William Ruben Helms is a Corona, Queens, NYC-born and-based African American music journalist, freelance writer, editor, photographer and founder of the DIY, independent music and photography site, The Joy of Violent Movement. Over the course of the past two decades, Helms’ writing and photography has been published in Downbeat, Premier Guitar Magazine (photography), Consequence, The Inventory, Glide Magazine.com (words and photography), Publisher’s Weekly, Sheckys.com, Shecky’s Bar and Nightlife Guide 2004, New York Press, Ins&Outs Magazine, Dish Du Jour Magazine, Aussie music publication Musicology.xyz (photography) and countless others, including his own site.
With The Joy of Violent Movement, Helms specializes in covering music with an eclectic, globe-trotting, and genre-defying perspective that’s deeply inspired by and informed by his birthplace and home, arguably one of the most diverse places in the world. Since its founding back in 2010, The Joy of Violent Movement can proudly claim readers across the US, Canada, the UK, The Netherlands, France, Australia, and several others throughout its history.
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Comprised of Christoffer Hein and Dracut Lugalzagosi, the Copenhagen, Denmark-based duo Mercyfox started collaborating together last year, and the result was a sound that drew from The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream and LCD Soundsystem — although their latest single “Dead White Doves” is a breakneck, rousingly anthemic and noisy track that manages to remind me quite a bit of The Jesus and Mary Chain and Radio 4 with a dance floor stomp; but underneath the surface, the song’s lyrics vacillates between hope and despair, and as the band explains “This is our best attempt at making a sunny as hell track. Even though weird and violent things are going on in the world, we mustn’t forget to party hard and spread loads of love in the sun.”
Earlier this month, I wrote about the Austin, TX-based punk quartet PLAX, and as you may recall, the band comprised of founding members Michael Goodwin, a member of the OBN IIIs and eeetsFEATS; Chris “Anton” Stevenson, a member of Spray Paint, Dikes of Holland and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth; Marley Jones, a member of the OBN IIIs and Sweet Talk; and newest recruit Victor Ziolkowski, a member of Skeleton and Nosferatu can trace their origins to when Goodwin approached his longtime friend Stevenston and current OBN IIIs bandmate Jones about the possibility of forming an unconventional, outsider punk band, inspired by Wire and Dawn of Humans. The band’s founding trio quickly went to work writing songs for a demo — they eventually wrote 9 — but they felt were still in need of a vocalist to complete the project. At the time Marley was collaborating with David and Victor Ziolkowksi, the founding members and frontman of Skeleton, a constantly evolving project featuring the Ziolkowski Brothers and a rotating cast of collaborators and friends. Stevenson and Marley then recruited Victor Ziolkowski, who then finalized the project’s lineup.
Last July, the quartet played their first live show with New Orleans punk act Patsy and they quickly followed that by playing with a number of national touring Texas-based bands including Crooked Bangs, Institute and Army and others — and building upon the buzz they were receiving, the band went on a January 2017 tour throughout Texas. And although Stevenson has recently relocated to Melbourne, Australia, the band has continued writing, eventually finishing their full-length debut Clean Feeling, which is slated for an August 11, 2017 release through Super Secret Records. And from the album’s first single “Boring Story,” the band seems to specialize in the sort of scuzzy, sneering, garage punk that would be be perfectly at home on Goner Records or on Castle Face Records, complete with slashing power chords and punchily delivered vocals.
The album’s second and latest single “Night Watch” will further cement the quartet’s burgeoning reputation for crafting scuzzy and sneering, garage punk; however, the song possesses a nightmarish, tense, piss, vinegar, whiskey and PCP-fueled fury reminiscent of Ex-Cult’sCigarette Machine and Negative Growth. And much like its predecessor, it’s a cathartic, mosh pit worthy, barn-burner.
Comprised of Thom Moore (vocals, guitar), Adam Della-Grota (guitar), Sam Barron (bass, keys), Jackson Love (keys, vocals) and Thomas Eagleton (drums, vocals), the Sydney, Australia-based indie rock quintet Wild Honey quickly emerged with their self-titled debut EP, an effort that was written and recorded by Moore almost entirely in his bedroom and featured lead single “Eye To Eye.” “Eye To Eye” wound up becoming one of the most played songs by an Australian artist on Triple J during the summer of 2015-2016 — and as a result, the band found themselves opening for the likes of several national and internationally recognized bands including The Delta Riggs, The Belligerents, Hinds and Twin Peaks.
Building upon a rapidly growing national profile, the Sydney-based indie rock quintet went into the studio to record their forthcoming, Jack Mofitt-produced, full-length debut album, and the album’s first single “Break Away,” serves as an anthemic call to arms for anyone, who feels like they’re going through the motions. Interestingly, the song finds the band effortlessly meshing classic alt rock, Brit Pop and contemporary indie rock as the song features jangling guitars, an anthemic hook consisting of enormous, arena rock friendly power chords and an earnest call to go out and work your ass off to make your dreams happen — and that there’s more to life than struggling to cover the rent and your bills while working a shitty 9 to 5.
Directed by Kansas Smeaton and Keane, the recently released video, echoes the song’s aspirational message and tone as it follows a dissatisfied and hopelessly bored advertising executive, who in a fit of frustration figuratively and literally breaks out of his boredom — and probably loses his job in an awesome, “take this fucking job and shove it moment.”
Over the past handful of years, I’ve written a handful of posts featuring the Cincinnati, OH-based, JOVM mainstay act The Afghan Whigs. Currently comprised of founding members Greg Dulli (guitar, vocals) and John Curley (bass) along Jon Skibic (guitar), multi-instrumentalist Rick Nelson and Cully Symington (drums), the band can trace their origins to when its founding trio of Dulli, Curley and Steve Earle founded the band in 1986, after the breakup of Dulli’s previous band, The Black Republicans. Interestingly, the band has the distinction of being one of the first bands that Sub Pop Records signed outside of the Pacific Northwest, as well as being one of the more highly-regarded and critically applauded bands of the early 90s, with 1993’s Gentlemen landing at number 17 on The Village Voice‘s Pazz and Jop critics list and 1996’s Black Love, landing at number 79 on the Billboard Top 200 — all while going through several lineup changes.
After the band’s initial breakup in 2001, the members of the band went on with other creative pursuits — with Dulli famously collaborating with Mark Lanegan in The Gutter Twins, his other post-Afghan Whigs project, The Twilight Singers and with a lengthy list of contemporary artists; however, the members of the band would occasionally reunite for a series of one-off shows and festivals sets that eventually lead to 2014’s Do To The Beast, which marked the band’s first proper release in over 16 years, and the band’s return to their original label home, Sub Pop Records. And while being one of my favorite albums that year — and one of the more forceful rock album of 2014 — the album’s material centered around Dulli’s long-held obsessions.
Released earlier this year, In Spades is the Cincinnati-based indie rock band’s second post-reunion album, and the album, which was produced by the band’s Greg Dulli reportedly finds the band emphasizing a decidedly populist, arena rock-leaning sensibility while retaining the urgent, dark and seductive sound they’ve long been known for; but with an underlying spectral vibe. ““It’s a spooky record,” Dulli remarks in press notes. “I like that it’s veiled. It’s not a concept album per se, but as I began to assemble it, I saw an arc and followed it. To me, it’s about memory — in particular, how quickly life and memory can blur together.”
Now, as you may recall, I wrote about the album’s first single “Demon In Profile,” a single that evokes the lingering ghosts of one’s life — but in particular, the electric touch of a lover’s skin against your own; that lover’s smell and taste, and the sense of irrevocable loss that permeates everything, once they’re no longer in your life. But interestingly enough, it may be the rare Afghan Whigs song that directly reveals a classic soul influence, as they paired their enormous sound with an explosive yet strutting horn line. The album’s second single “Oriole” featured Greg Dulli singing occult and death riddled lyrics paired with a lush and cinematic arrangement of acoustic guitar, xylophone and a soaring string section paired with a power chord-based anthemic, electric guitar-based hook — with the result being a song that meshes 60s bubble gum pop and 90s alt rock.
The Cincinnati, OH-based band’s latest single “You Want Love” was originally released by the New Orleans-based Pleasure Club on their second and final album together, and the Afghan Whigs’ rendition of the song features the song’s original vocal and songwriter James Hall — and interestingly enough, the song has become both a staple of their live set during their ongoing tour, and a tribute to the band’s Dave Rosser, who recently died after a battling colon cancer. As the band’s Greg Dulli has recently mentioned publicly, he and Rosser had been fans of the long defunct New Orleans-based band, and they had talked about covering the song for years; but they just never found the opportunity to put it on wax — until recently. Of course, once you hear the original, you’ll know why Dulli and Rosser dug the song so much; it sounds and feels much like it should have been a Whigs song.
Next week will begin another extended leg of touring, which will have the band in Europe throughout August, including a stop at the gorgeous Paradiso in Amsterdam and a handful of festival sets, followed by some extensive North American touring, which will have the band playing Brooklyn Steel on September 16, 2017. Check out tour dates below.
Comprised of founding trio Millie Duthie, Danny Southwell, Dan Hole who all met in 2015 while attending college. Quickly bonding over music, the trio formed the Brighton, UK-based band, Thyla. But with the addition of the band’s newest member, Mitch Duce, the newly constituted quartet found their sound. The quarter spent the better part of 2016 reimagining their sound and aesthetic, and then writing and recording new material, rooted around a distaste of the stale state of the British music industry — all while furthering Brighton’s growing reputation for producing some of England’s hottest, up-and-coming bands, including some you’ve likely come across on this site. Adding to a growing profile, the members of Thyla have played with the likes of Dream Wife, Luxury Death, Matt Maltese and Yonaka, and over the next few months, they will be opening for Husky Loops and Lazy Day.
“Pristine Dream,” the Brighton-based quartet’s latest single is a rousing and towering track that draws equally from early 90s Brit Pop, shoegaze and early 80s New Wave as the band pairs layers upon layers of shimmering, pedal effected guitars, thundering drumming and anthemic and arena rock-friendly hooks with Duthie’s ethereal and beguiling vocals; but while drawing from familiar and beloved sources, the up-and-coming quartet is an inspired, contemporary take on it.
Hannah Williams is a Bristol, UK-born and based singer/songwriter and soul artist, who can trace the origins of her own musical career to growing up in an extremely musical family; Williams’ father was a musician and minister at the local church, and her mother, recognizing that she had some talent, allowed Williams to join the church choir when she was 6. Unsurprisingly, like a a lot intensely musical homes, Williams learned how to read music before she could actually read words.
With the release of her 2012 full-length debut Hill of Feathers, Williams exploded into the both national and international scenes, thanks in part to the success of album single “Work It Out,” which received attention across the blogosphere and airplay on radio stations across the US, Australia and the European Union; in fact, at one point, “Work It Out” was the most downloaded song in Greece, and according to her label, Record Kicks Records, the video has — as of this point — received over 1.5 million plays on YouTube. Adding to a growing international profile, Williams has played sets at some of Europe’s biggest festivals including Shambala Festival, Valley Fest, Wilderness Festival, Cambridge Jazz Festival and Larmer Tree Festival,as well as some of Europe’s well-known clubs including Hamburg, Germany‘s Mojo; Manchester, UK’s Band on the Wall; Camden, UK‘s Jazz Cafe and others with the likes of Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings, Cat Power, and Charles Bradley.
Williams’ sophomore effort Late Nights and Heartbreak, which was produced by The Heliocentrics’ Malcolm Catto, and marked both the first time Williams has worked with Catto, as well as the first recorded output with her backing band, the Bristol-based soul unit, The Affirmations, comprised of James Graham (organ, piano and Wurlitzer), Adam Holgate (guitar), Adam Newton (bass), Jai Widdowson-Jones (drums), Nicholas Malcolm (trumper), Liam Treasure (trombone), Victoria Klewin (baritone saxophone) and Hannah Nicholson (backing vocals). And as you may recall, the album, which featured singles like the fierce, Dusty Springfield-like torch song “Tame in the Water” and psychedelic soul rendition of “Dazed and Confused” that managed to draw from equally from the original version written by Jake Holmes, Led Zeppelin’s legendary cover and The Temptations’ “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” as well as some of the most personal and heartfelt material I came across last year, was one of my favorite albums in 2016, decidedly taking the top spot on last year’s Best of List.
Recently, the Bristol-born and-based soul artist and her backing band have received greater international attention after renowned, smash hit producer NO I.D. convinced Jay-Z to use the hook of album title track “Late Nights and Heartbreak” for the superstar artist’s album title track “4:44,” making his track a personal statement of his infidelity in response to Beyonce’s Lemonade. Of course, as you hear on Williams’ “Late Night and Heartbreak,” the song focuses on infidelity but also on the narrator’s crippling and confounding inability to figure out their own desires, their fears of vulnerability and heartbreak and their deception both to themselves and their partner. But at the core of the song is something that the song’s narrator and the most people don’t want to readily admit — that it’s difficult to face yourself and your own life with the sort of unflinching honesty that you may have for others. And as a result of the song coming from a deeply personal and lived-in place, it packs an unexpected and devastating wallop, especially if you’ve been on either side of a troubled, deception-filled relationship.
Directed by Nick Donnelly, who has worked on videos for the Wu-Tang Clan, Martha Reeves and Akala and DJ Khaled, the recently released video for “Late Nights and Heartbreak” was filmed in Williams’ hometown and focuses on the sort of deeply troubled relationship at the heart of the song. As Williams explained to Complex, the video “depicts the realisation that sometimes the most burning love is for ones’ own passion, and when a human relationship gets in the way it will lead to heartbreak.”
Aerin Fogel is a Toronto, ON-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who may be best known for her stint as one-half of fuzz pop duo The Bitters, with Fucked Up’s, Young Guv’s and Bad Actors Records’ Ben Cook. The duo released critically applauded material through several renowned indie labels including Captured Tracks Records, Mexican Summer Records, Sacred Bones Records and Release The Bats Records, as well as festival appearances at SXSW, NXNE, and Woodsist/Captured Tracks Fest; however, Fogel’s newest recording project Queens of Swords finds Fogel specializing in sweeping and dramatic pop that aesthetically speaking nods at Siouxsie and the Banshees, PJ Harvey and others, but with huntingly ethereal melodies, as you’ll hear on her latest single off the project’s self-titled full-length debut, “Rise Instead.”
The recently released music video for the song, was recorded and directed by Danielle Aphrodite on grainy VHS and was devised as n ode to the stages of female empowerment; but it also manages to nod at the billowing and dreamy vibe of the song.
Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past few months, you may recall that the Connecticut-born, Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter Kat Leon initially developed a reputation for writing material that focused on her obsessions with death and the occult as one-half of the Los Angeles, CA-based indie electro pop act Sad Robot, with Long Beach, CA-born, Los Angeles, CA-based multi-instrumentalist Nick Perez. With both of her parents suddenly dying within months of one another, Leon plunged into a period of profound grief, an dafter taking much needed time to grieve, Leon started her latest, solo recording project Holy Wars, which is largely influenced by what was arguably some of the darkest days of her life; in fact, the Holy Wars project in many ways is a way to extrapolate the tumultuous feelings and thoughts she had during that period, and expressing it creatively — with the result being her debut EP Mother released last month and its follow up Father slated for release later on this year. And while both EPs are dedicated to her respective parents and possess material that’s — at points — dark and foreboding, it’s not completely depressing or nihilistic; in fact, Mother’s first single “I Can’t Feel A Thing” is complete, cathartic release paired with an anthemic, arena rock/hard pop-leaning sound reminiscent of Paramore — but there’s a an adult angst at its core, full of the bitter recognition that death is an inconsolable and permanent parting.
Mother’s second single “Orphan” was a slow-burner of a track that focuses on a rather embittering truth: that everyone you will ever know, care about and love will one day die, and that it’ll leave the survivors reeling from their losses, and trying to piece together their lives. Leon and her backing band pair that sense of reeling pain with a story and forceful, 90s alt rock-leaning song structure — quiet verses, stormy and loud choruses. And while being stormy, the song expresses a weary acceptance.
“Warrior,” the third and most recent single continues in a similar vein as its predecessors as it’s a rousingly anthemic song inspired by and written by the underdog, the downtrodden and the disenfranchised as a proverbial call to arms, focusing on recognizing one’s inner strength and resolve to fight back, and ultimately show their own innate abilities and powers.
Directed by Jeremy Cordy and Kat Leon, the recently released video stars Elijah Potruch as the brave, alter ego of the bullied CW Mead, and much like Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club in which the lines of reality and fiction become hopelessly blurred. To balance some of the dark nature of the song and the video, Leon envisioned the battle between “The Warrior” and his tormentors to be between kids that could have easily been cast in movies like The Sandlot, Stand by Me and Lord of the Flies, ending with a battle featuring confetti blood, a soccer ball mace, and cardboard swords that turn to metal. The video manages to continue Leon’s reputation for paring her music with inventive and symbolic visuals.
Comprised of founding members Cory Feirman (bass, vocals) and Dan Wise (guitar, vocals) with Will Schmeichen (drums) the Brooklyn-based punk rock trio Honey can trace their origins to when its founding duo met at Academy Records — at the time Feirman worked as a buyer, while Wise was a regular customer. As the story goes, Wise stopped by Academy Records and mentioned that he was looking for The Gun Club‘s Death Party EP, which happened to be the next record in the stack of recent arrivals that Feirman was pricing. The coincidence ultimately led them to realize that they had had more in common than a love of punk rock and punk rock records, and they began playing together not long after that. Interestingly, at the time Wise was a member of JOVM mainstays Psychic Ills and shared an occasional bill with Schmeichen, who was a member of Amen Dunes. Wise and Freirman recruited Schmeichen, who was interested in joining a more straightforward rock-leaning project.
Since their formation, the band has shared stages with the likes of Dead Moon, J. Mascis, Sheer Mag, The Men, Destruction Unit and others, while quickly developing a reputation for being one of the area’s rawest punk bands; in fact, with the release of 2015’s Love Is Hard, the trio received praise for releasing, in the words of Bryon Coley, “a great hard-edged slice of rock noise.” and with the forthcoming release of their sophomore effort, New Moody Judy, the Brooklyn-based trio hope to further cement their burgeoning reputation for blistering noisey rock. And unsurprisingly, New Moody Judy‘s first single “Dream Come Now,” manages to sonically reminds me of JOVM mainstays Ex-Cult and NOTS in the sense that the Brooklyn trio is equally primal, forceful — and perhaps more important, mosh-pit friendly.
The band has a September 12, 2017 show at Union Pool with NOTS, and it may be one of the highlights of the musical year.
Since their formation back in 1977, the Athens, GA-based The B-52s, their founding (and surviving members) Fred Schneider (vocals), Kate Pierson (vocals, keys), Cindy Wilson (vocals) and Keith Strickland (drums, rhythm guitar) have developed a reputation for an approach that draws from 60s garage rock, New Wave, post-punk and dance music, complete with the guy vs. gal, call and response vocals. Much ink has been spilled on them, so it won’t be very necessary to delve deeply into biographical detail; however, over the past few years, Cindy Wilson has embarked on a solo recording career that has managed to be an almost complete departure from her primary gig’s imitable and influential sound; in fact, earlier this year, I wrote about “Ballistic” off her Supernatural EP a single, which revealed that as a solo artist, her sound nodded at much more contemporary sources — i.e., the anthemic and trippy electro pop of Gary Numan, Tame Impala, Air and punk pop, complete with pulsating synths.
Much like the Supernatural EP, Wilson’s forthcoming full-length, solo debut Change was produced and engineered by PacificUV’s and Dream Boat‘s Sun Lyons, and continues her collaboration with some of Athens’ finest and most acclaimed, contemporary, young musicians including Easter Island‘s and Monahan’s Ryan Monahan, Ola Moon‘s and PacificUV’s Lemuel Hayes, and powerkompany’s Marie Davon. Change’s first single “Mystic” continues on a similar vibe as “Ballistic,” as the song is an icy retro-futuristic, dance floor-friendly blast of synth rock/New Wave that features Wilson crooning and cooing seductively, rather than her world-renowned belting and shouting from the mountains. And in some way, the material finds the New Wave/post-punk legend at her most mischievous and adventurous, as she pushes her sound into a new territory — while being a sincere and earnest exploration of contemporary sound and songwriting.
As Wilson explained to the folks at Stereogum, “‘Mystic’ was actually one of the last tracks recorded for the LP. It quickly became one of the band’s favorites and maintains its energy on the road. Lyrically, it’s about our personalities — how we’re all multi-dimensional in ways that we will never understand. We all have a hidden mystic quality if we can learn and trust to tap into that power. This song is about how we’re all trying to define ourselves and make sense of ourselves, yet there is an ineffable, indescribable quality to consciousness.”
