Category: singer/songwriters

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Quilter Releases a Playful Visual for “The Long Weekend”

Stuart Dougan is a Glasgow-born and-based singer/songwriter, who is best known in his native Scotland for fronting French Wives and Smash Williams. Dougan steps out into the limelight as a solo artist, writing and recording every single part of music on his own terms with his latest project The Quilter. 

Dougan’s The Quilter debut, Bolt The Door EP is a collection of bold, alt pop songs, som eo which were written and recorded before the pandemic with others written during the initial lockdown. Interestingly, the EP follows upon last year’s immersive and cinematic visual record Dark Cloud/Grey Area, which was equal parts documentary film, live concert and album.

Bolt The Door’s latest single “The Long Weekend,” is an anthemic bit of synth pop featuring shimmering synth arpeggios, a driving groove and a euphoria-inducing hooks and fueled by nostalgia for hook-driven New Order-like dance anthems and for the things we here in the States are slowly getting back — in particular, being in the company of other sweaty and joyful humans at a summer festival and for other mundane things we’ve been deprived of for the past 15 months or so. 

“This song was in part inspired by a viral clip I saw from the set of Uncut Gems where the crew had finished filming and were all dancing to ‘I Feel It Coming’ by The Weeknd.  It was just a short clip but I wanted to try and capture the palpable sense of joy that was clearly being felt at the time.  It was written during lockdown and is basically a love letter to my friends and daydreaming about getting to hang out and have fun in a post pandemic world.  I’m very aware that it’s bombastic and over the top in places but I wanted to purposely try and capture a sense of hopeful euphoria that one day, not too far from here, you’ll get to hug all your friends again.”

The main star of the recently released video for “The Long Weekend” is a park bench on a beautiful Spring afternoon — but this park bench happens to be the spot: starting with The Quilter’s Dougan, a series of locals including kids, couples and people just walking their dogs sit on the bench and listen to music. In some way, it’s all a bit of a welcomed escape from their days. Adding to the playfulness of the video, Dougan eventually joins these people for a few minutes. While centered around a rather simple concept, the video reminds all of us is that music — and our love of it — are the way that we can connect with others, and that it inspires us to be around others.

“The whole concept of the video was, by design, supposed to be very simple so that it would be logistically easy to shoot and edit,” Stuart Dougan explains. “That may not be exciting to hear, but sometimes that’s how the sausage is made (quickly).  Disaster struck however when the footage from the shoot got corrupted due to (redacted, unimportant technical issue).  Long story short, the only way to salvage the footage was to pivot to a stop motion animation concept that resulted in over 8,500ish screenshots being taken to make it work.  It was traumatic and outrageously laborious so whilst I may struggle to ever watch it again, I hope that folk enjoy it!’

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Berlin’s IRYS Releases a Slickly Produced Bop

IRYS is an emerging, Berlin-based singer/songwriter and producer, who specializes in what she describes as dark electro pop with a note of retro and synth wave. She released her first single earlier this and currently has plans to release one single a month throughout the rest of the year.

The Berlin-based artist’s latest single, “River” features IRYS’ sultry vocals over a slick production centered around shimming synth arpeggios, skittering tweeter and woofer rocking beats and a propulsive bass line to create a mid-tempo track that sounds — to my ears, at least — indebted to Version 2.0-era Garbage while it describes a dysfunctional relationship that just holds her back in every possible way.

The recently released video by VI Productions is a slick visual split between footage in a strobe lit club, people diving into water, people walking on the beach and the rising German artist singing the song in front of tinsel and other decorations.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Canadian Artist Nathan Lawr Releases a Road Trip Friendly Anthem

Nathan Lawr is a Guelph, Ontario, Canada-based singer/songwriter and musician. His forthcoming album Apocalypse Marshmallow is slated for release in July — and of course, to build buzz for the album, Lawr recently released the album’s second and latest single, “Restless.”

Centered around jangling guitars, twinkling keys, propulsive drumming, a rousing hook and earnest, lived-in songwriting,”Restless” is a carefully crafted, 70s AM rock-inspired, road trip anthem that captures the overarching zeitgeist: the bitter, perpetual sense of dissatisfaction with everything; the uneasy desire to suddenly change everything within the drop of a hat; the lack of human connections. In some way, the song will likely hit close to home for many of my readers.

“I wrote this song more than nine years ago,” Lawr recalls in press notes. “I actually can’t remember at all when or where I was when I wrote it. I’ve been making this record for so long, things have gotten pretty blurry along the way. It’s such an eerie feeling, my past self sending me messages through song for the future.”

Shot in a grainy black and white, the recently released video follows a shadowy figure across a wintry and suburban landscape.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New VIdeo: Follow St. Vincent on a Gritty 70s Inspired Heist

Initially starting her professional career as a member of The Polyphonic Spree and as a touring member of Sufjan Stevens’ touring band, the Tulsa-born, New York-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark stepped out into the limelight as a solo artist and frontperson with her acclaimed project St. Vincent. Since the release of 2007’s full-length debut Marry Me, Clark’s work has continued to grow in stature and complexity with her self-titled fourth album winning a 2014 Grammy for Best Alternative Album, making her only the second female artist to ever win in that category.

Along with her work as a solo artist, Clark has collaborated with the legendary David Byrne on 2012’s Love This Giant, performed with the living members of Nirvana at the 2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and da 2019 Grammy Awards duet with Dua Lipa.

Clark collaborated with co-producer Jack Antonoff on 2017’s critically applauded, smash hit album MASSEDUCATION, an album that landed on both the US and UK Top 10 Charts while landing at #1 of the Best of 2017 list of The New York Times and The Guardian — and placing high on the Best of 2017 lists of The AV Club, Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, Mashable, New York Daily News, NME, Paste, Pitchfork, Q, Stereogum, USA Today and a length list of others. 2018’s MassEducation found Clark collaborating with pianist Thomas Bartlett: Recorded over two nights in August 2017, the effort found Clark stripping back MASSEDUCATION’s material to its bare bones, revealing the vulnerable and earnest songwriting at their core.

MASSEDUCATION’s title track won a Grammy for Best Rock Song with the album winning another Grammy for Best Recording Package in 2019. As she was celebrating an enviable run of critical and commercial success, Clark’s father was released from prison. Clark began writing a new batch of materials which would become her soon-to-be released seventh album, Daddy’s Home. Daddy’s Home thematically closes the loop the loop on a journey that began with her father’s incarceration back in 2019 — and it ultimately led her back to the vinyl records her dad had introduced her when she was child — the gritty and sleazy rock records written and recorded in New York between 1971-1975.

Interestingly, Daddy’s Home’s latest single, “Down” is centered around a groove that’s simultaneously sultry and anxious with the track evoking images of the legendarily sleazy New York: in this case, a coke and booze fueled bender that starts at the local bar, features a stop at CBGB’s or Max’s Kansas City to see Blondie or Ramones before heading off to Studio 54. Warhol is somewhere in this picture, right? Now, while some critics have compared the album’s overall aesthetic and sound to Young Americans-era Bowie and Prince, “Down” to my ears reminds me more of Station to Station and Lodger-era Bowie. It’s far more anxious and murkier with a bit of menace seeping through.

Co-directed by Clark and Bill Benz, the recently released video features Clark in Candy Darling-like regalia through an anxious chase that’s one part French Connection and one part drug-fueled, paranoid fever dream. It fits the song’s careening and glitchy groove perfectly.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Asset Music Releases a “120 Minutes” MTV-era Alt Rock Inspired Single

Will Goodchild is a Marlow, Buckingham, UK-based singer/songwriter, guitarist and producer, and the creative mastermind behind the emerging solo recording project Asset Music. As Goodchild explains, Asset Music was created as a creative outlet, when it became difficult to get a real band together to play. So, he took to his mini studio — a MacBook Pro with Logic X — and started writing and recording music inspired by Brit Pop and alt rock that he wanted to hear. Although, Goodchild aims to take the project wherever his muses take him, with the project being firmly rooted in the ‘if it sounds good, it must be” ethos.

In the meantime, Asset Music’s latest single “Shine On” is a decidedly 120 Minutes MTV-era alt rock single featuring fuzzy power chords, cavernous drumming and a rousingly anthemic hook. Sonically, the track brings Gentlemen-era Afghan Whigs to mind; but as Goodchild explains in press notes, the song reflects on the past year of the pandemic but with an optimistic view of things getting back to some level of normal. Live music may actually be a fucking thing again in New York, so how about that?

The recently released video by Studio 4×2 follows a black clad traveling guitarist. The guitarist travels about, playing music in various locations throughout a long day and night. And while the cities are quiet, things aren’t completely hopeless. You do see people embarking on their daily errands — and the sight of a wandering musician gives a small bit of hope for normalcy on the horizon.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Stuart Dougan is a Glasgow-born and-based singer/songwriter, who is best known in his native Scotland for fronting French Wives and Smash Williams. Dougan steps out into the limelight as a solo artist, writing and recording every single part of music on his own terms with his latest project The Quilter.

Dougan’s The Quilter debut, Bolt The Door EP is a collection of bold, alt pop songs, som eo which were written and recorded before the pandemic with others written during the initial lockdown. Interestingly, the EP follows upon last year’s immersive and cinematic visual record Dark Cloud/Grey Area, which was equal parts documentary film, live concert and album.

Bolt The Door’s latest single “The Long Weekend,” is an anthemic bit of synth pop featuring shimmering synth arpeggios, a driving groove and a euphoria-inducing hooks and fueled by nostalgia for hook-driven New Order-like dance anthems and for the things we here in the States are slowly getting back — in particular, being in the company of other sweaty and joyful humans at a summer festival and for other mundane things we’ve been deprived of for the past 15 months or so.

“This song was in part inspired by a viral clip I saw from the set of Uncut Gems where the crew had finished filming and were all dancing to ‘I Feel It Coming’ by The Weeknd.  It was just a short clip but I wanted to try and capture the palpable sense of joy that was clearly being felt at the time.  It was written during lockdown and is basically a love letter to my friends and daydreaming about getting to hang out and have fun in a post pandemic world.  I’m very aware that it’s bombastic and over the top in places but I wanted to purposely try and capture a sense of hopeful euphoria that one day, not too far from here, you’ll get to hug all your friends again.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Sloan Stumble is the 20-something  Aledo, TX-born, Austin, TX-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and creative mastermind behind the critically applauded and rapidly rising indie rock/indie pop project Dayglow. The project can trace its origins to Struble’s teenaged years, growing up in a Fort Worth suburb that he has referred to as a “small football-crazed town,” where he felt irrevocably out of place. Aesthetically and thematically, the project finds Struble crafting material cen nloater red around a hard fought, hard won optimism. 

Much like countless other hopelessly out of place young people across the globe, Struble turned to music as an escape from his surroundings. “I didn’t really feel connected to what everyone else in my school was into, so making music became an obsession for me, and sort of like therapy in a way,” Struble recalled in press notes. “I’d dream about it all day in class, and then come home and for on songs instead of doing homework. After a while I realized I’d made an album.”

Working completely on his own with a minuscule collection of gear that included his guitar, his computer and some secondhand keyboards he picked up at Goodwill, Struble worked on transforming his privately kept outpouring into a batch of songs — often grandiose in scale. “Usually artists will have demos they’ll bounce off other people to get some feedback, but nobody except for my parents down the hall really heard much of the album until I put it out,” Struble recalled. With the self-release of 2018’s Fuzzybrain, the Aledo-born, Austin-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer received widespread attention and an ardent online following — with countess listeners praising the material’s overwhelming positivity. 

In 2019, Struble re-released a fully realized version of Fuzzybrain that featured Can I Call You Tonight,” a track that wound up being a smash-hit last year, as well as two previously unreleased singles “Nicknames” and “Listerine.” With the two new singles, the album further establishes Struble’s growing reputation for illuminating emotional pain in a way that not only deeply resonates with listeners but while managing to make that emotional pain feel lighter. 

Struble kicked off 2021 with the infectious and sugary pop confection “Close to You,” a track indebted to 80s synth-led soul — in particular Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald‘s “On My Own” Cherelle’s and Alexander and O’Neal‘s “Saturday Love” and other duets, but imbued with an aching melancholy and uncertainty. He then made his national late night TV debut on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he, along with his backing band, played “Can I Call You Tonight.” 

Continuing upon that momentum, Struble’s highly-anticipated Dayglow sophomore album Harmony House is slated for a May 21, 2021 release through his own Very Nice Records and AWAL. After Fuzzybrain‘s release, Struble had started to write material that was inspired by the 70s and 80s piano-driven soft rock that he had been drawn to — and around the time he had been watching a lot of Cheers. “At the very beginning, I was writing a soundtrack to a sitcom that doesn’t exist,” Struble recalls. And while actively attempting to generate nostalgia for something that hadn’t ever been real — as well as something most of his listeners had never really experienced — the album’s material thematically is about growing up and coping with change as an inevitable part of life. 

“Balcony,” Harmony House‘s fourth and latest single may arguably be the most upbeat song on the entire album. Centered around shimmering guitars, bouncy synth arpeggios, four-on-the-floor drumming and an incredibly infectious hook, “Balcony” is a summery, feel good house party anthem that will get everyone jumping up and down and shouting along to the chorus. “I wrote ‘Balcony’ quite a while ago, but it’s been through tons of phases & revisions before landing on this final version,” Struble says of his latest single. “I wanted to make a song that felt like The Cure, BRONCHO, and the Mario Kart Soundtrack huddled up. Not sure why— it just feels nice 🙂 Hope you enjoy it and play it at a house party or something cause that’s definitely what it’s for/about”

The rising Texan artist also announced series of North American tour dates that we hope actually will happen. The tour includes an October 17, 2021 stop at Webster Hall. Check out the tour dates below. 

North American Tour Dates:

09/09/21 – Dallas, TX @ House of Blues

09/10/21 – Austin, TX @ Stubb’s

09/11/21 – Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live

09/13/21 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren

09/15/21 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre

09/16/21 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre (SOLD OUT)

09/17/21 – San Diego, CA @ House of Blues

09/18/21 – Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory

09/22/21 – San Francisco, CA @ The Regency Ballroom

09/23/21 – Portland, OR @ Roseland Theater

09/24/21 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom

09/26/21 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox

09/28/21 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot

09/29/21 – Denver, CO @ Summit

10/05/21 – Indianapolis, IN @ Deluxe

10/06/21 – Nashville, TN @ Brooklyn Bowl

10/12/21 – Atlanta, GA @ Center Stage

10/13/21 – Charlotte, NC @ The Underground

10/15/21 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of Living Arts

10/16/21 – Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club

10/17/21 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall

10/19/21 – Washington, D.C. @ 9:30 Club

10/21/21 – Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall

10/23/21 – Toronto, ON @ The Phoenix Concert Theatre

10/24/21 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Elevation

10/27/21 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue

10/29/21 – St Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall

10/30/21 – Kansas City, MO @ The Truman

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Rising Burundian-Tanzanian Artist Young Spit Releases a Summery Banger

Niyomwungere Eric is rising 24 year-old Burundian-Tanzanian singer/rapper, whose family emigrated to the States when he was a child. Best known to the world as Young Spit, the Burundian-Tanzanian artist rose to prominence with the release of his first two singles “Shanna” and “Cinderella,” which appeared on his full-length length debut, last year’s Era 257. Those early singles and his debut found the young artist quickly establishing his unique sound, a mesh of Afro pop, Caribbean music and hip-hop paired with lyrics that draw from his personal experiences.

Clocking in at a smidge under three minutes, Era 257’s latest single “Uwanje” is a summery banger that’s both club and radio friendly — while drawing from an eclectic array of influences: the song manages to mesh trap, contemporary pop and R&B and dancehall as it prominently features twinkling synth arpeggios, skittering tweeter and woofer rocking beats, brief blasts of squiggling horns, a scorching guitar solo and the rising Burundian-Tanzanian artist’s gently Autotuned yet expressive vocals. But underneath the glossy swagger, the song is actually a tender and very sweet love song that gives it a subtle Quiet Storm vibe.

Directed by the rising Burundian-Tanzanian artist, shot by 21G productions and edited by Easy.Cuts, the recently released video for “Uwanje” is part behind-the-scenes-like footage of a photo shoot with the rising artist and some beautiful women split with footage of Young Spit rocking out to the song. The video has a playful charm that’s as infectious as the song itself.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Chief Ghoul Releases a Menacing Stoner Blues Anthem

Louisville-based singer/songwriter, guitarist and producer Les Miles is the creative mastermind behind the JOVM mainstay act Chief Ghoul. Sonically Miles’ work meshes old school Kentucky folk with Mississippi Delta Blues and Chicago Blues –in particular the work of the likes Lightnin’ Hopkins, Blind Willie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters‘ acoustic blues and John Lee Hooker paired with poetic lyricism rooted in an overall belief in music as therapy.

Miles’ sixth Chief Ghoul album, These Lycanthropic Blues is slated for a June, 2021 release, and the album reportedly finds the Louisville-based JOVM mainstay tracing a sepia finger chronologically through Miles’ musical journey and influences — but while also revealing where he’s heading in the future. Along with that, the forthcoming album is the second album of his expanding output since 1892 that finds Miles producing his own work, after getting tired of the creative restraints of more commercial studios. But while 1892 was deeply connected to its lo-fi and hauntingly stark predecessors, These Lycanthropic Blues reportedly is centered around a much more three-dimensional yet earthy sound — with additions to the sonic palette, like piano, dirty bass, percussion and occasional cavernous sounding drums. Throughout it all, the autonomy of self-producing has allowed miles to make his work as personal, vulnerable and true to his old-soul.

Interestingly, These Lycanthropic Blues’ latest single, album closer “The Blackest of Souls” reveals Miles’ new sonic direction — stoner rock tinged, dive bar blues, centered around grungy and sludgy power chords, thunderous drumming, Miles’ bluesy baritone wail and a rousingly anthemic hook. It may be the most primal, forceful song of his career while remaining as menacing as ever.

Directed, filmed and edited by Aaron Tyler, the recently released video employs the use of shadows in a trippy fashion — first with seductively dancing woman, stripping and tantalizing the viewer; but the video takes turn for the dark, as monsters and mayhem lurking about.