Category: singer/songwriters

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Madeleine Dopico is an up-and-coming Sleepy Hollow, NY-born, Brooklyn, NY-based singer/songwriter, who has received a bit of attention over the past 12-18 months or so — “Nice Boy,” which she released late last year has received just under 220,000 Spotify streams and with the release of her latest single “Me to Bleed,” the Sleepy Hollow-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter has begun to receive press from both sides of the pond. Adding to a growing profile, Dopico has performed at some of the area’s most renowned and beloved venues including a residency at Piano’s in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

 

 

Just on the heels of her set at The Knitting Factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I spoke to the up-and-coming singer/songwriter in a playful and revealing interview about a variety of subjects including some of the following:

  • the stories and influences behind her three biggest, attention-grabbing singles “Nice Boy,” “Done,” which is one of my personal favorites and her latest single “Made to Bleed”
  • how she could trace her love of music, singing and performing to being a 3 year old, who one day burst into the 4-year-olds’ daycare class and began singing “This Land is Your Land,” complete with a mic drop-like moment
  • what she ascribes to her early successes and the role her supporters have played in it
  • the careful and deliberate ways she attempts to set herself apart from a very crowded and competitive music scene
  • her songwriting process, along with her influences
  • her recent listening, which has included a deeper foray into hip-hop, along with some suggestions by yours truly
  • the moment she took the biggest risk of her life — quitting a successful and secure day job and began focusing on music
  • and much more

Just based on this young artist’s earnestness and determination to succeed, along with pop star belter vocals, I think that 2017 will be a huge year for Dopico. Check out the interview.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

If you’ve been frequenting JOVM over the past couple of years, you’ve likely come across several posts on Umea, Sweden-born and based, singer/songwriter and cellist  Cajsa Siik. And with the release of her debut single “Was I Supposed To,” which was then promptly followed by her full-length debut Contra and a batch of attention grabbing singles through 2015, Siik received attention both nationally and internationally while cementing herself as one of her country’s standout artists, drawing comparisons to contemporary, Scandinavian pop artists Lyyke Li and Robyn.

Siik’s third full-length effort DOMINO is slated for a June 2, 2017 release through Birds Will Sing For You Records, and the effort, which was produced by Rolf Plinth will feature guest spots from Phoenix‘s and Deportees‘ Thomas Hedlund and Tiger Lou’s Rasmus Kellerman, both of whom contributed to the jangling and shuffling  album single “Talk To Trees.” And what made that single particularly interesting to me was the fact that it reveled a new direction for the internationally renowned singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, with its sound being simultaneously intimate and bold, yet swooningly anthemic and spacious enough for Siik’s effortlessly gorgeous and tender vocals. While the song may be one of Siik’s shorter songs — it clocks in at 2:40 — the song and its narrator seem haunted by a messy yet fully-lived in past; but while suggesting that life is about closing your eyes and taking a chance — even if it may backfire.

DOMINO‘s latest single “White Noise” is a dramatic track that features four-on-the-floor drumming, blasts of shimmering guitar, and atmospheric synths which give the song an art pop sheen while Siik’s vocals and uncanny ability to write an infectious and soaring hook gives the song a pop-leaning accessibility.  In press notes, Siik explained that, “DOMINO can be described in two different ways. First I wanted it to represent the fact that we’re all connected to each other and that we have a responsibility towards each other and this world. To shoulder that responsibility is easier said than done, but we must try. Be aware. Not only mind our own business. I’ve given that a lot of thought lately. Secondly, every song on this album depends and relies on the other. Together they create a unit and the unit is supposed to be diverse. I aimed for creating a dynamic album.” Interestingly, when you hear the newest single in relation to its preceding single “Talk To Trees” there’s a sense of Siik and her collaborators creating a deeply unified mood and vision while speaking of experiences and feelings — in particular about love and longing with a hard-fought deeply adult wisdom and confidence.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms
With the release of her Jimmy Logic-produced, debut single “Then” and her debut EP The Coffee Shop, the London-based pop artist Kemi Ade received national and international attention from the likes of Complex,  Artistic Manifesto, Fame Magazine, Reprezent Radio, First Ear and others for a song that meshed elements of alternative neo-soul, jazz, hip-hop and folk seemingly drawing from the likes of Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild, Erykah Badu and others, and paired with Ade’s introspective and fearlessly honest songwriting.

The Coffee Shop‘s highly-anticipated follow up O.W. Nesty EP is slated for release later this year, and the EP’s latest single “Third” will further cement Ade’s burgeoning reputation for introspective and fearless songwriting and for a maturity and self-assuredness that belie her youth; but it also manages to reveal a subtle refinement of the sound that first caught attention as the song consists of a production featuring woozy and wobbling looped synths, stuttering beats, swirling electronics, shimmering keys and some subtle industrial clang and clatter. And yet, the production manages to be roomy enough for Ade’s effortlessly soulful and jazz-leaning delivery in a coquettish come hither song, in which the song’s narrator express vulnerability, need and longing simultaneously — with a bit of wish fulfillment.
Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Mark Lanegan is a Ellensburg, WA-born, Los Angeles, CA-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, best known as the frontman, and founding member of  Seattle-based grunge rock pioneers Screaming Trees, and for collaborating with an incredibly diverse array of artists and bands throughout his lengthy career including Nirvana‘s Kurt Cobain on an unreleased Lead Belly cover/tribute album recorded before the release of Nevermind. The Ellensburg-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter was also a member of renowned grunge rock All-Star supergroup/side project Mad Season with Alice in Chains‘ Layne Staley and Pearl Jam‘s Mike McCready. After Screaming Trees broke up in 2000, Lanegan joined Queens of the Stone Age and is featured on the band’s last five albums — 2000’s Rated R, 2002’s Songs for the Deaf, 2005’s Lullabies to Paralyze, 2007’s Era Vulgaris and 2013’s . . . Like Clockwork. He’s also collaborated with The Afghan Whigs‘ Greg Dulli in The Gutter Twins and has collaborated with former Belle and Sebastian vocalist Isobel Campbell on three albums. Additionally, he has contributed or guested on albums by Melisa Auf der Maur, Martina Topley-Bird, Creature with the Atom Brain, Moby, Bomb the Bass, Soulsavers, Greg Dulli’s The Twilight Singers, UNKLE and others. And although he’s managed to be rather busy throughout the years, Lanegan has also developed a low-key solo career in which he’s released nine studio albums that have been critically applauded and have seen a fair amount of commercial success.

Lanegan’s 10th full-length effort Gargoyle is slated for an April 28, 2017 release through Heavenly Recordings and interestingly enough, Lanegan can trace the origins of the album’s material and sound back to early 2016. At the time, the renowned grunge rocker was working on some ideas for what might be a new solo album, when he received an email from a friend and collaborator, the British based musician Rob Marshall, who he had first met several years before when Marshall’s former band Exit Calm had supported Soulsavers, a band that Lanegan had been fronting. The email thanked Lanegan for his participation on an album that Marshall had recorded with his newest project, Humanist while offering to write music for Lanegan to return a favor to the grunge pioneer. As Lanegan recalls in press notes, his response was along the lines of “Hey man, I’m getting ready to make a record, if you’ve got anything? Three days later he sent me 10 things… !”

Early on in the writing process, Lanegan had written “Blue Blue Sea,” a rippling mood peice that he thought and felt would be more fruitful direction for the songs on the album. “It’s almost always how my records start,” the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter explains in press notes. “I let the first couple of songs tell me what the next couple should sound like, and it’s really the same process when I’m writing words. Whatever my first couple of lines are, tell me what the next couple should be. I’ve always built things like that, sort of like making a sculpture I guess.” Within about an hour, Lanegan and written words and recorded vocals for two of the instrumental tracks Marshall had written and recorded at Mount Sion Studios in Kent UK. Interestingly, the music Marshall had written had managed to fit perfectly with the direction Lanegan had been thinking of for some time — an expansion of the Krautrock-inspired electronic sounds and textures of his previous two albums Blues Funeral and Phantom Radio. Eventually Marshall wound up co-writing six of the album’s 10 songs with the remainder of the album being written and produced by Lanegan’s longtime collaborator Alain Johannes at 11AD Studios in West Hollywood.

As the story goes, everything was polished and finished within a month, which has been unusually fast by Lanegan’s recent standards. “I definitely feel like I’m a better songwriter than I was 15 years ago,” Lanegan stays in press notes. “I don’t know if I’m just kidding myself or what, but it’s definitely easier now to make something that is satisfying to me. Maybe I’m just easier on myself these days, but it’s definitely not as painful a process, and therefore I feel I’m better at it now. But part of the way that I stay interested in making music is by collaborating with other people. When I see things through somebody else’s perspective it’s more exciting than if I’m left to my own devices.”

Gargoyle‘s second and latest single “Beehive” pairs Lanegan’s imitable boozy, growling baritone vocals with a bluesy and swaggering production featuring shimmering guitar chords and enormous tweeter and woofer rattling beats, essentially pushing Lanegan’s recent forays into the blues into the 21st Century; but in a way that feels both warmly familiar and yet new.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Up-and-Coming Australian Pop Artist Woodes Live at The Line in Melbourne Australia

Best known as Woodes, Elle Graham is an up-and-coming, 24-year-old, Melbourne, Australia-based singer/songwriter and producer, who first came to national attention across Australia with a commercially and critically successful collaboration with fellow Australian producer Elkkle on a single that wound up becoming one of 2015’s most played songs on Triple J’s Unearthed Radio. Building upon a growing national profile, Graham collaborated with an impressive list of contemporary artists and producers including FØRD, Golden Vessel, Atticus Beats and North Elements. Adding to a growing profile, Graham released her 2016 self-produced self-titled debut EP, which debuted in the iTunes Top 20 Charts in 7 countries and received more than 2 million streams, while receiving praise across the blogosphere from Indie Shuffle, Pigeons and Planes, i-D, as well as from actress Emma Roberts, who has tweeted about her love of “The Thaw.”

“Bonfire,” Graham’s latest single consists of a looped, handclap-led production featuring tribal polyrhythm, shimmering and moody guitar chords, twinkling keys, buzzing and atmospheric electronics with Graham’s ethereal yet soulful vocals with a soaring hook. And while drawing from a cherished childhood memory of being both fearless and carefree, the song manages to sound unlike anything in contemporary pop today.

Just in time for her Stateside and SXSW debut and the release of three remixes of the song, Graham released both the live video of her and her backing band performing “Bonfire” at The Line in Melbourne.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: ATO Sessions: Nick Hakim “Bet She Looks Like You”

Up until relatively recently, it had been some since I had written about the Washington, DC-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Nick Hakim; however, 2017 looks to be a big year for the renowned singer/songwriter as his much-anticipated full-length debut Green Twins is slated for a May 19, 2017 release through ATO Records — and if you had stumbled across this site earlier today, you’d remember that Hakim is currently on tour to build up buzz for the new material until its release.

Interestingly enough, as the story goes, Hakim can trace the origins of the material of Green Twins to when armed with the masters for his first two EPs Where Will We Go Part 1 and Where Will We Go Part 2, the DC-born singer/songwriter and guitarist relocated from Boston, where he was based at the time to Brooklyn. And as soon as he got himself settled, he spent his spare time fleshing out incomplete songs and writing and recording sketches and lyrics using his phone’s voice memo app and a four-track cassette recorder. He then took his new, demo’d material to various studios in NYC, Philadelphia and London, where he built up the material with a number of engineers, including frequent collaborator Andrew Sarlo (bass, engineering and production), who were tasked with keeping the original spirit and essence of the material intact as much as humanly possible.

As Andrew Sarlo explained in press notes about the writing and recording process for Green Twins, for many artists, a demo typically serves an extremely rough sketch of what the song could eventually become and sound; however, with the Hakim, the general sense is that the demos are much more like building a holy temple — and as a result, as a producer and engineer, he was tasked to clean, furnish and prepare entrants for a religious experience. Thematically speaking, the material on the album reportedly focuses on unique and rather particular aspects of his life with the bulk of the songs based on specific things he was thinking and feeling at the time he was writing and composing. And as a result, the album consists of a series of different self-portraits — and in a similar fashion to Vincent Van Gogh’s famed self-portraits, the album’s song captures the artist sometimes in broad strokes but frequently in subtle gradations of mood, tone and feeling. Hakim adds, “I also felt the need to push my creativity in a different way than I had on the EPs,” The record draws from influences spanning Robert Wyatt, Marvin Gaye and Shuggie Otis to My Bloody Valentine. We wanted to imagine what it would have sounded like if RZA had produced a Portishead album. We experimented with engineering techniques from Phil Spector and Al Green’s Back Up Train, drum programming from RZA and Outkast, and we were listening to a lot of The Impressions, John Lennon, Wu-Tang, Madlib and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.”

While in town for an intimate and sold out show at Union Pool, Hakim and his backing band recorded a live version of the spectral and achingly confessional “Bet She Looks Like You” for the ATO Sessions at Bushwick’s Market Hotel — and while conveying a visceral heartache and longing, paired with a Quiet Storm-like groove, the song, with repeated listens somehow manages to nod at Marvin Gaye, Bilal and Roy Orbison, thanks in part to his incredibly tight backing band. Speaking of the great Roy Orbison, the live footage is shot in a gorgeous, film noir-like black and white, much like Roy Orbison and Friends: A Night in Black and White.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Barry Adamson Returns with Sexy Slasher Film-Inspired Visuals for Latest Single “They Walk Among Us”

If you’ve been frequenting this site at some point over the course of its almost 7 year history, you’ve come across a couple of posts on the renowned Manchester, UK-born and-based singer/songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and filmmaker, Barry Adamson. Tracing the origins of his musical career to stints a member Magazine, Visage, The Birthday Party, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Adamson has had a lengthy and critically applauded solo career, in which he’s recorded and released 8 full-length albums, 7 EPs and a retrospective compilation, including I Will Set You Free, one of my favorite albums of 2012.

Now up until last year, it had been some time since I had written about or heard from Adamson. In 2013, the Manchester-born and-based musician and singer/songwriter rejoined Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for the recording of Cave’s critically applauded Push the Sky Away and over the subsequent few years, Adamson was busy composing soundtracks and getting more involved in film; however, Adamson released Know Where to Run last year, an effort that found the renowned multimedia artist and multi-instrumentalist pushing his sound in a number of different directions with the album’s material drawing from film noir, pop standards, jazz, dub, trip-hop and indie rock — but in Adamson’s imitable style.

Adamson’s 8th EP, Love Sick Dick is slated for an April 14, 2017 release and reportedly the EP will thematically explore the deepest, inner workings of a lovelorn, sad sack bastard in all of his downhearted, paranoid, self-flagellation and grief paired with a sound that the renowned British artist and producer has dubbed “futuristic blues” — and as he explains in press notes, ‘The blues is the blues and if the heart aches then that’s the sound that will come out, whether you are playing guitar, a synth, a piano or performing futuristic guitar solos on your iPhone!” Of course, Love Sick Dick will also further cement Adamson’s reputation for writing, playing, sampling and recording every note, frequently employing the use of new technology to replicate his sound both in the studio and live.

Love Sick Dick’s second and latest single “They Walk Among Us” is a sultry and propulsive track in which Adamson’s husky baritone crooning is paired with a dance floor-friendly production featuring stomping, tweeter and woofer rocking beats, layers of shimmering arpeggio synths, ominously swirling electronics, a sinuous bass line and an infectious, ear worm of a hook to create a song that evokes the murkily foreboding, late night prowl of someone looking for action while being remarkably cinematic — as though it could easily be part of a soundtrack of a psychological horror film. Interestingly, as Adamson explained to the folks at Dangerous Minds the song and its accompanying, “‘They Walk Among Us’ explores the conviction of who or indeed what lies beneath the mask we present. The fantasy, the illusion, and all too often foreboding reality.”

Directed by Adamson himself, the recently released video also stars the Manchester, UK-born artist as a debonair English gentleman walking back to his flat, when he comes across a stunning woman, who he invites back to his place — but it ends with a horrible and bloody conclusion that hints at the fact that people aren’t what they seem or what they really are.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Rachel K. Collier Performs New Single “Paper Tiger”

With today being International Women’s Day, I felt it was appropriate and necessary to spend some portion of the day both here and on Twitter honoring the female artists, musicians and producers I’ve written about throughout the site’s history and to writing about new (and sometimes, firmly established) female artists, producers throughout the day as much as humanly possible.

Rachel K. Collier is a accomplished Swansea, Wales, UK-born, London-based singer/songwriter and producer, who has quickly achieved both commercial and critical success across the UK. Collier is credited as a co-writer or producer or several chart-topping, smash hits including Ray Foxx’s “Boom Boom (Heartbeat),” which peaked at nubmer 12 on the UK Singles chart back in 2013; Mat Zo’s Grammy-nomiated album Damage Control, which peaked at number 1 on the iTunes Dance Album charts; and on legendary garage producer Wookie’s comeback single “2 Us.” As a solo artist, she recorded a cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “Hard Road to Travel,” which landed at number 79 on the UK Singles chart, and her debut original single “Predictions” was named Sarah Jane Crawford’s “Smash of the Week” on the radio personality’s BBC Radio 1Xtra show. Collier has also received airplay and praise from the likes of Annie Nightingale, Capitol Xtra, Tiësto and Oliver Heldons.

Building upon a growing national profile, Collier released her self-produced, debut EP Words You Never Heard through Love and Other records in late 2015 and followed that up with “Ships,” a single she released during the last few months of 2016. “Paper Tiger,” Collier’s first single of 2017 and the single features a slick yet unfussy, dance floor-friendly production consisting of wobbling low end, twinkling synths and stuttering drum programming, enormous tweeter and woofer rocking beats, and a chopped up vocal sample paired with a rousingly anthemic hook; but interestingly, Collier’s production manages to be roomy enough for her swaggering, cocky vocals.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Miles Francis Releases Infectious Darkly, Ironic Experimental Pop Single

Miles Francis’ solo debut single “You’re a Star” employs mischievously complex and propulsive polyrhythm, bursts of jerky and motwinkling 8 bit Nintendo-like synths, a breezy and infectious hook wrapped around hushed and whispered vocals. And while clearly drawing from Afropop and Afrobeat, the song also seems to draw from Fear of Music and Remain in Light-era Talking Heads, as well as contemporaries like Rubblebucket and others, “You’re a Star” sound like a bit of departure from Arntzen’s previously recorded work as the material possesses a darker and more ironic tone, as the song’s narrator is desperate for the greater validation that he may never actually see. In some way, it pokes fun at the musician’s life, darkly suggesting that maybe part of the endeavor is pointless and ridiculous.

Directed by Charles Billot, and featuring the Star Dancers, comprised of Magdalen Segale, Colin Fuller, Ashton Muniz, Matilda Nakamoto and Taner Van Kuren, as well as the Miles Francis backing band, comprised of Katherine Lieberson and Lizzie Lieberson, the recently released music video has the pop artist in a white, linen suit as he goes through a series of surreal, dream-like situations — including sitting in sparsely furnished apartment and on a beach with brightly costumed dancers moving to the song’s jerky instrumentation. And it ends with Miles Francis in the ocean, being overtaken by the waves. While being gorgeous, it’s surreal and is rife with several levels of symbolism left for the viewer to interpret in any way they felt fit.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Amber Arcade’s Psychedelic Leaning Visuals for “It Changes”

With the release of her 2016 debut, Fading Light, Dutch singer/songwriter and musician Annelotte de Graaf quickly received international attention for her solo recording project Amber Arcades, a project that thematically drew from a variety of esoteric and familiar subjects — time and the relativistic experience of it, jet leg and her own dreams; in fact, following her own dreams has informed much of the Dutch singer/songwriter’s personal and creative life. Because she had always dreamt of working for the UN, de Graaf worked her way into a position as a legal aide on a UN war crime tribunal and human rights law, assisting Syrian refugees. She also used her life savings for a flight to NYC and studio time to record her debut 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).

Building upon the buzz that she received for Fading Lines and a Fall 2016 tour with renowned indie rock act Nada Surf, de Graaf will be releasing her debut’s highly-anticipated follow up Cannonball on June 2, 2017 and the EP will include the propulsive “It Changes,” a single that reveals a decided change in sonic direction for the Dutch singer/songwriter, as the song manages to sound as though it draws from post-punk and garage rock, thanks in part to angular guitar chords played through effects pedals and an anthemic hook paired with de Graaf’s crooning. As de Graaf explains in press notes, the song is ultimately about life’s temporal nature. “Everything changes, all the time,” de Graaf says in press notes. “You think that when starting something new you can kinda tell which way it will go, but you never do. I always try to aim for constancy and stability but things always get messier than I foresaw. And hey, maybe that’s actually what makes it worthwhile.” As a result, while the song possesses a hopeful yet realistic take on life; suggesting that the recognition of messiness and uncertainty being a part of life and something you can learn from.

Created by Ben Clarkson, the recently released lyric video features psychedelic-leaning animation depicting the passage of time superimposed over neon-treated negatives of a variety of imagery including a woman playing at the beach, the icy North Atlantic Ocean, spinning tops, couples holding hands and so on, along with bursts of the song’s lyrics. It emphasizes the song’s central theme while being a little mischievous.

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Perhaps best known for this time spent in New England-based psych rock band MMOSS, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Doug Tuttle quickly developed a reputation as a solo artist of note with the release of his solo debut, an album that was widely praised for paring his dexterous guitar work and a jittery, love-lorn anxiety with psychedelic-leaning guitar pop. And if you had been frequenting JOVM over the course of 2016, Tuttle’s sophomore effort It Calls On Me, which featured lead single an album track “It Calls On Me” further cemented the New Hampshire-born singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s reputation for crafting psych-leaning pop but with more of a dreamer and ethereal feel that its predecessor — all while subtly nodding at The Doors‘ “Light My Fire.”

Tuttle’s third full-length effort Peace Potato is slated for a May 5, 2017 through renowned Chicago, IL-based label Trouble In Mind Records and the album’s first single, “Bait The Sun,” is a bubblegum pop meets White Album-era Beatles inspired track in which Tuttle’s dreamy falsetto is paired with shimmering guitar chords, soaring organ chords, a gorgeous horn arrangement, and a breezy, infectious hook — and in some way, the song evokes a lucid dream; but just under the surface, there’s a wistful nostalgia at something that’s just out of reach.