Category: singer/songwriters

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Nashville’s Sundaes Specializes in Scuzzy Take on Dance Floor Friendly Pop

Sundaes is a recording project fronted by a rather mysterious New York-born, Nashville, TN-based multi-instrumentalist and producer, influenced by early aughts indie rock,  blues and genre assorted hits of all eras, as well as Steel Magnolias and the work of Lana Del Rey. The band made their live debut back in the spring of 2015 with two sold out sets at the Chelsea Hotel Storefront Gallery — and adding to a growing profile, “Walk My Street,” appeared in the soundtrack of that year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, Spotlight.

Last year saw the release of the Nashville-based act’s self-titled debut EP, and their latest single “Pretty Wife” is the highly anticipated follow up to their EP. Sonically, the act employs the use of arpeggiated synths, blasts of strummed guitar, thumping, tweeter and woofer beats, a sneak and infectious hook and breathily delivered vocals. Sonically speaking, the Nashville-based act’s latest single will likely bring to mind Black Moth Super Rainbow, NVDES, Bottoms and others — but with a mischievous, dance floor friendly accessibility.

Featuring cinematography by Monique Juliette Baron and choreography by Amanda Hameline, the recently released video for “Pretty Wife” stars Sundaes dressed as a ballerina wearing a crown with several other dancers. As Sundaes explains in press notes about the video’s concept: ” I’d been watching the Kirov’s performance of Swan Lake on YouTube a lot around the time I was thinking about video ideas. It’s amazing how ballet dancers take something that requires such precise, intense discipline and make it appear so delicate and effortless. I love how much emotion they can express with the softest gestures. I wanted to do sort of a dreamy modern ballet gone awry. Somewhere between Tchaikovsky and Rocky Horror; equal parts ‘Waltz of the Snowflakes’ and ‘Sweet Transvestite.'”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Bittersweet and Anthemic Pop of Jack River

Holly Rankin is a Forster, New South Wales, Australia-born, Sydney, Australia-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and label head and overall boss, who has received national attention with her solo recording project Jack River. Rankin’s first Jack River single “Fool’s Gold,” amassed over 3 million steams and landed at number 64 on Triple J’s Hottest 100 earlier this year, and has opened for the likes of Midnight Oil. Along with that, she’s the founder of the Electric Lady concert series, which has featured women artists such as Ali Barter, Alex Lahey and Gretta Ray, the founder of the Grown Your Own Music Festival, a community-enhancing music festival and the founder of Hopeless Utopian, a production company and label that houses all of those various projects.

Rankin’s forthcoming album Sugar Mountain is slated for a June 22, 2018 release and the album derives its title after Neil Young’s bittersweet ode to youth and the loss of innocence, and as the up-and-coming Australian singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and mogul says of the album “It’s the souvenir of my youth, the wish of what it could have been.” As for the aforementioned, attention grabbing “Fool’s Gold,” the single is a shimmering and atmospheric track with a soaring and anthemic hook and thumping beats; but underneath the shimmering surface is heartache over a failed relationship in which the song’s narrator recognizes that she was ultimately at fault to some degree. Sometimes, the hardest thing about getting older is accepting when you’ve behaved poorly, foolishly and selfishly and that it can have dramatic, life-altering consequences.

Directed by Matt Sav, the recently released video for “Fool’s Gold” possesses a swooning, dream-like logic that centers over a longing for a failed relationship that the song’s narrator cannot get back.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Perhaps best known as a member of Los Angeles-based band TÜLIPS,  the singer/songwriter and musician Taleen Kali decided to go solo after the band broke up — and in a relatively short period of time, Kali has developed a reputation as one of her hometown’s up-and-coming talents, as she has opened forthe likes of Madame Gandhi and Kimya Dawson, and has played sets at Echo Park Rising Festival, Mothership Festival and Women Fuck Shit Up Fest. And with the release of “Half Life,” the first single off her forthcoming Kristin Kontrol-produced EP Soul Songs, Kali has begun to receive attention from the likes of Stereogum and others, quickly developing a reputation for a New Wave take on noise rock and punk reminiscent of Gothic Tropic, Dum Dum Girls, Dirty Ghosts and others.

Building upon the growing buzz surrounding her, Kali recently released the EP’s latest single, the anthemic, hook-laden, dance floor friendly  “Lost & Bound,” and  that the single reveals an artist, who can effortlessly walk a tightrope between a slick studio sheen and a scuzzy punk rock air — without feeling contrived or ridiculous. Interestingly, there’s a subtle hint of triumph over something deeply daunting that adds to the song’s danceable vibe and anthemic hooks; in fact, as Kali explains in press notes, “‘Lost & Bound’ is about finding yourself again after being lost. I wanted to write a song that was really dark but also danceable, so I wrote a dirge dedicated to a ‘lost self,’ and I added a disco beat to add this sense of movement, of celebration, of making it to the other side.”  

Kali is playing a handful of live shows in the Los Angeles area over the next few weeks. If you’re in the area, check them out, below.

Tour Dates
05.20 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hi Hat (Dum Dum Zine Kickoff Party For L.A. Zine Week)
05.27 – Pasadena, CA @ Pasadena Convention Center (LA Zine Fest)
06.26 – Los Angeles, CA @ Resident (Record Release show)

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Easy-Going and Soulful 70s AM Rock Sounds of Andy Jenkins

Co-founded by Richmond, VA-based singer/songwriter Matthew E. White back in 2012, Spacebomb Records has quickly become a renowned indie folk label that has released a number of critically applauded albums including White’s own Big Inner, Natalie Prass’ self-titled debut, the work of singer/songwriter Bedouine and others.  Their newest artist Andy Jenkins has toiled behind the scenes of the Spacebomb Records universe for some time, and interestingly enough, Jenkins and White can trace their friendship back to several high school bands they both played in. 

Jenkins’ full-length debut Sweet Bunch is slated for a June 15, 2018 release through Spacebomb, and the album’s latest single, album title track “Sweet Bunch,” which features labelmate Matthew E. White is a down-home folksy take on indie rock centered on twangy and bluesy power chords, a propulsive backbeat, a sinuous bass line that brings Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Allman Brothers and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere-era Neil Young to mind; but beneath the easy-going, bunch of guys jamming, drinking and maybe smoking a little weed in a room vibe, there’s a thoughtful and deliberate attention to craft that gives the song its soulfulness and purpose. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Nana Adjoa Returns with an Atmospheric, Soulful, and Straightforward New Single from Forthcoming EP

Last month, I wrote about Nana Adjoa, an up-and-coming Dutch-Ghanian singer/songwriter, who began to receive attention across the European Union and elsewhere with the release of her debut Down at the Root, Part 1. Now, as you may recall Adjoa’s was accepted at the prestigious Amsterdam Conservatory, where she would study jazz (electric bass and double bass); however, she found the experience to not be what she had always imagined it would.  “It was very much like school,” she says in press notes. “We thought we wanted to go to the most difficult department, that we wanted to be the best, but it wasn’t a very fun experience.” Around the same time, the Amsterdam-born and-based singer/songwriter began to experience a growing divide between the restrictive and theoretical compositions she was studying and the melodic, free-flowing music she’d play while outside. Adjoa began to realize that pursing a solo was the direction she needed to take, and so she formed a band and record her original songs, which has resulted in the attention grabbing Down At The Root Part 1 and the forthcoming Down At The Root Part 2.

“Honestly,” Down at the Root Part 2‘s first single was an effortless and breezy affair that seemed indebted to Simply Bill-era Bill Withers, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and others, as the song reveled a self-assured artist beyond her years, who can craft a song that’s driven by an infectious hook and a lush melody — and as Adjoa explained in press notes, the song is what she considers an “outsider track” that grew from a simple piano backing into its current, vibey, jazz-soul arrangement. “I didn’t even think it was going to make the record because it felt so different from the rest,” the Dutch-Ghanian singer/songwriter says. “I guess it’s about how people are scared of the possibility of something bad happening. And that fear is really strange because you don’t know what’s going to happen. You never know what’s going to happen.”

Down At The Root, Part 2’s second and latest single is the slow-burning and atmospheric “Part Of It,” a track centered around a lush and plaintive melody, a sinuous and propulsive bass line and arguably the most honest and straightforward lyrics of the EP I’ve heard, as the song focuses on the desire and need to fit in when you’re a complete outsider.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Jangling and Anthemic Guitar Pop of Australia’s BATTS

Tanya Batt is a Melbourne, Australia-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind the recording project BATTS — and with release of last year’s 62 Moons EP, Batt quickly received attention across the blogosphere for a sound that has drawn comparisons to Angel Olsen, Courtney Barnett, Mazzy Star, Sharon Van Etten and others. Adding to a growing international profile, Batt received airplay from BBC Radio 1, KCRW and Triple J.

Building upon a growing profile, Batt toured her native Australia with Didirri, and she recently played her first UK shows with Cub Sport as part of the Communion Music tour; but more important, Batt’s newest single is a jangling bit of guitar pop that manages to nod at Fleetwood Mac-like AM radio rock, complete with an anthemic rock but underneath the easy-going and self-assured vibes of the song is an urgent desire to change things for the better — although in a lot of cases that’s impossible. After all, the human condition is to be endlessly disappointing. There’s also this desire to go off and colonize someplace else, and start over with different rules — that maybe it’d better on Mars, Jupiter or someplace else. 

Directed by Dyllan Corbett, the recently released video for “Shame” stars Tanya Batt, Olaf Scott, Daniel Moulds, Nkechi Anele, Melanie Scammell, Megan Kent and Alice Kent, and as Corbett explains of the video treatment “Thematically, we were after a sliding door effect of having two separate outlooks/moods and the outcome that each one has on your happiness.” 

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New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Dan Sultan is an acclaimed Fitzroy, Australia-born, Melbourne, Australia-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, who started playing guitar when he was four and wrote his first song when he turned 10. As the story goes, his mother’s friend gave the young Sultan an old electric guitar, and he began playing gigs at local pubs. In 2000, Sultan met a fellow singer/songwriter and guitarist Scott Wilson at a Williamstown, Australia pub and the duo began writing songs together. As Wilson recalled in an interview “What struck me at first was that he [Sultan] could play piano and guitar, and he was a great foil for what I was doing . . . After a while playing together, he said, ‘Can I Sing this one?’ I said, ‘Do you know the words?’ . . . [he had a] mighty voice. A lot people can play guitar . . . not many can sing like that.”

Sultan’s  Scott Wilson-produced, full-length solo debut, the genre-defying Homemade Biscuits was released in early 2006 and consisted of tracks written by Wilson or co-written by Sultan and Wilson, and a featured number of local musicians and collaborators, including Lazare Agneskis, Neil Gray, Elijah Maiyah, Lochile McKlean and Ben Wicks. Sultan’s debut also featured two attention grabbing tracks — “Your Love Is Like a Song,” which won a 2007 Deadly Award for Single Release of the Year, and “Rosyln,” a song Sultan wrote about his mother, who was a member of the Aboriginal “stolen generations,” which he performed during 2007’s National Day of Healing concert. Adding to a growing profile that year, Paul Kelly invited Sultan to record a cover of Kev Carmody’s “This Land Is Mine” for a compilation tribute album of Carmody’s work titled Cannot Buy My Soul — and with a backing band of Eugene Ball (trumpet), Ben Gillespie (trombone), Joshua Jones (bass), Peter Marin (drums), Ash Naylor (guitar) and Gina Woods (keys), Sultan and company played Australia’s festival circuit over the next two years or so, including set at the Sydney Festival and the Queensland Music Festival.

Sultan’s sophomore album 2009’s Get Out While You Can was a massive, commercial success as it charted on the ARIA Albums Chart Top 100, eventually reaching #1 on the independent Australian charts and was a Triple J featured album. Along with that, Sultan won ARIA Music Awards for Best Male Artist and Best Blues & Roots Album, and Australian Independent Records Awards for Best Independent Artist and Best Independent Blues & Roots Music Music.

In early 2014, Sultan opened for Bruce Springsteen‘s Melbourne and Hunter Valley shows during his Australian tour, which Sultan promptly followed up with the release of his third full-length album Blackbird, an album that reached #4 on the ARIA Albums Charts and spent 13 weeks in the Top 50 — and the album won a Best Rock Album Award at that year’s ARIA Awards. Building upon an impressive year, Sultan released the Dirty Ground EP, which reached the ARIA Albums Chart Top 100. Sultan’s fourth album, 2017’s Jan Skubiszewski-produced Killer was nominated for three ARIA Awards — Best Male Artist, Best Rock Album, and Best Independent Release.

Interestingly, Sultan’s soon-to-be released Killer Under a Blood Moon was recorded over the course of four days and while it continues Sultan’s commercially and critically successful collaboration Skubiszewski, the EP finds the duo collaborating with some of their country’s brightest and talented, up-and-coming artists, including  A.B. Original, Camp Cope, Meg Mac and Gang of Youths‘ Dave Le’aupepe to reinterpret a series of tracks from Sultan’s fourth album as a way to give his material new bodies, new ways of being while having a good time doing so. Now, as you may recall, last month I wrote about Sultan’s reworking of “Drover,” which featured Gang of Youth’s Dave Le’aupepe taking over vocal duties on a swaggering, arena rock-friendly blues centered around power chords, stomping beats, a looped choral sample and a muscular and anthemic hook reminiscent of The Black Keys.

The EP’s latest single is a reworking of Killer‘s album title track “Killer” that features Meg Mac — and while the original is a shuffling yet anthemic rock song with an infectious hook, the EP’s rework turns the song into a Fleetwood Mac/Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks-styled duet that retains the hook and melody but adds a sultriness to the song’s heartfelt vibe.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Throughout this site’s almost 8 year history, I’ve written a bit about the Gold Coast, Australia-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Emily Hamilton and her solo recording project San Mei, which began rather humbly as a bedroom recording project but gradually began receiving attention from this site and a number of major media outlets including NME, Indie Shuffle, NYLON and Triple J. Interestingly, with the release of debut EP Necessary, Hamilton’s sound adding more organic instrumentation, drawing Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Cat Power, and Feist  — and a result, the EP found Hamilton moving away from the bedroom synth pop that first captured the attention of the blogosphere towards fuzzy, power chord-based dream pop.

Hamilton met songwriter, producer and overall musical phenom Oscar Dawson, who has worked with Holy Holy, Alex Lahey, Ali Barter, British India, Robbie Miller and Joyride at BIGSOUND last year, and the pair immediately hit it off. According to Hamilton, taking Dawson on as a producer and collaborator — and early on, the collaboration between the pair have found them refining ideas, exploring different soundscapes and laying down the foundation for the sonic progression of San Mei. As Hamilton explains in press notes “[Dawson and I] hit it off straight away and it seemed like he understood where I was coming from, even if I had trouble conveying certain ideas in the demos I made at home.”

Hamilton’s latest single “Wonder” is the first single since the release of Necessary EP and while the single in some way continues in a similar vein of as the material on her critically applauded EP, it manages to be a subtle refinement that finds Dawson and Hamilton crafting an anthemic, radio friendly and arena rock friendly track centered around a razor sharp, infectious hook, fuzzy shoegazer rock-like power chords and thundering drumming. And yet interestingly enough, the single may be among Hamilton’s most sincere song, as it captures the swooning, butterflies in the stomach sensation when someone who’s unknown to you captures your attention and you can’t quite pin down why. That unknown person becomes part of a mysterious daydream to you, in which you begin to wonder everything about them — and yet, there’s a part of you that isn’t certain if you want them to become more than just some brief, intoxicating illusion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Born into a family of artists and musicians, the Denton, TX-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Claire Morales began to play music and make visual art at a very young age. Family gatherings were frequently interrupted by a three year-old Morales insisting on singing a mix of Beatles and Disney songs on a makeshift, fireplace stage. The Denton, TX-based singer/songwriter and guitarist began playing her first solo shows as a middle school at local coffee shops, armed with her father’s 1960s Gibson and an arresting voice that has had many well-meaning people throughout  at her life would deal “more powerful than I thought it would be, looking you.”

Morales’ 2015 full-length debut Amaranthine saw her work translation from folksy and rootsy solo singer/songwriter to fully fleshed out band with at sound that many have described as melodic, hazy, 70s inspired rock centered around a nostalgic meditation on childhood — from the perspective of someone, in the early throes of adulthood. However, All That Wanting, Morales’ sophomore effort, is the much-anticipated follow-up to her debut, and the album, which is slated for a June 29, 2018 release reportedly explores the vast freedom, possibility and existential terror of young, adult life; in fact, the album revolves around the human tendency to endlessly crave more, asking how we can stave off and tame that feeling and instead take in the beauty before you. Desire is ultimately viewed as a mythic force capable of compelling one forward or consuming one wholly.

Recorded by Matt Pence and Jeremy Buller at the Denton-based Echo Lab, Morales and her backing band of Alex Hastings, Ryan Williams and Russ Connell spent six days recording the album’s ten tracks mostly live together in the studio’s cavernous main room, which gives the album and its material the raw energy of a group of musicians who have collaborated together for a long time, and hinges on mutual respect and open communication between everyone involved. The album finds Morales and company fearlessly and fluidly passing through a vast sonic palette including intense dramatic moments, shoegazer-like psychedelia, profound introspection, rumbling unease and cathartic release.

All That Wanting‘s latests ingle, the album title track “All That Wanting” centers around fuzzy, pedal effected guitar chords, a propulsive rhythm section, a soaring, arena rock friendly hook, Morales’ powerhouse vocals and a trembling, unfulfilled longing that sonically and thematically reminds me quite a bit of PJ Harvey and Shana Falana, complete with a distinctly feminine strength and resiliency.

 

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ruby Boots Returns with a Coquettish and Stomping New Single

Throughout the past couple of years, I’ve written a bit about the Perth, Australia-born, Nashville, TN-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, Bex Chilcott, and as you may recall, Chilcott has led the sort of life that could have easily inspired a dozen or so country albums. At 14, the Perth-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter left a deeply dysfunctional home and eventually worked her way up the desolate, Western Australian coast, before ending up in Broome, a culturally diverse and ramshackle, tiny dot of a town on the map, where reportedly it doesn’t pay to ask people too many questions about their pasts — or why they ended up there of all places, And while in Broome, Chilcott worked for weeks at at time on a pearling trawler, where she worked with incredibly hardened men, doing backbreaking, exhaustingly hard labor, and alcohol was prohibited. Her time on the sea doing backbreaking work with the men she was surrounded by was quite profound, and in her free time, the Perth-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter spent her free hours contemplating life and teaching herself guitar and songwriting, which eventually lead to her singing her own original material. 

Returning from a self-imposed exile from civilization, Chilcott learned that people actually wanted to listen to her originals — and that was when she began to perform as Ruby Boots. Chilcott’s first two Ruby Boots efforts were critically praised for being bold, unafraid and unabashedly honest works centered around stories on tough and unlucky sorts, who see their lives and affairs of the heart as deathly serious matters. With the buzz surrounding her early work, the Perth-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter and guitarist has shared stages with an impressive array of internationally acclaimed artists like Father John Misty, Shakey Graves, Justin Townes Earle, Shovels & Rope, Nikki Lane, Reverend Horton Heat, Tony Joe White, Kris Kristofferson and others. Building upon a growing profile, Chilcott’s 2015 Ruby Boots debut Solitude featured guest spots from The Waifs’ Vicki Thorn, along with some of Australia’s top alt-country talents, including Dewey Lane, Jordie Lane, Bill Chambers, The Sleepy Jackson‘s and Eskimo Joe‘s Lee Jones, who has been one of Chilcott’s frequent collaborators.

Chilcott’s Beau Bedford-produced Ruby Boots sophomore album Don’t Talk About It was released through Chicago, IL-based label Bloodshot Records earlier this year, and as you may recall, the album features the acclaimed Southern rock/Country and Western band The Texas Gentlemen, fronted by the album’s producer, as her backing band. Lyrically and thematically, the album follows the restlessly odyssey of a restless and somewhat aimless drifter, with tattered, beaten up and heavily stamped passport in hand, essentially capturing the life of a woman who’s been tossed about by the rough undertow, breakers and currents of life and its messiness but without losing hope, strength or her will to survive and thrive. Granted, just underneath the surface is a world weary acceptance that life will break your heart in countless ways — and when you think and feel that you can’t go on anymore, life will push and shove you forward, and towards where life needs you to be. 
Earlier this year, I wrote about Don’t Talk About It’s sparse, bare-knuckle, and unabashedly honest, a cappela “I Am A Woman,” a single centered around the raw ache and regret of someone, who has lived a full and messy life of shitty decisions frequently inspired by even shittier situations, dysfunctional and furiously passionate relationships with irresponsible lovers and with decent, honest ones, too. And yet, through the song there’s the quietly defiant resiliency and pride that from my experience I’ve only ever seen in women. As Chilcott explained in press notes, “‘I Am a Woman’ was conjured up amid recent events where men have spoken about, and treated women’s bodies, the way no man, or woman, should. This kind of treatment toward another human being makes every nerve in my body scream. These kinds of incidents are so ingrained in our culture and are swept under the carpet at every turn—it needs to change. As tempting as it was to just write an angry tirade I wanted to respond with integrity, so I sat with my feelings and this song emerged as a celebration of women and womanhood, of our strength and our vulnerability, all we encompass and our inner beauty, countering ignorance and vulgarity with honesty and pride and without being exclusionary to any man or woman. My hope is that we come together on this long drawn out journey. The song is the backbone to the album for me.”

“It’s So Cruel,” the latest single off Chilcott’s critically acclaimed sophomore album is a swaggering and gritty, power chord-based, honky tonk anthem and a coquettish love song, full of swaggering confidence in which its narrator essentially says throughout “look, you fucking dummy, i’m the best thing in your life and you need to recognize it — now!” Unsurprisingly, the recently released video produced and directly by Joshua Shoemaker features Chilcott as a guitar playing force of nature.  

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Acclaimed Country Duo Rogue + Jaye Releases a Hauntingly Gorgeous Meditation on Intimacy and Vulnerability

Last year, I wrote a bit about the the country music duo Rogue + Jaye, and as you may recall, the act which is comprised of Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter Courtney Jaye, who has spent stints living in Nashville, Atlanta, Austin and elsewhere; and Bay Area-based singer/songwriter Zach Rogue, the frontman of indie rock act Rogue Wave can trace its origins back to a December 2013 songwriting session in which the duo quickly recognized they had an easygoing simpatico centered around the fact that as songwriters, who were deeply influenced by country, their material possesses a wistful, late night, drinking and thinking in a divey honky tonk vibe, reflected on their critically applauded debut single together “Til It Fades.”  

Pent Up, the duo’s full-length debut features a backing band consisting of Bands of Horses’Bill Reynolds (bass), Floating Action’s Seth Kauffman (guitar) and Grace Potter and The Nocturnals’ and Natalie Prass’ Michael Libramento (drums), and it was released last year to critical praise from a number of  major media outlets including  The Associated Press, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, American Songwriter and others, with Rolling Stone Country recently naming the duo one of their “10 New Artists You Need to Know,” and with the album single “Golden Lady,” the duo’s sound seemed to draw from indie rock, 70s AM Rock and Renegade Country, complete with an understated emotional honesty; the sort that comes from living a full and messy life of mistakes, foibles, joy, heartache, loneliness, being lost and found and lost again, and profoundly life altering experiences and experiencing them as completely and fully as possible — and with an effortless gracefulness.

“Open Your Mind,” Pent Up’s latest single finds the duo drawing from jazz, psych rock and psych country in an effortless and slickly produced  fashion — and while sonically the song will further cement their reputation for anachronistic-leaning pop/country that could have been released in 1968, 1972, 1982 or 2012, and much like its predecessor, the song comes from the perspective of those who have lived full and messy lives — with dignity and quiet resolve; but as Jaye says, the song is “about opening up to intimacy and vulnerability without fear, as well as exploring the unknown in ourselves and through another.”

Directed by Ben Bennett, the recently released video for “Open Your Mind” is a gorgeously sun-dappled dream of two people trying to connect in an intimate and powerful fashion.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Soulful and Bluesy Sounds of Pete Wilde

Pete Wilde is a Oakland, CA-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, whose life and experiences have deeply influenced his own creative work. And as the story goes, although he was raised by a loving mother, his childhood was defined by a distant father, tormented by his own demons. Years later, after witnessing the murder of his best friend, the only thing that seemed to evoke and capture his own anger was rock ‘n’ roll — and although his stepfather, the saxophonist Eddie Minifield (he once played with Sheila E. and Kat Dyson) encouraged him to seek solace in music; however, a young Wilde was  also fueled by drugs and alcohol, and he eventually wound up in prison.

While serving his sentence, Wilde feverishly wrote songs influenced by black history and black artists, the emotions of his childhood, the feminism that his mother ingrained in him — and he quickly recognized that he had an urgent purpose: to make rock ‘n’ roll black again.  As Pete Wilde explains “I’m making rock music with groove and a ‘black’ sound that just isn’t funk or pop, but real, original rock ‘n’ roll.” And from the sensual and funky “Lucy,” Wilde’s sound brings to mind the bluesy stomp of Howlin’ Wolf and Sister Rossetta Tharpe with a good mixture of the swaggering soulfulness of black folk  paired with power chords and an anthemic hook. It’s a powerful and necessary reminder that black culture is American culture, that the primordial essence of rock is from the blues — and most important that rock is desperately in need of brothers and sisters to bring soul back into it. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Dark and Surreal Pop of Sydney Australia’s Jack Ladder and The Dreamlanders

Jack Ladder and The Dreamlanders  is the solo recording project of Sydney, Australia-born and-based singer/songwriter, guitarist and composer Tim Rogers, and with the release of his first four albums: 2005’s Not Worth Waiting For, 2008’s Love is Gone, 2011’s Hurtsville and 2014’s chart topping Playmates, Rogers have developed a reputation for being a singular presence in contemporary Australian music, as his material typically centers around tales of beauty, love, hope, redemption and the sincerity and absurdity of the human condition with a tone that can be frequently sentimental and mournful, sardonic and surreal. Along with that, Rogers has a rich, sonorous baritone that conveys a plaintive, masculine vulnerability and need — but with a slight bit of ironic detachment. 

Rogers’ fifth Jack Ladder album Blue Poles officially dropped today, and from the album’s  latest single, the 80s-inspired, minimalist synth pop track “Susan,” the song will further Rogers reputation in his homeland for crafting detailed, novelistic narratives, with fully fleshed out characters —  but within dark, fucked up milieu; in the case, the Susan at the heart of the song, is literally haunted by the spectral (and perhaps physical) presence of her late lover Richard, who she longs for, and is desperate to join. Throughout there’s a sense of Susan trying to find answers to why her Richard and if she could go on without him, and naturally, the song leaves that as an open-ended question for the listener to figure out. Sonically and thematically, “Susan” reminds me quite of the work of JOVM mainstay Daughn Gibson, whose work pairs slick yet dusty electronic production with dark themes and lyrical concerns, as well as O Children, who work had a similar quality. 

Directed by Leilnai Croucher, the recently released video for “Susan” is largely inspired by 1980s psychic hotline informercials, as it’s based upon her interpretation of the song, as someone trying to find answers and in the process “losing themselves in the desire to be someone else; to become something else. The video exists in a world where people are looking for answers through a television set”, Croucher continues. “They hear a voice supposedly calling to them from the other side. These infomercials are a truly fascinating reflection on our constant desire to find the answers. They are combination of over-the-top melodrama mixed with real people trying to better themselves.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Decadently Shot Visuals for Monogem’s Soulful New Single “Get You High”

Over the past handful of years, I’ve written quite a bit about the critically applauded JOVM mainstay act Monogem, the solo electro pop recording project of Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter Jen Hirsch, and as you may recall the project derives its name from a unique cosmic phenomenon — a monogem ring, the leftover glow of an supernova explosion. Interestingly, one of the largest monogem rings in the observable universe is located near the Gemini and Cancer constellations. For Hirsch, whose birthday is on the cusp of the astrological signs of Gemini and Cancer, the project’s name has a deeply personal and special meaning for her. 
Now, it’s been some time since I’ve personally written about her, but her latest single “Get You High” will further cement Hirsch’s reputation for crafting slickly produced,  Quiet Storm-influenced synth pop centered around Hirsch’s sultry vocals, shimmering synths and a sinuous bass line — and much like her previously released material, the song evokes a lingering yet plaintive need that hasn’t been completely fulfilled. 

Directed by Finders Motion Pictures and starring Hirsch, Julia Barna, Shane Allen and Shanina Morse, the recently released video for “Get You High” featured decadent and stylishly shot visuals, focusing on the idle yet beautiful rich — and in a way that’s reminiscent of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.