Best described as a roots or Americana artist, Austin, Texas’ Bonnie Whitmore is a veteran musician who has trod the boards throughout North America as an in-demand session and stage bassist for more than two decades. But she has also developed a unique musical compositional style all her own – one that combines many elements of the music she loves, regardless of genre, and a lyrical directness and powerful honestly that makes for a truly compelling listening experience.
Whitmore released her latest album, “Last Will & Testament” in October, through her own label, and Whitmore herself co-produced the 10-song release alongside Scott Davis, working out of the Ramble Creek Recording Studio. Although the word eclectic can sometimes be over-used or mis-used, it is rather appropriate for Last Will & Testament, as Whitmore is unafraid to mix and meld styles and genres to suit the emotional and lyrical tapestry she weaves with each individual song.
“To me as an artist, it’s about the creation of whatever it’s going to be, and not to make it form into something that’s supposed to be more marketable, which I know goes against everything you’re supposed to be doing in music if music is your livelihood,” she said, from her home in Austin, where she is doing her best to stay busy writing new material and promoting the album during the Covid-19 lockdown.
“I think I have a very eclectic taste, so I am not surprised that my music is eclectic within itself. I do like to take things that are sort of polar opposites of each other and mix them together. As a bass player, my influences are [legendary session player] Carol Kaye and Kim Deal of the Pixies – very different bass players, but both are integral parts of where I come at it musically. Americana is just sort of the all-encompassing, ‘everybody’s welcome,’ kind of genre, because they accept everybody into it.”
With the release of Bonnie Whitmore’s latest record, the celebrated Texas-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist borrows just enough stylistic “ingredients” from just enough musical “neighbours,” she succeeds in baking one of the tastiest confections of 2020 — a soaring seduction that owns roadhouse authenticity and drips cathouse allure. Among the record’s many highlights, “Time to Shoot” shines brightly.
Written by Bonnie Whitmore From the album “Last Will & Testament” (2020) CD Baby (on behalf of Aviatrix Records)
It all began with Marty Robbins, whose cowboy ballads entranced and inspired Clash co-founder and vocalist Joe Strummer from across the Atlantic for years. When Amarillo-native Joe Ely toured London in ’78, Strummer went backstage to introduce himself and the band. They were huge Ely fans, and while he had never heard of them, they bonded over shared interests in rockabilly, movies, and poetry. They spent the next few days showing Ely around London, even taking him to their studio.
“It was like the West Texas hell raisers meet the London hell raisers,” Ely said. In Ely, the Clash finally had a direct connection to the world they’d only heard on records and seen on television.
“To them,” Ely said, “Texas was a mythical place that they only knew about in old Marty Robbins gunfighter ballads and Westerns and stuff.”
When Strummer brought up an upcoming American tour, the only places he wanted to play were those he’d heard about in songs—El Paso, Laredo, Wichita Falls. Ely returned home to Lubbock, and soon enough, the Clash called to book several Texas dates with Joe Ely Band as opening act. They played their first Texas show at the Armadillo World Headquarters, the 1970s venue that propelled Austin’s music scene to national attention and forever shaped the city’s image.
The night was October 4th, 1979, and Michael Corcoran’s in-depth article, “25 Most Significant Nights in Austin Music History,” features it at number twelve. Corcoran quotes the oft-cited description of the performance as “Ely and his band pouring gasoline all over the stage and then the Clash coming out and lighting a match.” The all-night jam session that followed, with Ely and the Clash joining local punk band the Skunks on stage at the Continental Club, turned an unforgettable night into one of true, incendiary fame.
When the Clash returned in June of 1982 to film “Rock the Casbah,” the Armadillo had been closed a year and a half. Perhaps in homage to the venue that hosted that first Texas performance, the video features a recurring armadillo running through various shots. Maybe it was just a funny thing to include, but a photo from that show did end up on the back of the London Calling album, suggesting the ‘Dillo’s significance to the band. The song was released as the second single from their fifth album, Combat Rock. “Rock the Casbah” was musically written by the band’s drummer Topper Headon, based on a piano part that he had been toying with. Finding himself in the studio without his three bandmates, Headon progressively taped the drum, piano and bass parts, recording the bulk of the song’s musical instrumentation himself. This origin makes “Rock the Casbah” different from the majority of Clash songs, which tended to originate with music written by the Strummer–Jones song writing partnership. Upon entering the studio to hear Headon’s recording, the other Clash members were impressed with his creation, stating that they felt the musical track was essentially complete, relatively minor overdubs were added, such as guitars and percussion
Joe Strummer was not impressed by the page of suggested lyrics that Headon gave him. According to Clash guitar technician Digby Cleaver, they were “a soppy set of lyrics about how much he missed his girlfriend”. Strummer just took one look at these words and said, ‘How incredibly interesting!’, screwed the piece of paper into a ball and chucked it backwards over his head. Strummer had been developing a set of lyrical ideas that he was looking to match with an appropriate tune. Before hearing Headon’s music, Strummer had already come up with the phrases “rock the casbah” and “you’ll have to let that raga drop” as lyrical ideas that he was considering for future songs. After hearing Headon’s music, Strummer went into the studio’s toilets and wrote lyrics to match the song’s melody. This phrase had originated during a jam session with Strummer’s violinist friend Tymon Dogg. Dogg began playing Eastern scales with his violin and Strummer started shouting “rock the casbah!”
Further inspiration for the lyrics of “Rock the Casbah” originated from Strummer observing the band’s manager Bernie Rhodes moaning about The Clash’s increasing tendency to perform lengthy songs. Rhodes asked the band facetiously “does everything have to be as long as this rāga?” (referring to the Indian musical style known for its length and complexity).
Strummer later returned to his room at the Iroquois Hotel in New York City and wrote the opening lines to the song: “The King told the boogie-men ‘you have to let that rāga drop.’ The song gives a fabulist account of a ban on Western rock music by an Arab king. The lyrics describe the king’s efforts to stop his population from listening to this music, such as ordering his military’s jet fighters to bomb any people in violation of the ban. The pilots ignore the orders, and instead play rock music on their cockpit radios. The population then proceed to “rock the casbah” by dancing to the music. This scenario was inspired by the ban on Western music in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution
To watch the video now is to see glimpses of the Austin that long time natives speak of wistfully, reverently. As much as I wanted to believe in Austin Motel’s place in punk rock history after learning about the Clash’s Texas connection, I am sorry to report that the shots of a motel swimming pool were not taken at the Austin Motel. After a deep dive into obscure internet wormholes about the video, my best guess for the pool featured at 2:05 and 2:08 is the Sheraton Hotel near Interstate 35 and 11th Street. According to Songfacts.com, the actor who played the Rabbi, Dennis Razze, said auditions were held at the Sheraton, and pictures of that hotel pool do look like those in the video.
At fifty-four seconds, the two main characters, The Sheik and The Rabbi, drive in to Austin with the Capitol Building in the background. That skyline sure looks different, though, doesn’t it? Other noteworthy shots of 1982 Austin are fun to spot, and often difficult to discern. The Winchell’s Donuts is now a Subway. A close examination of this location, and a trove of trivia about the video, can be found in Adam Norwood’s delightfully obsessive blog.
The Burger King 27th and Guadalupe didn’t change too much—it’s now a Whataburger. Texans love Whataburger, if you don’t know, so this is one change that old-timers probably aren’t mad at. The Alamo Hotel at the corner of 6th and Guadalupe appears to now be the Extended Stay America. Fun fact: scenes from the music video for Willie Nelson’s “Panchoand Lefty” were filmed at the hotel’s bar. It was knocked down in 1984. The planes are flying into Bergstrom Air Force Base, which is now Austin Bergstrom International Airport.
The City Coliseum, which is now the Palmer Events center, was originally an aircraft hangar. Footage from inside The Coliseum was, according to Razze, “absolutely crazy, because they just worked us into the audience in front of the stage and shot us and the band in real time during the concert.”
The legend of the Clash lounging poolside at our motel may be debunked, but if you want to walk the same path as the armadillo featured in the video, it’s tough to find a better starting point. Plus, the former site of the Armadillo is only a ten-minute walk away, and located next door is Threadgill’s World Headquarters, a restaurant dedicated to honouring the renowned venue. Memorabilia covers the walls, and the juke box features one hundred albums by artists who played the ‘Dillo. In the spirit of two worlds colliding—Texas’ Joe Ely and London’s definitive punks—you can chow down on chicken fried steak while listening to that “crazy Casbah sound.”
Just be sure to wait thirty minutes before jumping back in the pool to avoid any cramping.
The music video for “Rock the Casbah” was filmed in Austin, Texas by director Don Letts on 8th and 9th June 1982.
The music of Alex Maas has always mesmerised. Now, on his soul-baring solo debut “Luca”, the Texan and The Black Angel’s singer journey is taking an equally hypnotic detour along the wild trails of his indigenous homestead. Driven by the force of nature, each phase of life is celebrated through songs of love, hope, human connection whilst navigating perils of modern society and tentatively facing the darkness. As the shamanic vocalist and bass player of The Black Angels, Alex Maas knows neo-psych-rock well; yet its menace is barely noticeable across his masterfully crafted soul-baring debut solo album. Named for Maas’ firstborn, whose name means “bringer of light,” Luca was a long time coming, with some of its songs dating back almost a decade, put together piece-by-piece over the course of a couple years. The record began its transformation from loner folk leanings to a worldlier embrace of gentle psychedelia.
It’s a record fuelled by memories of an upbringing in the strange, unique paradise of his father’s plant nursery in Seabrook, Texas by the waterfront of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Native American sounds that would drift through the garden’s hidden speakers, ricocheting off multi-coloured pottery mazes of curiosities from across the world.
Casting shades of deeply personal wide-eyed innocence and the darker realms of paranoia, Luca has its sights set on the near and distant future. Subtle psychedelic flourishes and instrumentation come from a cast of expert players in Austin but this is a deeply personal endeavour.
It’s been a while since the Black Angels released an album and I’m happy to hear Alex’ Voice again, Driven by the force of nature, The Black Angels singer’s solo journey takes an hypnotic detour along the wild trails of hisindigenous homestead with songs of love, hope, human connection whilst navigating perils of modern society and tentatively facing the darkness.
Sibling duo the Oh Hellos have been musical collaborators for years, but Maggie and Tyler Heath have never undertaken anything quite like their latest project — four EPs framed around a question. The Austin-based artists were more interested in following whatever threads of inquiry their curiosity might reveal. By the time they were done, they’d undertaken a deep-dive examination of faith, one they expected would pan out as a “deconstruction slash reconstruction,” according to Maggie. Instead, they experienced an implosion or sorts.
Their first release, in late 2017, was Notos, named for the god of summer’s south winds — and dangerous storms. Euros, named for the god of east winds and autumn, followed in early 2018. Neither, obviously, was released to coincide with its actual season — a pattern that continued with Boreas, named for the north winds that bring winter’s freeze, and Zephyrus, who brings spring’s gentle west winds. Boreas ; Zephyrus’ release day is today (October. 16th).
They’d actually intended to release Boreas last winter. “Go figure you wouldn’t be able to exactly map out what you’re going to believe after several years of questioning your faith and your upbringing and your head, you know?” Maggie notes. “So just to make sure we were leaving plenty of room for us to be honest with ourselves, and honest with the project, took longer than we expected.”
And then the pandemic arrived. Eventually, they decided to stop waiting and unleash the winds of winter and spring. Each segment is filled with multi-layered orchestral arrangements, richly textured harmonies and lyrical complexity. Their distinctive style brings to mind progressive folk-rock predecessors Renaissance, Fairport Convention, the Strawbs, It’s a Beautiful Day and Steeleye Span.
Tyler admits he knows none of those bands. The Heaths list Fleet Foxes, Sufjan Stevens as influences. “We are very bad at nailing down exactly where we sit on the genre spectrum,” Tyler confesses, adding, “We have appreciated when people describe us as folk punk.”
These carefully constructed works, in which each note seems lovingly placed, then given enough space to define its own contours. The juxtapositions are so seamless, it takes a minute to realize the lovely 46-second interlude of “Holding on Where I am Able” is a separate work and not just an introduction to “Theseus.”The Heaths are pretty sure their Celtic lean comes from Irish lineage on their mother’s side. Being the daughter of a band director, she set them on their musical path early. Their father, who’d played music in school, also encouraged them.
Born four years apart (Tyler came first), they grew up in Angleton, Texas, near Houston. Maggie sang in church and school choirs. Tyler didn’t, but became fascinated with harmony because his mother would always harmonize on church hymns instead of singing the melody. It stuck with him. He started writing songs as a young teen. “At some point, I realized I was enjoying singing and song-writing enough that I sought out some voice lessons, just to make sure that I wasn’t gonna build any bad habits that would damage my voice,” he says.
Maggie received some classical vocal training while attending Texas State University in San Marcos. Tyler studied music composition at the University of Texas at Austin, then moved to San Marcos, where he and Maggie started collaborating about nine years ago. Now living in North Austin, they intentionally moved within walking distance of one another. They do most of their recording at Tyler’s home studio.
Though they share credit as producers on their albums, Maggie tends to do the writing and Tyler the arranging. When they perform live they bring a big bunch of players — including some who came up in punk and hardcore scenes.
They’re not out to re-create every sound on their albums, however. “We reinvent it live,” Tyler says. “There’s a lot of adaptation and translation. And then there’s a lot of additional arranging, where we look for the parts that we feel are the most important to get across live. “We have to condense down the music so that it still feels the same, or brings you the same emotions, without being able to literally have 10 guitar parts all happening at once to create these big, expansive textures,” he adds. “Pretty early on, we realized we’re not gonna hit this note for note, but that’s probably OK. How can we just lean into that? As much energy and intensity as we squeeze into the records, I feel like the live show is just cranking up that dial even further. Just trying to have as much fun as possible. And also get the aggression out a little bit.
The series concludes. Zephyrus, the final cardinal wind of this project, brought the gentle warmth of spring that summoned up a new year of growth rooted in the fertile ashes of all the structures that keep us isolated and unfeeling — the kind of growth we can see in ourselves, if we can muster the courage to be vulnerable. The arrangements mirror and embrace this shift, rising up like tender leaves breaking through concrete and cascading down like mountain rivers surging with the first thaw of the season. It’s been a long year; thanks for listening.
released October 16th, 2020
Produced by Maggie Heath, Tyler Heath
Written by Maggie Heath, Tyler Heath
The five members of Sun June spent their early years spread out across the United States, from the boonies of the Hudson Valley to the sprawling outskirts of LA. Having spent their college years within the gloomy, cold winters of the North East, Laura Colwell and Stephen Salisbury found themselves in the vibrant melting-pot of inspiration that is Austin, Texas. Meeting each other while working on Terrence Malick’s ‘Song to Song’, the pair were immediately taken by the city’s bustling small clubs and honky-tonk scene, and the fact that there was always an instrument within reach, always someone to play alongside.
Coming alive in this newly discovered landscape, Colwell and Salisbury formed Sun June alongside Michael Bain on lead guitar, Sarah Schultz on drums, and Justin Harris on bass and recorded their debut album live to tape, releasing it via the city’s esteemed Keeled Scales label in 2018. The band coined the term ‘regret pop’ to describe the music they made on the ‘Years’ LP. Though somewhat tongue in cheek, it made perfect sense ~ the gentle sway of their country leaning pop songs seeped in melancholy, as if each subtle turn of phrase was always grasping for something just out Sun June returns with “Somewhere”, a brand new album, out February 2021. It’s a record that feels distinctly more present than its predecessor. In the time since, Colwell and Salisbury have become a couple, and it’s had a profound effect on their work; if Years was about how loss evolves, Somewhere is about how love evolves. “We explore a lot of the same themes across it,” Colwell says, “but I think there’s a lot more love here.
”Somewhere is Sun June at their most decadent, a richly diverse album which sees them exploring bright new corners with full hearts and wide eyes. Embracing a more pop-oriented sound the album consists of eleven beautiful new songs and is deliberately more collaborative and fully arranged: Laura played guitar for the first time; band members swapped instruments, and producer Danny Reisch helped flesh out layers of synth and percussion that provides a sweeping undercurrent to the whole thing. Throughout Somewhere you can hear Sun June blossom into a living-and-breathing five-piece, the album formed from an exploratory track building process which results in a more formidable version of the band we once knew. ’Real Thing’ is most indicative of this, a fully collaborative effort which encompasses all of the nuances that come to define the album.
“Are you the real thing?” Laura Colwell questions in the song’s repeated refrain. “Honey I’m the real thing,” she answers back. They’ve called this one their ‘prom’ record; a sincere, alive-in-the-moment snapshot of the heady rush of love. “The prom idea started as a mood for us to arrange and shape the music to, which we hadn’t done before,” the band explains. “ Prom isn’t all rosy and perfect. The songs show you the crying in the bathroom,, the fear of dancing, the joy of a kiss – all the highs and all the lows.” It’s in both those highs and lows where Somewhere comes alive. Laura Colwell’s voice is mesmerising throughout, and while the record is a document of falling in love, there’s still room for her to wilt and linger, the vibrancy of the production creating beautiful contrasts for her voice to pull us through.
Opening track ‘Bad With Time’ sets this tone from the outset, both dark and mysterious, sad and sultry as it fascinatingly unrolls. “I didn’t mean what I said,” Colwell sings. “But I wanted you to think I did.” Somewhere showcases a gentle but eminently pronounced maturation of Sun June’s sound, a second record full of quiet revelation, eleven songs that bristle with love and longing. It finds a band at the height of their collective potency, a marked stride forward from the band that created that debut record, but also one that once again is able to transport the listener into a fascinating new landscape, one that lies somewhere between the town and the city, between the head and the heart; neither here nor there, but certainly somewhere. “Karen O” by Sun June from the upcoming album ‘Somewhere‘ out February 2nd, 2020 via Run For Cover Records,
We are extremely happy to be announcing the February 5th release of Sun June’s forthcoming LP Somewhere. “We shot the video out on a Texas Hill Country ranch with a spotlight ranchers use to check on cattle at night (very Texas of us). We thought the stage lights and disco ball helped draw out the connection between feeling an emotion and performing it, both for yourself and others. We got lucky and happened to shoot during a lightning storm, so we went full melodrama with it.”
The goal was to push my brain to places it didn’t want to go. The idea was to not have any idea – to keep myself confused about what I was doing,” frontman Will Sheff says about Okkervil River’s newest album ‘I Am Very Far’. It’s a startling break from the band’s previous work: terrifying and joyous, violent and serene, grotesque and romantic, it’s a celebration of forces beyond our control.
This chapter has been a long time coming; we recorded almost every show from the American and European 2018 #intherainbowrain tour so it took a long time to sort through it all. Also, the audio liner notes are…. just shy of 5 hours long? Almost a whole audiobook in themselves. I’m super proud of the music on here and so excited for you all to hear it! Thank you all so much for coming on this journey with us and if anybody’s hesitated till now climb aboard and scope out the whole thing!
I’ve had some of my most fun onstage experiences of the past few years doing the “Rarities & Requests” touring format, but because of logistics we’ve often had to restrict these shows to larger markets. Under the current quarantine situation, I thought it would be really cool to play a streaming “Rarities & Requests” show where we could open the request pool to anybody all over the world.
This will be the first Okkervil streaming show we’ve done his year, and I’m super excited about it. We’ll have more details soon on when it will air, but we wanted to open requests ASAP. So if you plan to watch start submitting requests via the request form link in the comment section! (But not in comments themselves please). Note that we’ll still be taking requests from the big cities but we’ll be giving extra weight to requests from people in towns we’ve never hit with the #raritiesandrequests format.
Hovvdy released a new single, “Runner,” last month, and now they’ve followed it with a second, which “is about the mixed emotions when a relationship has to change or end,” Will Taylor says. “Grief and relief. We were excited to pull the guitars back to let the vocals and ambient textures shine. The clank and swing of the programmed drums create a resonance and energy that brings it all together.”
Hailing from Austin, Texas, indie-pop duo Hovvdy are back again with another sumptuous treat for our ears with new single; ‘I’m Sorry’. Shortly after their release of ‘Runner’ — released just last month — ‘I’m Sorry’is Will Taylor and Charlie Martin at their finest; delightfully odd as always, whilst showcasing dreamy melodies that are best suited to lying in bed on a calm Sunday morning.
Slightly muted vocal melodies greet us from the get-go, along with a reverberated kick and snare beat that echoes through your soul to the very end. The song in its entirety feels somewhat zephyr-like; feelings of heartache but also of healing: a journey downstream that Hovvdy are kind enough to let us in on. Gradually swelling in volume, accompanied by wispy, mellow vocals throughout; ‘I’m Sorry’is a harmonically beautiful, and melodically considerate track — created for the disenfranchised, and executed to foggy, ambiguous perfection.
Fundamentally acoustic, Hovvdy also incorporates elements of electronica in the most subtle ways; pulling us in gently at the beginning with synth-enhanced vocals and rhythms, then reverting to their familiar, honestly indie style, before welcoming back the electronic-inspired rhythms, vocals and synths for the end of the track — bringing closure in a familiar, comforting way.
Stacking on Will Taylor’s growing pop sensibility, “I’m Sorry” carves a beat around the artist’s hollowed-out, echoing vocals. Jumbled feelings in flux swirl a cloud of granular electronic ambience. “I’m sorry,” he sings. “Going under the water again.”
Of the song and stylistic venture, Taylor says: “‘I’m Sorry’ is about the mixed emotions when a relationship has to change or end. Grief and relief. We were excited to pull the guitars back to let the vocals and ambient textures shine. The clank and swing of the programmed drums create a resonance and energy that brings it all together.”
Effortlessly minimalistic in nature, Hovvdy is consistent in delivering stunningly layered instrumentals lead by melodically sweet, wistful vocals that haunt you and soothe you in equal measure; providing a plethora of influences from pop to hip-hop. All-in-all, ‘I’m Sorry’ is the oh-so-familiar nostalgia trip that Hovvdy never fail to contribute to this ever-expanding world of plentiful music that we’re currently living in. Unapologetically honest, inexplicably raw, and invariably delightful; I’m Sorry is yet another notable mark on the musical map — transcending above normality and welcoming us in to their world of authentic memories.
The work of Texas-born songwriter Anna Roenigk, Aka Born Again Virgin first caught out ear back in 2017 with her self-titled EP. Last year Anna made the bold decision to uproot her life, and relocated to London. Her new single, “Spider in the Snow”, is her first offering to largely be recorded in the United Kingdom, although with White Denim’s Greg Clifford adding drums back in Austin, Texas. The track is released today via her new label, My Little Empire Records, home to the likes of Pip Hall and Caroline Lazar.
Discussing the inspiration behind the track, Anna has suggested Spider In The Snow was influenced by Dean Young’s poetic collection ‘Fall Higher’ – “Hark Dumbass, the error is not to fall but to fall from no height“. As Anna further explains, she takes inspiration from the freedom that line implies, seeing it as being, “courageous enough to take a chance on something or someone because either way we are all going to fall, whether it’s from a height or tripping over our own feet”. Musically the track seems to be a louder, denser offering than Anna’s previous releases, citing influences from, “the theatrics of Rufus Wainwright to the rawness of 90’s grunge”. The track starts with a sedate, meander of guitar and a raw vocal sound, perfectly suited to Anna’s memories of a relationship that seems to be long gone. Then suddenly as the song seems to be walking a familiar path, it explodes into a wave of noisy guitars, as Anna pleads for closure, “I’ll be your spider in the snow, waiting for you, and if you love me let me go, let me fall from your fingertips”. Born Again Virgin showed the bravery to upend their life and pursue their dreams across an ocean, and here it seems to have brought fresh inspiration, excitement and quite possibly her finest release to date.
Scientists aren’t exactly sure how spiders survive the winter. Even in the coldest of climates, the arachnids seem to simply sit between the layers of snow and wait patiently for spring to come. Therefore it’s fitting that the central metaphor in Born Again Virgin‘s newest release– a ballad full of bitter patience and sombre desperation– would centre around this “Spider In The Snow.”
Holy Wave is an experimental dream-pop band originally from El Paso, Texas. After seeing a life-altering performance by My Bloody Valentine in 2008, the band moved to Austin to pursue their own vision of Texas psych, their sweet melodies dyed in carefully constructed noise. Over the course of four albums, the band have cemented themselves as a staple force in the international indie scene, with key performances at Levitation, Desert Daze, and nearly every psych gathering on the planet. They’ve toured the world, and shared the stage with heroes such as Slowdive, Spiritualized, Hope Sandoval and The Black Angels. Their body of work has received critical acclaim from Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound, Paste Magazine and countless others, and in 2020 they are prepared to release their latest body of work.
Hello, thank you for your support of Holy Wave! This is a band we have championed for years, and we have two announcements to share with you: The band just released their excellent new LP “Interloper”, and the band would sure love to be back on the road & playing these new songs on tour. 2020 had other plans, so Levitation is going to be bringing Holy Wave’s live show to you, via our Levitation Sessions series, Tune into Levitation Sessions at 5pm CT on July 25th to catch Holy Wave celebrating the release of their new album with a full live set, filmed and recorded at Mosaic Sound Collective. The show features tracks from their new album Interloper + choice cuts from their discography, and visuals by Drip Cuts!
Interloper sees the band adding new layers to their lush and mesmerizing songwriting style. Written about the duality between life at home and life on the road, it sees the band expanding on their most esoteric and thought-provoking themes.
“I’m Not Living in the Past Anymore” is a mantra about breaking the cycle of the mundane, “Escapism” is a dream-like meditation. “Interloper” serves as the centerpiece for this self-expanding record, asking, what happens when the world beneath your feet changes so much that you feel like a stranger in your own shoes? The band turns inward, to blissed-out moments on album opener “Schmetterling”, the saccharine haze of “R&B”, and the freak-out catharsis of live favorite “Buddhist Pete”.
Interlopersees the band adding new layers to their lush and mesmerizing songwriting style. Written about the duality between life at home and life on the road, it sees the band expanding on their most esoteric and thought-provoking themes. I’m Not Living in the Past Anymore is a mantra about breaking the cycle of the mundane, Escapism is a dream-like meditation.Interloper serves as the centerpiece for this self-expanding record, asking, what happens when the world beneath your feet changes so much that you feel like a stranger in your own shoes? .
The band turns inward, to blissed-out moments on album opener Schmetterling, the saccharine haze of R&B, and the freak-out catharsis of live favourite Buddhist Pete. With Interloper Holy Wave weaves together a contemplative tapestry that can serve as a road map for the diffident, a soundtrack to self-realization, or simply an invitation to escape.
Released on the Label The Reverberation Appreciation Society Released 03/07/20
Texas-born / Nashville-based singer-songwriter Lou Turner has crafted some kind of low-key masterpiece with “Songs For John Venn”, released a couple months back by the Spinster Sounds label. The album’s sonic picture is made up of Astral Weeks-y flute flutters, Hurley-worthy armchair boogies, garage-y rambles, and beyond. But however eclectic it gets, the album is held together firmly by Turner’s singular lyrics and perfectly breezy vocals. She can make even the most tongue-twisted of lines sound as natural as a conversation with friends, blending wry humor with piercing observations, stony wonderings with crystal clear vision. These tunes follow their own weird inner logic but remain altogether accessible for the casual listener—a neat trick, indeed. Conjuring up circles within circles and wheels within wheels, Songs For John Venn feels both mystical and earthy, both feet on the ground with its head in the clouds.
Lou Turner (aka Lauren Turner) grew up in Texas, playing music in school and at church. She remembers hearing her mother harmonizing along with everything—from commercials, to songs on the radio, to religious hymns. Her listening quickly expanded in high school and college from singer-songwriters like Dylan and Van Zandt to folk and jazz traditions from around the world. She says, “The spirituality I felt in music as a child is still there, but is far more mysterious and boundless, and simultaneously more grounded and rooted to contexts and histories. Spiritual jazz (specifically Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda) has become hugely important to me for this reason.”
Eventually landing in Nashville, Turner fell in with the underground indie/experimental music scene, in part through Chris Davis’ (The Cherry Blossoms) FMRL presenting series, and in 2018, she started deejaying at Nashville’s freeform radio station with her program Shout, Sister Shout!, highlighting music by under-represented women throughout time and space. As a solo artist and with her band Styrofoam Winos, Turner has opened for the likes of Simon Joyner (who offered a blurb for the record), Kath Bloom, Xylouris White, Josephine Foster, and many others.
Songs for John Venn was written during 2017-19, a period in which Turner began her day job in a library and became further inspired by libraries as creative, communal spaces “where we each have a little space carved out for ourselves and all of our particular interpretations can coexist and breathe together.” She researched John Venn, credited with creating the diagram in classification, and discovered that he too had grown up in a religious household and served as a priest before deciding to become a mathematician. Feeling a kinship, the symbol became an anchor for her work during this time. She says, “the theme exists on this record in form as well as content, and the backing artists make up the form of my Venn diagram.”
Official Video for Lou Turner’s “Widening Venn Diagram” on “Songs for John Venn”
The Fat Angel Sings 