Category: indie rock

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Darkly Seductive and Soulful Visuals and Sounds of The Afghan Whigs’ Newest Single “Demon In Profile”

Currently comprised of founding members Greg Dulli (guitar, vocals) and John Curley (bass) along with Dave Rosser (guitar), Jon Skibic (guitar), multi-instrumentalist Rick Nelson and Cully Symington (drums), the Cincinnati, OH-based septet The Afghan Whigs can trace its origins to when its founding members — Dulli, Curley and Steve Earle (drums) founded the band in 1986 after the breakup of Dulli’s previous band The Black Republicans. Curley introduced Dulli to Rick McCollum (guitar), a frequent jam partner, who had developed a reputation across the Cincinnati scene for use of effects pedals. With their initial lineup finalized, Dulli has publicly described the band as intending to be a cross between The Band, The Temptations and Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

Although the band has gone through several lineups, including a lengthy breakup and a recent reunion, the Cincinnati-based band has the distinction of being among the first batch of 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, which landed at number 79 on the Billboard Top 200, while being critically praised for a sound that reportedly drew from 1970s Rolling Stones while setting themselves apart from the rock music being released that year.

After their breakup in 2001, the members of the band went on towards other creative pursuits — with Dulli frequently and famously collaborating with Mark Lanegan and others; but after reuniting for a series of festival tours, the band released 2014’s Do To The Beast, which marked both the band’s first proper release in over 16 years and the band’s return to Sub Pop Records. And while arguably being one of that year’s most forceful albums rooted around Dulli’s angst and bile-filled lyrics, evoking the bitter, lingering and fucked up memories of a relationship gone terribly sour; but while also focusing on Dulli’s long-held obsessions.

In Spades, the band’s forthcoming album is slated for a May 5, 2017 release through Sub Pop Records and the album, which was produced by the band’s Greg Dulli reportedly finds the band at their most soulful and urgent and while being darkly seductive, emphasizing a pop leaning sensibility. And much like their previously recorded work, the material manages to be veiled. “It’s a spooky record,” notes Dulli. “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.” And as you’ll hear on the album’s first single “Demon In Profile,” the song evokes life’s lingering ghosts — the electric touch of a lover’s skin, their smell and the sense of loss and confusion that permeates everything once a person is no longer in your life, and how at times its inescapable, that letting go seems impossible and unfeasible. While being one of the more soulful tunes the band has released, thanks in part to the horn section, its one of the sexiest yet anthemic songs they’ve released in some time.

The recently released video possesses a dream like logic as it follows several characters haunted by both their demons and their pasts in various ways — but spending the most amount of time on a fat, washed up, weary and arrogant pop star, getting ready to perform before a crowd of teenyboppers. But is it the present? Or is it a glorious past that of wild success, drugs and women that fuel this fantasy? And it ends suggesting that it’s main character is stuck within some uneasy, never-ending, dread-filled nightmare.

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

 

Currently comprised of its Riga, Latvia-born, Brooklyn, NY-base founding duo Kerry Kaleja and Eric Jayk and recent recruits Rebecca Silber (bass) and Luca Bertalgia (drums), the Brooklyn-based glam rock act Astra the 22s can trace their origins back to 2011 when Kaleja and Jayk first met. As the story goes, Kaleja was looking for guitar lessons and stumbled onto Jayk’s Craigslist ad. Interestingly, at the time Jayk was a touring member of Wildstreet.

Three years later, Kaleja and Jayk started collaborating full-time, writing and recording music that drew from an eclectic set of influences including The Kills, Michael Jackson, Nine Inch Nails and Blondie among others. And with the release of their 2014 debut EP Blue Venom, the duo received attention across the Baltic region, playing at Vilnius Music Week, the Gaizin Kalns Festival and the KLANG! Rock Festival, and performed at the Gold Microphone Awards, one of Latvia’s biggest music award shows. Although both Kaleja and Jayk relocated to Williamsburg last year, where they recruited the band’s newest members their debut EP Blue Venom and their forthcoming sophomore EP Paris Love were primarily written while the band’s founding duo were living apart with one member in Riga and the other in Brooklyn; however, the band’s newest material may be the most self-assured and arena rock friendly work they’ve completed to date while the material thematically explores sex, narcissism love, art and war on a personal and global level.

The EP’s latest single, EP title track “Paris Love” is a sensual and swaggering song featuring an enormous, arena rock friendly sound — power chords upon power chords, propulsive and forceful drumming, sultry vocals and a rousingly anthemic hook. Structurally, the song manages to draw from radio friendly, 90s grunge and electro rock — think of Garbage, Nine Inch Nails and others –as quiet verses lead the way for the aforementioned anthemic hooks but with a sleek yet unfussy, contemporary sheen.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Originally founded in 2009 as a duo by founding members Sarah Kinlaw and Bryan Keller, Jr., the Brooklyn-based indie rock act SOFTSPOT has gradually evolved into a quartet of friends and fellow musicians with a history of collaborating with each other and wild, almost unfettered creativity; in fact in 2012, Kinlaw and Keller recruited long-time friends and renowned musicians Blake Bateh, a member of JOVM mainstays Bambara (drums), who joined the band for the recording of MASS and Jonathan Campelo, a member of Pill (synths), who joined the band during the tour to support MASS.

Slated for an April 7, 2017 release through Arrowhawk Records, the label home of Bambara, Cinemechanica and White Laces, Clearing is the first recorded effort featuring the band’s current lineup and the album finds the band refining their sound and songwriting approach. Now, if you had been frequenting this site for a while, you may recall that I wrote about Clearing‘s first single “Abalone,” a spectral yet tense and urgent song that featured a tightly syncopated rhythm section, shimmering guitar lines and twinkling synths paired with Kinlaw’s gorgeous and ethereal vocals. The album’s second and latest single “Heat Seeker” continues in a similar vein as its predecessor but manages to sound as though it draws from New Wave, 80s synth pop and prog rock as the band pairs slashing guitar attack with propulsive metronomic-like drumming, Kinlaw’s plaintive and ethereal vocals, twisting, turning and shimmering synths and a soaring hook within a gently morphing song structure. And much like “Abalone,” Clearing‘s latest “Heat Seeker” possesses a hauntingly spectral quality but there’s an underlying tenseness at its core, stemming from the difficulties and frustrations in attaining true and lasting connection with others, while revealing a song with a novelistic approach to its narrator’s psychological makeup.

 

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Over the course of the past couple of years, you’ve likely come across a handful of posts on the Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstay post-punk act The Harrow. Deriving their name from a name of a device used to punish and torture prisoners in the Franz Kafka short story “In the Penal Colony,” the band can trace a portion of their origins back to 2008 when its founding member Frank Deserto (bass, synths and electronics) started it as a solo recording project that expanded into a full band in 2013 when Deserto recruited Vanessa Irena (vocals, synths and programming), Barrett Hiatt (synth, programming), and Greg Fasolino (guitar) to flesh out the project’s sound. As a quartet, the Brooklyn-based act released the “Mouth to Mouth”/”Ringing the Changes” 7 inch and their full-length effort Silhouettes to critical praise across the blogosphere including The Deli Magazine, The Big Takeover, Impose, AltSounds as well as this site for a sound that is deeply indebted to The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, and others —  although with Silhouette, the material, which was mixed by friend and frequent collaborator, Automelodi’s Xavier Paradis revealed a band that had been subtly experimenting with and expanding upon their sound, as their sound took on a bit of an industrial feel, as though nodding at Depeche Mode and New Order.

Up until relatively recently, some time had passed since I had written about them; however, in the last few weeks, the band announced that they will be releasing a remix album Points of View, which would be comprised of remixes, re-workings and re-imaginings of the material off Silhouettes by various friends, collaborators and associates as part of a “living” album that will grow as they receive additional contributions to the album.  And fittingly, the album’s first single was Xavier Paradis’ propulsive, dance floor-friendly remix of “Kaleidoscope” in which industrial clang and clatter and tweeter and woofer rocking beats are paired with the original’s shimmering guitars and Irena’s ethereal vocals — and as a result, the remix retained the spirit and mood of the original, while being a subtle new take.

Interestingly enough, if you had been following the site since the early days, you may recall that I wrote about the Brooklyn-based synth pop duo Azar Swan. Comprised of singer/songwriter Zohra Atash, who was a touring vocalist with A Storm of Light and multi-instrumentalist and producer Joshua Strawn, who was a member of Blacklist, Vaura, Vain Warr and others, the duo’s current project can trace its origins to when Atash and Strawn ended their previous project Religious to Damn in 2012. And much like it, The Harrow it had been some time since I had written about them — that is until now, as the duo remixed The Harrow’s “Secret Language,” giving an already stark minimalist song an even moodier, retro-futuristic John Carpenter soundtrack vibe.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Initially members of Swedish melodic punk/dark pop collective Vånna Inget, Karolina Engdahl (vocals/bass) and Tommy Tift (guitar) can trace their latest musical project, the Malmo, Sweden-based post-punk quartet True Moon to a mounting frustration with what they felt was an increasingly sanitized and homogeneous Scandinavian music scene. “Karolina and I are bored with the Swedish music scene at the moment,” Tift explains in press notes. “It feels like everyone has the same blueprint, like there’s an industry rulebook now for how bands must sound. We wanted to do something different. With the last Vånna Inget (2013’s critically acclaimed, Swedish Grammy-nominated Ingen Botten) we got more and more into dark wave and new wave, so we felt we wanted to explore than more.”

“We were listening to artists such as Joy Division, Killing Joke, Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Sisters of Mercy, The Mission and early Cure,” Tift notes. “There is a purity and honesty and integrity to that music that’s missing from the current scene. Those bands weren’t making music to be pop stars or rock stars, it is pure expression and pure art, and that’s the aesthetic we were pursuing.” Once the duo settled on the band’s overall aesthetic, they recruited  Frederik Orevad (drums) and Linus Segerstedt (guitar) to complete the band’s lineup.
The Malmo, Sweden-based quartet’s self-titled full-length debut was recorded by producer Jari Haapalainen, known for his work with Ed Harcourt and The (International) Noise Conspiracy live to analog tape at Tift’s Studio Motion with the producer and band actively aiming for a raw, unpolished feel and sound reminiscent of Martin Hannet’s legendary work with Joy Division — and in a similar fashion to those legendary recordings, the members of True Moon recorded their debut album’s material in single takes, which gives the album’s material a forceful immediacy; in fact, Engdahl completed the vocals for the album in about 90 minutes.
Slated for an April 28, 2017 release through Lovely Records, the band and their label recently released the album’s first single “Sugar,” and while sonically speaking the song — to my ears, at least — sounds like what would happen if Siouxsie and the Banshees had covered Joy Division, complete with a roaring and rousingly anthemic hook, and an undeniably forceful, almost primal and explosive “you-were-there” immediacy that sets them apart from they countrymen and from their counterparts internationally.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Captain Casanova, is an Aarhus, Denmark-based indie rock trio, who have developed a reputation across Scandinavia, Northern Europe and Central Europe for a busy touring schedule with some of each region’s up-and-coming bands — and for a sound that clearly draws influence from 90s grunge rock and Brit Pop as you’ll hear on the band’s anthemic, mosh pit friendly, barn burning single “Futures.” Interestingly, along with bands like Love Talk, Pacific Swell and John Alcabean, Captain Casanova have helped to establish a burgeoning Danish indie rock scene that’s seeing international attention across Europe and the UK.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the 90s Grunge Rock-Inspired Sound of Copenhagen’s John Alcabean

With the release of last year’s Real Time Fiction EP, the Copenhagen, Denmark-based indie rock trio John Alcabean received attention across both Scandinavia and the UK for a sound that draws from the 90s — in particular anthemic Brit Pop and grunge; in fact one website had aligned them with contemporary indie rock acts like Wolf Alice and Drenge among others, despite the fact that the trio hadn’t had a ton of live gigs under their belts.

However, the members of the Copenhagen-based trio are currently in the studio working on their much-anticipated full-length debut and while the album’s first single “Need Comfort” will further cement their growing reputation for anthemic and scuzzy grunge-inspired indie rock, the single manages to be incredibly radio-friendly yet contemporary take on a familiar sound.

Directed and shot by Hans -Jørgen Hersoug, the video for “Need Comfort” is shot in a film noir-like black and white and features a disorientating amount of superimpositions and distortions of the band looking at the viewer with a particularly Scandinavian yet totally familiar brooding seriousness, along with the band’s frontman headbanging while playing his guitar.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Dark Surfer Punk of Denmark’s Pacific Swell

Comprised of Nicklas Sørensen, Emil Østedgaard, Adam Peleg and Daniel Brodersen, Pacific Swell is a Grenaa, Denmark-based indie rock quartet Pacific Swell convenes somewhat infrequently as its members spend most of their time in Klitmoeller, known as Cold Hawaii — […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Trippy Visuals and The Jesus and Mary Chain-Inspired Sounds of Aarhus, Denmark’s Love Talk

Currently comprised of Casper Iskov (vocals), Mathias Risager (drums), Jens Hyldahl (bassist) and Andreas Frandsen (guitar), the Aarhus, Denmark-based  indie rock quartet Love Talk can trace their origins to when its co-founders Casper Iskov and […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Winnipeg-based Indie Rock Act Living Hour Performs Gorgeous New Single Live

Living Hour is a Winnipeg, MB-based indie rock quartet that can trace their origins to when they formed during basement jam sessions in which they would write dreamy and cinematic songs inspired by the enormous prairie skies that surround their hometown. And unsurprisingly, the sound that the Canadian quartet developed manages to draw from shoegazer rock, dream pop and chillwave among other genres. Now, if you had been frequenting this site back in 2015, you may recall that I wrote about “Seagull,” a single that reminded me quite a bit of Mazzy Star‘s “Fade Into You.”

The Canadian quartet is currently in the middle of a Stateside tour, including a lengthy stop in Austin for SXSW — in fact, I think at this moment they’re playing at the Force Field PR Showcase; and interestingly enough, just before the band embarked on their tour, they recorded a live version of an ethereal and gorgeous new single “Inside.” And much like “Seagull,” the new will further cement the quartet’s reputation for a sound that draws from shoegaze and dream pop paired with ethereal and haunting vocals, that possesses a cinematic quality; but unlike its predecessor, the band pairs a gorgeous and mournful horn arrangement at the song’s cathartic coda.

The live footage of the song was shot by Jelly Fish Jam during a recent performance at the West End Cultural Center in Winnipeg Manitoba, and as you can see, the band expands to a septet to evoke an even larger, more lush and enveloping sound.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of 21-year-old Sidonie B Hand-Halford, her 18-year-old sister Esmé Dee Hand-Halford and their 17-year-old best friend Henry Carlyle Wade, the Halifax, UK-based indie rock trio The Orielles have developed a reputation as one of Northern England’s “most exciting local bands of recent years” and their hometown’s best-kept musical secrets, the trio can trace their origins to when the Hand-Halford sisters met Wade at a house party and bonded over their shared love of Stateside 90s alt rock and indie rock.

With a reputation that had preceded them, Heavenly Recordings head Jeff Barrett caught the band opening for their new labelmates The Parrots in late 2016 and immediately signed them to the label. This year may be a huge year for the young British indie rockers as they played at the Heavenly Weekender Festival at Hebden Bridge last year, and they will be embarking on their first UK/EU tour next month; but in the mean time, the trio’s Heavenly Recordings debut single “Sugar Tastes Like Salt” is an expansive 8 minute track that draws influence from psych rock,  New Wave and post-punk while lyrically the band makes references to several Quentin Tarantino movies including Deathproof and the whole thing is held together by a sinuous and funky bass line that sonically reminds me of The Mallard’s incredible Finding Meaning in Deference. And much like The Mallard‘s last album, “Sugar Tastes Like Salt” possesses a surprising self-assuredness that belies their youth. It’s an impressive and forceful release that has me excited to hear more from them.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Mark Lanegan is a Ellensburg, WA-born, Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, best known as the frontman, and founding member of  Seattle-based grunge rock pioneers Screaming Trees, and for collaborating with an incredibly diverse array of artists and bands throughout his lengthy career including Nirvana‘s Kurt Cobain on an unreleased Lead Belly cover/tribute album recorded before the release of Nevermind. The Ellensburg-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter was also a member of renowned grunge rock All-Star supergroup/side project Mad Season with Alice in Chains‘ Layne Staley and Pearl Jam‘s Mike McCready. After Screaming Trees broke up in 2000, Lanegan joined Queens of the Stone Age and is featured on the band’s last five albums — 2000’s Rated R, 2002’s Songs for the Deaf, 2005’s Lullabies to Paralyze, 2007’s Era Vulgaris and 2013’s . . . Like Clockwork. He’s also collaborated with The Afghan Whigs‘ Greg Dulli in The Gutter Twins and has collaborated with former Belle and Sebastian vocalist Isobel Campbell on three albums. Additionally, he has contributed or guested on albums by Melisa Auf der Maur, Martina Topley-Bird, Creature with the Atom Brain, Moby, Bomb the Bass, Soulsavers, Greg Dulli’s The Twilight Singers, UNKLE and others. And although he’s managed to be rather busy throughout the years, Lanegan has also developed a low-key solo career in which he’s released nine studio albums that have been critically applauded and have seen a fair amount of commercial success.

Lanegan’s 10th full-length effort Gargoyle is slated for an April 28, 2017 release through Heavenly Recordings and interestingly enough, Lanegan can trace the origins of the album’s material and sound back to early 2016. At the time, the renowned grunge rocker was working on some ideas for what might be a new solo album, when he received an email from a friend and collaborator, the British based musician Rob Marshall, who he had first met several years before when Marshall’s former band Exit Calm had supported Soulsavers, a band that Lanegan had been fronting. The email thanked Lanegan for his participation on an album that Marshall had recorded with his newest project, Humanist while offering to write music for Lanegan to return a favor to the grunge pioneer. As Lanegan recalls in press notes, his response was along the lines of “Hey man, I’m getting ready to make a record, if you’ve got anything? Three days later he sent me 10 things… !”

Early on in the writing process, Lanegan had written “Blue Blue Sea,” a rippling mood peice that he thought and felt would be more fruitful direction for the songs on the album. “It’s almost always how my records start,” the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter explains in press notes. “I let the first couple of songs tell me what the next couple should sound like, and it’s really the same process when I’m writing words. Whatever my first couple of lines are, tell me what the next couple should be. I’ve always built things like that, sort of like making a sculpture I guess.” Within about an hour, Lanegan and written words and recorded vocals for two of the instrumental tracks Marshall had written and recorded at Mount Sion Studios in Kent UK. Interestingly, the music Marshall had written had managed to fit perfectly with the direction Lanegan had been thinking of for some time — an expansion of the Krautrock-inspired electronic sounds and textures of his previous two albums Blues Funeral and Phantom Radio. Eventually Marshall wound up co-writing six of the album’s 10 songs with the remainder of the album being written and produced by Lanegan’s longtime collaborator Alain Johannes at 11AD Studios in West Hollywood.

As the story goes, everything was polished and finished within a month, which has been unusually fast by Lanegan’s recent standards. “I definitely feel like I’m a better songwriter than I was 15 years ago,” Lanegan stays in press notes. “I don’t know if I’m just kidding myself or what, but it’s definitely easier now to make something that is satisfying to me. Maybe I’m just easier on myself these days, but it’s definitely not as painful a process, and therefore I feel I’m better at it now. But part of the way that I stay interested in making music is by collaborating with other people. When I see things through somebody else’s perspective it’s more exciting than if I’m left to my own devices.”

Gargoyle‘s second and latest single “Beehive” pairs Lanegan’s imitable boozy, growling baritone vocals with a bluesy and swaggering production featuring shimmering guitar chords and enormous tweeter and woofer rattling beats, essentially pushing Lanegan’s recent forays into the blues into the 21st Century; but in a way that feels both warmly familiar and yet new.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Soviet Soviet is Pesaro, Italy-based post-punk trio, who have received both national and international attention for a uniquely Italian take on the genre, while clearly drawing from familiar sources such as Joy Division/New Order and Echo and the Bunnymen, and shoegazers like RIDE, Slowdive, and others as you’ll hear on the wistfully nostalgic and anthemic “Endless Beauty” off the band’s recently released effort Endless.

Directed by fellow countryman Giulio Letizi, the recently released video for “Endless Beauty” features the members of the band performing the song in front of a projection screen that displays 60s stock footage of crashing waves, brilliant sunrises and sunsets and palm trees, cocksure surfers surfing but in wildly psychedelic hues, which creates both an aching nostalgia for a seemingly less complicated pass, while simultaneously being a reminder that like clockwork, another summer will soon be here. As the band explains of the video concept “We love this concept and these images complementing our music. We shot the live images of the band inside an old cinema where are from in Pesaro, Italy. ‘Endless Beauty’ reminds us of this kind of imagery — the beach, the surfers and days at the beach. We live in a coast city and love the sea.”

If you’ve been actively following the music blogosphere as I do, you’d likely know that the band’s Stateside tour and forthcoming SXSW appearances have been cancelled, due to visa issues that resulted in the members of the band being detained for the better part of a day before they were deported and sent back home. Based on the official statement from the band, the experience was both humiliating and terrifying; but I hope that maybe one day they will return to play in front of Stateside audiences — and soon.
Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Deriving their name from an archaic spelling of the state of Alaska and the first name of the band’s frontwoman, Alyeska is a Los Angeles, CA-based indie rock/dream pop duo comprised of Montana-born, Los Angeles, CA-based Alaska Reid and Ben Spear. And with “Tilt A Whirl,” the first single off the duo’s soon-to-be released, John Angelo-produced debut EP Crush, the duo began to receive attention across the blogosphere for a  sound that drew equally from 80s post-punk and New Wave, as it did from contemporary indie rock.

Crush‘s second and latest single “Motel State of Mind” is a moody and dramatic song that the duo’s Alaska Reid explained in an interview the Billboard wasn’t about illicit behavior, like truckers, hookers and cooking meth but an attempt to “rip off The Replacements;” however to my ears, the song sound as though the band was inspired by Concrete Blonde‘s “Joey” as Reid’s dreamy and achingly plaintive vocals are paired with a towering and enveloping shoegazer-like guitar chords, angular bass chords and dramatic drumming — but with an swooning heartache at its core.