Category: singer/songwriters

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Over the past 12-18 months or so, I’ve written quite a bit about Rodes Rollins, a Boulder, CO-born singer/songwriter, who spent a stint living abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina and is now primarily based in New York, and as you may recall, she quickly emerged into the national scene with “Young and Thriving,” the first single off her critically applauded debut EP Young Adult, an incredibly self-assured effort written as a portrait of an artist as a young woman, in which the narrator looks back at her most formative experiences with a nostalgic yet wizened flashback of sorts — with the perspective of someone, who now sees how her decisions for better or for worse, planned or serendipitous have influenced who she has become and where her life is at this moment.

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Nasty Woman,” a bold and self-assured feminist anthem that according to Rollins was largely centered on empowerment and pride, while focusing on ” . . .the multi-dimensionality of what it means to be a woman in society — being who you are, as you are; and being proud of that. This song is not presented from only my singular perspective, or through just one medium. The very point of what I’m trying to express is that being a woman shouldn’t be a restrictive identity, but rather a broad and inclusive one.” Sonically, the song is based around a bluesy and reverb-y guitar line, propulsive drumming from Portugal, The Man’s Kane Ritchotee an infectious hook and Rollins’ sultry cooed vocals — and while sultry, the song lyrically features inclusive and intersectional lyrics.

Rollins’ latest single “Boom Pow” is centered around a circular, hypnotic guitar riff and African-inspired percussion and rhythms, and an infectious hook paired around the New York-based singer/songwriter’s sultry and self-assured vocals. Sonically, the song finds the JOVM mainstay pushing her sound in a new direction — but while retaining the essential elements of the sound and approach that captured the attention of the blogosphere. As Rollins says of the song “‘Boom Pow’ is a song inspired by a wide array of influences from Tinariwen to Jane Birkin. I write Americana inspired music and felt compelled to explore the different influences of the Americana genre by showcasing West African-tinged percussion and rhythms. I’m excited to showcase a different side of my sound with this song. I really feel like I’m covering different territory with this one.”

Rollins is playing a free set at Elsewhere’s Rooftop. And you can RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/231823890926934.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Ron Gallo Returns with an Ironic Yet Contented Philosophy on Life in New Single

Over the past couple of years, I’ve written a bit about Ron Gallo, a  Philadelphia-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, whose musical career began in earnest with an eight year stint as the frontman of Philadelphia-based band  Toy Soldiers, an act that initially began as a guitar and drum duo that at one point featured 12 members, before ending as a quintet. Gallo’s 2016 full-length debut HEAVY META was largely inspired by the end of romantic relationship with a deeply troubled woman. Once that relationship ended, Gallo moved to Nashville, recorded an album’s worth of material during a period that he has since considered a deeply transformative period of his life. Interestingly, Gallo initially wrote and recorded the album’s material in small batches without the support of a label — and without the intention of even making an album; however, the material he wrote wound up touching upon a number of themes within his life, including his own personal ideology on abstaining from drugs and alcohol, self-empowerment, domestication, dead and unhappy love, not truly knowing yourself and the thing that could happen to you when you don’t, mental illness from the perspective of a sufferer and an observer, and a burning almost misanthropic frustration with humanity and civilization. And yet, there’s some level of optimism.  As Gallo said in press notes at the time, “this record comes from my frustration with humanity and myself, and from my wanting to shake us all. At my core, I’m compassionate for humanity and the sickness that we all live with, and from that comes something more constructive.”

HEAVY META’s follow-up Really Nice Guys EP was released earlier this year, and the EP was a concept EP largely inspired by the previous year in Gallo’s life in which he was busy touring and promoting his full-length debut with the material being a satirical commentary on the contemporary music industry; in fact, the EP featured songs about rough mixes, (broken into three parts — iPhone demo, live band demo and overproduced, autotuned to death studio recording), the weird inability for those within the music industry to honestly admit that someone is just awful at music, so everyone winds up saying, “well, they’re really nice guys . . .” and the number of friends asking to be put on the guestlist so that you can never really make money off a show.

Slated for an October 5, 2018 release, Gallo’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Stardust Birthday Party is largely inspired by a life-altering, seismic shift in Gallo’s life: as the story goes, the deeply troubled women he was with and left before writing his solo debut, had taken a trip to South America, found a healer and miraculously got herself and her life together in 2016. Understandably, such news had piqued Gallo’s interest and he began reading and searching for a more inward path for his own mental and spiritual development. Earlier this year, on a whim, he booked a trip to California for a silent meditation retreat. Despite his initial discomfort, Gallo reportedly experienced a profound experience that quickly became the answer for his existential searching — and the thematic core of the album: how inner transformation impacts both the outside world and your perception of it.

Or, as Ron Gallo says in a statement about the album:

“Stardust Birthday Party is about human evolution. Specifically, one humans evolution: mine, Ron Gallo.  That’s the name my parents gave me. Hi.
At one point, I was a very lost mid-twenties person living in Philadelphia, in a relationship with someone struggling with mental health issues and crippling heroin addiction. I was asleep. I didn’t know how to handle my life. I was also writing songs for HEAVY META – my “frustrated with humanity” album. I laugh about it all now, but at the time it all felt like an absolute nightmare. It was the perfect doorway to look inside the place I’d been avoiding forever: myself.
Stardust Birthday Party is about what is happening underneath all of this life stuff. My path inward. The details of my path are pointless because everyone’s path is different. It is about me sitting with myself for the first time and confronting the big question “WHAT AM I, REALLY?” It’s about the love and compassion for all things that enters when you find out you are nothing and everything. I think at one point I wanted to change the world, but now I know I can only change myself, or rather just strip away everything that is not me to reveal the only thing that’s ever been there. And that’s what this album is about, it’s me dancing while destroying the person I thought I was, and hopefully forever.
In the liner notes of John Coltrane’s album A Love Supreme (which we pay tribute to on this album) he wrote: ‘During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.’
That’s it.  That is the pure essence of creativity. Someone embodying what they have realized about themselves and the world that surrounds them. That is why this album exists. ”

Stardust Birthday Party’s latest single “It’s All Gonna Be Okay,” is an angular ripper centered around two disparate things — a relishing of life’s ironies with a bemused yet accepting smile, as though saying “well, we’re all small, ridiculous and powerless to the larger forces in the universe that will kill us eventually and that’s okay.” But along with that the song points out a larger connection to everyone and everything, suggesting that the only way the world can even begin the change is if every individual seriously take a look at their own fucked up shit. Until then, well — more of the same, I guess?

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Up-and-Coming Teen Singer/Songwriter Billie Eilish Performs on Vevo LIFT

16 year old Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter and pop artist Billie Eilish can trace the origins of her musical career to when she joined the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus whens he had turned 8. And while with the Children’s Chorus, Eilish perfected and honed her vocal talents. Interestingly, as the story goes, when she turned 11, she began writing and performing her own songs, much like her older brother Finneas, who had been writing and performing his own songs with a band he had formed some years before. In 2015, the sibling duo had written and released two songs SoundCloud — “sHE’s brOKen,” and “Fingers Crossed” for fun and to have their friends listen to.

As the story goes, late that year, Eilish’s older brother told his sister of a song he had been playing with his band “Ocean Eyes.” The up-and-coming Southern Californian singer/songwriter covered the song and sent it to her dance teacher, who she hoped would choreograph a dance routine to the song. The following year, Eilish released Ocean Eyes” and he single quickly became a viral hit. Building upon a rapidly growing profile, its follow up, “Six Feet Under,” led to Darkroom/Interscope Records signing her and officially releasing material to critical applause from major media outlets like Stereogum and others. 

Last year was a breakthrough year for Eilish, thanks in part to her critically applauded debut ep dont smile at me, which resulted in sold-out headlining tours across North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, a number of national daytime and late night television appearances in the States. Additionally. she was long listed for BBC’s Sound of 2018 , was profiled in Apple’s Up Next Artist campaign, and was named VEVO dscvr Artist To Watch 2018.
Eilish’s “bitches broken hearts” continues a run of sultry and self-assured tracks in which the up-and-coming singer/songwriter’s breathy coos ethereally float over a minimalist yet soulful production centered around bluesy guitar chords, stuttering beats and an infectious, radio friendly hook. Interestingly, while the song sonically nods at 90s neo soul and classic Quiet Storm-era R&B, it’s an unabashedly honest ode to the bitterness of a lost love and the inherent excitement of fresh starts and new love — even when that new love is dysfunctional and completely fucked up.  

Vevo has been championing Ms. Eilish for the better part of the past year or so, and they recently included the young singer/songwriter as part of their LIFT initiative, which connects today’s rising stars to global audiences with original creative content through the release of weekly installments of live performances and behind-the-scenes footage to bring fans closer to the artist than before, essentially pulling back the curtain and revealing the humanity of the artist. Directed by Ryan Booth, the second installment of the series is a live performance of “bitches broken hearts” shot in a ostentatious old mansion/performance space as Eilish seductively and self-assuredly performs the song with her backing band.  

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

 

Livia Blanc is a French-born, Tahiti-rased, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, who has received attention for specializing in a subtly modern take on classic chanteuse pop that at points recalls Edith Piaf and references Brigitte Bardot and Francoise Hardy.Building upon a growing profile, Blanc’s debut EP Amour Amour was released earlier this summer — and the EP’s latest single, closing track “It’s Over Isn’t It,” is a gorgeous, Broadway meets pop standard featuring an arrangement of twinkling piano, soaring strings and strummed guitar paired with Blanc’s gorgeous vocals singing lyrics that serve as a bittersweet farewell to old lovers, old memories and old heartbreaks that immediately brings to mind an old Vera Lynn tune, “Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart.”

As Blanc says in press notes, “The songs that make up Amour Amour are written like a collection of love letters, spoken from the heart with sincerity. Love hurts, and we have all been there. This EP tells the story of the end of a relationship and is in itself the end of a chapter.” And while the song is in itself an end, there’s a subtle reminder that “every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” as a song once wisely said.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

 

Calvin Johnson is an Olympia, WA-born and-based guitarist, singer/songwriter, producer and DJ best known as a founding member of Cool Rays, Beat Happening, The Go Team and The Halo Benders, all of which featured his rich baritone vocals. He’s also the founder and owner of renowned indie label K Records — and he was one of the major organizers of the International Pop Underground Convention.

Johnson’s forthcoming album A Wonderful Beast is slated for an October 12, 2018 release through his own K Records, and the album, which was recorded at Audio Eagle Studios in Nashville, TN finds Johnson collaborating with the The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney, who cowrote and produced the album and Michelle Branch, who contributes backing vocals on three songs. Johnson can trace the origins of his collaboration with Carney back to 2005 when the Olympia, WA-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, producer and DJ was on a stateside tour to support his sophomore solo album Before the Dream Faded. The two kept in touch over the years, with Carney suggesting that they collaborate. Branch is best known for being a member of The Wreckers and for a solo career, and as the story goes, she lives next door to Audio Eagle Studios. Intrigued by the sounds she heard from the shack that houses the studio, she walked over to see for herself what was going on, and she wound up on the album.

A Wonderful Beast‘s first single is the swooning and urgent “Kiss Me Sweetly,” a single centered around a 60s bubblegum pop-like arrangement featuring a propulsive rhythm section consisting of a thumping, almost boom-bap-like backbeat, a funky bass line and blasts of swirling, kaleidoscopic guitar playing — but by far, the star of the song is the harmonizing between Johnson’s rich, sonorous baritone and Branch’s ethereal soprano, which further emphasizes the song’s swooning nature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

The up-and-coming Los Angeles, CA-based psych pop project Das Kope is the brainchild of its Sao Paulo, Brazil-born, Los Angeles-based creative mastermind, George. Interestingly, George lived a few blocks away from where renowned Brazilian psych rock act Os Mutantes had originated — and much like the members of the renowned group, George had long felt that he was an outsider with a unique vision. As a self-taught guitarist, influenced the city’s grey cityscape, he found his musical voice in punk rock. As a teen propelled by the DIY spirit and ethos, George saved up enough money to buy a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, leaving everything he had known behind to pursue his dream of becoming a musician. Quickly realizing that the money he had saved in his homeland didn’t translate to much in the way of American money, he did something rather unexpected considering the situation: he decided to join one of Los Angeles’ fastest and constantly growing lifestyles — broke musician.

The Sao Paulo-born, Los Angeles-based musician spent the next couple of years working at a slew of odd jobs and moving from place to place before eventually settling in as a partial recluse in a dark Hollywood apartment he nicknamed “the cave.” Isolated, he spent the next few years focusing on any and all creative pursuits that brought color to his mostly nocturnal existence. He became obsessed with guitar pedals, synthesizers, VCRs, after effects, tape recorders, green screen and the like. And as the story goes, those obsessions influenced Das Kope. Interestingly, his latest single, the breezy “L.A.X.” is centered around layers of shuffling guitar chords, a sinuous bass line, thumping beats, ethereal vocals and shimmering synths that recalls JOVM mainstays POND and Tame Impala but with a gritty urgency at it score.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstays POND Returns with a Trippy and Expansive Single

Throughout the course of this site’s history, I’ve written quite a bit about POND, the recording project of Perth, Australia-based multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter and producer Jay Watson. The project has a long history of Watson collaborating with a […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Now, over the past few years, I’ve written quite a bit about the prolific Bay Area-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist  and JOVM mainstay Tim Cohen, and as you may recall Cohen writes, records and tours with a number of different creative pursuits including  Magic Trick, The Fresh & Onlys (with whom, he may be the best known) and as a solo artist. His obsession with writing music as a means of turning nothing into something has over the better part of the past decade has become an almost neurotic need that has driven him to write, record and release something close to 30 full-length albums. And as Cohen readily admits in press notes, his prolificacy has sometimes worked against him, as he describes some of his earlier, home-recorded work as “hurried” and “incomplete.”

Cohen’s forthcoming solo album The Modern World is slated for a September 28, 2018 release through Sinderlyn Records, and the album is the first entirely self-recorded album since 2011’s Tim Cohen’s Magic Trick. Recorded over the course of a restless and fruitful year that saw the birth of his second child, and Cohen balancing the constant juggle for his time and attention of a fledging painting career, a day job and his music career. Naturally that allowed for strains of anxiety to creep in, and he relished those rare moments of silence, where he could coop up in his attic recording space and press “record.” And reportedly, the album is a visceral yet clear amalgamation of Cohen’s paranoias and deepest joys — with the material at points focusing on the pitfalls of a fast-moving, fast-changing world, the fears of an ever rising tide of hatred and unrest that could kill us all, the complications and strains of love and parenthood in the modern age; but ultimately, it’s centered around the intrinsic and fulfilling joy of pure love. The Modern World‘s first single “Goodness,” as he notes is like many of his songs, spilling forth as a plea of sorts. “A mixture between happy and sad. A contented malaise. Throw in some dissonant synth stabs over the sing-along chorus. It just feels like goodness to me.” Interestingly enough, the song manages to balance a “you-were- there-in-the-room with- the- song’s-creator” urgency with an easy-going, Sunday afternoon vibe; but the song points at the fact that relationships are almost always with two very flawed, very fucked up people who desire some sweetness, some goodness in a miserable and hate-filled world — and yet, like everything else in this world, it barely makes sense, and when it works to some degree, feels like a surreal dream that someone else wrote for you.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Now, over the past year or so, I’ve written quite a bit about the Los Angeles, CA-based indie pop project and JOVM mainstays Oddnesse, comprised of singer/songwriter Rebeca Arango and producer Grey Goon. The project has received attention for crafting beautiful and infectious hook-driven material centered around dark, heavy grooves. but with each successive single they’ve released, they’ve managed to subtly expand upon the sound that has captured the attention of this site and others. In  fact, the duo’s latest single “It Runs Wild” is driven by swirling and arpeggiated synths, shimmering guitar chords and a chugging rhythm section,  and while clearly indebted to 80s New Wave and pop, in particular, I think of Prince and Siouxsie and The Banshees, as the song’s emotional center is an aching longing.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Julietta is an up-and-coming model, largely considered one of New York’s fashion-forward “It Girls” — but she’s also received attention as an up-and-coming pop artist. Slated for an August 8, 2019 her forthcoming album Smooth Sailing may arguably be the most personal and vulnerable material she’s ever written and put on wax, as the album finds her sharing stories of being an easily impressionable teenager, who got caught up in the allure of big city excess that eventually led to difficult struggles with her own mental health and addiction.  As the story goes, while struggling to get her sense of self, the up-and-coming pop artist discovered her voice through songwriting — partially as a coping mechanism and partially as cathartic release. Interestingly, the album’s latest single, album title track “Smooth Sailing” is a buoyant and summery pop confection centered around a breezy synth-led production, an infectious hook and Julietta’s self-assured cooing; but underneath that is a song that has a deeply personal meaning for the artist — and it’s relatable: that life is a constant quest for self-discovery and self-improvement, and that most important, that while there will always be hardships and heartbreak, that things usually find a way of working out one way or the other. Or as I once heard TV on the Radio‘s Tunde Adebimpe wisely say during a set, “Everything will turn out okay in the end. And if it isn’t okay; then it clearly isn’t the end yet.”

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Acclaimed JOVM Mainstay Amber Arcades Releases a Mournful 70s AM Rock Inspired Single

Over the past couple of years of this site’s history, I’ve managed to write quite a bit about Utrecht, The Netherlands-based singer/songwriter Annelotte de Graff and her solo recording project Amber Arcades. And with the release of her full-length debut, Fading Light, de Graaf quickly received attention for pairing crafted guitar pop with erudite thematic concerns — in particular, time and the relativistic experience of it, magic, jet leg and her own dreams, which have managed to influence a great deal of her personal and creative life. In fact, as the story goes, De Graaf used her life savings for a flight to New York and studio time with Ben Greenberg, who has worked with The Men, Beach Fossils and Destruction Unit, and a studio backing band that included Quilt’s Shane Butler (guitar) and Keven Lareau (bass) and Real Esate’s Jackson Pollis (drums) — both of whom she had specifically hand picked because she had dreamt of working with them.

de Graaf’s critically applauded Cannonball EP, an effort that landed at #1 on this site’s Best of List last year — with the gorgeous “Wouldn’t Even Know,” landing at #4 on the Best Singles list. Slated for a September 28, 2018 release through Heavenly Recordings,de Graaf’s forthcoming album European Heartbreak was recorded and co-produced in Los Angeles with Deerhoof’s Chris Cohen and in Richmond, Virginia with Trey Pollard, who oversaw horn and string overdubs from the Spacebomb Records crew. And the album sonically and thematically are reportedly a major step forward for the Dutch- born and-based singer/songwriter and musician — thematically, the album is about the nature of memory and the human tendency to over-romanticize the events of our lives. And while naturally focusing on the passage of time, there’s a disillusionment that’s been concealed just under the romanticized surface. Nothing in this life is what it really seems — and ultimately, everything can be a bit disappointing, alienating and downright strange. As Annelotte de Graaf says of the album, “If it were called ‘American Heartbreak,’ you wouldn’t bat an eye. Somehow calling it ‘European Heartbreak’ feels far less comfortable, almost like a statement in itself. I’m Dutch, hence European. The focus of the record is Europe. As for Heartbreak, for me a heartbreak symbolises any kind of falling apart of one of these concepts or stories we invent for ourselves, like romantic love, a sense of identity, nationality, an economic system. It’s kind of a universal thing in my mind.”

Sonically speaking, the material, as you’d hear on the album’s first single “Goodnight Europe” managed to be both sophisticated yet anachronistic as it finds her sound nodding at classic, late 60s and early 70s rock — in particular, Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, T. Rex and Sgt. Pepper and Let It Be-era Beatles, as the song features some impressive and bluesy guitar work paired with a gorgeous string arrangement; but interestingly, the song is both a meditation on the current state of the European Union and of a dysfunctional and confusing romantic relationship, meshing the personal and the political in a way that expresses a concern over what it all means in the first place.

European Heartbreak’s latest single “Alpine Town” is a decidedly 70s AM rock-like song centered around shimmering guitar, twinkling piano, a sinuous bass line, a mournful horn and string arrangement and de Graaf’s ethereal vocals floating over the mix. The song evokes a deeper  disappointment — that an illusion that the song’s narrator once held as true has now been proven to be false. And as a result, the song is a world weary sigh while being someplace away from home. As de Graaf says of the song “I wrote this song exactly a year ago while on holiday in Guillestre, a small town in the French Alps. I was kind of in a sad place and my boyfriend had dragged me along to get away from all that, but I guess it doesn’t really work like that, ha. It just made me reflect on the sad part of the tourist condition as a metaphor for life, man.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms
With the release of her first two singles “Gold Angel” and “Armour,” the London-born and-based based singer/songwriter and musician Minke(pronounced as to rhyme with the word “link”) quickly became a buzz-worthy artist: “Gold Angel” received airplay on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 Radio show, was featured on Spotify‘s New Music Fridayand Pop Rising playlists and was a Hype Machine#1  — within a two week period. The track also received praise from the The Line of Best Fit for its “elements of pop, rock, soul and R&B,” and “guitar riffs, mingled with understated vocals like curls of smoke in a darkened bar.” Building upon a growing profile, the up-and-coming London-born and-based singer/songwriter and musician released “Armour” to praise from Billboard, who said the song was “a female empowerment anthem about letting go of your defenses and learning how to be vulnerable, especially with those closest to you.”
Minke’s latest single “Maybe 25” was co-written by the up-and-coming British artist and her producer Rory Andrew and the single which pairs Minke’s tender, ethereal and yearning vocals with twinkling piano, reverb drenched guitar chords, thumping beats, brief bits of industrial clang and clatter, and a soaring hook within a song that to my ears makes sonic nods to Adele and London Grammar but with a self assured, effortless yet soulful quality. Interestingly as Minke explains in press notes, the track was written about the emptiness and frustrations of online dating, and the hold technology has over us. “As I started to write, it became less and less about that, and more a general observation on connection. We’ve never been more connected by disconnected at the same time. It’s made us more insular, less open to having a conversation with a stranger and maintaining eye contact for more than a second without looking at your phone. So it’s about longing about something more than that, whatever that is. Something real in a seemingly disposable world. Questioning if that’s still possible. Questioning if it’s got the better of you.”
The up-and-coming British artist is currently working on her debut EP, which is slated for a Fall release, and there are plans for a North American tour to support it but before that I think we’ll be hearing quite a bit more from her.
Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Majical Cloudz Former Frontman Devon Welsh Releases a Meditative and Brooding Visuals for “By the Daylight”

Devon Welsh is a Montreal-based singer/songwriter and artist, who released two critically acclaimed full-length albums as the frontman of Majical Cloudz, an electronic duo whose brooding and intense music combined elements of poetry, hardcore, folk and minimalist electronica among others. The project ended in 2016 largely because its members felt it had fulfilled its intentions.”The band has come to a very natural conclusion, as it has communicated everything it was meant to and reached more people than we would have ever imagined,” Welsh said at the time.

Following the breakup of Majical Cloudz, Welsh stepped away from music for a year. “I wrote songs but didn’t think about their purpose or anything at all to do with the music industry or if I would be releasing music in the future,” he said about that time. “I just tried to grow as a person and do some learning.” Interestingly, the songs he wrote during that period would eventually comprise much of the material on his solo, full-length debut, Dream Songs. Slated for an August 24, 2018 release through You Are Accepted Records, the album finds Welsh stepping out and away from the strict aesthetic he had worked in with Majical Cloudz but while continuing and expanding upon some of the core themes an ideas which that project was best known for — and as a result, the material thematically is a series of reflections on time and its passing, separation, the complexities of love, free will, life’s endless cycles and so on.

Produced and recorded by BRAIDS’ Austin Tufts with the intention of making an album that maintained the simplicity and minimalism of Welsh’s previous work while exploring the possibilities of more traditional arrangements — guitar, piano, strings — the album presents the Montreal-based singer/songwriter and artist’s songs in a more organic context. As the story goes, Tufts and Welsh essentially rebuilt the recordings from the ground up, working out kinks in demos, imagining different arrangements and re-recorded everything. The simple string arrangements Devon’s demos possessed were transformed and became the sonic and emotional center of the entire album. “I love songs with strings,” Welsh says in press notes, “so making recordings with beautiful string arrangements is a dream come true.

Dream Songs’ first single “By The Daylight” is chronologically one of the oldest songs on the album — and as Welsh explains, it began with a very different arrangement than the recorded version. “It was originally made mostly with synthesizers and had saxophone on it, and then when Austin and I started re-recording the demos it got transformed into something built almost entirely around strings,” Welsh says in press notes, “the new arrangement opened a lot of mental possibilities for what the record as a whole could be.” Thematically, the song has a fatalistic view of life — that there are larger, deterministic forces at play in our lives, and as a result, we’re frequently caught up and swept away in a tide that we don’t (and can’t) really understand. It’s a mature and meditative song with a deep and aching yearning at its core. 

Directed by Christopher Honeywell, the recently released video features footage of nature,  some shot on old, Super 8 film — and in a subtle way, the video conveys passing of time and the sense of larger, natural forces at play.