Back when he was still one-half of Clipse, Pusha-T dazzled listeners of the Virginia duo\'s mixtape series *We Got It 4 Cheap* by annihilating popular beats of the day. The project\'s sole criticism was that the production was already so good, it could carry anyone. *DAYTONA*, copiloted by hip-hop production genius Kanye West, upends that conceit, with contemporary boom-bap built from luscious soul samples that would swallow a lesser MC. With Pusha at the absolute top of his game, *DAYTONA* is somehow more than the sum of its parts, a fact the rapper acknowledges proudly on “The Games We Play”: “To all of my young n\*\*\*\*s/I am your Ghost and your Rae/This is my Purple Tape.”
Over the course of five stellar albums, Papercuts' Jason Quever has shown himself to be a top-notch song-writer and producer, equally at home with lush, baroque textures and more stripped-down arrangements. His skill in the studio has helped him build-up an enviable resumé recording, producing and playing with artists including Luna, Beach House, Cass McCombs, Dean Wareham/Dean & Britta and Slumberland's own The Mantles. Papercuts' new album "Parallel Universe Blues" reflects Quever's recent move from long-time musical home San Francisco to Los Angeles and all of the searching and self-exploration that accompanies leaving your home, your friends and your scene. The sound is intimate and close, nicely balancing the sonic concerns of the last few Papercuts records. The opening pair of songs "Mattress On The Floor" and Laughing Man" superbly sets the table for the rest of the album: perfect Spectorian pop songs echoed down through The Velvet Underground, LA's Paisley Underground, Spiritualized and The Jesus and Mary Chain. "How To Quit Smoking" is a wry bit of self-examination, fueled by some gorgeous guitar melodies and a terrific chorus. "Sing To Me Candy" amps up the fuzz - distant peels of feedback blending into tape loops to create a Opal-esque atmosphere. "Clean Living" is another "jab at self improvement and who it's really for" that could fit right on on Nico's "Chelsea Girl." "All Along St Mary's" is an epic breakup song that would be right at home on The Jesus And Mary Chain's "Darklands" - ideal late night/rainy day vibes. Never sacrificing song-writing for atmospherics, "Parallel Universe Blues" is a superb addition to the Papercuts catalog. Its themes of self-examination are as a timeless as the tunes themselves, the dreamy autumnal mood perfectly captured in the pastoral cover art. The album is a triumph and points to more great things in the future from Quever and Papercuts.
Four albums in six years is a breakneck pace for any major artist in 2018, to say nothing of a band as ascendant and ambitious as Imagine Dragons. And as with its predecessors, the songs that comprise *Origins*—coming just over a year after the blockbuster *Evolve*—aren\'t tossed-off lo-fi recordings. They’re big hits with big beats and big choruses and big production, made for the big venues that the Los Angeles/Las Vegas quartet regularly play. And if the pressures that come with mounting pop stardom aren’t enough to discourage a prolific streak, there’s always debilitating personal strife. But those hard times led to more songs, frontman Dan Reynolds tells Apple Music. **How did this album come together so quickly?** Some of these songs were written when we had weeks off on tour; some were written a month ago. I know there’s some bands that say, “Every three years we’ll put out a record and feed the fans, do a big tour, and then go away,” but we have the ability to continually feed the culture and fan base of Imagine Dragons, so why not do that? I grew up mainly listening to hip-hop and I loved the whole aspect of mixtapes—you could consume stuff from your favorite artists continually, and rock doesn’t do that. We kind of just get put there because we have a guitarist and because sometimes I sing a little screamy, but I really am more influenced by the culture of hip-hop, and of R&B music. **Is there one particular song that made you realize this was going to be a proper album sooner than later?** The last track, “Real Life,” really solidified things for me. Imagine Dragons has never been a love song kind of band, but this record is, like, 90% about love and relationships. I went through a hard divorce this year and we announced it to the world—then we never wound up signing the papers. We have a chaotic relationship, but a stale one seems worse to me. It sounds like such a clichéd thing to say, but going through heartbreak is devastating. Your whole world falls apart. **So you threw yourself into writing?** I had to be either listening to or creating music at all times, because I was so afraid of facing a quiet room. I just had this gaping hole that felt so desolate and scary, and music at least took me away from that. “Bad Liar” I wrote with my wife right before we separated, and it’s all about a dying relationship. Listening to it now that we’re back together, it’s kind of cathartic in a weird way. **Do you write differently now, knowing there’s a huge audience waiting?** Fortunately, we have a few things going for us. We’ve been pretty genre-less since the beginning, so whereas some bands get pigeonholed, we’re able to be all over the gamut. I love big melodies and poppy songs; the only rock I listened to was Rage Against the Machine and Minor Threat. I enjoy writing pop music and I want to write big pop songs.
The departure of founding member and guitarist Nick McCarthy appears to have refocused Franz Ferdinand—they\'ve traded guitar-driven indie anthems for synth-heavy disco-rock. High-energy comeback single “Always Ascending” opens the album with a climax of pulsating post-punk beats while polished dance track “Feel the Love Go” is fuelled by a filthy saxophone riff. Alex Kapranos’ velvet vocals breathe life into lyrics about the American healthcare crisis (“Huck and Jim”) and the self-serving side of altruism (“Lois Lane”). Well into their career, Franz Ferdinand sound as invigorating as ever.
“I wanted to write an album that could give justice to being someone complex in the pop world,” the surging French star sometimes known as Héloïse Letissier tells Apple Music. “Pop music is so much recently about trying to simplify narratives, and I was trying to complexify mine. Christine is really me taking your shirt and talking to you really up close. I just want to make sure you actually meet me.” If you have not yet made his acquaintance, you are about to: his second album under the name Christine and the Queens takes his alter ego a step further with a bolder iteration named Chris. “The first album was born out of the frustration of being an aberration in society, because I was a young queer woman,” says the singer (who announced in August 2022 that he was gendering himself in the masculine). “The second was really born out of the aberration I was becoming, which was a powerful woman—being lustful and horny and sometimes angry, and craving for this will to just own everything a bit more and apologize a bit less.” While the new album, also named *Chris*, undoubtedly works as an exploration of identity and sexuality and power—and as self-aware performance art worthy of touchstones like David Bowie and Laurie Anderson—it is also a supremely danceable collection of synth-pop confections that never gets overwhelmed by its messages. “Doesn’t matter” makes something as heavy as questioning the existence of God feel weightless; “Girlfriend,” featuring LA producer/DJ Dâm-Funk, likewise aims for both the hips and the head. “I don’t feel like a girlfriend, but I’ll be your lover,” he says. “The song is basically me trying to steal a bit from the patriarchy. It’s purely empowering out of defiance and wittiness.” That flair for the dramatic comes naturally to this artist. “I wanted to be a stage director before I became a pop performer, and writing a record is kind of like staging a huge play in my head,” he says. “This is a mysterious job I have.”
Theatricality has long been a part of Panic! At the Disco’s DNA. But following a 10-week run playing entrepreneur Charlie Price in *Kinky Boots* on Broadway, Panic!’s lone full-time member, Brendon Urie, has infused his unique brand of emo-pop with renewed song-and-dance-man vigor. Each track feels humongous, swirling with strings and shiny horns and topped with Urie’s now theater-tested voice. “Say Amen (Saturday Night)” and “(Fuck A) Silver Lining” are on par with PATD’s most grandiose hits, while “High Hopes” and “Hey Look Ma, I Made It” take inspiration for their brassiness from Urie\'s mother (“Mama said, ‘It’s uphill for oddities/Stranger crusaders ain’t ever wannabes’” goes one memorable line). Even the piano-and-strings ballad “Dying in LA” radiates enough charisma to reach the top deck.
As the singer for Mount Moriah, H.C. McEntire first gained attention presiding over the North Carolina band\'s earthy country-rock realm. And while her solo debut is just as rootsy, it finds McEntire adopting a more nuanced approach to her Americana inclinations. Her organic Southern charm still spills out from every corner, whether on the graceful, piano-based ballad \"A Lamb, a Dove,\" the chamber-folk feel of \"Wild Dogs,\" or the full-bodied forward momentum of \"Quartz in the Valley.\"
DOWNLOAD DIGITAL DIRECT FROM THE ARTIST: bodiesoneverest.bandcamp.com/album/a-national-day-of-mourning The infernal noise machine BODIES ON EVEREST in collaboration with Third I Rex & Cruel Nature Recordings will unleash hell this April with their brand new collection of noise-laden compositions and abrasive shrieks entitled "A National Day Of Mourning". The band labels its sound as "Dungeon Wave" — a caustic mix of drone, doom, noise and cursed psyche-sludge. BODIES ON EVEREST hail from Liverpool and Manchester and have spent the last few years playing intense live shows across the UK. The two distorted basses plunge the depths of ultra-low frequencies while the vocals lead the listener through the crushing monotony of modern life. 2015 saw the band release their debut — "The Burning" which solidified their uncompromising attitude and dedication to pushing the boundaries of bleak, punishing repetition. "A National Day Of Mourning" presents an invigorated band which has sharpened its sound in order to create a new record that’s even more corrosive, unsettling and unrelenting. When asked to present their new album, the band provided this opaque response: "... two bass players, one drummer, vocals and a board of electronics were all played at once and repeated back infinitely. This record is the very urgent and desperate result of an accident... Welcome to Hell.”
“I’m making pop records,” The 1975 frontman Matty Healy told Beats 1 host Matt Wilkinson. “When I say we’re a pop band, what I’m really saying is we’re not a rock band. Please stop calling us a rock band—’cause I think that’s the only music we *don’t* make.” It’s a fair comment: Thanks to their eclecticism and adventure, attempting to label The 1975 has been as easy as serving tea in a sieve. On their third album, the Cheshire four-piece are, once again, many things, including jazz crooners, 2-step experimentalists and yearning balladeers. What’s most impressive is their ability to wrangle all these ideas into coherent music—their outsize ambition never makes the songs feel cluttered. “I hate prog, I hate double albums, I hate indulgence,” said Healy. “I hate it when the world goes, ‘Hey, you’ve got our attention!’ and someone goes, ‘Right, well, if I’ve got your attention, how many guitar solos…’” Crucially, Healy’s lyrics add extra substance to—and bind together—the kaleidoscope of styles. On the neo-jazz of “Sincerity Is Scary,” he rails against a modern aversion to emotional expression. Broadly an album about love in the digital age, *A Brief Inquiry…* offers compelling insights into Healy’s own life. “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)” provides an unvarnished account of his heroin addiction, while “Surrounded By Heads and Bodies” draws on his experiences in rehab and “Be My Mistake” examines guilt and compulsion. “Honestly, you can look at your work and be like, ‘What did I do there that someone likes?’” he said. “Me, when I’m, like, really personal or really inward, really honest, that’s when I get the best reaction.” Introspection needn’t breed a somber mood though. From the tropical pop of “Tootimetootimetootime” to the spry electro-indie of “Give Yourself a Try,” this is an album full of uplifting, melodic rushes. “My favorite records are about life,” said Healy. “It may be a bit of a big thing to say, but I like the all-encompassing aspect of life: You can have these bits, the sad bits, but don’t leave the dancing out, you know what I mean?”
Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow,” the most chantable song of 2017, introduced the Bronx MC’s lively around-the-way-girl persona to the world. Her debut album, *Invasion of Privacy*, reveals more of Cardi\'s layers, the MC leaning forcefully into her many influences. “I Like It,” featuring Bad Bunny and J Balvin, is a nod to her Afro-Caribbean roots, while “Bickenhead” reimagines Project Pat’s battle-of-the-sexes classic “Chickenhead” as a hustler’s anthem. There are lyrical winks at NYC culture (“Flexing on b\*tches as hard as I can/Eating halal, driving a Lam”), but Cardi also hits on universal moments, like going back and forth with a lover (“Ring”) and reckoning with infidelity (“Thru Your Phone”).
Father John Misty’s fourth LP is not a happy one. *God’s Favorite Customer* was written during a two-month period when singer/songwriter Joshua Tillman was, as he sings on the glum title track, “on the straits.” Temporarily separated from his wife and struggling, he delivers a literal plea against suicide on “Please Don’t Die” and unravels in a hotel lobby on the twisted folk-pop song “Mr. Tillman.” Heartache has produced his most honest, anguished work yet—but even at its most morose, Father John Misty\'s music is still captivating.
Written largely in New York between summer 2016 and winter 2017, Josh Tillman’s fourth Father John Misty LP, 'God’s Favorite Customer', reflects on the experience of being caught between the vertigo of heartbreak and the manic throes of freedom. 'God’s Favorite Customer' reveals a bittersweetness and directness in Tillman’s songwriting, without sacrificing any of his wit or taste for the absurd. From “Mr. Tillman,” where he trains his lens on his own misadventure, to the cavernous pain of estrangement in “Please Don’t Die,” Tillman plays with perspective throughout to alternatingly hilarious and devastating effect. “We’re Only People (And There’s Not Much Anyone Can Do About That)” is a meditation on our inner lives and the limitations we experience in our attempts to give and receive love. It stands in solidarity with the title track, which examines the ironic relationship between forgiveness and sin. Together, these are songs that demand to know either real love or what comes after, and as the album progresses, that entreaty leads to discovering the latter’s true stakes. 'God's Favorite Customer' was produced by Tillman and recorded with Jonathan Rado (Foxygen), Dave Cerminara (Jonathan Wilson, Foster the People, Conor Oberst), and Trevor Spencer (FJM). The album features contributions from Haxan Cloak, Natalie Mering of Weyes Blood, longtime collaborator Jonathan Wilson, and members of Misty’s touring band.
Our favourite records are the perfect counterbalance of the considered and the superficial. Whether it’s Madonna, Talking Heads or Holger Czukay - we enjoy these artists in the background with friends or profoundly and alone. Virginia Wing both understand and embrace this concept fully as they return with Ecstatic Arrow, an album which finds them in a place of renewed strength, optimism and clarity. Recorded in Switzerland, in the family home of longtime friend and collaborator Misha Hering within the domesticity and gentle routine of communal life, the album represents a world as predisposed to solemn introspection as it is to blithe conviviality. Ecstatic Arrow borrows from the heterogeneous terrain of The Flying Lizard’s Fourth Wall, the exuberant technology assisted pop of Yellow Magic Orchestra and the playful sophistication of Lizzy Mercier Descloux’s Press Colour, arriving at the evergreen intersection of pop music and conceptual art. The resolute opener of Be Released and album centre point The Female Genius pair resonant Fourth World instrumentation with sonorous, loping drum patterns. Elsewhere, the sentimental march of single The Second Shift plays out like an after-hours ballad re-imagined by Wally Badarou and For Every Window There’s a Curtain is coloured by the blue-lit haze of an Eventide warped tenor saxophone. Three albums in, the voice of Alice Merida Richards is more compelling and expressive than ever. The glacial deadpan of previous records has given way to a more candid, self-possessed delivery, showing an appreciation for the humour and tragedy innate in the downtown Arcadia of Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley or even Lynn Goldsmith’s Will Powers. It’s with this voice that Richards outlines a simple ideality that fortifies the entirety of Ecstatic Arrow - inequality pervades, destructive behaviours are inherited and each subsequent generation has to reconcile the debts of its precursor - yet a space exists within ourselves and each other that houses a fact we must be reminded of - we have the ability to choose. Even in moments of frustration; the ascerbic eye-roll toward male entitlement, Glorious Idea or the world-weary Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day, there persists a joy for living that refuses to be confined. A depiction of a group finally at ease with itself, Ecstatic Arrow is a tribute to the internal momentum that quietly guides us toward our destination.
Ask any touring musician and they’ll agree: years spent on the road can be measured like dog years. Over time, the unpredictable nature of the lifestyle starts to become not only predictable, but all-consuming. On the band’s latest full-length Have You Considered Punk Music, singer Patrick Kindlon reflects on his time as a musician, taking a closer look at the bottomless drive to create that he’s spent his life exploring. “I’ve been doing something for a long time that I find really fulfulling, and I’m able to look at it with more clarity as time passes,” says Kindlon. “I can look at things from 10 years ago, or the reason I even got involved in this thing in the first place, with more perspective. The changes I’ve gone through as a person over time are interesting to me. I spend almost all my waking hours making things, and that’s a relationship I assumed was normal, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve started to understand that that’s not the way everybody is looking at life,” says Kindlon. His choice to reflect on his experiences isn’t a topic he discusses with ease - “It makes me sound like I’m 200 years old,” he jokes - but it’s one he does well, distilling personal, specific experiences into simple and relatable metaphors. “It’s about feeling very intensely about a thing you’re becoming increasingly aware the rest of the world doesn’t give a shit about,” says Kindlon. “It’s like how people feel about their cats: they love their cat, but you don’t give a shit about their cat.” Kindlon’s passion for making music is matched by his bandmates. While many bands have found themselves stuck in a rut after years of making music together, Self Defense Family’s unique structure ensures that the band never ends up at a dead end. Their tours aren’t mandatory, but instead an open invitation to whoever would like to come, whether that be three members or seven. Their recording process is equally as open ended; when one member gets creatively burnt out, another will take their place, often offering a new take on the song at hand in the process. This type of system can lend itself to chaos at times, but to the band, it’s worth it in the end. “While it can be frustrating to sift through a million ideas, at least you have a million ideas to sift through,” says Kindlon. The album was recorded in just under two weeks, the longest the band has ever spent in the studio at one time. As they often do, the musicians in the group who chose to participate in the project came to the studio completely unprepared and wrote the songs as they tracked them. “For us, recording is largely about first takes,” says Kindlon. “We don’t see recording as creating a product - we see it as capturing whatever’s going on at the moment, and if we mess it up, we’ll do better next time. This album is different for us in the respect that it’s a fairly polished final product.” It’s a perfect fit for a record about making records - that, simultaneously, the band hones in on their craft while dissecting the craft itself.
Quite possibly the photo negative of the New York Trio\'s difficult second album, *Twentytwo in Blue* features Sunflower Bean opening up and luxuriating in their prodigious talent. Key to its success is the positioning of Julia Cumming. She’s front and center here, taking the vast majority of lead vocals and dusting the band’s imaginative dream-rock with an unmissable star quality. She’s light and mesmeric on the album’s poppier moments (“I Was a Fool,” “Twentytwo”) and an impassioned presence when the trio dart confidently towards punky, political edges (“Crisis Fest,” “Puppet Strings”).
LUMP was born of good timing and predestined compatibility. It began one night in mid-June 2016, when Mike Lindsay – founding member of Tunng and Throws, and a prolific, Mercury prize-winning producer – was introduced to Grammy-nominated, Brit award-winning singer-songwriter Laura Marling after her show supporting Neil Young in London. On meeting, Lindsay and Marling discovered they had long been admirers of each other’s work. Lindsay had been busy for some months composing an intricate, ambitious new sound cycle. His compositional style had evolved over the course of years of musical experimentation with Tunng, and during his time spent producing other people’s records while living in Iceland. He had arrived at a remarkably visual, colourful sound – a heady blend of wonked-out guitars, Moog synths and pattering drums, set against droning, coiling clouds of flutes and voices. With the project in need of a lyricist and vocalist, Lindsay and Marling's meeting of minds seemed all the more fortuitous. He quickly invited her to step into his world, and a few days later they retreated into his subterranean London studio in order to unite their energies and create LUMP. That world turned out to be somewhere Marling felt instinctively at home. Inspired by early-20th-century Surrealism and the absurdist poetry of Edward Lear and Ivor Cutler, she wanted to slice through the apparent emptiness of contemporary life. Her resulting creation is a bizarre but compelling narrative about the commodification of curated public personas, the mundane absurdity of individualism, and the lengths we go to escape our own meaninglessness. Perhaps the most direct manifestation of the album’s concept is its central song, Curse of the Contemporary. A steady, pulsing bassline divines a road snaking off towards the horizon -– a sense of gazing out of a car window as mountains and palm trees rush by. Marling begins: “If you should be bored in California / I’m sure I’m not the first to warn you,” and as the song goes on, her words drip with ever more cynicism for the new age: “We salute the sun / Because when the day is done / We can’t believe what we’ve become / Something else to prey upon.” Elsewhere, opening track Late to the Flight tells of a man dreaming about his own death – or perhaps the death of his carefully curated persona – after being advised not to dress in a manner he might regret: “Don’t wear your smiley face T-shirt tonight.” The composers are keen to stress that LUMP is a creation that passed through them, and they look upon it parentally. It is their understanding that, now it has come into being, LUMP is the artist, and it will continue to create itself from here on. Lindsay and Marling will assist it as necessary.
UNIFORM DISTORTION was produced by Jim James and Kevin Ratterman at Louisville, KY’s La La Land, with Ratterman also serving as recording engineer. All songs were written by James, who is backed on the album by bassist Seth Kauffman (Floating Action) and longtime touring drummer Dave Givan, with backing vocals provided throughout by Dear Lemon Trees’ Leslie Stevens, Jamie Drake and Kathleen Grace. “My head feels like it is exploding with the amount of information we are forced to consume on a daily basis, and how that information is so DISTORTED there is almost no longer any tangible truth,” says James. “The name of my new record is UNIFORM DISTORTION because I feel like there is this blanket distortion on society/media and the way we gather our ‘news and important information. More and more of us are feeling lost and looking for new ways out of this distortion and back to the truth…and finding hope in places like the desert where I write this now...finding hope in the land and in the water and in old books offering new ideas and most importantly in each other and love.”
2016’s radiant *Honest Life* was a breakthrough for Courtney Marie Andrews. Here, the Arizona singer/songwriter’s pockmarked country finds broader, more reflective inspiration. There’s a hymn-like solidity to the album’s 10 songs, all telling stories of struggling people, as Andrews describes, “chasing that bigger life.” But she isn’t just in the business of chronicling sadness. The delicate piano on “Rough Around the Edges” belies its message of rugged self-acceptance, while the hearty “Kindness of Strangers” lets the sun pour through.
After breaking through with a batch of restless, itinerant songs on Honest Life in 2016, Courtney Marie Andrews longs for something more permanent on the follow-up. The Seattle singer spends much of May Your Kindness Remain exploring ideas of home and what it means to have roots, on 10 new tunes that are lusher and more expansive while leaving plenty of room to showcase her astonishing voice. Andrews and her band recorded May Your Kindness Remain with producer Mark Howard, whose voluminous credits include albums by Lucinda Williams, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris. Howard’s understated aesthetic suits Andrews, who pushes herself toward bolder musical arrangements and a fuller, more soulful sound than the traveling-woman-with-guitar feel of Honest Life.- Eric R. Danton of Paste Magazine
“This is a test. 1, 2, 3, 4, Error.” Intones the voice that leads you into the first track of Chlorine’s Loser Herds, before melting into looped strings and bass tones that make up the albums first track. Looped recordings and found moments form the heart of the album as samples bleed into and fade over each other in a shifting dreamlike collage. Melodic refrains hover over clattering samples and pulsing tones, and snatches of breath dart through shifting footsteps and almost percussion. The album closes in a kind of Basinskian night club before falling into itself and fading away. Chlorine is the moniker of North East visual artist and musician, Graeme Hopper. Utilising found sounds and field recordings as source material, he builds rhythmic layers of sound into rich textural tracks reminiscent of Susumu Yokota or Tim Hecker, but laced with his own brand of fuzzy warmth throughout, crafting Oneiric soundscapes out of disparate fragment that compliment his visual collages.
It was worth the wait for Colombian-American songstress Kali Uchis’s first full-length. A romantic collage of artists and sounds she’s encountered along the way—Tyler, The Creator and Bootsy Collins on “After the Storm”, and Gorillaz’ Damon Albarn on the surfy “In My Dreams”—the album draws on Latin pop (“Nuestro Planeta”), hypnotic R&B (“Just a Stranger”), and high-flying psych-rock (“Tomorrow,” with production from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker). It’s a sign of Uchis’ artistic vision that she pulled so many creative minds into a single body of work that sounds so distinctly her own.
“My natural go-to is sad songs”, Troye Sivan tells Apple Music. But the South African-born, Australian-raised, LA-residing pop star found himself with a problem when he started work on his second album. “I’d go into the studio and think, ‘What am I sad about?’ And it just wasn’t there. So I started writing these lighter, happier songs.” That has manifested as *Bloom*, a warm, upbeat record about love, sex, relationships, and self-discovery. “My My My!,” “Bloom,” and “Dance to This (feat. Ariana Grande)” are ecstatic, innuendo-laden dance-pop hits that glow with the brightness of flourishing love. Even the more solemn songs about difficult moments and breaking up are wise and wistful, rather than melancholy. On “The Good Side,” he gently sings to his ex-boyfriend over an acoustic guitar: “I sympathize, and I recognize/And baby, I apologize/That I got the good side of things.” *Bloom* is, above all else, an ode to the joys of nascent maturity. “I’m out of the teen angst now,” he says. “I’m 23 and I feel a little bit more that I know who I am. I’m super in love. I wanted to immortalize that, as much for myself as anyone else.” Beyond the album’s more dynamic sound—which he says he designed for “hopping around the stage”—what really makes *Bloom* so special is the intimacy behind it all. “Music has always been extremely personal and extremely cathartic and therapeutic,” says Sivan, citing Amy Winehouse as an example of using specificity to make songs more relatable. “That’s the most powerful way to speak to an audience: to just be real with them.”
How To Socialise & Make Friends anchors on the cycles of life, loss, and growth through resilience, and those moments of finding and being yourself. The title track and “Animal and Real” celebrate the joys of being an independent unit and knowing who you are without any influencing external factors, while “Anna” and “Sagan-Indiana” speak to the love you feel towards friends – the women who shape you and work together to find strength in numbers. “The Face of God” is a raw account of sexual assault and the feelings of isolation that follow, and album closer “I’ve Got You” showcases vocalist and guitarist Georgia Maq solo, singing of her late father’s battle with cancer and their close friendship that prevails, even in death. Throughout the nine songs on How To Socialise & Make Friends, it becomes clear that if their 2016 self-titled debut was the flame, this is Camp Cope rising from the ashes, stronger and more focused than ever. Camp Cope – Maq (vocals/guitar), Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich (bass) and Sarah Thompson (drums) – have become a force in music since forming in 2015. Their Australian Music Prize-shortlisted debut saw critical acclaim from all corners, including Pitchfork (8.0, “effusive, empathic, and emphatic”), Noisey (‘Best Albums of 2016’), Brooklyn Vegan (“one of the most promising debuts from a young new band this year”), and DIY (“it’s rare to find a band with the sheer songwriting ability and integrity of Camp Cope”), among others. They sold out two shows at Sydney Opera House as part of Vivid LIVE 2017, headlined Melbourne’s Weekender Fest 2017, and toured the US for the first time earlier this year, playing through 13 states with Worriers.
For some, Gaz Coombes is just the mutton-chopped likely lad who peaked with Supergrass mega-single “Alright”. Those people are missing out. The trio were perhaps Britpop’s most underrated band (the mature, but commercially modest, later releases deserve rediscovery) and their talisman’s solo career has continued to burnish a robust and quietly brilliant talent. *World’s Strongest Man* is Coombes’ most confident solo album yet—a satisfying coalition of *Here Come the Bombs*’ trippy chutzpah and Mercury Prize-nominated *Matador*’s melodic sure-footedness. Highlights abound (the Berlin electro shuffle of “Deep Pockets”; “In Waves” and its sinister groove), but this is a carefully layered record to play right through.
ON TOUR NOW www.perfectshapes.club In January of 2018, five months after the release of her debut album "Night Night at the First Landing," Madeline Kenney traveled from Oakland, California to the woods outside of Durham, North Carolina to record her sophomore album with a new collaborator, Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner. The choice was a conscious decision to explore new methodology in writing, recording, production and even genre. "Perfect Shapes" sees Kenney leaping headfirst into fresh and adventurous territory, largely eschewing conventional rock structures in favor of theme and melody. Its ten songs are full of surprises big and small - from vibrant synth lines to taut bass figures and subtly modulated vocals - that instead of feeling fussed over, reveal Kenney’s penchant for elegant and abstract composition. Kenney’s 2017 debut, "Night Night at the First Landing," was a guitar-centric rock album, produced by friend and collaborator Chaz Bear of Toro Y Moi. "Perfect Shapes" leans on the foundational pieces of "Night Night" - fuzzed-out guitar tones, coy wordplay and Kenney’s notably strong voice - but with an unconventional approach that allows them to bloom, reincarnated. "Perfect Shapes" marks Wasner’s first foray into producing another artist’s work and is permeated by the pair’s collaborative spirit. Both Wasner and Kenney play multiple instruments on the record, and engineered the session alongside Kenney’s touring percussionist, Camille Lewis. An eagerness to explore and experiment is apparent from start to finish, as Kenney and Wasner weave endless sonic curve balls into the arrangements. From the delightfully warped percussion on opening track “Overhead” to the burbling synths on the R&B-tinted “The Flavor of the Fruit Tree” and the left-field trumpet solo in “Your Art,” these rich and inventive ideas echo Yo La Tengo’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink mentality, as well as the surging soundscapes of Tame Impala and Wye Oak at their most impressionistic. Lead single "Cut Me Off" is a surprise of its own - the most pop-forward song Kenney has written yet. The dazzling arrangements form the perfect backdrop for the complex and open-ended questions at the core of "Perfect Shapes" - how do you love another when it hurts to do so? What is the physical limit to which one can carry the emotions of others? How does a modern female artist reckon with the expectations demanded of her femininity? Yet for all the notes of doubt and fear that Kenney raises, she delivers each song with confidence and nuance. “Bad Idea,” finds her balancing fragility as foil; later, “I Went Home” manages to evoke both frustration and affection in a single breath.
Armed with a freer, more collaborative approach to both writing and recording, Teleman's new 11-track album Family of Aliens, is a fluid collection of glorious pop-songs fluent with new electronic textures and united by the sharp lyricism, buoyant guitars and instantaneous melodies that are synonymous with Teleman. “We want to keep evolving and keep discovering. This band is one long journey for us, and we never want to stop developing and finding new ways of creating music. I'm always wanting to better what we've done before. To go deeper, to find something more beautiful, more catchy, more challenging, more interesting … just more.” It’s evident the much-loved quartet have evolved, cultivating and honing their sound as a very-welcome and anticipated proposition for 2018.
"Hitchhiking a ride to which galaxy exactly? Back to a light, but what light? Maybe the one that radiates the heat from an ancient sun, the one that blistered the back of Telemachus when he went looking for his dad after the latter had failed to return from the pub. Avi’s new record is the soundtrack of a parallel world; one of strange riches, of snortingly beautiful music displaying a Mycenaean loucheness. Something that is at once deeply unsettling and akin to a tropical pool you want to dive into after that last cocktail. You could even imagine Roxy’s Bogus Man would get a suntan out here. Avi is stage left, chief conjuror and bottle washer all at once; concerned with the minutiae of this other life he’s walked himself into. In Avi’s OtherWorld, old captains are microchipped, given a VR visor and set ashore to a deceptively smooth soundtrack. Somehow this music also suggests that the inner monologues in Hopper’s paintings have been thrust into a new plane(t)scape and made into mystery pop; with Avi playing at being both the sonic hunter and the hunted. It’s the inner pop sound that propelled Marvin Gaye to go to the provincial Belgian town called Ostend and play darts with the locals." – 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝐿𝒶𝓃𝒸𝒶𝓈𝒽𝒾𝓇𝑒 𝐹𝓊𝓈𝒾𝓁𝑒𝑒𝓇 "Much like Burial, Avi understands how to integrate familiar real-world elements to evoke the paranoia and fear at the heart of the 21st century experience. His ability to find connections and meanings in the darkness is his finest quality and for those with a wandering ear, OtherWorld is one of 2018's most underrated gems." - 𝒰𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑅𝒶𝒹𝒶𝓇 “His fourth album, where his sonorous Bowie/Billy Mackenzie tones navigate aqueous depths, synth grind and planetarium-exotica beats, possesses many chrimeric qualities.” - 𝑀𝒪𝒥𝒪 𝑀𝒶𝑔𝒶𝓏𝒾𝓃𝑒 “Avi’s brand new record OtherWorld is a limo-drive through the (strange) sunlit uplands of his imagination.” – 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝒬𝓊𝒾𝑒𝓉𝓊𝓈 “It's normally easier to argue that everything under the sun has been done before, but we'd say it's harder to argue that Mart Avi is like any other artist. And his new album OtherWorld is one of the best records we've heard in recent times, making him one of the hot new talents in the world right now." – 𝒢𝒾𝑔𝓌𝒾𝓈𝑒 “Estonian pop maverick Mart Avi is the embodiment of an enigma, creating a singular and complex artistic language that confounds the past and present, the familiar and the unknown.” – 𝒟𝓇𝑜𝓌𝓃𝑒𝒹 𝐼𝓃 𝒮𝑜𝓊𝓃𝒹 "And for one so in tune with the cultural zeitgeist and adept at using what the modern world has to offer, Mart Avi is an old spirit. You could also cast him as the Wilmington Man in code form, holding the door open to rock and roll’s past in a way that is utterly at odds with the increasingly inane (not to say mad), playlist and stats-driven conformities of the now. Yet, to twist again, this is the latest chapter in a hyper-modern affair, a timeless pop music that transcends the algorithmic idiocy of copying and points to new possibilities, new horizons." – 𝐿𝑜𝓊𝒹𝑒𝓇 𝒯𝒽𝒶𝓃 𝒲𝒶𝓇
Noname releases her highly anticipated debut album, Room 25. The 11-track album was executive produced by fellow Chicago native Phoelix and sees Noname return as a more mature and experienced artist. Room 25 has received early praise from The New York Times, calling her a "Full-Fledged Maverick" in their Critic's Pick review yesterday. Noname also recently opened up in The FADER's Fall Fashion issue about her life since the release of her 2016 mixtape Telefone. Rather than cash in on the hype around her extremely well-received 2016 debut mixtape Telefone, Noname took two years to play shows backed by a full band and refine her craft before releasing her follow up project. Over the last few months anticipation for her new album steadily built with Nonamedropping a stream of hints that its release was approaching. Telefone established Noname as one of the most promising and unique voices in hip hop, and with Room 25 she stakes out her place as one of the best lyricists in the genre and comes into her own as a fully realized artist as she achieves mastery over the style she developed with her first tape. Room 25 arrives a little over two years after Noname released her breakout mixtape Telefone. Upon its release, Telefone received nearly universal acclaim and propelled Noname to become one of the most exciting new voices in music. The intimate mixtape cut through the noise of an oversaturated musical landscape like few other releases have in the last several years. Since the release of Telefone, Noname has built an international presence, successfully touring the world and playing the top festivals. In 2017, she also touched the Saturday Night Live stage alongside collaborator and childhood friend Chance the Rapper to perform a song of his Colouring Book album. The New York Times called her SNL performance "a master class in poise, delivery, and self-assuredness." Noname (AKA Fatimah Warner) grew up in Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on the Southside of Chicago that famously attracted accomplished black artists and intellectuals of all types. Fatimah first discovered her love for wordplay while taking a creative writing class as a sophomore in high school. She became enamored with poetry and spoken word - pouring over Def Poetry Jam clips on YouTube and attending open mics around the city. After impressive appearances as Noname Gypsy on early Chance the Rapper and Mick Jenkins mixtapes, she gained a cult-like following online that helped set the stage for the life-changing release of Telefone. Coinciding with the album's release, Noname is also announcing her Fall tour, beginning next year in Detroit on January 2nd, she will play 19 shows across North America before concluding at Oakland's historic Fox Theater on March 15. Tickets for the tour will go on sale 9/21 at 10:00 AM local time and will be available at nonamehiding.com.
Far from the acoustic sensibilities of her earlier material, new album ‘How We Made It’ – set for release August 31 via Propeller Recordings – signals an arguably more “mature” sound, combining full band with folk-leaning string sections. Though the instrumental approach feels more expansive and fully fledged, the album is thematically inspired by Frøkedal's more "immature" personal traits, by her own admission – detailing “unfiltered, impulsive thoughts and actions fuelled by everything from fear, love and deep passion to red hot anger.” “When I started writing this new material, I was picturing different ages or stages in our lives when our vision gets a little blurred,” she says. “I wanted the songs (and the characters) to channel these critical moments when decisions are dominated by emotion and not necessarily by logic.” Includes singles: Treehouse, David, Believe, Cracks and "Pitchfork-supported" I Don't Care ‘How We Made It’ serves a worthy successor to Frøkedal’s Norwegian Grammy-nominated debut LP of 2016, Hold On Dreamer’, with her cumulative catalogue celebrated by the likes of Pitchfork, The New Yorker, The Fader, The Sunday Times, The Independent, DIY Magazine, CLASH, The Line Of Best Fit, Q Magazine and many more.
Adam Stafford's new LP 'Fire Behind the Curtain' will be released on double gatefold vinyl on Song, By Toad in May 2018. Empty oil tankers. A haunted sponge cake factory. A housing estate on the edge of an industrial wasteland. Adam Stafford's memories of his childhood home in Falkirk could easily be the premise of a coming-of-age horror movie, or a setting for a Celtic noir drama. Perhaps not entirely surprising for an artist whose very first film picked up no fewer than seven major awards, including two Oscar-qualifying festival accolades and a Scottish BAFTA. But Adam's prolific career in music and film have come out of a lifelong struggle with severe dyslexia and depression. Unable to write or read until the age of 10, he threw himself into music as a way of escaping the drudgery of lessons and bullying at school. Music was his passion and a subject he did well in despite not being able to read notation. This was also the time when Adam played in a number of punk garage bands, one of which was the ill-fated Chuck Norris Machine - an improv collective whose one and only gig in a biker's club was so loud, it earned them a lifetime ban. After the trials of school years, Stafford's film career happened by chance. A friend making a documentary asked him to write a soundtrack and offered to return the favour by producing and shooting a short film. The Shutdown was filmed in one night with the budget of £50 for petrol money. It ended up doing the festival circuit for two years. To date`Adam Stafford's amassed an impressive body of work in both music and film. His numerous achievements include a Scottish Album of the Year-nominated solo album Imaginary Walls Collapse, video direction of The Twilight Sad's 'Seven Years of Letter' and an experimental tape-collage Miniature Porcelain Horse Emporium. Famed for his mesmerising performances on stage, he's played alongside Warpaint, The Twilight Sad, Norman Blake, King Creosote and Ela Orleans. Recently, Stafford has been leaning towards more experimental compositions. Reverse Drift (2017) is an art presentation comprising of 24 photographs and a single 40-minute improvised track. The same year he released jarring lo-fi synthesiser/Gamelan configurations on a 3-track EP, Torments Through Supernatural Flogging. Recorded in the Song, by Toad HQ, The Happiness Hotel, the latest addition to the Adam Stafford opus is Fire Behind the Curtain. The neoclassical L.P. is a "testament of hope" in his battle against depression. It was written over an eight- year period and inspired by Adam's love of Meredith Monk, Michael Gordon and US Minimalism. Adam gives a preview of his latest avant-garde musical expedition: "Choirs yelp and screech, beatboxing courses through cosmic k-holes and guitars sound like saxophones trapped deep in the wasp-machine."
The final part in a trilogy of LPs that started with Dreamlands in 2012 (wide-eyed, naive beginnings introducing listeners to the world the records inhabit), followed by Distractions three years ago (what happens while you're heading towards a destination, the unknowns, the unexpected outcomes), the songs that comprise Deaths are collectively about the act of finishing, an ode to 'the ending'. Creating this album was a working research project embodying what is sometimes the hardest part of musical endeavour: completing a record. Making a new album is always daunting, but when all band members also have full-time jobs and other commitments it can also seem logistically impossible. Then there is the nagging, unattainable perfectionism that can draw out a record for months or even years - an experience that didn't bear repeating. When is something finished? Is finishing necessary to move on? The album was created and facilitated through a series of deadlines. The recording studio was booked before any songs had been written. Having a deadline in advance allowed for productive freedom through limitation and finite time: five months to write the album, that was it. This meant meeting every week to write no matter how many members could make it, filling in on each other's instruments (reminiscent of how side-project Monotony came about: writer's block in a Sauna Youth practice - removing yourself from your role in a band removes the old expectations) and using automatic writing processes. The limited time didn't allow for much reflection and overworking. Placeholders became final tracks through committing to songs at early stages, keeping them immediate. The album is site and time specific - those months in an archway in Peckham, which live on through samples including amp interference from trains passing overhead. It's also very much of this specific point in history, influences, and band members' lives. This process created a tension through trusting decisions and not questioning what was produced. The 12 tracks touch on political rhetoric, artistic legacy, action and passivity, work and leisure, and, of course, distraction, referencing many musical genres in the process while never leaving punk's orbit. Creative living becomes more gruelling and endless than the 9 to 5 on 'Leisure Time', how freelance living and having multiple jobs both result in no free time. Being in a band is leisure time, but can be a lot of work. Our lives should afford us with time, but we fill it with activity. 'No Personal Space' looks at the cyclical nature of music, referencing 'New Rose' - the first single by a British punk band - via a drumbeat and lyrics, exploring the enclosure of the genre; a blown out recording of practising constantly interrupts the band. 'Percentages' was written at a point of political and social upheaval and problematizes the use of numbers as a form of proof. Whole groups of people have been reduced to statistics for political reasons, and people use and manipulate statistics to prove any point they want. 'In Flux' is about whatever is opposite to creativity, what kills it dead, the communication of a song or a piece of art can kill it, even trying to see an idea through to its conclusion can be what kills it. The pure pop number 'Laura', according to Jonah Falco who mixed the record, sounds like "The Desperate Bicycles went to graduate school in the fields of Salisbury while being yelled at by two sides of their conscience, oddly enough, telling them the exact same thing." 'Problems' - a former Monotony song - reduces the punk song to its essential elements, aiming to sound like being inside a brake factory and repeating 'Problems' until it has rendered the word completely meaningless. The album ends with a wild and playful rejection of patriarchy and a frustration with those who uphold it either willingly or through inaction in the form of the unhinged Theatre 83. It's like English music hall meets 'We're A Happy Family' by The Ramones. Like the previous two albums, Deaths includes writing put to music. 'Swerve' and 'The Patio' are extracts from a short story written by band member Ecke about the murder of an artist whose estate is overseen by her ambitious sister, and is read by writer and frontperson of Marcel Wave, Maike Hale-Jones. Samples are as important as they ever were - this time including the aforementioned electrical interference, recordings of practice and YouTube videos of lawnmowers and cafe noise that people (including members of the band) listen to while working to distract their mind in order to focus. An album once finished is frozen in time, solid and no longer resistent or adaptive to outside forces. Does the difficulty to find an end come from the genre, from punk's revisionist impulse, redoing the same thing over and over? Do we avoid an ending because playing in a band is a distraction from everyday life?
