Category: post punk

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Canadian post punk outfit and JOVM mainstays Preoccupations —  Matt Flegel (bass, vocals), Mike Wallace (drums), Scott Munro (guitar) and Daniel Christiansen (guitar) — will be releasing their fourth, full-length album Arrangements on September 9, 2022. Longtime label home Flemish Eye will handle the release throughout Canada while the band will self-release the album outside of Canada.

Initial work on Arrangements began in the fall of 2019, when Flegel and Christiansen met up with Munro at his Montreal-based Studio St. Zo. The trio wrote the album’s material and recorded all of the bed tracks together. Wallace then joined in and recorded his parts. With all of the instrumental parts laid down, the band planned to reconvene in a few months and decided what else the songs needed.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the JOVM mainstays’ plans were to reconvene in person were halted. At the time Munro was in Calgary on tour with his partner when the shutdowns began, so he wound up staying with parents for the next 16 months. He whipped up a make-shift studio in his parents house, and the rest of the record was finished remotely with Munro and Flegel sending tracks back and forth to each other: Munro’s vocal and keyboard parts were completed in that set up while Flegel’s vocal parts were laid down in New York. Holy Fuck‘s Graham Walsh mixed the record and Total Control‘s Mikey Young mastered it.

Interestingly, pandemic isolation encouraged the members of the band to reconnect with elements of their earlier releases: Munro, holed up in Calgary with endless weed gummies, obsessively doubled keyboards on guitars and vice versa, sampled the recordings using an old Ensoniq keyboard sample and made new parts out of the samples. While on 2016’s self-titled and 2018’s New Material, Munro was committed to making keyboards the centerpiece, Arrangements sees guitar returning to the spotlight — an instrument that he describes as much more fun and visceral to play. Throughout most of the album, Christiansen employs a unique tuning that sees him blurring and smearing his parts while Munro’s standard-tuned riffs provide melody and clarity. The end result is an album that sonically will see the band weaving their guitar-heavy origins with their more synth-based recent work to create what may arguably be their most intense and playful album to date.

Much like its predecessor New Material, Arrangements‘ title is simultaneously literal and cheeky — a sharp contrast to their overall aesthetic. Thematically, the album is dark and direct: “The lyrics are pretty conspicuous and self explanatory on this one, but it’s basically about the world blowing up and no one giving a shit,” says Flegel. 

“Ricochet,” Arrangements‘ first single, is a murky and dark churn featuring around layers of glistening and distorted guitar slashes, rolling and lashing snare, atmospheric synth arpeggios, a propulsive bass line paired with Flegal’s mournful, embittered delivery and their penchant for rousing hooks. While being a slick and seamless synthesis of their early work and their most recent work, “Ricochet” manages to evoke the creeping, existential dread we all felt — and perhaps continue to feel — during one of the most heightened periods in recent memory.

2022 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES:

Oct 19th – Loving Touch – Detroit, MI

Oct 20th – Grog Shop – Cleveland, OH

Oct 21st – Lincoln Hall – Chicago, IL

Oct 22nd – Racoon Motel- Davenport, IA

Oct 23rd – Turf Club in St. Paul – Minneapolis, MN

Oct 26th – Commonwealth – Calgary, AB

Oct 28th – Tractor Tavern – Seattle, WA

Oct 29th – Biltmore Cabaret – Vancouver, BC

Oct 30th – Doug Fir Lounge – Portland, OR

Nov 2nd – Rickshaw Stop – San Francisco, CA

Nov 4th – Echoplex – Los Angeles, CA

Nov 5th – Valley – Phoenix, AZ

Nov 8th – Paper Tiger – San Antonio, TX

Nov 9th –  Parish – Austin, TX

Nov 10th – Three Links – Dallas, TX

Nov 12th – Aisle 5 – Atlanta, GA

Nov 16th – DC9 – Washington, DC

Nov 17th – Johnny Brendas – Philadelphia, PA

Nov 18th Bowery Ballroom – New York, NY

Nov 19th – Space Ballroom – Hamden, CT

Nov 21st –  The Sinclair – Boston, MA

Nov 22nd – Bar Le Ritz – Montreal, QC

Nov 24th – Lee’s – Toronto, ON 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ganser Shares Brooding and Menacing Visual for Tense, New Ripper, “People Watching”

Acclaimed Chicago-based post-punk outfit and JOVM mainstays Ganser — founding members Nadia Garofalo (vocals, keys) and Alicia Gaines (vocals, bass) along with Brian Cundiff (drums) and Charlie Landsman (guitar) — can trace their origins back to when its founding members met while attending art school. Bonding over a mutual love of The Residents, outsider communities and the work of John Waters, the duo developed a hands-on DIY craftsmanship that eventually carried into their band: Each member of the post punk outfit shares writing duties and they collaborate on every aspect of their creative work, including videos, album art, merch and the visuals which often accompany their live shows.

Ganser’s 2018 full-length debut Odd Talk received widespread praise nationally and across the blogosphere with some critics comparing their sound and approach to Sonic Youth and Magazine. Thematically, the album focused on communication breakdowns — namely, the difficulties of being understood, avoidance, intimacy and avoidance.

2020’s sophomore album, the critically applauded Just Look at That Sky found the members of Ganser thematically probing the futility of striving for self-growth during chorus — all while evoking an all to familiar manic worry and generalized sense of existential dread and doom. It’s an album that accurately captures our slow-burning, omnipresent hellscape.

Besides last year’s Look at That Sky Remixes EP, the Chicago-based JOVM have been busy working on new material — including their Angus Andrew co-produced, three-song Nothing You Do Matters EP. The EP’s first single, the woozy and expansive ripper “People Watching” begins with a slow-burning and atmospheric, bass-driven intro before quickly morphing into a feverish thrash featuring slashing guitar attack, relentless four-on-the-four and squiggling bursts of electronics paired with Garofalo’s seething, irony-drenched delivery.

Arguably the most tense and uneasy song of their growing catalog, “People Watching” captures the mad and desperate senselessness — of well, just about everything right now.

Directed by Alicia Gaines and Nadia Garofalo, the accompanying video for “People Watching” employs the same LED Volume virtual “green screen” technology that’s used in shows like The Mandalorian: We’re thrown in the middle of a wintry and desolate bit of farmland, where we see an extremely nervous and uncertain Gaines, Cundiff and Landsman with shovels trying to bury a body — a body that turns out to be, Garofalo. It’s menacing yet there’s a campus sense of humor to the proceedings.

Nothing You Do Matters EP is slated for an October 5, 2022 digital release and a December 2, 2022 vinyl release through Felte Records.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Rising Los Angeles-based outfit Automatic — Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon (bass, vocals) — met while immersed in their hometown’s DIY scene and started jamming together back in 2017.

Since then, the trio became a local club circuit mainstay. Their full-length debut, 2019’s Signals saw the trio quickly establishing their sound, which paired motorik grooves with icy atmospheres.

Excess, Automatic’s forthcoming sophomore album is slated for a June 24, 2022 through Stones Throw Records. Sonically Excess reportedly rides the imaginary edge where the ’70s underground met ’80s corporate culture — or as the band says “That fleeting moment when what was once cool quickly turned and became mainstream all for the sake of consumerism.” Using that particular point in time as a lens through which to view our uncertain and seemingly apocalyptic present, the album’s material sees the trio taking aim at corporate culture and extravagance through deadpan critiques and razor sharp hooks.

“Skyscaper,” Excess‘ third and latest single is a dance floor friendly bop featuring glistening synths, relentless four-on-the-floor, a disco-like bass line paired with an icy and insouciant delivery and razor sharp hooks. Sonically, “Skyscraper” strikes me as a slick and effortless synthesis of Blondie, Devo and Talking Heads while being both ironic and politically charged. The band’s Halle Saxon explains that “Skyscraper” is ” . . .about spending your life making money and then spending it to fill the void created by said job.” Lola Dompé adds, “Kind of like going to LA to live your dreams.”

The past few weeks have been rather busy for the trio: Just after playing shows with IDLES and Parquet Courts and two sets at Los Angeles’ Cruel World Festival, the band will open for Tame Impala for two shows later this month. They’ll then head to Europe for a lengthy run of shows that features stops across the European festival circuit including Primavera Sound, Wide Awake and Best Kept Secret.

Over the fall, they’ll play a short run of shows with Osees. More dates will be announced in the near future. But in the meantime, tour dates are below. And you can click here for more tickets and info: https://automatic.band

Tour Dates

US (with Tame Impala)

May 24 : Wilmington, NC – Live Oak Bank Pavilion

May 26 : Columbus, OH – KEMBA Live! Festival Stage 

UK & EUROPE

May 28: UK, London – Wide Awake

May 29: UK, Manchester – Yes

May 30: UK, Leeds – Headrow House

May 31: UK, Brighton – Green Door Store

Jun 01: FR, Lille – L’Aéronef

Jun 02: FR, Paris – L’international

Jun 03: FR, Angers – Levitation

Jun 04: ES, Barcelona – Primavera

Jun 05: ES, Barcelona – Primavera

Jun 08: IT, Ravenna – Beaches Brew

Jun 09: CH, Neuchatel – Festineuch

Jun 10: CH, Aarau – Kiff (with Choir Boy & Soft Kill) 

Jun 11: DE, Mannheim – Maifeld Derbi

Jun 12: NL, Hilvarenbeek – Best Kept Secret

Jun 13: NL, Amsterdam – Bitterzoet

Jun 14: NL, Nijmegen – Merleyn

Jun 15: DE, Berlin – UFO Sound Studios

Jun 16: DE, Koln – Bumann & Sohn

Jun 17: BE, Charlerois – Fete De La Musique 

Jun 18: NL, Den Haag – Grauzone

US (with Osees)

Sep 05: San Francisco, CA – Chapel

Sep 06: San Francisco, CA – Chapel

Sep 07: San Francisco, CA- Chapel

Sep 09: Portland, OR – Roseland

Sep 10: Seattle, WA – Neumos

Sep 11: Seattle, WA – Neumos

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Mike Rogers is an Amsterdam-based indie dance trio featuring three of the country’s rising electronic music stars — Mike Mago, TWR72, and Kita Menari mastermind Micha de Jonge.

The project can trace their origins back to the early 2000s: Mago and TWR72 met while DJ’ing Dutch underground electro parties. That raw and energetic scene saw the pari playing a mixture of electro pop, French house, fidget and techno. As the years passed by, they individually developed their own unique sounds — but they realized that they had long held a similar dream: to start a live act inspired by the bands they grew up with, as well as the likes of Miike Snow, Foals, Editors, Van She, and Goose.

Mike Rogers was a way for the pair to challenge themselves creatively and professionally — and to further develop themselves as producers and DJs. The duo recruited Kita Menari’s Micha de Jonge to his big, plaintive vocals to their hook-driven, crowd-pleasing sound.

Their full-length debut, which is slated for an early 2023 release will see reportedly see the trio crafting material that’s a mix of analog, digital and retro sounds with a modern feel. But in the meantime . . . The Dutch trio’s latest single “Can’t Stop” is an anthemic bit of post punk/dance punk centered around angular guitar attack, de Jonge’s achingly plaintive vocals and a motorik-like groove paired with enormous, euphoric hooks. While to my ears recalling the likes of Radio 4, Interpol, and Editors, “Can’t Stop” as the trio explains is about a lonely man, who looks back at his life: As a young man, he tries to do everything right, but always feels as though he is failing since people don’t seem to understand him. Battling a personal struggle with his past, the lonely man protests against this feeling, with the hopes that he can get rid of those negative thoughts.

Written last year, the trio explain, “In our minds that year was a year where we had a lot of questions. Like, what is freedom, what should one fight for, how should one fight for something, how do we move forward as a society and also, how do we judge our past behaviour. We believe questions are the biggest inspirator. We’re trying to ask questions more than to send a message, although that’s also a bit of a vision we want to share.” 



Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Atlanta’s CDSM Performs “666” at Yellow Studio

Atlanta-based collective Celebrity Death Slot Machine (CDSM) — Ben Presley, Tyler Jundt and John Restivo, Jr. along with live accompaniment from Jack Blauvelt, Drew Kirby and Vinny Restivo — features current and former members of local acts like Material Girls, Neighbor Lady, Mothers, and Rose Hotel.

CDSM is a decided sonic departure from its members previous and current projects: The Atlanta-based collective’s sound blends elements of dark wave, psych rock and post punk in an edgy, genre-bending fashion. The act’s debut EP Hell Stairs was released late last week through Mothland and EXAG Records.

Hell Stairs which features the LCD Soundsystem from hell meets No Wave-like “GFH” finds the members of CDSM crafting material that’s simultaneously glamorous and bleak, swanky and derelict, uplifting and crushing. The EP’s latest single “666” is a dance punk song that’s one-part dark wave, one-part no wave featuring relentlessly tight four-on-the-floor, buzzing synth arpeggios and swirling sax lines paired with crooner-esque laments fittingly delivered with a Vincent Price-like campiness while detailing evil, murderous deeds over the course of a bloody, moonlit night.

Sure there’s murder and mayhem but that doesn’t mean you can’t dance the night away. Just make sure you don’t slip on the blood, eh?

The accompanying video features the band playing at the soon-to-be opened Yellow Studios.

World Music by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Entrée Libre Shares a Funky Dance Punk Bop

I’m in Baltimore for a couple of days to visit family, hang out and to catch a show. The posts will be a bit intermittent until my return — but in the meantime . . .

Formed back in 2019. Parisian indie electro pop duo Entrée Libre consists of two childhood friends, who derived the project’s name from the first letter of their first names. Sonically, the pair have developed joyful, spontaneous and hook driven pop, which for the band has served as an escape from the our strange and uncertain moment.

Entrée Libre’s debut EP Avant-Premiére is slated for a May 13, 2022 release. The EP will feature previously released singles “L’Air du temps,” “Dehors” and “Aller Simple,” a dance floor friendly track that’s one-part 80s New Order, one- part JOVM mainstays DBFC, one-part Daft Punk.

“Corps à corps,” Avant-Premiére‘s fourth and latest single is another dance floor friendly bop — but this time more along the lines of LCD Soundsystem: angular bursts of funk guitar, sinuous bass lines, buzzing bass synths, relentless four-on-the-floor and copious cowbell are placed within a hook-driven song structure. Fittingly for a danceable song, the song’s French’s lyrics detail the movements of bodies approaching and then repelling each seemingly in an off-kilter fashion.

The accompanying lyric video features the duo in an empty theater changing seats while a maintenance person cleans up.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Italy’s IC2 Shares an Icy Yet Dance Floor Friendly Single

IC2 is the darkwave/post-punk solo recording project of Ivan Coppola, mysterious Villa Latina, Italy-based producer, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Late last year, I wrote about the brooding yet dance floor friendly “Falling Down,” a track that sonically brought post-punk heavyweights like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure and Joy Division — as well as contemporaries like ACTORS, Bootblacks and others to mind.

The Italian singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer will be releasing the Bad Moon Light EP this year. The EP’s latest single, title track “Bad Moon Light” continues a run of dance floor friendly yet icy post punk centered around reverb-drenched and guitars, atmospheric synths, thumping beats, the Italian artist’s detached vocals placed within a hook-driven song structure. Interestingly, “Bad Moon Light” manages to bring Garlands era Cocteau Twins to mind, revealing an artist gently expanding upon his sound.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 69th Birthday, Peter Garrett!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett’s 69th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Liverpool’s Courting Shares Acerbic “Tennis”

Liverpool-based post-punk quarter Courting — Sean Murphy-O’Neill (vocals, guitar), Sean Thomas (drums, vocals), Josh Cope (guitar) and Connor McCann (bass) — exploded into the the national scene with last year’s Grand National EP, a critically applauded effort that led to coverage from the likes The Needle Drop, CRACK, Dork, NME, Clash and London Evening Standard — and landed on a number of end of year lists, including NME‘s 100, Dork‘s Hype List 2022, Daily Star‘s Ones to Watch 2021 and DIY‘s Hello 2021. Adding to a rapidly growing national profile, the act landed two singles on BBC Radio 6′s playlist.

Building upon last year’s incredible momentum, the Liverpool-based post-punk outfit recently signed to [PIAS] and they announced a run of UK tour dates slated for September and October. Along with that, they released a new single “Tennis,” the first bit of new material from the band since the release of last year’s Grand National.

The James Dring-produced “Tennis” sees the members of Courting expanding upon their sound with smatterings of electronic fuzz, bloops, bleeps and feedback that explodes into cacophony paired with angular guitar lines, a driving bass line, forceful rhythms and an enormous, shout-along worthy hook-driven chorus paired with Murphy-O’Neill’s sardonic lyrics delivered with vocals, which vacillate between a restrained monologue and a bristling and acerbic spittle and bile-fueled singing. The song captures the push and pull, and the bitter and endless back and forth within a dysfunctional, transactional relationship with an uncanny sense of realism.

“‘Tennis’ is a paypig’s personal redemption narrative, set in ‘the city’, and told in two parts. A twisted tale of two lovers’ back and forth, bound by cricket, bodybuilding, and money. A story as old as time,” the members of Courting explain. “We named the song ‘Tennis’ as a logical (but unrelated) sequel to our two previously released sports-related songs. To us, this felt like a natural ending to that idea. Dynamically, the second part of the song is supposed to represent a shift in tone for the character in which they realise their own worth and leave the situation that is set within the first part of the song.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Calgary’s Sunglaciers Share Brooding and Uneasy “Best Years”

Calgary-based post-punk outfit Sunglaciers can trace its origins back to 2017 as a caollaboration between its founding — and core — members: multi-instrumentalist Matthieu Blanchard and lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Evan Resnik. When they started the project, Blanchard had completed his studies in medicine, working in family medicine and addiction and Resnik had returned from a trip hitchhiking through France.

Since the project’s formation, the Calgary-based act has released a couple of EPs and their full-length debut, 2019’s Foreign Bodies. Foreign Bodies saw the Canadian post-punk outfit saw them crafting a maximalist approach that saw them blurring the lines between dazzling indie rock melodicism and icy, post-punk experimentation.

During that same period, the duo have seen a steadily rising profile: They’ve shared stages with the likes of JOVM mainstays Preoccupations, Omni and Daniel Romano while topping the charts of college radio stations across Western Canada.

When the pandemic put their touring plans on a then-indefinite pause, the band quickly shifted their focus to writing material, dedicating 40-plus hour weeks to music during the early months of 2020. Those writing sessions wound up becoming their sophomore album Subterranea, which Montreal-based purveyors of all things psych and trippy, Mothland released today.

Continuing an ongoing collaboration with Chad VanGaalen, who co-produced the album, Subterranea  sees the band eschewing the maximalist approach of their previous releases and crafting material with a decided laser focus. The end result is a frenetic, breakneck album of material that never overstays its welcome. “We tried to write vertically instead of horizontally,” Sunglaciers’ Matthieu Blanchard explains. “Our last album Foreign Bodies and the EPs that came before it had lots of long songs with different parts drifting back and forth. For this album, we decided to strip our songs down to two or three minutes with only a few ideas in each of them.”

“The bulk of this album came together during the pandemic and the changing of gears that we had to do,” Sunglaciers’ Evan Resnik says. “I was out of work and Mathieu was working half as much as usual, so we had lots of time on our hands. We flipped a switch and started playing music everyday. It’s a good indicator of how we were writing at the time while we wrapped our heads around some new gear and saw what came out of it. Essentially, we took all of our favourite musical tendencies and put them together. We were listening to a lot of McCartney II at the time and loved how eclectic it was, which led to us mirroring that vibe.”

With an extended timeframe to write and record, the album, which was recorded at Bruce Crews’ voiceover studio On Air Studios allowed Blanchard and Blanchard the opportunity to learn engineering skills and for the opportunity to experiment with swapping the instruments that each member typically played, a strategy that was employed during the writing and recording of Portishead‘s Third and David Bowie‘s “Boys Keep Swinging.”

The album also features contributions from the aforementioned Chad VanGaalen, Hermitess‘ Jennifer Crighton and Roman66′s Louis Cza The Black Greek God. The end result may arguably be Sunglaciers most urgent and cohesive batch of material, an effort that draws from the likes of Deerhunter, Total Control, and BEAK> among others.

In the lead up to the album’s release today, I wrote about two of Subterranea‘s singles:

  • “Avoidance,” a woozy and uneasy ripper full of guilt and recriminations delivered with a breakneck freneticism centered around a persistent synth-driven groove. And while sounding a bit like Plague Vendor and Atsuko Chiba, “Avoidance” lyrically touches upon themes of alienation, abandonment and guilt in a way that should feel familiar to most of us during this unusual moment of our lives. 
  • “Out of My Skull,” another breakneck track full of foreboding, uneasy menace centered around hypnotic, glistening synth arpeggios, a sinuous bass line and propulsive drumming paired with Resnik’s anxious delivery. And as a result, the song evokes a frustrated, restless boredom — and it should feel familiar for most of us, stuck at home with nothing to do, nowhere to really go and no one to see. 

“Best Years,” Subterranea‘s latest single features a guest spot from the aforementioned Chad VanGaalen and may be the dreamiest, most Wolf Parade-like song on the entire album with the song featuring wobbling synth arpeggios, a slow-burning grinding groove, glistening guitars and Resik’s plaintive vocals. But underneath, the seemingly placid surface is a gnawing and uneasy dissatisfaction.

“The song is about getting stuck in what comforts you and losing years inside passive contentment,” the band’s Evan Resnik explains. “Time passes, you realize all those plans you had for yourself have charred on the back burner or disappeared completely. You thought you were happy, but it was just the safety of your situation, a relationship or a decent job, that made you feel this way. Suddenly the world is dull and you feel like your time is up. I’m very afraid of that feeling and these days I try my best to avoid it.

The video was made by Calgary-based multimedia artist Ryan Kostel. He reworked old film footage and ran it through different media (weird lenses, old TVs, VCRs, etc.) to create a visual story for the song.”