventual dream,” he says. “With that in mind, the song is about being happy no matter where we land, with each other’s presence and being in this journey together.”
Love and Other Stuff follows the release of Riley Pearce’s last EP, “Maybe I Can Sleep It Off”, released in September. His imitable self-reflection and ability to grapple with his own feelings in real-time has seen his trademark brand of storytelling resonate across the globe, with over 50 million streams to date.
Last year, Riley Pearce toured all through Australia, Europe and the United Kingdom before returning to live in Melbourne. His upcoming EP was produced by Andy Lawson, who loaned Pearce his Japanese Fender Jaguar for the recording. Coupled with a pedal Pearce found at a second-hand shop in London, “Love and Other Stuff” will speak to the times while also offering a reprieve from it.
Filmed by Riley Pearce from lockdown in Melbourne. WRITER / MUSICIAN: Riley Pearce
The Fat Angel Sings 