Cardin’s latest single “Faufile,” which translates into English as “to slip or sneak away” features Cardin’s gorgeous and aching vocals paired with the singer/songwriter accompanied by a sparse yet eerie piano accompaniment, and the single will further cement the French Canadian singer/songwriter’s growing reputation for crafting hauntingly eerie pop that owes a debt to jazz. And hot on the heels of the release of “Faufile,” comes the wistful music video, which features a brooding and seemingly heartbroken on the rooftops and streets of what appears to be Montreal after a devastating breakup.
Category: women who kick ass
With the release of their 2014 full-length debut We Are Nots Memphis, TN-based synth punk/thrash punk/noise punk quartet Nots, featuring their current lineup of Natalie Hoffman (vocals, guitar) and Charlotte Watson (drums), Madison Farmer (bass) and Alexandra Eastburn (synths) have received a growing national profile and became JOVM mainstay artists for a sound that owes a great debt to 60s garage rock, punk, thrash punk, no wave and new wave — complete with a frenetic, unhinged and deeply visceral feel. Since the release of We Are Nots, the band has released a number of singles, including the “Shelf Life”/”Virgin Mary” 7 inch, which revealed that the Memphis-based quartet had been expanding upon the sound that had first captured the attention of the blogosphere, as well as focusing on deeper thematic concerns.
September 9, 2016 will mark the release of Nots highly-anticipated sophomore effort Cosmetic through Goner Records, and the album reportedly focuses on and attacks the rough edges between desire, deceit, appearances and reality. And as the band’s frontwoman Natalie Hoffman explains in press notes, the album’s first single “Entertain Me” “is a song in a constant state of movement and deterioration around one central, repeating part. No two live versions of it sound the same. Drawing influences from experimental no wave, postpunk, and psychedelic music, ‘Entertain Me’ takes its cues from the edges of genres, where one begins to blend into another, and nothing is easily classified. The lyrics reflect the cyclical, distorted nature of the song, addressing different facets of the grotesque horror show going on in American politics and how they are portrayed- the rise of Trump, the reality-TV-like nature of American news, the almost-forced compliance of the viewer, and the for-profit-constructed “right” of the viewer, the consumer, to require constant entertainment in order to participate, and to live.”
Clocking in at a little over 7 minutes, “Entertain Me” is arguably Nots’ noisiest, most frenetic and most sprawling song as swirling layers of guitar chords are played through wah wah pedal and other distortion pedal, furious bleeping and squeaking and squawking synths, howled vocals fed through distortion and propulsive drumming are held together (somewhat) by a a throbbing and insistent bass line in a song that structurally and sonically reminds me of The Church‘s “Chaos” and Disappears‘ “Kone” — but angrier and much more abrasive, as though capturing the frustration, powerlessness of its narrator, a narrator who is struggling to find some footing in a perverse, fucked up world.
Over the course of the soon-to-be six year history of JOVM, New York-based singer/songwriter Anna Rose has developed a growing national profile with the release of a self-titled EP and two full-length efforts Nomad and Behold A Pale Horse — and of course, over that time, the New York-based singer/songwriter has also been a JOVM mainstay artist since its inception.
Officially seeing its release today, Strays in the Cut is the long-awaited follow-up to the New York-based singer/songwriter’s exceptional Pale Horse and as Anna Rose has explained in press notes, the songwriting and recording process forced her and her collaborators to look at everything differently, with a careful and deliberate attention to telling a particular story and evoking a particular period within the artist’s life with a conciseness that wouldn’t necessarily happen on a full-length album. Interestingly, because of that very conciseness the material manages to possess a laser focus — not only do the New York-based singer/songwriter and her backing band play and sing with a greater sense of self-assuredness, the material possesses a visceral and emotional weight to it, as lyrically the songs come from a much more personal, truer place.
I recently spent a few minutes chatting with Anna Rose about the new EP, her and her collaborators songwriting and recording process and how it changed for the EP, her upcoming acoustic tour with guitarist Adam Stoler, her father’s influence on her and her music, the video concept for the EP’s first single “Start A War” and much more in a revealing and very funny interview. Check it out.
New Video: The Darkly Surreal Visuals for The Kills “Siberian Nights”
Ash and Ice, the duo’s latest full-length effort and first full-length effort in over 5 years was released last week — and if you’ve been frequenting this site you’d know that I wrote about the album’s first single “Heart Of A Dog” earlier this year. Sonically, Ash and Ice’s first single proved to be a thorough refinement of their sound as the duo paired enormous boom-bap drum programming, skittering beats, buzzing electronics, scorching guitar chords and anthemic hook with Mossheart’s bluesy, cigarettes and whiskey soaked vocals to crate a swaggering and arena rock-friendly song that clearly draws from Delta blues but possesses a raw, insistent and urgent carnality. The album’s latest single “Siberian Nights” continues along a similar vein of the preceding single — boom bap beats, propulsive drumming, bluesy guitar chords, a sinuous bass line and subtly ominous electronics in a sleek, sensual song that shimmies and struts about with a cool self-assuredness.
The recently released music video is a stark and gorgeously surreal video that possesses a nightmarish logic; certainly as a photographer, there are sequences I absolutely envy — a scene of a horse running in slow motion and you can see every sinew and fiber flexing in unified movement; a barking husky in surreal slow motion with teeth snarled angrily and so on. In some way, the video evokes a lingering and inescapable fucked up dystopian nightmare.
New Video: Check Out The Kills Playful and Yet Badass Video for “Heart Of A Dog”
With the release of the first four critically praised albums Keep On Your Mean Side, No Wow, Midnight Boom and Blood Pressures, the indie rock The Kills, comprised of Alison Mossheart, a former member […]
New Audio: White Lung’s Radio-Friendly, Kick Ass New Single Reveals a Subtle Refinement and Modernization of Their Sound
http://cache.vevo.com/assets/html/embed.html?video=GBCEL1500766&autoplay=0 With the release of their first three full-length albums, Vancouver, BC-based trio White Lung — comprised of Mish Barber-Way (vocals), Kenneth William (guitar) and Anne-Marie Vassilou (drums) — have seen a growing profile across the blogosphere for a […]
New Video: The Gorgeous and Mournful Visuals for Anna Rose’s “Start A War”
Over the course of past six years, New York-based singer/songwriter Anna Rose has developed a growing national profile with the release of a self-titled EP and two full-length efforts, Nomad and Behold A Pale Horse — and whereas both the self-titled […]
If you’ve been frequenting JOVM over the past month or two, you might remember a couple of posts on NYC-based indie rock quartet High Waisted — including some live photos from their early February stop at Baby’s All Right with NYC-based quintet Junk Boys and NYC-based duo Granny .
Fronted by Jessica Louise Dye, the quartet formed a couple of years ago and in a relatively short period of time, they developed a reputation locally for a sound that possesses elements of old school surf rock, lo-fi garage rock and psych rock — and for their DIY concerts/booze cruises, tiki styled pig roasts and acid trip pizza parties. With the release of their Acid Tapes Vol. 2 mixtape, the quartet captured the attention of NME, who named them one of a “buzz band to watch.” High Waisted’s highly-anticipated full-length debut effort On Ludlow is slated for a March 4 release, and the album, which was produced by renowned producer Bryan Pugh will likely cement the quartet’s burgeoning reputation for scuzzy, party until you drop rock that also manages to reveal subtle shades of vulnerability beneath all the strutting, stomping and badassery much like the source material that has influenced their sound and aesthetic so much.
Earlier this year, I wrote about On Ludlow‘s latest single and video “Party In The Back.” Clock in at a little over 2 minutes, the song features Dye’s sweetly sung vocals paired with scuzzy, lo-fi surf rock chords, a propulsive rhythm section and a great guitar solo at the song’s bridge. And if wasn’t for the song’s modern lyrical and thematic concerns — essentially getting out on the town and tearing it the fuck up — the song may have been mistaken for being released in 1962. The album’s latest single “Door” continues the band’s reputation for an old-school inspired rock; however, “Door” sounds as though it could have been played at someone’s sock hop or prom back in 1955 or in a Quentin Tarantino film as Dye’s sweetly aching vocals are paired with shimmering guitar chords, steady bass playing and simple yet propulsive drumming — but with a subtly modern production sheen. With warmer than normal weather in the next few days around here, this song is a brief blast of summer, and of summer fun.
New Video: The Surreal and Nightmarish New Video for White Lung’s “Hungry”
With the release of their first three full-length albums, Vancouver, BC-based trio White Lung — comprised of Mish Barber-Way (vocals), Kenneth William (guitar) and Anne-Marie Vassilou (drums) — have seen a growing profile across the blogosphere […]
Just a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Atlanta-based trio and JOVM mainstay The Coathangers. In the the decade since their formation, the band has released four full-length albums and have gone on a number of North American and European tours, which have cemented their reputation for writing incredibly catchy songs — and for unruly live shows. Back in 2014, during the recording sessions for Suck My Shirt, the band went through a lineup change as Candice Jones left the band, making the band a trio comprised of Julia Kugel (vocals and guitar), Meredith Franco (bass), and Stephanie Luke (drums). Naturally, as a result of the lineup change, the newly-constituted trio’s fourth full-length effort, Suck My Shirt revealed a refined songwriting approach in which the album’s material still retained the raw, seemingly spontaneously simplicity and fury that has won them national and international attention — but with streamlined, more direct arrangements that made the material feel more urgent.
“Make It Right,” the first single off the band’s soon-to-be released fifth full-length album Nosebleed Weekend continued in the same lines of their previous effort as it possessed a similar primal simplicity — in other words although it nodded at garage rock and surfer rock, there was an underlying sneering, “we don’t give a fuck” attitude. The album’s latest single and album title track “Nosebleed Weekend” pairs their signature sneering “zero fucks given” attitude with an anthemic hook that you can imagine a room full of sweaty concertgoers lustily yelling along with upraised fist and in a way that’s reminiscent of 90s alt rock. In particular, I’m reminded of L7, Hole and Bikini Kill but angrier and seemingly fueled on whiskey.
New Video: Watch Alison Mossheart Brave a Massive Storm in the Video for “I Feel Love (Every Million Miles)”
http://cache.vevo.com/assets/html/embed.html?video=US3JJ1500922&autoplay=0 Comprised of Allison Mossheart of The Kills and Discount (vocals), Jack White formerly of The White Stripes and currently of The Raconteurs (drums, guitar and vocals), Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age (guitar, […]