Category: singer/songwriters

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Nashville-based JOVM Mainstay Marcus King Releases a Mind-Bending Visual for “One Day She’s Here”

Over the past six months or so, I’ve written quite a bit about the Greenville, SC-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter, guitarist and JOVM mainstay Marcus King. King is a fourth generation musician, who has followed in his family’s footsteps by becoming a musician and singer/songwriter of note himself. 

Playing professionally since he was 11, King was discovered after a video of him performing at Norman’s Rare Guitars went viral. Now 23, King  has been performing for the past 15 years, establishing himself as a  world class guitarist, vocalist and highly sought-after session player.

Since 2015, King has been relentlessly touring with his backing band The Marcus King Band — Jack Ryan (drums), Stephen Campbell (bass), Justin Johnson (trumpet, trombone) and Dean Mitchell (sax, still guitar) — playing 140 dates live shows over the course of the past year. Adding to a breakthrough year, King and his backing band have played on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, made his debut at The Grand Ole Opry — and he has opened for Chris Stapleton during the country star’s last US arena tour, playing in front of 17,000 people every night.

King’s Dan Auerbach-produced full-length debut El Dorado was released earlier this year through Fantasy Recordings, and the album continues his ongoing collaboration with Auerbach with the album being co-written with the acclaimed singer/songwriter, guitarist and producer over a breakneck three days at his Nashville-based Easy Eye Sound Studio. Sonically the album finds King and Auerbach crafting a contemporary exploration of classic rock, blues, southern R&B and country soul. 

“Marcus is known by so many as a phenom guitar player, and rightfully so,” Dan Auerbach says of King. “He’s regularly the best player in the room, hands down. I was equally blown away by the way he can sing — so effortless, so soulful, straight to the heart. He’s a naturally gifted writer too, which was clear right away. Everything for him is so innate — that’s why he can always go right to the heart of a song and connect in a deeper way. He’s really one of a king and I’m proud I got to work alongside him on this record.”

“One Day She’s Here,” El Dorado’s fourth single is lush song centered around a soulful arrangement that’s indebted to Curtis Mayfield and 70s Motown, complete with a soaring string arrangement, layers of propulsive percussion, shimmering Rhodes piano and guitar,  an enormous hook and King’s effortlessly soulful vocals. Much like the specific period that seemingly inspired it, the song is an achingly earnest song about a lover, who suddenly disappears without explanation — and with a remarkable display of craft and self-assuredness that belies its creators relative youth. 

Directed by Joshua Shoemaker, the recently released video for “One Day She’s Here” is a mind-bending nod to Memento as it features action going in forward and reverse simultaneously as it focuses on the sudden disappearance of the song’s central love interest. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Beginning his professional life with working in finance and as a co-owner of London‘s The Society Club, the Norwegian-born, London-based singer/songwriter, composer and multi-instrumentalist Erik Brudvik left both to pursue a career with his solo recording project Brudini. Slated for a May 15, 2020 release, Brudvik’s forthcoming self-recorded and self-produced Brudini debut From Darkness, Light is a conceptual album that draws from his own personal experience traversing between two seemingly contradictory worlds before finding his creative voice — and of a life spent as a sort of itinerant traveler.

From Darkness, Light is reportedly a soul searching effort that thematically and narratively weaves an abstract, wandering tale through feelings of loss and longing, anger, lust and despair, towards cosmic consolation as the album features Brudvik’s lyrics and the poems of California-based poet Chip Martin paired with old-timey and atmospheric arrangements featuring creaky pianos, analog synths, syncopated jazz-inspired lyrics and occasional blasts of distorted guitar. The end result is a contemplation of the various transitions, compromises and dashed dreams of adulthood.

The album’s first three singles — “Reflections,” ‘Emotional Outlaw” and “Pale Gold” — were released to widespread critical praise in the UK with Louder Than War referring to the rising singer/songwriter as “an indescribable talent,” as well as praise from NYC music legend Danny Fields. Each of the album’s first singles have received airplay on Radio X, BBC Radio 6 and BBC Radio 2 personality Frank Skinner‘s program. Building upon a growing profile, Brudvik has developed a reputation as a must-see live act, collaborating with Lulu Gainsbourg, Lanah P, and Erasure‘s Andy Bell.

“Radiant Man,” From Darkness, Light‘s fourth and latest single finds the rising Norwegian-born, British-based singer/songwriting crafting a song that balances a thoughtful and earnest intimacy with a widescreen, cinematic quality that subtly recalls Harvest-era Neil Young, OK Computer-era Radiohead and The Invisible Band-era Travis — thanks, in part to an arrangement centered around strummed guitar, atmospheric synths, twinkling piano, shuffling jazz-like rhythms and Brudvik’s plaintive vocals.

Thematically, the song is centered around a narrative that’s older than time, and yet strangely relevant and contemporary: it follows a well-meaning protagonist, full of good intentions who fights onward despite being slowly crushed by a tidal wave of enormous forces beyond his control.  The human spirit can be indefatigable — and in these very dark and uncertain times, we’ll need to dig deep, perhaps deeper than ever before to make it to whatever awaits us on the other side.

“‘Radiant Man’ is the story of a person fighting against a tidal wave. In the midst of a crisis, I find there is something about the enduring human spirit that emerges and brings us closer. ‘Radiant Man’ is an homage to this human radiance, echoed today in streets everywhere from Wuhan and New York to Sao Paolo and Milan.” 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

 

Denny Soloist is a rising, Maryland-born singer/songwriter and photographer — and within a week of posting “Not Built For War” on SoundCloud back in 2015, the Maryland native quickly amassed over 10,000 streams. Building upon that momentum, Soloist released his debut mixtape 2016’s Truth or Dare, which featured “Not Built For War” and his official debut single “The Funeral.”

The following year, Denny Soloist released covers of James Arthur‘s “Say You Won’t Let Go” and JoJo‘s remix of Drake‘s “Marvins Room,” which both wound up landing one Apple Music Connect’s Top 200. 2017 also saw the release of his second official single “Out The Window,” a collaboration with rapper Pro-Lific.

The Maryland native then took most of 2018 away from the music industry to focus on his other passion — photography. During that same year, which featured a period of deep, personal reflection, Soloist came to terms with his sexuality, releasing some of his most honest material to date, including last year’s BOYS mixtape.

Soloist begins 2020 with the sultry, trap-influenced banger “Selfish.” Featuring shimmering synths, rapid-fire stuttering beats, wobbling low end and Soloist’s achingly plaintive falsetto, the track details how the song’s narrator ruined a romantic relationship through his own selfishness — cheating on his lover left and right. But the song is centered by a hilarious yet realistic irony: although the song’s narrator admittedly feels badly about his own deceitfulness, he isn’t naive; he’s aware that his lover was doing the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Caroline Mason’s Surreal and Minimalist Visual for Brooding “If You Want Me To”

Caroline Mason is an emerging, Portland, OR-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer and experimental electronic music artist, who from an early age has been drawn to find a connection between the depths of human emotion and how must has the ability to take us to those places within ourselves. 

Mason’s latest single “If You Want Me To” is a brooding yet atmospheric song centered around a sinuous bass line, reverb and delay pedaled guitar, gently accumulating layers of wobbling, arpeggiated synths, Mason’s plaintive vocals and an infectious, ear worm of a hook. Sonically recalling Us-era Peter Gabriel, the song thematically touches upon honestly facing oneself and pushing away old habits, old fears and old selves for a bold new future. 

Directed by filmmaker and stylist Christal Angelique, the recently released video was inspired by English fashion designer Gareth Pugh and finds Mason dressed up in a custom, futuristic piece made by Portland-based designer Kate Towers. And in the video we see Mason in the desert, accompanied by a marching army of her doppelgängers. Angelique wanted the piece to be relatable for anyone facing fears and parts of themselves that needed to go. “It is about overcoming the battles within so one can move into their stronger, future self,” Mason says of the song.  

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

I’m having a major technical issue which has screwed up my own editorial schedule — but we’ll make do with what we can.  Technology can be a real asshole y’all. So let’s get to it: Starting his career as a member of Staggered Crossing, Julian Taylor is a Toronto-based singer/songwriter, whose sound meshes country, 70s AM rock and folkas you’ll hear on his latest single, the tightly crafted honky tonk-like track “The Ridge.” 

Interestingly, the track finds Taylor, an indigenous person of color reflecting on what life was back during his grandparents day in Maple Ridge, BC and his own experience as an indigenous person of color in a primarily white world. As a Black American man, the song evokes things I’ve felt personally — as though I’m not completely accepted anywhere.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Kalbells Featuring Rubblebucket’s Kalmia Traver Releases a Shimmering and Mesmerizing New Single

Best known for being the co-founder and frontwoman of the acclaimed JOVM mainstays Rubblebucket, the Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Kalmia Traver has stepped out on her own with her latest recording project Kalbells. The project’s latest EP, the  recently released Chrome Sparks and Traver co-produced Mothertime EP thematically navigates through themes of resilience, yielding, beckoning creativity, self-exploration and joy.  

“Mothertime,” the EP’s latest single and title track is an ethereal song centered around layers of glistening synths, stuttering beats, handclaps, and Traver’s achingly plaintive vocals the ethereal and mesmerizing track subtly recalls her work with Rubblebucket — but while possessing a surreal and mesmerizing quality reminiscent of Radiohead’s Kid A. 

Directed, shot and produced by Kalmia Traver, the recently released lyric video is a college art-styled visual that stars Anthony The Celebrity Ant, who according to Traver “was a diva to work with but onscreen, he pulled 1000x his weight in emotion.” 

Kalbells will be embarking on their first headlining tour this fall — pandemic willing –with support from Lily and Horn Horse, Bernice, and Ohmme, and the tour will include an October 16, 2020 hometown show at The Sultan Room. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Amsterdam’s Someone Releases a Low-Budget Horror Film Inspired Commentary on Social Media

Over the past couple of years, I’ve managed to spill quite a bit of virtual ink writing about the Amsterdam-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and multidisciplinary artist Tessa Rose Jackson, the creative mastermind behind the rising indie recording project Someone. With the release of her debut EP Chain Reaction, Jackson quickly received attention for pairing her music with an accompanying short film.

The Dutch singer/songwriter, producer and multidisciplinary artist’s sophomore EP Orbit found Jackson exploring the intensity with which art and music can be fused and how they can be more fully enhanced. Thematically the material was an incisive commentary on our overstimulated digital age that suggests that we spend so much time staring into our phones and on social media, endlessly exposing ourselves to external distractions to the point that we’re essentially orbiting each other. And as a result, we rarely touch, rest or even focus long enough to connect to anyone or any particular thing. Orbit received praise from The Line of Best Fit, DIY Magazine, The 405 and NME — with NME picking her set as a highlight of last year’s Eurosonic.  

2020 looks to be a breakthrough year for the Dutch-based Jackson: her highly-anticipated Someone full-length debut, Orbit II is slated for a June 20, 2020 release through [PIAS] Recordings. And already, the album’s first single “Forget Forgive” was recently featured in a pivotal scene of the acclaimed Netflix series Dear White People. Building upon the momentum of the past year or so, Orbit II’s latest single “You Live In My Phone” is a sultry and decided change in sonic direction for the Amsterdam-based artist. Centered around a shimmering synth and key arpeggios, stuttering beats, Jackson’s breathy vocal delivery the song sonically sounds like a slick synthesis of neo soul and Daft Punk. Thematically, the song continues the Dutch artist’s focus on technology and social media on us and our relationships. 

“It isn’t meant as a personal diary log for me to vent my feelings and that’s that. I’d like it to be more of a bolstering experience, a conversation starter for people that recognise themselves in these songs,” Jackson says of Orbit II’s material. “The music is optimistic, even if the lyrics sometimes wade into some pretty harsh waters and this balance -to me -helps to bring perspective, positivity and a little humour into the mix.”

Created by Someone’s Tessa Rose Jackson and directed by David Spearing, the recently released video for “You Live In My Phone” is indebted to 50s and 80s low-budget sci-fi and horror films. We follow the life story of its protagonist, Joe who has spent his entire childhood immersed with his smartphone, to the exclusion of life around him. One night, the grown Joe falls asleep with his trust phony during a thunderstorm, and when he wakes up he finds his phone gone — and his head replaced by a giant emoji. It’s a decidedly absurd tragicomedy that finds our now emoji-headed protagonist desperately alone and misunderstood. Every time that he tries to reach out to another, he’s completely ignored by people on their phones. The only time anyone does connect with him, they spend time taking picture of him for their social media feeds. And in anger, he turns those who have tormented him into emoji-heads. 

Orbit II will be releasing alongside an app that allows listeners to experience the record’s artwork in augmented reality. ” “To me, playfulness is a big part of what I do. I hope to invite people to explore and experience new music (and art) actively, instead of passively. Hands on,” Jackson explains. “This is why the visually interactive element of ORBIT II is so essential.”
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Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Blinker The Star’s Glitchy and Trippy Visual for Anthemic “Only To Ruin Wild”

Over the past couple of months, I’ve written about the Pembroke, Ontario-born and-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind acclaimed indie rock recording project Blinker The Star, Jordon Zadorozny. Initially started as a solo project. Zadorozny’s Blinker The Star expanded into a trio by the time they signed to A&M Records, who released the band’s first two albums — 1995’s self-titled debut and 1996’s A Bourgeois Kitten. During those early years, the band built up a profile nationally and elsewhere through steady touring. 

In 1997, Zadorozny relocated from Montreal to Los Angeles, where he worked with Courtney Love, helping craft songs for Hole’s acclaimed and commercially successful Celebrity Skin. While in Los Angeles, Zadorozny began soaking up new influences and became increasingly fascinated with production. Signing with Dreamworks in 1999, the band, which at the time featured Zadorozny, Failure’s Kelli Scott (drums), longtime bassist Pete Frolander and a rotating cast of Southern California-based session musicians recorded and released their critically applauded third album August Everywhere, which they supported with touring across North America with Our Lady Peace, Sloan, Failure and The Flaming Lips. 

Returning back to Pembroke in 2002, Zadorozny built his first commercial recording studio and began working with Sam Roberts, contributing drums and producing Roberts’ breakthrough debut EP The Inhuman Condition. Zadorozny also worked on albums by Melisa Auf der Maur, Chris Cornell, Lindsey Buckingham and others.

During the Winter of 2003, Zadorozny wrote and recorded Blinker The Star’s fourth album Still In Rome as a duo with Kelli Scott. Following a brief tour to support the album, the Pembroke, Ontario-born multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter quickly settled into the production side of the things working with an electric array of artists, including collaborative projects like Digital Noise Academy, SheLoom,  The Angry Moon, and others. 

2012’s fourth album, We Draw Lines was the first Blinker The Star album that Zadorozny wrote and recorded as a solo recording project since he started the it. We Draw Lines began a rather prolific period that included 2013’s Songs from Laniakea Beach, a one-off single “Future Fires” 2015’s 11235 EP, 2017’s 8 of Hearts and last year’s Careful With Your Magic.

After completing a short run of shows last fall, Zodorozny began working working on new material at his Skylark Park Studio. The solitude of his environment helped inform his forthcoming Blinker The Star album Juvenile Universe, which is slated for release this summer. Now, as you may recall, last month I wrote about the album’s first single “Way Off Wave,” a Station to Station-era David Bowie-like track with an enormous, arena rock friendly hook that according to Zodorozny “touches upon the things we do and think to ourselves after a period of great change: our impulse to seek out new external realities, while internally returning to stuck patterns and thoughts which inhibit growth and acceptance. It is almost a dreamlike state we find ourselves in trying to move forward while mentally sloshing about in the past, looking for new answers that will never appear.”

“Only To Run Wild” Juvenile Universe’s second and latest single continues a run of seemingly 70s rock inspired singles, centered around a jangling guitars, a shimmering and expressive guitar solo, a soaring hook and an unerring melodicism. But interestingly enough, it may be the most boldly ambitious Blinker The Star song I’ve heard. 

“There was a moment after New Year’s when the studio suddenly fell silent for the first time in weeks. I found myself pacing mindlessly so I sat down at my 1972 Heinzman upright piano and the first 4 chords that fell out are the first chords you hear in this song,” Zodorozny explains in press notes. “It is a paean to those who must live free and roam this earth alone, perhaps not fearlessly but with a stubbornness of will and imagination, all chips on the table, never to be caught in limbo or treading water. To flow like an eternal spring.”

The recently released video is centered around digitally massaged and trippy visuals by Victor Malang. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Jacque Ryal is an an emerging singer/songwriter, keyboardist and pop artist, who first emerged into the local scene as a vocalist and keyboardist in pop act Strip Darling before boldly going forward as a solo artist. Ryal began her solo career crafting Portishead-inspired trip-hop. Interestingly, her latest project RYAL which finds her collaborating with producer and songwriter Aaron Nevezie has received attention from The Best Line of Best Fit, Time Out New York, LadyGunn, Popdust and elsewhere for work that has been compared favorably to Little Dragon and Portishead.

Anna Azarov Photography

 

RYAL’s latest single is the atmospheric and slow-burning “Where Did All The Love Go.” Centered around Jacque Ryal’s heavily vocoder’ed and auto-tuned vocals, stuttered beats,  shimmering synth arpeggios and an infectious hook, the song is an achingly bittersweet lament that focuses on a relationship with hot and heavy beginnings that has slowly and inexplicably cooled off. Throughout the song, its heartbroken narrator is fighting to find answers and keep the relationship intact — but on a certain level, there’s tacit understanding that this valued relationship is bound to end. Certainly, we’ve all been there and it’s an embittering and wrenching experience.

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Alison Mosshart’s Self-Directed and Edited Visual for Ominous Solo Debut “Rise”

Alison Mosshart is a Vero Beach, FL-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter a best known as one-half of the acclaimed indie rock act JOVM mainstays The Kills and for being the frontwoman of the indie rock/blues punk supergroup The Dead Weather. Interestingly, over the past decade or so, Mosshart has developed a reputation for being restlessly creative: she has had paintings shown in galleries across the world and she recently published her first book CAR MA, a collection of her art, photography and writing that serves as a love letter to all things automobile. Additionally, Mosshart has developed a reputation for being a go-to collaborator for that added dash of badassery, working with her Dead Weather bandmate Jack White, Arctic Monkeys, Primal Scream, Gang of Four, Cage The Elephant, Foo Fighters, James Williamson and Mini Mansions in a rapidly growing list. 

2020 will continue a period of remarkably creative prolificacy for Mosshart: Currently, Mosshart and her bandmate Jamie Hince are working on the next Kills record, which they hope to be able to bring to the road — pandemic willing, of course. Interestingly, this year also see Mosshart stepping out into the spotlight as a solo artist, releasing material under her name for the first time in her career. And although for Mosshart, releasing music under her own name is a new and thrilling experience, it’s a process that can be traced back more than a decade with Mosshart compiling a trove of unreleased material. Her debut single, the Lawrence Rothman-produced “Rise” can trace its origins back to 2013 when she first wrote the initial sketch of the song.  The end result is a slow-burning and searing blues with brooding and ominous undertones centered around thumping beats, fuzzy power chords, Mosshart’s imitable vocals and a soaring hook. 

“I didn’t ever forget it,” Mosshart recalls. “I remember right where I was when I wrote it, sitting at my desk in London, missing someone badly. Interestingly, when the Sacred Lies team reached out to the Kills and Dead Weather frontwoman about doing a signature song for the song, she knew “Rise” had the right sort of vibe for the show. Interestingly, “Rise” is prominently featured in the final episode of  the FacebookWatch drama Sacred Lies with the song serving as a major plot point within the series’ story. 

Much like everyone else across the world, Mosshart is hunkered down in her Nashville home and she’s used this period of social distancing and quarantine to teach herself video editing. Shot, edited and directed by Mosshart, the recently released video for “Rise” is comprised of footage from a recent trip she took to Los Angeles with most of it centered around capturing lowrider culture.