Category: indie rock

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Anxious and Ambient Sounds and Visuals of Dire Wolves “Fogged Out (Two)”

Currently comprised of Sheila Bosco (drums), Brian Lucas (bass), Kelly Ann Nelson (vocals, wooden flute), Jeffrey Alexander (guitar, wooden sax), Arjun Mendiratta (violin), Laura Naukkarinen (vocals) and Michael Whitaker (flute, sax), the San Francisco, CA/Oakland, CA-based septet Dire Wolves have developed a reputation for crating deeply hypnotic folk-leaning indie rock and for being remarkably prolific, as they’ve released 12 full-length, studio albums since their formation in 2008.

Last month, I wrote about “Cerebration Day,” an expansive, slow-burning, trance-inducing dirge of a single off the Bay Area-based septet’s soon-to-be released 13th full-length effort, Excursions to Cloudland. “Fogged Out (Two),” Excursions to Cloudland’s latest single, will further cement the band’s reputation for crafting trance-inducing and expansive material; in fact, with this single, the band eschews recognizable song structures — i.e. hooks, choruses, bridges, etc. — to focus on establishing a deeply tense yet meditative and enveloping air, primarily based around an arrangement featuring blistering psych rock guitar, played through copious guitar, angular violin stabs, and a propulsive rhythm section. And much like its preceding single, “Fogged Out (Two)” manages to build up to a howling and dizzy churn, while holding back and withholding the anticipated release the listener would expect.

The recently released VHS-based video, created by Caitlin Denny features heavily distorted footage and undulating blasts of color, all of which both further emphasize the song’s dreamy and distracted yet meditative nature, while also suggesting a creeping, anxious dread.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of founding members Victor Martinez and Nick Mariotti, along with Steven Doman, the Los Angeles, CA-based indie rock trio Paloma can trace its origins to when  both its founding members started the band in a small, bedroom studio deconstructing ideas over and over and over again while the duo had been balancing the need to make ends meet while expressing their irrepressible need to be creative; however the band’s sound and aesthetic didn’t coalesce until they recruited Steven Doman to fully flesh out their sound.  And with the band’s forthcoming debut EP Luna, the band’s sound draws a bit from the classic Southern California sound, as well as a variety of renowned artists including Beach House, Daft Punk, The Weeknd, Tame Impala, Pond, Gum, Dumbo Gets Mad, Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, and Earth Wind and Fire — although with “Touch,” the EP’s latest single finds the band pairing a propulsive and sinuous groove, a brooding New Wave-like moodiness and achingly plaintive vocals, creating a sound that reminds me a bit of Hands‘ dreamy and excellent 2012 EP, Massive Context and Milagres‘ impressionistic 2011 debut Glowing Mouth. In a similar fashion to those albums, the song manages to be emotionally ambivalent and confused, capturing the vacillating thoughts and emotions of its narrator.

As the members of the band explain about their new single, the song is about a diamond in the rough, a somewhat tramp-like sort, who doesn’t quite know how to believe in themselves until he meets a princess – – for him, at least — that did believe in him. When they both turn to real life, there’s a part of him that’s banking on the idea that in some ay they’re only halfway through the film, that the story isn’t finished yet. And as a result, the song possesses an unresolved tension.

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Psychedelic and Animated Visuals for Cones’ “Echoes On”

Comprised of San Francisco-born, Los Angeles-based sibling duo Jonathan Rosen, a pop music influenced, acclaimed hand-drawn animator, who has created music videos for a number of renowned artists including Toro y Moi, Eleanor Friedburger and Delicate Steve, whose rock ‘n’ roll dream started in earnest when he played Johnny Thunders for the HBO series Vinyl; and Michael Rosen, who is a classically trained pianist, commercial/film composer and experimental sound artist, Cones can trace their newest project to when they began playing music together, while they were both in NYC as members of Icewater. Eventually the members of Icewater began playing as the session and backing band for the Fiery Furnaces’ Eleanor Friedberger, helping to write, record her latest album New View.

As the story goes, while on tour the Rosens began to conceptual their latest project, a project that would fuse Jonathan’s pop sensibilities with Michael’s lush, atmospheric soundscapes and key-heavy orchestration. And in the summer of 2016, the Rosens, along with a bunch of friends and associates wrote and recorded the material of their debut EP Whatever Your’e Into. And interestingly enough, the EP’s latest single “Echoes On” has the duo pairing Jonathan’s dreamy falsetto with a twangy, psych country arrangement that’s reminiscent of 70s AM radio, Tame Impala and Oracular Spectacular-era MGMT; but with a breezier feel and rousingly anthemic hooks.

The recently released video features Jonathan Rosen’s loose and playful, hand-held animation featuring the duo traveling in a car, wandering around aimlessly, playing the song through a variety of instruments with a fittingly psychedelic and trippy quality.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Currently comprised of founding member, frontman and primary songwriter Jason Dodson, Kevin Barrans, Tim Gadbois, Chris Warner, Jesse Bonn, Adam Bily and Faustine Hudson, the Seattle, WA-based alt-country/indie rock septet The Maldives over the course of their 15 year history have released four critically applauded full-length efforts, and have developed a reputation for a rousing live show; however with the band’s fifth full-length album, Mad Lives, the Seattle, WA-based septet reportedly finds themselves making a radical departure from the sound that first caught attention, moving away form the alt-country, Americana and rock sound towards  soaring, cinematic sound full of ache and loss that nods heavily towards Roy Orbison paired with mystical-leaning, deliberately impressionistic lyrics (sung in a gorgeous and tender falsetto) meant to convey a narrator’s innermost thoughts and worldview as you’ll hear on the album’s latest single “2 Know U is 2 Love U.” And in this case, the song’s wound narrator is swooning over a lost love, whose ghost lingers in a painful and largely inescapable fashion — and when the song’s narrator somehow thinks they’ve moved forward, they’ve fallen back into a deep pit of despair.

This shouldn’t be surprising as one’s past has a vexing and frustrating way of re-entering one’s life at devastatingly surprising moments — and it can throw you for a bit of loop; after all, romantic entanglements are the most anxiety fraught, complicated and strangest relationships we’ll ever know. And as a result, they have us at our most confused and vulnerable, which the song evokes in a breathlessly realistic fashion.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The 60s Psych Rock and Proto-Metal Sounds of Austin TX’s Dream Machine

Perhaps best known as the founder, frontman and primary songwriter of Austin, TX-based indie pop, indie rock act Warm Soda, Matthew Melton had approached John Dwyer and the rest of the folks at renowned indie label Castle Face Records with two new albums — Warm Soda’s fourth and final album together I Don’t Want to Grow Up, which is slated for an April release and The Illusion, the full-length debut slated for a May 2017 release from a new project that Melton and his wife Doris formed, by the name of Dream Machine. And from the album’s latest single “I Walked In The Fire,” the project’s sound reveals a decided change of sonic direction for Melton as the band’s sound draws from the heavy psych, proto-metal and proto-stoner rock of early Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly and RidingEasy Records’ and Permanent Records’ collaborative compilation of similar sounds from the 1960s and 1970s, Brown Acid, complete with some early synthesizer and organ.

Fittingly, the recently released music video manages to be a spot on take on the early music videos and recorded musical segments of the 1960s — a simple yet very trippy concept in which the members of the band play in front of a screen, featuring psychedelic imagery; in fact, paired with the band’s sound, the visuals manage to evoke 1967-1972 so well that you could be tricked into thinking that the video was the promotional video for a band that time has sadly forgotten.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard’s Wild, Acid Tinged, Eastern Take on Psych Rock

Comprised of Stu Mackenzie (vocals, guitar, and flute), Ambrose Kenny Smith (synths, harmonica), Cook Craig (guitar), Joey Walker (guitar), Lucas Skinner (bass), Eric Moore (drums) and Michael Cavanagh (drums), the Melbourne, Australia-based psych rock sextet King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have developed a reputation for energetic live shows, for being remarkably prolific, as they’ve released 9 full-length albums since 2012 with each album revealing a band that relentlessly experimented with its sound and songwriting approach. In fact, the band’s early releases blended 60s surf rock, garage rock and psych rock but over the years, their sound has included elements of film scores, prog rock, folk, soul, Krautrock and heavy metal.

The Australian sextet’s recently released full-length effort Flying Microtonal Banana will further cement the band’s reputation for being incredibly prolific and restlessly experimental as the material on the album is reportedly a subtle shift in the sound of 2016’s Nonagon Infinity as the material finds the and delving deeper into trace-inducing drone, jazz flourishes and non-Western musical scales and metronomic rhythms — and in fact, the sound is so unique and evolved that it required the members of the band to reinvent their own instruments after they began experimenting with a custom microtonal guitar, made for the band’s frontman Stu Mackenzie. As the story goes, the members of the band found inspiration from the movable frets of a Turkish instrument, the bağlama, a classical lute, and three old guitars and a bass were customized for the band to explore a new set of musical notes. They then customized a keyboard and a mouth organ. Additionally, the material on the album finds the and incorporating the use of a Turkish horn called a zurna, which looks a bit like a clarinet but because it’s a double-reeded instrument, the possess a wobbly sound that Mackenzie says “blends perfectly with the secret notes on the guitar.”

Flying Microtonal Banana’s latest single “Rattlesnake” pairs a chugging, motorik-like groove and anthemic, chant-worthy hook; but while clearly drawing from prog rock, Krautrock, psych rock, heavy psych, stoner rock and even space rock, the song finds the band putting a familiar Western sound into a decidedly Eastern context — and as a result, it’s not only a wild, mind-altering spin on something familiar and seemingly done to death and then some, while possessing a familiar acid-tinged yet alien, otherworldly sound.

The recently released music video for “Rattlesnake” is both deliriously psychedelic and gloriously low budget, and fittingly draws from the early music videos from the early 1960s and 1970s.

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Austin, TX-based, self-described “freak parade” octet Sweet Spirit initially began as a solo project of its founding member  and frontperson Sabrina Ellis. And when she started the project, Ellis’ personal and creative lives were falling apart in front of her — Bobby Jealousy, the band she fronted and co-founded with her then-husband had been disintegrating along with her romantic relationship. Ideally, Ellis conceived Sweet Spirit as a way to hone her writing and offer her an ability to perform solo. “It was supposed to be focused on me writing solo, and performing with the guitar,” Ellis said in press notes. But interestingly enough, when the Austin, TX-based singer/songwriter and guitarist began her latest project, she was simultaneously writing and performing as a member of a local garage punk band A Giant Dog — and her A Giant Dog co-founder Andrew Cashen was intrigued by Ellis’ newer material, which drew from soul, country and pop music. Cashen quickly joined as a way to challenge himself creatively and as a musician. “I’m very comfortable doing loud and fast,” Cashen explained in press notes, “so this is uncharted territory for me.”

Ellis and Cashen began writing material at a breakneck pace and then recruited a core backing band of four more members, with whom they rehearsed religiously before playing a series of attention grabbing gigs around town. Within their first six months as a live, performing band they caught the attention of Spoon’s Britt Daniel, who then asked the band to play at Spoon’s “secret” kick off show for the tour to support They Want My Soul, which resulted in both greater local and national attention, including playing 2015’s SXSW — without having an actual album under their belts or applying. Adding to growing attention, the members of Sweet Spirit opened for Spoon for a 12 of Spoon’s Midwest and West Coast dates.

Building on the buzz they were receiving, the band released their full-length debut Cokomo and a two song collaborative effort with Britt Daniel to critical praise from the likes of Stereogum, Consequence of Sound, Spin and other media outlets, which lead to two national tours. In between playing shows, the band squeezed in studio time with producer Steve Berlin, best known for his work Los Lobos and Deer Tick to record their forthcoming sophomore full-length effort, St. Mojo, which is slated for an April 7, 2017 release through Nine Mile Records. Interestingly, the album’s first single “The Power” is a relatively recent staple of their live sets and a fan favorite, while revealing a change of songwriting approach and sound — towards the anthemic hooks, power chords and thundering drumming of glam rock; in fact, “The Power” sounds as though it draws from T. Rex‘s “Bang A Gong” but being both a battle cry for the outcasts, rebels and misfits to stand up and be proud of what they are, and feminist anthem that says “defy shitty stereotypes and be the you, you’re always meant to be — no matter what.” Considering our world and sociopolitical climate in which conformity is constantly demanded of you and in which in some cases being yourself can threaten the perceived social mores and sensibilities of judgmental, hypocritical prudes, rebelling and being your truest and only self may be the biggest, most revolutionary act of your life.

 

 

 

 

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Perhaps best known for this time spent in New England-based psych rock band MMOSS, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Doug Tuttle quickly developed a reputation as a solo artist of note with the release of his solo debut, an album that was widely praised for paring his dexterous guitar work and a jittery, love-lorn anxiety with psychedelic-leaning guitar pop. And if you had been frequenting JOVM over the course of 2016, Tuttle’s sophomore effort It Calls On Me, which featured lead single an album track “It Calls On Me” further cemented the New Hampshire-born singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s reputation for crafting psych-leaning pop but with more of a dreamer and ethereal feel that its predecessor — all while subtly nodding at The Doors‘ “Light My Fire.”

Tuttle’s third full-length effort Peace Potato is slated for a May 5, 2017 through renowned Chicago, IL-based label Trouble In Mind Records and the album’s first single, “Bait The Sun,” is a bubblegum pop meets White Album-era Beatles inspired track in which Tuttle’s dreamy falsetto is paired with shimmering guitar chords, soaring organ chords, a gorgeous horn arrangement, and a breezy, infectious hook — and in some way, the song evokes a lucid dream; but just under the surface, there’s a wistful nostalgia at something that’s just out of reach.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Gresham Cash (vocals, guitar), Wes Gregory (drummer) and Connor Sabula (bass), the Athens, GA-based indie rock/psych rock trio Oak House formed in 2014 and since their formation they’ve developed a growing reputation for a sound that possesses elements of melodic indie rock, grunge rock, psych rock and prog rock paired with contemplative and visceral lyrics that explore and investigate life’s inevitable conflicts — and for high energy live shows.

The Athens, GA-based trio’s forthcoming sophomore full-length album Hot or Mood was recorded at Chase Park Transduction with Drew Vandenberg, who’s worked with of Montreal, Toro y Moi, Kishi Bashi, Deerhunter and Mothers and the album reportedly represents a cohesive sample of their live sound — a sound that has been described as tumultuous, melodic, raucous infectious and immersive.  The album’s latest single “Cut That Out” is rapidly shifting and angular song with propulsive, rolling drumming, droning synths, buzzing guitar chords and a throbbing bass line that seems to capture the narrator’s rapidly vacillating thoughts and emotions, and with an unshakable anxiousness. As the band’s Gresham Cash explains in press notes ” I wanted to craft a picture of dreams by using frenetic, shifting imagery with a blend of hopeful nostalgia muddied by sadness, depression, suicidal thoughts, etc. Also, I felt that anxiety, depression and suicide are things that not only influence us directly, but also, those around us; hence, the chorus, ‘We’re all responsible for someone else.’ The ending is the feeling of the dream unraveling combined with the feeling that you are living within someone else’s dream: unsettling to say the least. Your only defense against the confusion and discomfort is like swatting at an irksome fly that keeps buzzing in your ears: ‘Cut that out.’”

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Now if you had been frequenting this site over the last few months of 2016, you’d recall that with the release of “Help Yourself” and several other singles the Welsh-born, London-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Sarah Howells, best known as Bryde quickly exploded into both the British and international scene as she received praise from Nylon, The Line of Best Fit and Earmilk and airplay from BBC Radio 6, BBC Radio Wales, Radio X and Huw Stephens’ BBC Radio 1 show for a sound that’s been compared to the likes of Jeff Buckley, Sharon Van Etten, Ben Howard and London Grammar while thematically focusing on complex, ambivalent and hopelessly entangled relationships.

Howells’ previous single and her JOVM debut,  “Wouldn’t That Make You Feel Good” was a boozy and woozy dirge in which the Welsh-born, London-based singer/songwriter and guitarist’s aching vocals are paired with bluesy yet shoegazer-leaning power chords reminiscent of  PJ Harvey, in a song that built up into a cathartic and explosive bridge before gently fading out.  Howells’ latest single “Less” continues her successful collaboration with producer Bill Ryder-Jones and it’s a viscerally forceful 90s alt rock-leaning track featuring an alternating quiet, loud, quiet song structure with an anthemic and cathartic hook. And while still channeling PJ Harvey, the song also manages to nod at Liz Phair, Hole and others, complete with an unflinching honesty and vulnerability.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Playfully Ironic Visuals for Winstons’ “Without You”

Comprised of Lou Nutting (guitar, harmonica, and vocals) and Ben Brock Wilkes (drums, vocals), the up-and-coming Virginia-born, Brooklyn-based indie rock duo Winstons can trace their origins to when the duo met while working at Williamsburg hotspot and music venue, Baby’s All Right. And with the release of 2015’s Turpentine EP and Black Dust, the duo quickly received attention for a soulful, garage-based blues rock that sonically speaking seems to owe a debt to The Black Keys, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, complete with a visceral and forceful earnestness — and for making a decided point in recording live to tape, with no touch-ups, no overdubs and no-retakes; in other words recording with the old adage, first thought, best thought. “Without You,” the A side of their “Without You”/”Enough” 7 inch will further cement the duo’s growing reputation for blues and garage rock that possesses an unmistakable immediacy — while in this particular song, a visceral
Directed by Buried Muse, the recently released video for “Without You” cuts between footage of the duo performing at Baby’s, hanging around and singing the song and running around all over Brooklyn — to suddenly encounter their dopplegangers looking back at them.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Fufanu Live on KEXP

Over the past couple of months here, I’ve written quite a bit about the Reykjavik, Iceland-based indie rock/post-punk trio Fufanu. The trio, which is currently comprised of founding members Kaktus Einarsson (vocals, guitar), whose father Einar, was a member of The Sugarcaubes and Guðlaugur “Gulli” Einarsson (guitar, programming) (no relation, by the way) along with Erling Bang (drums) can trace their origins to when the band’s founding members met while at school. According to the band’s founding duo, Katkus had glanced at Gulli’s iTunes and noticed that they had listened to a lot of the same techno and electronic music. And after quickly bonding over mutual interests, the duo went into a studio and began writing and recording electronic music under the name Captain Fufanu. Within a month of their formation, Kaktus Einarsson and Gulli Einarsson had started playing shows in and around Reykjavik.

Building on a growing local profile, the duo went into the studio to record what would be their full-length debut as Captain Fufanu; but in a strange twist of fate, the studio where Kaktus Einarsson and Gulli Einarsson had recorded the album was burgled. And as a result, the album was presumed lost. Instead of trying to recall the material they initially wrote from memory, Kaktus Einarsson and Gulli Einarsson decided that the moment was a perfect time for them to completely reinvent their sound. Interestingly, as that happened, Katkus was in London working on Damon Albarn’s Everyday Robots and touring with Bobby Womack when he began writing lyrics. Simultaneously Gulli had started to create a revised sound, which according to Kaktus Einarsson managed to coney exactly what he had been thinking. The duo then added guitars and drums, along with Kaktus’ brooding and detached vocals — and with their revised sound, renamed themselves Fufanu.

Their first live set with their new sound and aesthetic was at Iceland Airwaves and they quickly became one of the most talked about bands of the entire festival. Building upon the buzz they had received, they went into the studio their full-length debut A Few More Days To Go. And with the release of their debut, the duo received a rapidly growing national and international profile as they toured with a number of internationally renowned acts including The Vaccines and have played at JaJaJa Festival. With their recently released sophomore effort Sports, Kaktus and Gulli recruited Erling “Elli” Bang (drums) to further flesh out their sound as they expanded upon it and its thematic direction.

Now, you may recall that I’ve written about the first two singles off the Icelandic trio’s recently released sophomore effort Sports — the album’s title track “Sports,” which retained the synth-driven sound that first captured national and international attention while pairing it with a tight, motorik-like groove reminiscent of Can, Neu! Joy Division and early ’80s Peter Gabriel (in particular, think of Peter Gabriel 3 and Security) along with live instrumentation, which gives the material both an organic feel and a forcefulness — and “Liability,” which while continuing in a similar vein was a bit more slow-burning. Both singles possessed a murky and enigmatic air, they point at the soul-crushing mundanity and drudgery of daily life but just under the surface there’s the broiling frustration and resentment of someone who’s desperate to break free — and not sure how to do so without some recrimination.

Last year, the members of the band were on KEXP and the set included live versions of “Circus Life” and “Now” off their full-length debut Few More Days to Go along with “Sports” and then-unreleased single “Bad Rockets” off the recently released Sports. And while being fairly straightforward renditions of the material, the KEXP set will give you a sense of their intense and live set, a live set that frequently includes Kaktus Einarsson storming, strutting and stomping about the stage, alternating between being menacing and playful and so on. During this set, Kaktus throws his monitor headphones off his head and on to the floor, to headbang and stomp about as Gulli plays a furious and blistering solo. Just from this particular footage, I’m hoping that the Icelandic act will play a set or two here in NYC.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Sally Spitz (vocals), Ali Day (guitar, bass), Max Albeck (drums), and Daniel Trautfield (bass, sax), the Los Angeles, CA-based feminist art-punk quartet French Vanilla can trace the band’s origins to the members being partially driven by a desire to forcefully challenge Southern California’s established music scene, dominated by a few influential, male tastemakers and to do cool shit while hanging with friends, the band played their first shows within their hometown’s queer punk underground. Interestingly, the quartet quickly developed a local and regional reputation for socially conscious lyrics paired with a post-punk and No Wave-leaning sound — and as a result, the band has opened for the likes of Girlpool, Screaming Females, Tacocat, Genesis P-Orridge and Cherry Glazerr and others.

Adding to the growing buzz surrounding the Los Angeles-based band, their self-titled full-length effort is slated for a March 24, 2017 release through Danger Collective Records — and as you’ll hear on the album’s latest single “Anti-Aging Global Warming,” the quartet pairs the propulsive and angular bass lines and slashing guitar lines with incredibly neurotic lyrics that express the narrator’s anxious and neurotic worries about the impending end of the world as we know it, and how easy things can suddenly turn to shit before you know it; but sonically speaking the song strikes me as being reminiscent of Talking Heads: 77 and Fear of Music-era Talking Heads, Entertainment and Solid Gold-era Gang of Four and A-Frames.