Category: New Single

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Oddnesse is a Los Angeles, CA-based collaboration between musician and singer/songwriter Rebeca Arango and producer Grey Goon, and if you’ve been frequenting this website over the past few months, you may recall that the project can trace its origins to a number of simultaneous coincidences — both members relocating from the East Coast to Los Angeles, haunted by the ghosts of expensive degrees in music seemingly being wasted and unused, failed bands and collaborations and countless gigs at Cake Shop and other venues, as well as a mutually shared vision of infectious, beautiful music with a dark, heavy groove. Interestingly, the project began much like how countless projects begin with Goon and Arago occasionally stopping by the studio to jam together but after some time, the duo realized that had something and began to take it much more seriously.

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Are You Down,” a Mazzy Star and early 90s Brit Pop-like single that paired Arango’s sultry, self-assured yet laid back crooning with a moody and sleek production featuring shimmering guitar chords, a sinuous and propulsive groove and a soaring hook — with a come hither vibe. As the duo’s Rebeca Arango explained in press notes, “Are You Down,” is her “Pina Colada” song, as “it’s a very confident and laid-back anticipation of my next lover, where I’m getting specific about calling in someone, who can match my energy and approach to life. The question of going ‘slow’ isn’t about romantic pacing per-se (though that is important), it’s more about generally moving slow, never rushing to pack in too much all at once or getting anxious about ‘missing out,’ and preferring to to sink in and explore the depths of all things.”

The duo’s latest single “I Used To” is an atmospheric and meditative track featuring an ethereal arrangement consisting of twangy, guitar chords, gently droning synths with Arango’s crooning vocals ethereally gliding over the the surface and while nodding at 80s New Wave and pop, there’s a subtle alt-country leaning to a song that has a rather cinematic vibe. As the duo’s Rebeca Arango explains in press notes, the song comes from a rather personal experience: “I had driven alone from LA to Utah and back twice. I absolutely loved it, in the way I’ve always loved the independence of no one needing me, no one expecting me, no one to confer with about where I might stop, when I might leave, if I might come back. I was grateful on those trips (as one usually is) for the dissolution of a relationship I had been overly attached to.  I was grateful that my mind was clear and that I had the experience to myself. I was happy. I didn’t need to know what was next.” And as a result, the song buzzes with an anticipation over a new, unseen future.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Comprised of Molly Sides (vocals), Whitney Petty (guitar), Leah Julius (bass) and Ruby Dunphy (drums), the up-and-coming Seattle, WA-based quartet Thunderpussy quickly exploded into the national scene with co-signs from Rolling Stone and Pearl Jam‘s Mike McCready, as well as string of attention-grabbing, blistering live shows.  And from their latest single, the incredibly self-assured, ass-kicking and name-taking “Speed Queen,” the buzz around the Seattle-based quartet is well-deserved, as they specialize in sultry, scuzzy and anthemic power chord-based rock that seems to be inspired by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Joan Jett, among others.

As the band notes, their latest single is a motorcycle love story that mirrors and draws from the relationship between Whitney Petty and Molly Sides. Petty adds, “I got the title from an old coin laundry joint in Seattle that was full of high powered dyers labeled ‘Speed Queen.’ I always imagined a ‘Speed Queen’ as this mythical character with a checkered past, who led a female motorcycle gang. Then when I started writing the song, it became clear that I was writing about my partner — Molly Sides.”

The band is currently in the studio with Sylvia Massy, who’s worked with Johnny Cash and Tool, working on new material that will be released in 2018 — and based on “Speed Queen,” you’ll be hearing quite about these ass kicking ladies.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Currently comprised of Lawrence, KS-born, New York-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Dave Liang, who cut his teeth as a producer with Bad Boy Records, and multi-disciplinary artist Sun Yunfan, the Brooklyn-based electronic duo The Shanghai Restoration project was initially began as a solo recording project that received attention for organically meshing Chinese instrumentation and hip-hop — although with subsequent releases, Liang increasingly expanded upon his sound, drawing upon choral music, downtempo electronica and folk. Interestingly enough, in 2010, Liang met Shanghai-based jazz vocalist Zhang Le, with whom he released a series of contemporary interpretations of Chinese jazz standards that caught the attention of NPR’s All Songs Considered.  The following year, Liang met Sun Yunfan and the two started collaborating on music videos and live performance visuals before eventually working on songwriting and production, including Liang’s ongoing collaboration with Zhang Le, Life Elsewhere, an album, which was well-received in China and nominated for several national awards.  

The duo’s latest effort R.U.R. derives its title from a 1920’s Czech play Rossum’s Universal Robots from which the word robot originates. Self-produced and recorded in New York over the past year or so, the album, imagines a post apocalyptic world in which humans have been replaced by robots, who have been trying to understand what led to their predecessors’ extinction. Via a time capsule, the robots learn about humanity’s must noble and profound endeavors such as art, agriculture, science, philosophy and so on, as well as humanity’s worst attributes such as narcissism, materialism, greed, environmental devastation — and as they’re looking at the time capsule, they begin to wonder if the universe will ever see and experience those rather peculiar beings again.

Sonically speaking, the album is reportedly a shift in sonic direction from being whimsical towards a much more introspective approach with the duo setting to find some sort of balance within chaos, with the duo experimenting with a dissonant and polyrhythmic approach featuring atonal analog synth lines, household items being sampled, Malaysian rainforest insects, China’s omnipresent in-store marketing chants and the sounds of outer space. In fact, the album’s latest single “Spooky Party” features  breezy, Tropicalia and African-inspired polyrhythm paired with arpeggio analog synths and stuttering beats — and while being decidedly retro-futuristic, it may be the most dance floor friendly track they’ve released to date.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Odd Martin Skålnes, best known for his solo project O. Martin and as a member of Aurora’s backing band; Birgitta Alida Hole, a member of Lumkilde; Fredrik Vosberg, a member of The Megaphonic Thrift and Casiokids; and Even Kjelby, a member of Great News, the Norwegian shoegazer act Strange Hellos was started as a studio-based side project back in 2015. And interestingly enough since their formation, the band has received attention from the likes of NME, The Line of Best Fit and others for an anthemic, power pop take on shoegaze that will immediately bring to mind 4AD Records and 120 Minutes-era MTV, complete with enormous, rousing hooks, distortion-filled, jangling guitars and ethereal vocals; in fact, “Gold For The Golden,” the latest single off the Norwegian band’s recently released full-length debut, Chromatic will further cement their growing reputation for crafting anthemic and swooning shoegaze.

 

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Sam Valdez is a Nevada-born, Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, and classically trained violinist, who after spending time performing in a number of bands, discovered her own unique sound and decided that it was time to step out in front as a solo artist, writing her own original material influenced by the vastness of the desert and its sky, as well as Sufjan Stevens, The War on Drugs and the work of Sylvia Plath.  Interestingly, with the release of Hours, Valdez received attention from the likes of BlackBook.  Building upon a growing profile, Valdez’s latest single “It’s Alright” pairs incredibly forthright lyrics that thematically focus on coping with the disillusion that comes from relationships with a sound that manages to mesh anthemic shoegazer rock and twangy alt country/Americana in a way will remind some listeners of a brash and swaggering Mazzy Star, complete with rousing power chord-led hooks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms
Comprised of Ben Nir Jacob (vocals, guitar), Yanniv Brenner (Guitar), Amit David (Bass) and Amir Reich (Drums), the up-and-coming Tel Aviv, Israel-based indie rock quartet Document can trace their origins back to 2008. As the story goes, once Jacob had finished college, he moved back to Tel Aviv and began hanging out with his cousin and couple of his friends, and as bored 20-somethings, who were the only ones in their age group listening to Wire, The Fall, Fugazi, Dinosaur, Jr. and others, they decided to start a band and to write and play music together. In their native Israel the indie rock quartet have developed a reputation for writing material that focuses on our obsessions with technology and our increasing disconnection with others, dealing with soulless bureaucracy and corruption, the seemingly endless banality of modern life, and the constant oscillating anxiety, outrage, hope and joy that many of us feel on a regular basis.
The Israeli band’s latest single “Hustle” off their forthcoming album The Void Repeats 
will further cement the band’s reputation for crafting material that focuses on modern, daily life — in this case, the sort of digital addiction that removes you from connecting with others or from being in the very moment; where a screen is an extension of one’s life. Interestingly enough, I couldn’t help but think of how I was sitting in a Center City, Philadelphia bar, chatting with two locals, who eventually stopped talking to me to Snapchat endlessly. As the band’s Nir Ben Jacob says of the song, “Phones are the roots that allow us to be connected to everything else. We‘ve rooted ourselves in our modernity. Our identities can change online. We project what we want others to see. The screen has become a mirror. The phone takes away the ability to be intimate, and you are left alone with a distortion of reality. There’s the addiction of immediate gratification, the online approvals are ‘pseudo-pleasure’. This has all led to pointless compulsive behaviour.”
Sonically speaking, the song is a scuzzy and angular post-punk single that’s clearly influenced by the likes of Wire and Gang of Four but it bristles with an ironic and incredibly post modern awareness while possessing incredibly tight, infectious hooks and a cool, self-assuredness beyond their relative youth.

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

 

Livia Blanc is a French-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, who specializes in a subtly modern take on 60s-inspired, cinematic pop that mischievously nods at the likes of   Edith Piaf, Portishead and Melanie DeBlasio; in fact, the French-born, Brooklyn-based artist’s second and latest single, “Mr. Hyde,” which was produced and cowritten by The Chevin‘s Coyle Girelli and Andrew Horowitz, who has cowriting credits with Jidenna, Verite and John Legend, finds Blanc cooing in a coquettish French over a breezy yet mischievously anachronistic featuring strummed ukulele, whistling, polyrhythmic beats and soaring synths. But despite the song’s ethereal quality, the song reportedly explores the inner duality of good and evil that we all have, reminding the listener that we’re all capable of good and evil at any particular moment. Fitting for the Halloween season, indeed!

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

For the better part of a decade, Frankie Rose played a significant  and vital role in Brooklyn’s indie rock scene, as an original member of several critically applauded and commercially successful acts including Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls, Vivian Girls and Beverly, as well as a solo artist. Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site for some time, you may recall that Rose had briefly relocated back to her hometown of Los Angeles with the intention of establishing a new, creative and professional moment in her career; however, the experience of being down and out, and not quite knowing what to do next wound up inspiring her fourth full-length album Cage Tropical, which was co-written with Jorge Elbrecht, known for his work with Tamaryn, Gang Gang Dance, No Joy and my own personal favorite Violens.

Adding to a run of New Wave-inspired material, Rose is set to release a full-length cover of The Cure‘s critically applauded sophomore effort Seventeen Seconds as part of Turntable Kitchen’s Sounds Delicious vinyl covers series. The first single off Rose’s Seventeen Seconds cover album is a fairly straightforward and moody rendition of one of my favorite Cure songs “A Forest,” but interestingly enough, the cover album’s latest single is a slightly sped up rendition of “At Night,” which retains the original’s moody and foreboding vibe — all while reminding contemporary listeners of how influential and timeless The Cure’s work has been; in fact, you can easily imagine a contemporary band recording something that would have sounded like the material off Seventeen Seconds right now.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Initially formed in Kingston, Ontario and featuring Colleen Brown, Elijah Abrams, Shea Connor, Trevor Mann and and Murray Wood, the Edmonton, Alberta-based indie rock, All-Star band Major Love is comprised of members of several locally and regionally renowned bands including Scenic Route To Alaska, Jesse and the Dandelions and singer/songwriters Colleen Brown and Elijah Abrams. And since their formation, the band has specialized in what they describe in press notes as “soulful pop-rock music for their hoser friends.” The band’s latest single “Tear It Down” has started to receive some attention across the blogosphere, and as the members of the band explain in press notes, the song was inspired in the aftermath of two explosions at an Edmonton area senior residence, which as it turned out was across the street from where the band’s vocalist Colleen Brown lived. Two people died — as a the result of a bizarre murder/suicide. Over the course of the next three years, Brown saw the building gutted, rebuilt and furnished. And while contemplating the disparity between the tradesmen who were responsible for rebuilding the senior home and her life as a musician, she began writing a song, which thematically asks one of the biggest questions in our lives: is there beauty in destruction?  But along with that the song subtly focuses on the passage and brings up leitmotifs about life and death.

In some way, the song suggests that there are certain unassailable facts of life: that despite the tumults and joys of our lives, time keeps moving forward and that all things will inevitably die, but from that there’s something truly profound — an awareness of everything’s mutability, of everything being finite, and life’s constant renewal. Interestingly, the band manages to pair Brown’s gorgeous, pop belter-like vocals with twangy and jangling power chords, a propulsive yet old-timey backbeat and a rousingly anthemic hook that features Brown joyously singing ” Tear it down/down/down/Let’s start over,” and sonically speaking the song reminds me of Northern Aggression-era Steve Wynn and the Miracle Three,  Fleetwood Mac and others, as the Canadian act reveals some effortless yet incredibly crafted songwriting with a pop leaning.

Look for Major Love’s self-titled full-length debut early next year.