Category: Video Review

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Protomartyr Shares Tense and Uneasy “Elimination Dances”

Detroit-based post-punk outfit Protomartyr — Joe Casey (vocals), Greg Ahee (guitar), Alex Leonard (percussion), and Scott Davidson (bass) — have become synonymous with caustic, impressionistic assemblages of politics and poetry, the literal and oblique over the course of five albums — 2012’s No Passion All Technique, 2014’s Under Color of Official Right, 2015’s The Agent Intellect, 2017’s Relatives In Descent and 2020’s Ultimate Success Today.

Protomartyr’s sixth album, the Greg Ahee and Jake Aron co-produced, 12-song Formal Growth In The Desert is slated for a June 2, 2023 release through Domino Recording Co. Although the band’s Joe Casey had a humbling experience staring at awe-inspiring Sonoran rock formations and reckoning with his own smallness in the scheme of things during the recording sessions at Tornillo, TX-based Sonic Ranch, the album’s title isn’t necessarily a nod to the sand and sun-blasted expanses of the southwest. Detroit or anyplace else on Earth can be its own desert. “The desert is more of a metaphor or symbol,” Casey says, “of emotional deserts, or a place or time that seems to lack life.” The desert brings an existential awareness that is ultimately internal.

The “growth” referenced in the album’s title came from a period of profound, life-altering transitions for the band’s Casey, including the death of his mother, who struggled with Alzheimer’s for 15 years. Now, 45, Casey had lived in the family home in northwest Detroit all his life. In 2021 though, a rash of repeated break-ins signaled that it was time to move out. Protomartyr’s music — this time more spacious and dynamic than ever before — helped pull Casey up. “The band still being viable was very important to me,” Casey adds, “and it definitely lifted my spirits.”

Having long served as the band’s unofficial musical director, Greg Ahee knew what Casey had been going through and the challenges he’d been processing, and as he was conceptualizing the music, he thought about how to make it all “like a narrative film.” The cinematic sensibility also manifest itself in Casey’s song-as-story-like lyrics, which see him critiquing ominous techno-capitalism, processing aging, the future and the possibility of love. But the underlying them as Casey describes it, is a testament to “getting on with life,” even when it feels impossibly hard.
 

Post quarantine, the band regrouped with an understandable sense of uncertainty, questioning if and how to continue after the turbulence of the past few years. They found themselves channeling that ambivalence to hone a song they named after a chapter from a 1950’s teen dance manual. “Elimination Dances,” Formal Growth In The Desert‘s second and latest single refers to a game where “‘you get tapped out when you lose the dance,” and that felt an apt metaphor for just surviving. “Life is a struggle, but “you might as well keep dancing until the tap comes,” Casey says.

Fittingly “Elimination Dances” is a cinematic yet tense and uneasy waltz built around rolling and propulsive drumming, angular and wiry bursts of guitar and a sinuous bass line paired with Casey’s urgent, snarling delivery. The song partially recounts Casey’s experience feeling small in the vast and indifferent desert, the existential acknowledgement of time and the struggle to survive with your dignity and wits intact.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Toulouse’s BEAR Shares Atmospheric “Foreigner”

Toulouse, Franee-based electro pop duo BEAR — Rachel Balma (vocals) and Adrien Sabathier (production) — have developed a dreamy and atmospheric sound inspired by Kate Bush, Björk, Peter Gabriel, and Billie Eilish among others.

Their latest single “Foreigner” is a swooning track built around woozy synths, tweeter and woofer rattling bass and skittering beats paired with Balma’s expressive vocal. The end result is a song that sounds a bit like a slick synthesis of Kate Bush and contemporary alt pop — delivered with a heart-worn-on-sleeve earnestness.

Directed by Lionel Pesqué and Joakim Coutouly, the accompanying video for “Foreigner” is a hazy fever dream featuring sequences in which BEAR’s Balma is in a bare, white studio wearing white and the duo performing the song in a hazy red plastic, that looks a bit like an embryo.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Entrée Libre Shares Krautrock-like MedItation on Fame “Je voudrais que tout brûle”

Paris-based duo Entrée Libre formed back in 2019 and derives its name from the first letters of the childhood friends’ first names. The pair quickly developed a joyful, spontaneous and hook-driven pop sound, which for the duo — and in turn, their listeners — has served as an escape from our ongoing strange and uncertain moment.

The French duo’s debut EP, last year’s Avant-Premiére featured three singles I managed to write about on this site:

  • “Aller Simple,” a dance floor friendly track that’s one-part 80s New Order, one- part JOVM mainstays DBFC, one-part Daft Punk 

  • “Corps à corps,” a hook-driven,  LCD Soundsystem-like bop that’s perhaps even more danceable than its immediate predecessor.

  • “Pixel” is a breezy yet wistful bop centered around glistening synth arpeggios, a chugging motorik groove, skittering beats paired with plaintive harmonies that brought Trans Europe Express-era Kraftwerk and La Femme to mind

The duo’s sophomore EP Mémoire de formes is slated for release this year. The EP’s first single “Je voudrais que tout brûle” is a swaggering and decidedly krautrock inspired song built around a relentless motorik groove, shimmering synth arpeggios and angular bursts of guitar paired with the duo’s unerring knack for catchy hooks. While sonically bringing DBFC to mind, “Je voudrais que tout brûlée” as the duo explains “deals with the wild and absurd quest for success, and the desire to be heard.”

Directed by Leïla Macaire, the accompanying video features the duo dreaming — and then realizing some of their wildest dreams of fame and attention to delirious and hilarious effect.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay MAGON Shares Breezy “Havana Bay”

Over the past handful of years, I’ve spilled quite a bit of virtual ink covering the wildly prolific Israeli-born. Costa Rica-based singer/songwriter, guitarist and JOVM mainstay MAGON. 

Immediately after the release show for his fifth album, A Night in Bethlehem, MAGON, along with his girlfriend and daughter relocated to Costa Rica. He closed that year with “Simple Mind,” a song that saw the JOVM mainstay gently refining his sound yet again with hints of surf rock and jangle pop while retaining the hook-driven nature of his previously released material. Written during a major life transition, ‘Simple Mind” features a narrator, who’s closing a major chapter of his life — and perhaps career, as well — and is moving on to a new start, new possibilities, and new horizons. 

Continuing his reputation for being wildly and restlessly prolific, MAGON’s sixth album Did You Hear The Kids? reportedly features a broader and more expansive sonic palette than ever before. The album’s first single, the lush and laid-back “Onie Was A Kid” meshes elements of 60s psych rock, lo-fi singer/songwriter pop and contemporary indie rock paired with lyrics that are simultaneously autobiographical and deeply introspective. The song also features a guest spot from Paris-based indie duo SOS Citizen, who contribute shimmering guitar work and soaring backing vocals.

“Havana Bay,” the forthcoming sixth album’s second and latest single is an upbeat and summery tune built around jangling guitars, a shuffling and propulsive rhythm paired with the JOVM mainstay’s laid back delivery and his unerring knack for catchy hooks. While sonically reminding me of Psychic Ills‘ Inner Journey Out and Rolling Stones‘ Exile on Main Street, the song sees MAGON telling a story that shifts between two characters – a stoned jokester and a sincere balladeer — and describes a desire to escape ugliness and writer’s block.

Directed by Alexa Rotarescu and Magon, the accompanying video follows the JOVM mainstay as he cleans up a horse stall and grooms a couple of them before going on a lengthy ride on one of the horses. At one point, we see the JOVM mainstay and his daughter riding the same horse — with his daughter being thrilled beyond measure.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Pearl & The Oysters Share Woozy and Dreamy “Fireflies”

Released earlier this year through Stones Throw Records, Pearl & The Oysters‘ fourth album, Coast 2 Coast is heavily influenced by the pair’s move from Paris to Los Angeles — with a stop in Florida. Written mostly in Juliette “Pearl” Davis’ and Joachim Polack’s 1-bed apartment, the album’s material was fleshed out by a collection of friends and collaborators including Stereolab‘s Lætitia Sadier, Unknown Mortal Orchesta‘s, Caroline Rose’s and La Luz’s Riley Geare, Neon Indian creative mastermind Alan Palomo, Dent May, Mild High Club‘s Alex Brettin, and Shags Chamberlain, who mixed the album.

Because it was inspired so much by the pair’s relocation, the album thematically explores the idea of travel — physical, mental, experienced and fantasized. The album draws on an eclectic array of aesthetics and images, including Barbarella followed by an Agnés Varda triple bill; Florida swamps and sandy L.A. beaches under a mirrorball-like sun; a radio picking up a faraway broadcast before it fades into an oldies pop station, and crashing waves that melt into the sound of Davis’ white noise machine, among other things.

Coast 2 Coast‘s latest single “Fireflies” is a breezy and nostalgia-tinged bop built around woozy analog synths, twinkling keys, a supple bass line and a steady yet propulsive backbeat paired with Davis’ plaintive delivery. Sonically. “Fireflies” reminds me a bit of a synthesis of Young Narrator in the Breakers-era Pavo Pavo and 70s AM rock. Inspired by the late composer Ryuchi Sakamoto, the song explores dream states and insomniac visions.

Directed by Ambar Navarro, the accompanying video for “Fireflies” is informed by old sci-fi films: We see Davis hatching from a pearl and throughout the video, she plays a a daydreaming Tinkerbell type, who travels freely from planet to planet. Police acts as a controller of the universe while trying to capture Juliette, who has teleportation powers.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays RVG Share Urgent and Fiery “Midnight Sun”

Acclaimed and rising Aussie outfit and JOVM mainstays  RVG — currently Romy Vager (vocals, guitar), Gregor’s and Hearing’s Reuben Bloxham (guitar), Rayon Moon‘s Marc Nolte (drums), and Isabelle Wallace (bass) — have released two critically applauded albums:

  • 2017’s A Quality of Mercy, which was recorded live off the floor at Melbourne’s iconic rock ‘n’ roll pub, The Tote Hotel. Initially released to little fanfare, the album, much to their surprise received critical acclaim both nationally and internationally, landing on a number of end-of-year Best of Lists. 

  • 2020’s Victor Van Vugt-produced Feral was released by Fire Records globally, excluding Australia and New Zealand, where it was released by Our Golden Friend. The album received breathless praise nationally and internationally, with Rolling Stone Australia calling the album “the record of a lifetime.”

The Melbourne-based band’s highly-anticipated third album Brain Worms is slated for a June 2, 2023 release through Fire Records globally with Our Golden Friend releasing the album in Australia and New Zealand. Between the band’s members, Brain Worms captures the band at their most confident point they’ve ever been in as a band. Sonically, the album reportedly sees the band moving past their influences, trying new things and pushing themselves towards what they believe is their best album of their growing catalog to date. 

“Hype is scary. After two years of COVID it felt like the hype had gone down so we were able to just do stuff,” RVG’s Romy Vager says. “This time around we were like, this is what we’re doing, we’re taking control, we’re taking risks, and we’re going to make an album that sounds big so that when we hear it on the radio we want to hear it again. If we could only make one more album, it would be this one.”

Deriving its title from the hyper-recognizable experience of each day bearing witness to a world of private obsession being aired out in the infinite, Brain Worms may not be wholly new territory for the acclaimed Melbourne post-punk outfit and its frontperson, but there is a newfound radical acceptance. Recorded in London’s Snap Studios with James Trevacus, the ten-song album surges with lush sounds and clear intentions — and the magic of an acoustic guitar, once owned by Kate Bush, given to her by Tears for Fears, who legend has it, wrote “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” on it.

Over the past couple of months I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:

  • “Nothing Really Changes,” an angular, 80s New Wave-inspired track rooted in enormous arena rock friendly riffage, paired with the Aussie outfit’s long-held penchant for anthemic hooks and choruses and Vager’s lived-in, heart-worn-on-sleeve lyricism: The song features a narrator desperately missing someone while confronting the lingering ghosts of their relationship — with frustration, despair, anger and a begrudging acceptance. As the band’s Vager explains, the song “started off as a songwriting experiment to write something catchy with an obnoxious riff, a cross between Divinyls and ‘Smoke on the Water.‘ It’s a song about missing someone but protecting yourself from being hurt.”

  • “Squid,” a rousing arena rock friendly anthem that brings Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen and Starfish-era The Church to mind: Swirling and shimmering guitar textures are paired with angular guitar attack, thunderous drumming, shout-along worthy hooks and choruses. But while rooted in an absurd, Kafkaesque-like nightmare in which the song’s narrator imagines what might happen if they were to go back in time, step on something and become a squid, Vager’s delivery is so desperately earnest and urgent that it feels very real.

Brain Worms‘ third and latest single “Midnight Sun” is an urgent and hurtling ripper built around Vager’s defiant and furious delivery, jangling guitars, a thunderous and propulsive rhythm section paired with the band’s unerring knack for rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses. Fittingly, the song deals with matters of disbelief, and what it feels like to live in a culture — and a world — that often prefers to argue about semantics rather than save the world from burning. If it hits close to home, it fucking should. It’s our current hellscape, where we constantly deal with a seemingly unending and pervasive, cynical, self-serving stupidity and myopia.

“I wrote this around the time of the Australian bushfires in 2019 when it felt like everything precious about this country was being destroyed by climate change,” Vager explains. “There were all these talking heads trying to play down how much of a disaster it was, instead focusing on how much they hate immigrants or queer people. I thought – the world is literally on fucking fire and this is what you choose to use your platform on? The song is contrasting these two things, and how sick we are ideologically that we can’t identify what real problems are.”

Directed by Oscar O’Shea, the accompanying video for “Midnight Sun” shows Vager singing along with the track, as she walks around a house party with attendees, who chat with each other, make out and make drinks while completely oblivious to the RVG frontperson — and to the entire world burning around them.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays JOSEPH Shares Buoyant, Feminist Anthem “Fireworks”

JOVM mainstays JOSEPH‘s fourth album, the Tucker Martine and  Christian “Leggy” Langdon co-produced The Sun is slated for a Friday release through their longtime label home ATO Records. The album reportedly sees the group — Natalie Closner Schepman and her two, younger twin sisters Meegan and Allison Closner —working with a collection of new collaborators and making yet another vibrant sonic shift while retaining the craft, three-part harmonies and hard-fought and harder-won lyrical wisdom that they’ve been known for throughout their career. But unlike its predecessors, The Sun sees the sibling trio taking a decidedly more hands-on role in the production process. The result is an album of material that sees Joseph spinning incredibly complex concepts into anthemic, sing-along ready pop that serves as a backdrop for the trio’s fearless and deeply personal storytelling from each of their perspectives. 

Thematically, the forthcoming album sees the trio focusing their soul-searching songwriting on the quietly damaging forces that keep us from living fully in our truth — e.g., gaslighting, cultural conditioning, unconscious yet painfully limiting self-beliefs and the like. Drawing on hard lessons from relationships and personal growth through therapy, The Sun reportedly shares stories of taking control of your own fate, making difficult decisions in the name of becoming yourself and weathering the highs and lows of love while keeping the faith — and importantly, tending to ourselves with presence and compassion. “All of our therapists were a huge influence on this album,” the sibling trio say in press notes. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release later this year, I managed to write about two of the album’s singles”

  • “Nervous System,” a punchy pop song rooted in deep. personal experience, the rousingly anthemic, sing-along friendly choruses the trio is known for, and big-hearted, earnest compassion. Fittingly the song — and its narrator — discusses being our own lifeline during times of anxiety, struggle and uncertainty. “It’s about self regulating and tending to ourselves with presence and compassion, rather than frantically reaching outside of ourselves,” the trio explain. Alison Closner adds “I’ve struggled with a lot of anxiety over the years, at times a constant inner storm, and it’s been easy to look outside myself to feel safe and secure. I’ve fought to find my inner peace, and through that process I’ve found that so much of the time I already have what it takes to calm my nervous system.”

  • “The Sun,” a shimmering, buoyant and fittingly summery pop anthem and a righteously defiant tell-off to a relationship that has made you feel small and insignificant while recognizing — and perhaps for some, reclaiming — one’s own power, integrity and sense of self. Much like the previously released material from the album, the song is rooted in universal yet deeply personal experiences, which add to its rousingly anthemic nature. “Many times I have found myself in a position where I’m stuck in cycles of negative self-talk” Meegan Closner explains. “Times when I have seen myself as bad and struggle seeing any other possible truth. This song is my higher self speaking to that me. It’s me reminding myself that I am more than I think I am.” 

The album’s latest single “Fireworks” is a lush, stadium-ready bop built around the trio’s soaring harmonies and their penchant for shout-along worthy choruses paired with twinkling synths, strummed acoustic guitar and a propulsive backbeat. While seeming like a slick mesh of 80s pop and country, “Fireworks” is a feminist anthem about knowing your worth and refusing to settle or compromise your romantic ideals. The song is rooted in psychological realism though, with the song’s narrator admitting that she’s taking a leap of faith, while expressing self-doubt and frustration.

“This song was inspired after my sisters and I binged the UK version of Love Island season 6. Everyone is walking around in bathing suits and falling in love – it’s perfect,” JOSEPH’s Allison Closner says. “I was fascinated by how many times ‘what’s your type’ was asked, only to have the response be ‘tall, dark, and handsome’. I would think, why isn’t anyone saying ‘fireworks’? There’s a line in the song, ‘I don’t want to just settle now, put my fire underground’, and to me it symbolizes wanting to feel like that fire is being fed by something deep and meaningful – not settling for anything less than FIREWORKS.”  

Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Justin Frick, the accompanying video captures the Closner’s deep and affectionate bond with following them on the road, and their obsession with Love Island in a fun, playful fashion.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Draag Shares Dreamy “Good Era Doom”

Los Angeles-based musician Adrian Acosta was trained as a mariachi singer by his father, an established noreeńo musician, but after finding his older brother’s electric guitar, wound up getting into indie rock and shoegaze. He started the rising electro shoegaze outfit Draag as a solo recording project, but the project expanded into a full-fledged band when he brought together local musicians from the disparate musical worlds of underground punk, experimental jazz, no wave and classical to flesh out the project’s sound.  

The band — Acosta along with Jessica Huang, Ray Montes, Nick Kelley and Eric Fabbro —initially set about reviving songs from a karaoke tape deck that Acosta recorded when he was 10. They quickly became a buzz-worthy local act, playing shows with Wednesday, Reggie Watts, Mint Field and a lengthy list of others. Then the Los Angeles-based shoegazers released two critically applauded EPs, 2018’s Nontoxic Process and 2020’s Clara Luz. 

Draag’s full-length debut, Dark Fire Heresy is slated for a Friday release. Featuring arrangements built around Nintendo-era synths, lush guitars and warped tape samples played in reverse, the album thematically is reportedly a cathartic portrayal and release of religious trauma informed by Haung’s experience of using therapy to process her upbringing in a religious cult. Some songs act as vessels of healing and forgiveness and others became a revenge fantasy. Ultimately, the album holds space for a deeply familiar sentiment — the things you could have said, done or knew, while acknowledging a bittersweet nostalgia. 

Built around dense layers of scorching guitar fuzz paired with relentless, staccato thrash punk-styled drumming paired with ethereal vocal harmonies mosh pit friendly hooks and tape hiss “Demonbird” saw the Los Angeles-based shoegazers adding their name to a growing list of acts boldly pushing the genre’s sonic boundaries as far as humanly possible — while ripping extremely hard. 

Dark Fire Heresy‘s latest pre-release single “Good Era Doom” may arguably be the most 120 Minutes MTV-era like song on the entire album. Built around rapid-fire and propulsive drumming, jangling guitars dipped in gentle reverb paired with a dreamy melody and a soaring hook, “Good Era Doom” brings Souvlaki-era Slowdive and others to mind, but with a clean, modern production sheen and a weary sense of heartache.

Shot by Goon’s Kenny Becker, the accompanying video focuses on shadows on walls and windows, reflections of shiny surfaces and the like. “The video is through the lens of myself as an odd child who would obsess over liminal spaces, shadows on the walls and windows, imagining things coming to life that adults don’t register,” Draag’s Adrian Acosta explains.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Chopper Teams Up with Glitchi on Hedonistic and Bombastic “Sugar and Spice”

Jonatan K. Magnussen is a singer/songwriter and musician, best known for being the frontman of Copenhagen-based goth outfit The Love Coffin. Magnussen recently stepped into the spotlight as a solo artist with his solo project Chopper, which specializes in what the Danish artist has dubbed “shock pop,” a sound that draws from Eurodance, glam rock, industrial, disco and B horror movies. 

Magnussen’s upcoming Chopper effort Shock Pop Vol. 1 reportedly sees the Danish artist continuing to explore inherent dualities of the human condition while touching upon love, sexuality and carefree joy. Sonically, the album’s material is influenced by Pet Shop Boys, Skinny Puppy and Underworld — but placed in a modern context. 

Last month, I wrote about Shock Pop Vol. 1 single “Springtime,” a sleazy, dance floor friendly banger built around Magnussen’s sultrily delivered cooing, shimmering guitars, industrial clang and clatter, glistening synths and enormous, crowd pleasing hooks. The end result is a song — that to my ears — brings Electronic, New Order and Ministry to mind, while rooted in sleek, hyper modern production and razor sharp hooks. But underneath the dance floor rocking grooves, is something far darker and menacing. Written during the pandemic winter, the song illuminates the feelings of longing and isolation — capturing the desire to be out among friends, to meet lovers, to just do things with anyone. 

Shock Pop Vol. 1‘s second and latest single “Sugar and Spice” begins with a brooding horn line, twinkling synths and percussion, a sinuous bass line and tweeter and woofer rattling thump paired with Magnussen’s and Glitchi‘s sultry deliveries and enormous Larry Levan-era house-like hooks. The end result is a sweaty and hedonistic banger that to my ears sounds like a slick synthesis of Ministry, The Sisters of Mercy and Electronic.

Fittingly, the accompanying video for “Sugar and Spice” is as maximalist and bombastic as its single while drawing from 80s visual cliches.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Slumbering Sun Share Horror Movie-Influenced Visual for “Dream Snake”

Austin-based doom metal outfit Slumbering Sun — Monte Luna’s James Clarke (vocals), Destroyer of Light’s Keegan Kjeldsen (guitar), Temptress‘ Kelsey Wilson (guitar), Monte Luna‘s and Scorpion Child‘s Garth Condit (bass) and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner (drums) — is an All-Star band featuring acclaimed members of Texas’ underground metal scene. 

After the breakup of their previous band, James Clarke and Keegan Kjeldsen resolved to forget the bitter pain of an album that would never be released, by creating something new. They decided to start a new band with an album that Kjeldsen wrote between work on other projects. The pair continued the creative process at their rehearsal space with a few songs strummed on a clean, electric guitar: Clarke began to write melodies with the pair finishing lyrics. 

Clarke and Kjeldsen recruited Temptress’ Kelsey Wilson, who made the commute from Dallas for the writing and recording process. Scorpion Child’s Garth Condit and Destroyer of Light’s Penny Turner, who played in other bands with Clarke and Kjeldsen respectively were recruited to be the band’s rhythm section — and from that point on, Slumbering Sun was a full-fledged band. 

Released earlier this year digitally and on cassette and CD, tthe Austin-based doom metal outfit’s full-length debut The Ever Living Fire was recorded in a week-long recording session this past summer. Sonically, their full-length debut sees the band exploring broader melodies than their previous work while drawing from Celtic folk, doom metal act Warning, as well as 90s grunge rockers Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about three singles:

  • “Liminal Bridges,” an expansive song featuring an atmospheric introduction with swirling, shoegazer-like textures, followed by stormy, power chord-driven riffage and thunderous drumming paired with Clarke’s melodic crooning and enormous, arena rock-like hooks. The track sonically brought — to my ears, at least —  The Sword  to mind — ok but with a prog rock-leaning sensibility.

  • “Dream Snake,” an equally expansive track that opens with Black Sabbath and Soundgarden-like intro with fuzzy, power chord-driven riffage, thunderous drumming and a soulful solo paired with Clarke’s Ozzy Osbourne-like delivery until roughly around the five-minute mark. At that point, the song morphs into a sludgy doom metal dirge for the next two minutes or so before a gorgeous string arrangement carries the song into a gentle fadeout. Lyrically rooted in longing and heartbreak, “Dream Snake” sees the members of Slumbering Sun drawing from different eras one metal and doom metal and crafting something both familiar and new.

  • Album title track “The Ever Living Fire.” Continuing a remarkable run of expansive, mind-bending material, the song begins with a gorgeous 35 second, acoustic guitar-driven introduction before quickly exploding into an expressive and soulful doom metal dirge, built around sludgy power chord-driven riffage, thunderous drumming and Clarke’s crooning. And around the five minute mark, the band introduces a melodic hook that shifts the song in a trippy display of densely layered guitars. The song ends with a roughly minute-long, gorgeous acoustic gutter driven coda making it one of the more prog-leaning songs of the album’s released singles. 

Continuing to build about the attention the album’s first three singles have received throughout the course of this year, the Austin-based doom outfit recently shared the video for “Dream Snake.” Directed by the band’s James Clarke and Keegan Kjeldsen, the video follows four buddies driving to their regular dive bar for drinks and hijinks. They all happily greet their bartender, who serves them all their regular drinks. The bartender offers them a special stash of drugs called Sumatran Dream Flower with devilish delight. “Y’all really wanna get fucked up? Well I gotcha,” he seems to say. Fittingly, after snorting the Sumatran Dream Flower, they start having wild and paranoid visions of evil creatures wanting to kill them. Little do they know, it’s not a hallucinogen-fueled fever dream; it’s very real. B movie horror menace and bloodshed ensue to hilarious, goofy effect.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Acclaimed Inuk Artist Elisapie Shares a Gorgeous Adaptation OF Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”

Acclaimed Montréal-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and activist Elisapie Issac (best known as the mononymic Elisapie) was born and raised in Salluit, a small village in Nunavik, Québec’s northernmost region. In this extremely remote community, accessible only by plane, Issac was raised by an extended, yet slightly dysfunctional adoptive family. Growing up in Salliut, she lived through the loss of cousins who ended their lives. experienced young love, danced the night away at the village’s community center and witnessed first hand, the effects of colonialism — i.e., poverty, hopelessness, alcoholism, suicide, and more.

A teenaged Issac began performing on stage with her uncles, who were members of Sugluk (also known as Salliut Band), a famous and well-regarded Inuit rock band. She also worked at TNI, the village’s radio station, which broadcast across the region. And while working for the radio station, the teenaged Issac managed to secure an interview with Metallica.

Much like countless bright and ambitious young people across the world, Issac moved to the big city — in this case, Montréal to study and, ultimately, pursue a career in music. Since then, her work, whether within the confines of a band or as a solo artist, her unconditional attachment to her native territory, its people, and to her language, Inuktitut is at the core of her work. Spoken for millennia, Inuktitut embodies the harshness of its environment and the wild yet breathtaking beauty of the Inuit territory. Thematically, her work frequently pairs Intuit themes and concerns with modern rock music, mixing tradition with modernity in a deft fashion.

She won her first Juno Award as a member of Taima, and since then Issac’s work has received rapturous critical acclaim: 2018’s The Ballad of the Runaway Girl was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, earned her a number of Association du disque, de l’industrie du spectacle Québeécois (ADISQ) Felix Awards and a Juno Award nod. She followed up with a performance with the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal — at the invitation of Grammy Award-winning maestro Yannick Nézet Séguin — at Central Park SummerStage, a NPR Tiny Desk Session and headlining or festival sets both locally and internationally.

In her native Canada, Issac is also known as an actor, starting in the TV series Motel Paradis and C.S. Roy’s experimental indie film VFC, which was released earlier this year. She’s also graced the cover of a number of nationally known magazines including Châtelaine, Elle Québec and a long list of others. And as a devoted activist, she created and produced the first nation-wide broadcast TV show to celebrate National Indigenous People’s Day.

Slated for a September 15, 2023 release through Bonsound, Issac’s forthcoming album Inuktiut features inventive re-imaginings of songs by Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Blondie, Fleetwood Mac, Metallica and more. These are all acts and artists that the acclaimed Inuk artist received permission from. Elisapie has imbued each song with both depth and purpose, an act of cultural reappropriation that reinvigorates the poetry of these 10 classics by placing them within Inuit traditions. The album’s first single “Uummati Attanarsimat (Heart of Glass),” caught the attention of the legendary Debbie Harry.

The album’s second and latest single is a gorgeous and fairly faithful Inuktiut adaptation of Cyndi Lauper‘s 1983 Rob Hyman co-written smash hit “Time After Time” that retains the familiar beloved melody of the original paired with a percussive yet atmospheric arrangement and Issac’s gorgeous, achingly tender delivery.

Much like her previous single, “Taimangalimaaq (Time After Time)” was inspired by a childhood memory of Elisapie’s aunt Alasie and her cousin Susie:
 
“I was able to get through my pre-teen years, thanks to my Aunt Alasie, as my mother had neither the knowledge nor the experience to give me a crash course on puberty, fashion or social relationships,” Isaac recalls. “In addition to entering a new chapter in my life, we were in the midst of the 80’s and modernity was shaking up our traditional methods. My mother’s generation had lived in Igloos, and the cultural changes were too swift. 
 
Despite her struggles, my aunt ensured I felt accepted and exposed me to new and modern things like TV, clothes, dancing, Kraft Dinner and make-up! 
 
Whenever I went to my aunt’s house, I was in awe of my older girl cousins. They were all so cool and stylish, and they loved pop music and the crazy makeup of the 80s and early 90s.  One of my favorite memories is listening to the radio with them and hearing Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’ for the first time. It was like a lightning bolt, and I couldn’t separate the song or the artist from my older cousin Susie. For me, the song was all about her search for beauty, connection, love, and rising above pain.”

Directed by Philippe Léonard and edited by Omar Elhamy, the accompanying video for “Taimangalimaaq (Time After Time)” features home video-shot footage of dances, performances and games at her beloved community center, of kids just being kids and a slow yet steady encroachment of modernity as we see at least one kid popping and locking like Crazylegzs or least trying to do so. The video is a lovingly nostalgic look at the acclaimed Inuk’s community and of her childhood, making the video a meditation on the passing of time, and in some way the impact of pop culture on a young person trying to find their place in a changing world.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Miranda and the Beat Share a Feral, New Ripper

New York-based garage punks Miranda and the Beat — currently founding duo Miranda Zipse (vocals, guitar) and Kim Sollecito (drums) with Dylan Fernandez (Farfisa) and Alvin Jackson (bass) — can trace their origins back to a small California town, where the band’s founding duo met. Zipse, a high school dropout, had been working for her mom’s estate sale business going through dead people’s belongings and making up melodies in her head as she went about it to pass the time. Some of those melodies became the band’s first songs.

After playing shows locally, the duo decided to visit NYC, and during that visit, they tried their chops playing shows around town. When they’re friends, The Mystery Lights went on tour, the pair shacked up in their friends’ apartment and simply decided to never leave. The pair gave up their possession and a humdrum, everyday sort of existence in the hopes of making it as a real band.

Zipse and Sollecito shared a bed, looked for work and spent their time honing their craft. They met Dylan Fernandez when he delivered weed to a guy Zipse was dating at the duo’s apartment. Fernandez then joined the band. A years later, after Kate Gutwald’s departure, the band added Fernandez’s little brother Alvin Jackson. The band then continued to play around town, and eventually wrote what would become their highly-anticipated full-length debut. Building upon a growing profile, the New York-based garage punks opened for The King Khan and BBQ Show‘s seven-week long US and Canadian tour, also further cementing their reputation as a must-see live act.

The legendary King Khan, the self-professed “Emperor of R&B” says of the band “I never thought I would see someone be able to play guitar with the ferocity of Link Wray, and sing like Lydia Lunch had a nuclear meltdown and morphed into Etta James and Yma Sumac. Miranda and the Beat ARE the quintessential heirs to our rock n’ roll throne… May the circle remain unbroken. Consider the torch has not only been passed but its fiery tale is ready to set the whole world on fire all over again.”

Miranda and the Beat’s highly-anticipated, self-titled, full-length debut is slated for a May 26, 2023 release through Ernest Jennings Record Co./King Khang’s Khannibalism. The Nick Zinner-produced and-mixed album is reportedly a hallucinogenic ode to the canon of soul, garage punk, pure R&B and mayhem.

The album’s latest single “Concrete” is an old-fashioned sweaty, grimy and downright feral ripper built around fuzzy power chord-driven riffage, a forcefully propulsive rhythmic chug paired with Zipse’s powerhouse vocal range. Swaggering, gritty, nasty garage punk full of booze, piss and spittle ain’t dead y’all — and Ms. Zipse and company are here to get in your face and remind you of it. Play this one as loud as you can fucking stand it!

The accompanying video employs slickly edited footage from Velveeeta cheesy B horror movies, including a Roger Corman-like intro about a haunted house, some childlike drawings of ghosts and other creepy crawlies, eyeballs, a beating heart and more.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Kiltro Shares Fever Dream-Like Visual for “Guanaco”

Years ago, Chilean-American singer/songwriter and guitarist Chris Bowers Castillo moved to the Chilean port city of Valparaíso and became a walking tour guide. “I would dress up as Wally and give tours to families and kids,” he remembers with a laugh. “It was great, because I got to know the city incredibly well. I’d walk for hours, then spend the rest of the day partying and drinking, probably way too much. But I also wrote lots of new songs.” 

When he got to to Denver, Bowers Castillo searched for a moniker that reflected the evocative and subtly rebellious musical concepts he had brewing and his head, and eventually settled on Kiltro. a Chilean slang word for a stray dog or a mutt. He then teamed up with Will Parkhill (bass) and Micheal Devincenzi (drums). He then recruited Fez García (percussion) to join the band for their live shows. “I wanted to do a project mixing different styles and aesthetics,” Castillo explains. “Valparaíso is my favorite city in the world and will always influence my music. There were street dogs everywhere, and I’m a mutt myself.” 

Slated for a June 2, 2023 release, the Denver-based outfit’s forthcoming sophomore album Underbelly reportedly represents a bold, new chapter for the band, as they seamlessly fuse Latin roots music with American rock music. “When we first started the band, I was playing folk songs – focusing on my interior spaces and finding catharsis through melody,” Bowers Castillo says. “I’ve always been attracted to music that is melancholy and personal. Then we added the rhythmic component, and I realized that having a bit of noise and chaos can add emotional depth. Underbelly reflects everything that happens inside your soul when the world stops on its tracks.” “We tried a lot of new things on this record,” Kiltro’s Will Parkhill adds. “We were living through unprecedented times and coming to terms with all of it. The album is a reflection of that. At the end of the day, we wanted to create the kind of music that we didn’t hear anywhere else.”

The album’s first single “Guanaco” is built around a sinuous and propulsive groove paired with glistening guitars, Latin-influenced percussion, four-on-the-floor, Bowers Castillo’s gently cooed Spanish delivery and a sleek, almost dance floor friendly hook. Sonically, “Guanaco” sees the Denver-based outfit specializing in the sort of off-kilter funk reminiscent of Fear of Music–More Songs About Buildings and Food–Remain in Light-era Talking Heads but with a defiant, genre-defying flair. 

 “A guanaco is a South American animal that is a bit like a llama. It’s known for spitting,” Bowers Castillo explains. “In Chile, it has another meaning, and is colloquially used to refer to police vehicles that shoot water at protestors. We wrote this song in the wake of the 2019 protests for a new constitution in Chile.  The line “ya viene el guanáco” means simply “here/now comes the guanáco,” which against a driving, melancholic backdrop, had an almost fairy tale quality to it. I felt it communicated a sense of foreboding and nervous anxiety. Taken more literally, it means a beast is coming, here.  Of course, a guanaco is not a terrifying thing, but a police line in riot gear with the machinery of dispersion and violence, is. 

He continues “To be clear, the aim was never to make an explicit political point. Rather, I wanted to capture that peculiar environment of communal tension and mounting emotional energy, be it conviction or catharsis, or fear. The album had yet to take shape in those months, but I was certain the song would make an apt intro to whatever came next. I hope you enjoy it.”

Created by the band’s Chris Bowers Castillo and Will Parkhill, the accompanying video for “Guanaco” is a surrealistic fever dream of found footage from old documentaries, sci-fi films and other weird shit seemingly randomly stitched together.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Easy Star All-Stars Team Up with Macy Gray on Swooning Rendition of Bowie’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide”

Founded and led by producer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Michael Goldwasser, Easy Star All-Stars have established themselves as one of the top reggae acts on the international scene for the better part of the past two decades. During that period, they’ve managed to tour in over 30 countries on six continents while bringing together fans of reggae, classic rock, dub, indie rock and pop into one big family through their collection of critically acclaimed reggae tribute albums that includes 2003’s Dub Side of the Moon, 2006’s Radiodread, 2009’s Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band and 2012’s Easy Star’s Thrillah — and 2010’s remix album, Dubber Side of the Moon. And before you go off and think that they’re just a tribute band, they’re not; they’ve also released two efforts of original material, 2008’s Until That Day EP and 2011’s First Light.

Continuing their run of reggae tribute albums across classic rock, dub, indie rock and pop, the acclaimed local reggae outfit will tackle David Bowie‘s beloved classic, 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars. Slated for an April 21, 2023 release through their own Easy Star Records, Ziggy Stardub is a reggae re-imagining of the beloved album, featuring guest spots from Macy Gray, Steel Pulse, Maxi Priest, Fishbone, Living Colour‘s Vernon Reid, The Skints, Mortimer, The Expanders, Samory I, and a lengthy list of others. 

Pre-order packages of the album are available here, including royal blue colored vinyl along with CD and exclusive t-shirt offerings.

In the lead-up to Ziggy Stardub‘s release on Thursday, I’ve written about three of the album’s previously released singles:

  • “Starman,” featuring Maxi Preist. The Easy Star All-Star rendition is a warm and soulful dub take on the original that retains the rousingly anthemic hook everyone and their grandmother knows but places it within a shuffling, reggae riddim paired with warm blasts of Rhodes, some cinematic strings and Maxi Priest’s effortlessly soulful delivery. 

  • “Moonage Daydream,” featuring Naomi Cowan and the legendary Alex Lifeson. The Easy Star All-Star rendition  “Moonage Daydream” is a hazy dub-leaning take that makes loving nods to the original, with a full string seciton and a flute solo from Jenny Hill, that takes the place of Bowie’s recorder solo from the original. Cowan contributes a soulful, rock goddess vocal that I’d argue would make both Bowie and Tina Turner very proud. The song closes out with a trippy and inspired David Gilmour-like guitar solo from the legendary Lifeson. 

  • “Five Years” featuring the legendary Steel Pulse. Rooted in a soulful and slow-burning reggae riddim, the Easy Star All-Stars rendition lovingly retains the soaring string-driven hooks and choruses, and the weary, apocalyptic sigh-like vibe of the original. 

Ziggy Stardub‘s fourth and final pre-release single “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” features the acclaimed, multi-award-winning singer/songwriter, musician and producer Macy Gray. Pairing a deceptively laid-back vibe with strutting riddims and a coolly swaggering horn line with Macy Gray’s imitable and deeply sensitive delivery, the Easy Star All-Star rendition manages to retain the swooning and empathetic commiseration of the origin. Oh, how much all of us at one point or another, just needs to hear “Oh, no you’re not alone!”

“The main key was finding an emotive and groundbreaking vocalist, and we did just that with Macy Gray, who is truly inimitable in every song that she sings, including this one,” Easy Star All-Stars’ Goldwasser explains in press notes.

The Five Guys burger chain recently named Easy Star All-Stars as their Featured Artist of May. The chain will be playing an Easy Star track every hour in every store for the entire month.

Directed by Stefano Bertelli, the accompanying stop-animation video for “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide” follows two stray street cats on a journey through a sleepy evening in an intricately made paper town.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New VIdeo: JOVM Mainstays Dream Wife Share Kaleidoscopic Visual for Glittery Dance Punk Anthem “Orbit”

Deriving their name from a pointedly satirical criticism of society’s objectification of women, the acclaimed London-based JOVM mainstays Dream Wife — Rakel Mjöll (vocals) (she/her), Alice Go (guitar, vocals) (she/her) and Bella Podapec (bass, vocals) (they/them) — can trace their origins back to 2015 when the trio started the band as a art project, rooted in a unique concept: a band born out of one girl’s memories of growing up in Canada in the 1990s. 

Their 2018 self-titled debut was released to widespread critical acclaim, and led to the JOVM mainstays opening for Garbage, The Kills and Sleigh Bells, as well as their SXSW debut. Building upon a rapidly growing profile, Dream Wife followed up with a series of headlining tours across the European Union and the States, including a Rough Trade stop with New York-based genre-defying artist Sabri. 

Dream Wife’s 2020 Marta Salogni-produced So When You Gonna . . . saw the JOVM mainstays writing and recording some of their most urgent and direct material to date. Thematically touching upon abortion, miscarriage and gender equality, the album’s material is fueled by a “it’s-now-or-never” immediacy with the album’s material being a call to action to the listener to get up off their ass, and do the work to make a morally bankrupt world better.

Additionally, the album was a critical and commercial success — especially in the UK: The album landed at #18 on the UK Albums Chart, making it the only album in the Top 20 to be produced by an all womxn/non-male production and engineering team — and the only non-major label release to chart that high. 

The London-based outfit’s highly-anticipated and long-awaited third album Social Lubrication is slated for a June 9, 2023 release through Lucky Number. Throughout their career, the trio has been remarkably adept at merging the political and the playful, and Social Lubrication continues that reputation. Forcefully vital statements are hidden within hot and heavy dance floor anthems about making out, having fun, staying curious. In the band’s words, the album is: “Hyper lusty rock and roll with a political punch, exploring the alchemy of attraction, the lust for life, embracing community and calling out the patriarchy. With a healthy dose of playfulness and fun thrown in.”

“There is a sense of fun and openness that is central to Social Lubrication, as well. “There’s a lot of lust in this album and taking the piss out of yourself and everyone you know,” Rakel Mjöll says. “It’s almost quite juvenile in that way.”

Perhaps more than ever, the live show is at the core of the album and its material. “The live show is the truth of the band,” Alice Go says. “That’s at the heart of what we do and of the statements we’re making.” That energetic, pedal-to-the-metal sound explodes through the album’s material — and you can hear it through the loud, dirty riffs and choruses specifically built for dancing and shaking asses together in shared spaces. For the band’s Go, who produced the album, it was important to capture and bottle that joyful, frenetic feeling the band’s members all felt. “We wanted to get that rawness and energy across in a way that hadn’t been done before,” she says. 

For the band, the live show is where the band and fans can come together in a shared moment of community. And to that end, the album is a celebration of community and a big ol’ middle finger to the societal barriers enforced to sever connection, playfulness, curiosity and even sexual empowerment. “Music is one of the only forms of people experiencing an emotion together in a visceral, physical, real way,” says Go. “It’s cathartic to the systemic issues that are being called out across the board in the record. Music isn’t the cure, but it’s the remedy. That’s what Social Lubrication is: the positive glue that can create solidarity and community.” 

“The album is speaking to systemic problems that cannot be glossed over by lube,” the band’S Bella Podpadec says. “The things named in the songs are symptoms of f-ed up structures. And you can’t fix that. You need to pull it apart.”

So far, I’ve written about two of Social Lubrication‘s singles:

“Leech,” an urgent, post-punk inspired ripper that saw the band’s Mjöll alternating between spoken-word-like delivery for the song’s verses and feral shouting for the song’s choruses. Mjöll’s vocal delivery is paired with an alternating song structure that features looping and wiry guitar bursts for the song’s verses and explosive, power chord-driven riffage for the song’s choruses. The song is a tense, uneasy and forceful, mosh pit friendly anthem for our uncertain, fucked up time, that addresses the inherent double standards of power — while urgently calling for more empathy.” 

“It’s an anthem for empathy. For solidarity,” the JOVM mainstays explain. “Musically tense and withheld, erupting to angry cathartic crescendos. The push and pull of the song lyrically and musically expands and contracts, stating and calling out the double standards of power. Nobody really wins in a patriarchal society. We all lose. We could all use more empathy. As our first song to be released in a while, we wanted to write something that feels like letting an animal out of a cage. It’s out. And it’s out for blood…”

“Hot (Don’t Date A Musician),” a Gang of Four-like, tongue-in-cheek ripper inspired by Mjöll’s grandmother’s sage advice — despite the fact that she herself, dated many musicians in her day — while wryly poking fun at musicians and the music adjacent, the band included. “Dating musicians is a nightmare,” Mjöll explains. “Evoking imagery of late night make-outs with fuckboy/girl/ambiguously-gendered musicians on their mattress after being seduced by song-writing chat. The roles being equally reversed. Having a laugh together and being able to poke fun at ourselves is very much at the heart of this band. This song encapsulates our shared sense of humour. Sonically it is the lovechild of CSS and Motorhead. It has our hard, live, rock edge combined with cheeky and playful vocals.”

Tha album’s third and latest single “Orbit” is a dance punk ripper. built around a a propulsive disco-inspired post punk rhythm, bursts of wiry guitars paired with enormous hooks and Mjöll’s sultry rock goddess-like delivery that recalls Fever to Tell-era Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Echoes-era The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem among others. Much like its predecessor, the song is fun and rooted in a sense of youthful adventure and possibility.

“Written through the joy of jamming together and locking into the groove like a multi limbed space age organism, ‘Orbit’ has a dance rock edge from the early noughties of bands like New Young Pony Club and Yeah Yeah Yeahs,” the band explains. “Lyrically, it was inspired by post-lockdown London coming back to life and sharing a space through friendship and community. And how each day you never know what’s in store for you or how a stranger can become someone close to you – for a day, a heartbeat, a phase, or a lifetime.”

Directed by Sophie Webster, the accompanying video for “Orbit” is a kaleidoscopic and trippy visual that features the trio rocking out with a youthful abandon — and plenty of fans to blow around their hair, because rock ‘n’ roll, right?