Category: Single Review

Single Review by William Ruben Helms
Evalyn is an up-and-coming Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, and her forthcoming EP Salvation, which is slated for a September 28, 2018 release, thematically explores the seven deadly sins, centered around the concept of trying to find something to save you, whether it was religion or a cult, or anything else you might worship. Big Bad City,” the EP’s latest single features an almost arena rock-like production consisting of thumping drums, shimmering and arpeggiated synths, a sinuous bass line and a soaring hook and chorus and while the song manages to subtly nod at the enormity and emotional heft of an old school spiritual, the track is an examination of pride — in particular, an unapologetic passion for a sinful, greedy and vapid way of life.
What makes the song interesting to me is that it reveals a self-assured songwriter, who can craft the sort of infectious, radio friendly hook that could take over the world.
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Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of recent singles “Holding On” and “Let’s Go Outside” receiving attention across the blogosphere, opening slots with Her’s, Indoor Pets, and whenyoung, and a forthcoming set this month’s Leeds Festival, the up-and-coming Leeds, UK-based trio Far Caspian, comprised of Irish-born, Leeds-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Joel Johnson, Leeds-born and-based drummer and backing vocalist Jof Cabedeo and Leeds-born and-based bassist and backing vocalist Alessio Scozarro have developed a reputation for crafting material centered around Johnson’s transition to life in a new country and the upheavals that ensue paired with their unique take on atmospheric pop, influenced by Real Estate, Grizzly Bear and Band of Horses.

“The Place” off the up-and-coming Leeds-based trio’s forthcoming debut EP slated for release this fall through Dance To The Radio is a jangling and atmospheric track, rooted to percussive and angular drumming, shimmering guitar chords and sinuous hooks — and in some way, the song sounds as though it draws from Vampire Weekend and others but with a breezier, summertime vibe. As the band says in press notes, “We wanted to have a track on the EP that was based more on intricate rhythms but instead we went for a pretty stripped back arrangement so it made sense alongside our other tracks. The song itself is about overthinking things in social situations and feeling like you aren’t contributing enough to conversation because you’re feeling awkward.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Sha La Das Release a Jangling and Atmospheric New Single

Earlier this summer, I wrote about the newest band in the Daptone Records Universe, The Sha La Das. The band which is comprised of the The Staten Island, NY-based Schalda Brothers, Will (a.k.a. Swivs), who played keys for Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires; Paul, the creative mastermind and guitarist with his Paul and The Tall Trees, as well as a member of Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaries; Carmine; and their father Bill can trace the origins of their passion for music to growing up in a rather musical home — as a teenager, Bill was a member of the Brooklyn-based doo wop act The Montereys in the early 60s, an act that played neighborhood clubs and bars, before eventually playing at the 1964 World’s Fair before putting his musical career on hold to raise his family; however, Bill made sure that he taught his sons what he knew. As the eldest son Will recalls in press notes, “He would bring us out on the stoop on Staten Island, and we would teach us parts of say, the Sesame Street theme song. We were his backing group early on and that was a lot of fun for us growing up.”

Officially, the origins of The Sha La Das can be traced to when The Schalda Brothers had come into the studio to record background vocals on Charles Bradley’s sophomore album Victim of Love. And as the story goes, as soon as Daptone Records/Dunham Records producer and guitarist Thomas Brenneck first heard The Schalda Brothers’ close harmonizing, The Everly Brothers and The Beach Boys immediately came to his mind — and from that point, Brenneck knew that he had to work with them as a separate project. Now, as you may recall that The Sha La Das’ Thomas Brenneck-produced full-length debut Love In The Wind is slated for a September 21, 2018 release through Dunham Records, an imprint of Daptone Records, and the album which was co-written by Brenneck and Bill Schalda finds the group taking their sound and approach outside of doo wop and “to take the whole vocabulary of doo wop harmony and reapply it to soul, so you get so you get super soulful harmonies along the lines of The Manhattans and The Moments.” Unsurprisingly, the album was a family affair — both biological and within the Daptone Records Universe, as the Schaldas are backed by a modern soul All-Star backing band featuring Brenneck, Homer Steinweiss, Dave Guy, Leon Michels, Nick Movshon and Victor Axelrod.

The album’s first single was the achingly tender and yearning ballad “Open My Eyes” centered around an atmospheric and unhurried arrangement consisting of a bluesy guitar line, plinking keys, dramatic and gently padded drums, soaring strings and the Schaldas’ soulful harmonizing. Interestingly, the album’s second single “Just For a Minute” continues in a similar vein as its predecessor but centered around a jangling and old school soul-like arrangement that recalls The Everly Brothers and others, complete The Schaldas tender vocalizing.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Ezza Rose is a Julian, CA-born, Portland, OR-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, who can trace the origins of her musical career to being a small child, playing tambourine along with her father’s band. Shortly after, she found a CB drum set under the Christmas tree — and unsurprisingly, the young Rose became the only female punk rock drummer in her town of about 1,500. When she went to college, the drum set didn’t fit in her dorm room, so she picked up a guitar and began writing songs of her own. As the story goes, during a holiday break from her performing arts conservatory, Rose and a friend hitchhiked to Portland to check out the city’s arts scene, and the trip inspired her to eventually relocate.

Bandmate Craig Rupert relocated to Portland roughly a year later with the members of an East coast roots rock band. Rupert met Rose and her bandmate Ray Johnson, who was playing in Winterhaven while they were all playing on the same bill.  Soon all three were playing in Winterhaven, and after the band split up, Rose asked her former bandmates to play in a new project bearing her name. Interestingly, with 2015’s When The Water’s Hot was a sonic departure for the band, as it found them moving from the acoustic folk of their previous efforts and back towards Rose’s roots in rock, fueled by the frustrations of an unjust social climate.

The band’s fourth full-length album No Means No is slated for a September 21, 2018 release through Culture Collide Records, and the album finds the band encompassing the widest and most diverse array of sound and styles they’ve ever recorded — while being centered around a deep well of a lifetime of things silenced and buried within. “Baby Come Down,” No Means No‘s latest single is a slow-burning pop ballad that recalls 50s and 60s country and pop — The Hollies, Roy Orbison, Patsy Cline and others immediately come to mind with this stripped down song, while being a wistful observation over how society is now perpetually distracted from even the most important, intimate moments of our lives.

 

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Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Swedish Doom Metal Act Alastor Releases an Anthemic and Expansive Single

With the release of 2017’s 3-song debut album Black Magic through Twin Earth Records and the Blood on Satan’s Claw EP, the mysterious Swedish doom metal quartet Alastor, comprised of Dharma Gheddon (vocals, bass, acoustic guitar, organ), Lucy Ferian (lead guitar, acoustic guitar, organ), Terry Fying (guitar) and Levi Athan (drums) quickly received attention for crafting a heavy and doom-filled sound that harkened to when the genre was primarily played by and listened by rebels, oculists, lurkers and depraved weirdos that’s centered around enormous, distortion-fed power chords, thundering drumming and expansive song structures.

Building upon their growing profile, the members of the Swedish doom metal act went into the studio with engineer Magnus Sorensen to record their forthcoming album, Slave to the Grave, which RidingEasy Records will fittingly release on Halloween — and as the band’s Lucy Fenian explains, is ” . . . an album that circles around the concept of death. It’s about death in both its spiritual and personal meaning — how death is a part of our everyday life. How it affects our thoughts and actions, How some of us spend our entire life in fear of death, while some seek it. But no matter how you live your life and no matter what you achieve here on this Earth. You are still just a slave to the grave.”  The album’s anthemic yet murky title track and latest single “Slave to the Grave” is centered around enormous power chords, thundering and propulsive drumming, severely down-turned bass, arena rock friendly hooks and an expansive song structure that helps evoke Black Sabbath and others.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Yumi Zouma Releases a Breezy Yet Bittersweet Summer Jam

Comprised of Christchurch, New Zealand-born Christie Simpson, Sam Perry, Charlie Ryder and Josh Burgess, the members of internationally renowned synth pop act Yumi Zouma have been spread across the world with most of the band’s members relocating to New York and Paris after the massive 2011 earthquake. Primarily writing by email, the project wasn’t initially meant to be a live project — but interestingly enough over the years, they’ve received attention for breezy yet bittersweet 80s synth pop centered around Christie Simpson’s ethereal vocals. Since the release of their Turntable Kitchen released cover of Oasis’ 1995 full-length effort, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, the renowned synth pop act has been busily writing and recording an EP trilogy — with the last part of the trilogy EP III slated for a September 28, 2018 release through Cascine Records.
EP III’s first single is the swooning synth pop “In Camera,” a single that will further cement the band’s reputation for crafting summery yet bittersweet pop centered around Simpson’s ethereal vocals, a soaring hook, shimmering synths and guitars. Sonically speaking, the song nods at a bit at A Flock of Seagulls’ “I Ran (So Far Away)”, complete with reverb fed instrumentation but with a cinematic air and a clean, modern production sheen. But interestingly enough, the material is underpinned by a careful attention to craft with the members of the synth pop act revising and bouncing ideas off each other until each song is absolutely perfect.

As the band says in press notes “There’s something really special about the EP format. It’s been so long since we worked on one that we all had forgotten how fun and liberating they can be.”

This EP, both in its material and how it was written and recorded, feels really close to EP I & II. Spread again between three countries, bouncing endless revisions of a song until it’s right, falling asleep on FaceTime trying to write lyrics together and the exhilaration of waking up to NEW SONG VERSION 5 – it threw us back to how we worked on material when we thought no one would ever listen.

We’ve completed our EP family. It’s the little sibling none of us had growing up and none of us knew we could love so much.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Kyle Fisher, Merrick Powell, Jonny Dolan and Michael Sacco, the Sydney, Australia-based indie rock quartet STUMPS formed last year and  the band quickly exploded into the national scene, “Piggyback,” “This Home is Mine” and “We’ll Do It Anyway,” off the band’s debut EP Another Stay at Home Son all received airplay on Triple J’s Unearthed.  Already, the band has gone on national tours with Dear Seattle and Maddy Jane, and building upon a growing profile, they played a sold out Sydney headlining show, as well as packed shows in Brisbane and Melbourne — and the band will be on another national tour with Trophy Eyes, Maddy Jane and Dear Seattle in October.

Not wasting time or momentum, the members of STUMPS wrote, recorded and released their latest single, the angular post-punk influenced “Conversation Conversation,” which is centered around four-on-the-floor drumming, angular guitar chords, a propulsive rhythm section and Fisher’s sonorous baritone punchily delivering the song’s lyrics, which are derived from painfully awkward and overheard conversations and interactions of first and second dates, text messages and dating apps – and while being an  ironic view of dating in our short attention span age, it also is an an incisive stab at masculinity and the pointless (and desperate) attempts people make at impressing others.  Sure, the hook-driven song is danceable and arena rock friendly in a way that recalls Franz Ferdinand, but it points a deeply universal and uncomfortable experience that we’ve all had at some point or another.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Currently comprised of founding members David Schnitzler (vocals) and Elias Foerster (bass) with newest, touring member Tilman Ruetz (drums), the indie electro pop/psych pop act Sea Moya was formed back in 2014 with its founding members writing material between shipping containers in a German harbor. As a duo, they released two well-received EPs and building upon a growing profile, the act’s full-length debut Falmenta is slated for an October 12, 2018 release through Golden Brown Records and Majestic Casual Records.

Falmenta was written and recorded in a reclusive cabin in the Italian Alps above Lago Maggiore, and unsurprisingly, the material is the restful of a total withdrawal from everyday life, the distractions of technology and any influence from outsiders. Such reclusiveness allowed the members of the band to completely immerse themselves in their surroundings, to be more introspective and to bounce ideas off one-another until their creative output became one; in fact, each song and every lyric on the album was a collaborative effort — and interestingly enough, while being effortless, manages to be experimental and deeply personal.

Sonically, the material on Falmenta finds the act drawing from a wide-ranging and diverse array of influences including Krautrock, Afrobeat, electronica, electro pop and psych pop underpinned by a mischievous sense of experimentation in which analog instrumentation is filtered through saturated tape, modular systems and a complex array of effect pedals. Interestingly, the forthcoming album’s latest single is the breezy “The Long Run, a single centered by twinkling synths, a sinuous and funky bass line, stuttering drumming, a throbbing, motorik groove and ethereal melodies that recalls Tame Impala, Toro Y Moi and Fela Kuti among others but in an upbeat, neon-bright, difficult to pigeonhole fashion.

Following the recording of their full-length debut, the members of Sea Moya spontaneously relocated to Montreal, where they have quickly embedded themselves into that city’s DIY underground scene, playing shows across Canada and the States. Of the spontaneous move, the explains in press notes,  “At that time we listened to a bunch of great artists from Montreal like Homeshake, TOPS, Suuns or Project Pablo. It felt like there was a free spirited and open-minded music and arts scene going on. Even though none of us had ever been to Canada before, we just decided to give it a shot.

And here we are, moved in early 2018, already played a whole bunch of shows in Canada and the States, dived into the music scene in Montreal which is incredibly rich of DIY spirits, mesmerizing artists and an amazing mixed-up and buzzing culture of ALL couleurs. It feels like you can find your spot for every tiny niche you want to experiment with and all that pretty easy going and not too serious. It’s an inclusive and yet far out scene which makes it wild, buzzing and forward thinking. The move to Canada has been one of the most inspiring steps we took in our lives for now.”

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of an American, an Englishman and two Swedes, the members of FEWS relocated from London to Malmo, Sweden, where they unearthed its creative underbelly while internalizing the impact and influence of their new surroundings — and they immediately began working on the much-anticipated follow up to 2016’s full-length debut Means.  Interestingly, the band’s latest single “Business Man,” which will be released by Play It Again Sam, follows a self-imposed hiatus of sorts, one that had seen them writing and demoing new material, using the local studio of producer and friend Joakim Lindberg, while quietly returning to the UK to play a handful of well-received shows in London and Brighton. 

Sonically speaking, the explosive song is centered around twinkling Wurtlizer, slashing guitar and bass chords, feedback and distortion, thundering rhythms that fall and tumble around the mix and punchily delivered vocals — and while clearly drawing from Gang of Four, Wire, and Disappears, the song captures the modern day frustration of being caught up in the unending rat race, pointlessly striving for money to buy more shit that you really don’t want, and yet you can’t figure out how to get out the trap. Interestingly, as the band explains, the song “. . . is about people who realise they nee to shape up, get a haircut and suit, and work their asses off trying to please the boss. After a few years, burnout and the realization that the system is completely screwed, sees them lose their shit during the weekends before returning to the conveyor belt of conformity, trudging through the same bullshit week after week . . .”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Comprised of Jeff Houle, best known as the creative master mind of Strange Attractor; Jeff’s brother Mitch, with whom he’s played in power pop act STATUES; and frontman Tommy Commy, the Sudbury, Ontario, Canada-based punk act Tommy and the Commies can trace their origins to when Commy dragged Jeff Houle into a punk rock venue bathroom stall to play an inaudible demo on his phone. And as the story goes. the Houles decided to collaborate with Commy, after being impressed by his vocals.

The trio’s full-length debut, Here Come .  .  . is slated for a September 28, 2018 release through Slovenly Records, and the album’s first and latest single “Devices” reveals a band that specializes in furious and blistering mod punk centered around angular power chords, a propulsive backbreat and an infectious,  pop-like, shout worthy hook that brings to mind both power pop and The Ramones on speed; but underneath is an incisive criticism of how people are constantly attached to their electronic devices, to the detriment of getting to know someone next to them or to even enjoy the moment.