Category: women who kick ass

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Moody and Psychedelic-Leaning Visuals for Halycine’s “Elixir”

Arguably best known as a member of locally renowned indie rock act Blue and Gold, former co-frontperson Chloe Raynes started a her own band Halycine. which features her former bandmate GG Gonzalez (drums) and Derek Cabrera (bass) and released the project’s debut EP In The Salt earlier this year. The EP’s first single “Elixir” is shimmering and swooning 80s New Wave and post-punk-leaning guitar pop song set around an anthemic hook and Raynes’ superstar pop belter vocals earnest singing lyrics based on a devastating heartbreak. And like most breakup-related songs, “Elixir” focuses on the desperate longing for someone and something that can’t ever happen again; the gnawing sense that time is quickly passing and you’re getting older — and how everything seems increasingly messy and difficult; but there’s also a bittersweet recognition that as much as your heart may ache, life finds a way of pushing you forward, even when you don’t have a clue how.

Directed by the singer/songwriter herself, the recently released video features Raynes rocking out hard by herself in a rehearsal room or a studio with rapid fire cuts towards ocean waves hitting the beach, graffiti, a cloudy sky sequence, followed by rain hitting a puddle, footage of an elevated train or commuter line passing through a wooded area — and while mildly psychedelic, the video also possesses an intimacy which further cements the song’s earnestness.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Emily Robb (guitar, vocals), Leslie Burnette (organ, vocals), Emily K. Eichelberger (bass, vocals) and Jenna Robb (drums, vocals), the Philadelphia, PA-based quartet Louie Louie specializes in a sound that meshes 60s rock, 60s Motown-era soul, pop and R&B with post-punk — while clearly nodding at Phil Spector‘s Wall of Sound-like production. And much like the material and period that influences their sound, Louie Louie’s material possesses a lovelorn vulnerability and ache while revealing a maturity and self-assuredness beyond their years, as you’ll hear on their latest single “After Me” — but just under the surface is a swooning sincerity that sets the Philadelphia-based quartet apart from many of their contemporaries.

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Currently featuring Annie Lipetz, Josh Pollock, Mark Nelson and Sonny Pearce the members of San Francisco, CA-based psych rock/indie rock act Dooms Virginia can trace their origins to two disparate events — the first being the formation of their original project Annie Girl and The Light, a nationally touring punk act, which had opened for the Against Me! and others; and the second being, frontwoman Annie Lipetz’s long held obsession and fascination with Roy Sullivan, a man, who in his lifetime had been struck by lighting more than any other person. As the story goes Roy Sullivan came to Annie in a dream and told her that he discovered that the source of lightning’s attraction to him was a strange and power energy. In the dream Sullivan put this power into a totem and offered it to Lipetz and as soon as she took hold of it, a new and very different artistic voice emerged and new material came poring out. In exchange for this inspirational and powerful totem, Lipetz promised to pay tribute to Sullivan by renaming her band’s name to the town where he had been lain to rest.

And as you’ll hear on the band’s latest single “Devour,” the band’s more punk rock sound has become increasingly frenetic and forceful sounding as though it draws equally from math rock, punk rock and garage rock — in particular I think of Cinemechanica and The Blind Shake song others but with an overpowering urgency. As the band explains of their latest single “The media is lying to the masses, and it’s time to wake up. We have to fight against racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny and hate,” and may this single get you raring to fight — right now.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year, you may have come across a post or two featuring the Los Angeles-based indie rock trio Psychic Love. Fronted by multimedia artist and vocalist Laura Peters, along with Max Harrison (guitar) and Liam McCormick (bass), the trio have described their sound in press notes as “dream grunge” and “as if Nancy Sinatra had a love child with Frank Black.” Earlier this year, I wrote about “Ultralight,” the first single off the recently released full-length debut The Hive Mind, a propulsive and jangling guitar pop ballad that nodded at Phil Spector‘s Wall of Sound and  La Sera‘s Music For Listening To Music To — with an anthemic hook. The album’s latest single “Dye Pack” continues along a similar vein as  jangling guitar chords played through reverb and delay pedal and propulsive drumming are paired with Peters’ sultry vocals and an anthemic hook in a swaggering, mid-tempo song that is as Peters explains in press notes is about “how even the smallest relationships leave a mark on you, and how the bigger ones can be a huge, confusing, mess.”

As a result, the song’s narrator expresses the complex array of emotions that relationships can inspire in us:  frustration, dismay, confusion, desire, suspicion, the sensation that you’re being played but aren’t completely sure, and so on. And every relationship you ever have reverberates through every succeeding relationship — and frequently in often unforeseen and unpredictable ways.

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Nots Captures Our Current Dread and Unease

Cosmetic’s third and latest single “Inherently Low” is presciently and strangely fitting for our increasingly surreal times while continuing with the album’s overall theme. Sonically, the band pairs angular guitar and bass chords, propulsive drumming and shouted lyrics — and the end result is a song that evokes creeping dread and unease and while boldly and furiously calling out hypocritical bullshit. Simply put it’s a song with a narrator that simply has stopped giving a fuck.

The recently released video was created and edited by the band’s Natalie Hoffman and was influenced by the results of last week’s Presidential Election. And as Hoffman explains in press notes “the tension and fear that came with the results certainly played a part in the visual outcome of the video. America has elected someone who has openly campaigned to keep us low. To keep us completely divided. To keep us at war. I don’t think that I (or anyone) can fully process the weight of what is to come, but this video is an attempt to translate both what the song is about, and how I’ve felt since the election results – a new awareness, anger, and fear about being kept inherently low.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Led by frontwoman Daiana Feuer and comprised of a constantly rotating cast of collaborators, musicians, and friends in a configuration that can vary between three and 12 different members, the Los Angeles, CA-based band Bloody Death Skull not only will likely win an award for best Halloween-themed band name in recent memory, the members of the band consider the band a wild fusion between performance art project and actual band. Sonically and aesthetically, the band has received attention for employing the chord progressions and song structures of early rock, R&B and soul, unusual instrumentation including ukulele, toys and other instrumentation, a punk rock sensibility and taboo-breaking lyrics focusing on love, daydreams, the cosmos, television, dead things, cute things (sometimes dead, cute things), existential crises and being a perpetual teenager forever.

Clocking in at 139 seconds, “Betsy’s Back” off the band’s recently released The Haunting of Bloody Death Skull EP sounds as though it could have been released in 1962 as the single features hand clap-led percussion, jangling guitar chords, a propulsive and rollicking rhythm section, bratty yet incredibly infectious melodies, a blistering early rock, guitar solo with Feuer’s sultry and ominous vocals that give a mischievous song an underlying sense of swaggering menace as Betsy has come back to get bloody revenge on those who have wronged her.

 

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

 

With the release “Help Yourself” and several other singles, Western Wales-born, London-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Sarah Howells’ solo recording project Bryde has received praise from Nylon, The Line of Best Fit and Earmilk and airplay from BBC Radio 6, BBC Radio Wales, Radio X and Huw Stephens’ BBC Radio 1 show for a sound that’s been compared to the likes of Jeff Buckley, Sharon Van Etten, Ben Howard and London Grammar, as her early work so far has thematically focused on complex and ambivalent relationships that can simultaneously entangle. Her latest single “Wouldn’t That Make You Feel Good” is a boozy and woozy dirge in which Howells’ aching vocals are paired with bluesy yet shoegazer rock-like guitar chords in a song that builds up to a cathartic and explosive bridge before gently fading out. Interestingly, Howells’ latest single sounds to me as though it could be indebted to the likes of PJ Harvey as it possesses a similar earnest yet stormy and dramatic quality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of her debut effort under the moniker of Amber Arcades, Dutch musician and singer/songwriter Annelotte de Graaf quickly rose to international attention as the blogosphere and several media outlets praised de Graaf for material that thematically focused on a number of things — including both time and the relativistic experience of it, continuity, magic, jet lag and how being led by her own dreams has inspired the Dutch singer/songwriter’s personal, professional and creative lives. In fact, as the story goes, de Graaf has worked as a legal aide on UN war crime tribunals and while currently working human rights law, assisting Syrian refuges, she spent her savings on a flight to NYC, specifically to record her debut effort with Ben Greenberg, who has worked with The Men, Beach Fossils and Destruction Unit, and a studio backing band that includes Quilt‘s Shane Butler (guitar) and Keven Lareau (bass) and Real Esate’s Jackson Pollis.

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Turning Light,” a single that thematically explores being the protagonist in your own life story while you’re simultaneously a supporting player in the lives of everyone around you — and how those very different roles and various lives intertwine in ways that can be confusing.  While sonically speaking,  de Graaf and her backing band paired rapid fire, four-on-the-floor drumming, swirling and shimmering strings, twinkling electronics, a driving bass line and de Graaf’s ethereal vocals singing lyrics that reflect the relativistic nature of time to craft a woozy single that draws equally from shoegaze and Brit pop.

Building upon the buzz of her debut album and her Fall Stateside tour with Nada Surf, de Graff and her backing band went into the studio during a brief break on tour to record her latest single, a shimmering dream pop/bubblegum pop version of Nick Drake’s “Which Will” that manages to add a rather ironic take to the song while retaining the song’s earnest yearning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of founding members Erin Jenkins and Mathieu Blanchard and recent recruits Chris Dadge (bass), who has had stints in Lab Coast, Alvvays and Chad VanGaalen‘s backing band; and renowned singer/songwriter and guitarist Samantha Savage Smith joining a guitarist, Canadian band Crystal Eyes can trace their origins to the melancholic dream pop the duo wrote while nomadically bouncing back and forth between Tofino, British Columbia and Halifax, Nova Scotia — dream pop that the band’s founding duo has claimed has drawn from Francoise Hardy, Guided by Voices.  As a relatively constituted quartet, the band has continued to tour across their native Canada, including consecutive appearances at Pop Montreal.

The band’s latest effort The Female Imagination was written while the band spent time on a lake island in rural Ontario and was recorded on a Tascam 388. And according to the band, the album thematically focuses on and explores the other side of ourselves that we can never quite seem tor reach. The album’s latest single “Already Gone” consists dreamy and ethereal harmonies with layers of shimmering guitars played through copious amounts of reverb and delay pedal and a persistent, driving rhythm and in some way, the song sounds as though it were equally influenced by 60s garage psych — i.e., much like contemporary acts like Raccoon Fighter, The Black Angels, early Dum Dum Girls, Death Valley Girls and countless others but with a moody and sensual feel.

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Jangling and Anthemic Guitar Rock of French Singer/Songwriter Pamela Hute

Pamela Hute is a Paris-based singer/songwriter, who began her music career in earnest at a very young age — as a teen she formed The Mashed Potatoes before going solo in 2006. And as a solo artist, she’s released two albums, 2010’s Tales From Overseas and 2013’s Bandit, with Bandit being mixed by John Agnello, who has worked with the likes of The Kills, Sonic Youth and Cyndi Lauper. Interestingly both albums revealed that Hute specialized in jangling guitar pop and synth pop with rousingly anthemic hooks paired earnest lyrics as you’ll hear on The Breeders and 90s alt rock channeling “Banshees,” the second and latest single off her self-produced effort Today. But at its core, Today manages to reveal what may arguably be Hute’s most personal songwriting, influenced by a trip she took to California.

The recently released music video is shot in a gorgeous and cinematic black and white, and captures Hute with her backing band performing “Banshees” live at La Fourmi in Limoges, France.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Surreal Visuals for Teeth and Tongue’s “Turn Turn Turn”

Give Up On Your Health’s second and latest single “Turn Turn Turn” much like its predecessor is inspired by a painful breakup — and lyrically, the song is full of the bitter regret, uncertainty, self-deception and gradual acceptance that occurs in the aftermath of a breakup, while sonically speaking, the song draws from 80s New Wave, synth pop and the DFA Records roster. Or in other words, undulating and propulsive synths are paired with cowbell-led percussion, angular guitar chords in a sensual and slinky arrangement, along with an infectious, dance-floor friendly hook. And somehow, every time I’ve heard it I’m reminded of Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back” and Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll.”

The recently released video for the song turns the simple act of eating into something surreal, disgusting and detached and mechanical — and perhaps in some way, the video’s actors are deluding themselves into this being normal.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past two or three months or so, you’ve likely come across a couple of posts about Chasms, a San Francisco, CA-based duo comprised of Jess Labrador and Shannon Madden that specializes in crafting sparse, minimalist (and moody) dirges that feature Labrador’s hauntingly ethereal vocals accompanied by her shimmering guitar work paired with propulsive and pummeling drum programming, swirling electronics and bursts of feedback and industrial clang and clatter — and in some way their sound and songwriting approach draws from shoegaze, drone, dream pop, doom metal and ambient electronica simultaneously.

Now, over the course of the past couple of months, the duo have released two singles off their soon-to-be-released full-length debut On The Legs of Love Purified — the slow-burning and smoky “We’ll Go,” which under the seemingly placid surface reveals a sense of unease and discomfort and the shimmering and gauzy “Black Ice.” The album’s third and latest single “Beyond Flesh” much like the album’s first single “Black Ice” sounds as though it could have been released during 4AD Records heyday as the duo pairs Labrador’s ethereal wails with shimmering power chords, layers of stormy feedback and thundering drum programming — all feed through a bit of reverb. And while stunningly beautiful, the song possesses an aching yearning.

The duo will be embarking on a tour through October and November, which will include a November 16, 2016 stop at Brooklyn’s Shea Stadium. Check out tour dates below.

Tour Dates

10.07 Portland, OR @ Lovecraft %  
10.08 Seattle, WA @ Blue Moon
10.09 Eugene, WA @ Wandering Goat 
10.10 Sacramento @ Press Club # 
10.11 San Francisco, CA @ The Knockout ^ 
10.13 La Puente, CA @ Bridgetown DIY ~ 
10.14 San Diego, CA @ The Whistle Stop *
10.15 Long Beach, CA @ 4th St. Vine 
10.16 Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo (Part Time Punks) + 
10.29 Berkeley, CA @ KALX (Live Session + Interview)
11.08 Indianapolis, IN @ State St. Pub
11.15 Providence, RI @ Machines with Magnets
11.16 Brooklyn, NY @ Shea Stadium =
11.19 Chicago, IL @ TBA


% w/ Sean Pierce, Patricia Hall 
# w/ Odonis Odonis 
^ w/ Silver Shadows, Sirena Victima, DJ Nako & Cash Askew
~ w/ Second Still 
* w/ Black Marble 
+ w/ Black Marble, Ritual Howls 
 = w/ Holy Wave 
> w/ Merchandise, Gun Outfit