JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 72nd anniversary of Neil Peart’s birth.
Throwback: Happy 80th Birthday, Barry White!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 80th anniversary of Barry White’s birth.
Throwback: Happy 47th Birthday, Ludacris!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Ludacris’ 47th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 52nd Birthday, Richard Ashcroft!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates The Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft’s 52nd birthday.
Throwback: Happy Belated 74th Birthday, Joe Perry!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Aerosmith’s Joe Perry’s 74th birthday.
Throwback: Happy Belated 84th Birthday, Roy Ayers!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Roy Ayers 84th birthday.
Throwback: John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms shares John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.”
New Video: JOVM Mainstay TR/ST Shares Brooding and Uneasy “Performance”
Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and producer Robert Alfons is the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed JOVM mainstay project TR/ST. For well over a decade, Alfons has captivated audiences with a unique blend of dynamic vocals, emotive lyrics and late night sensuality.
Alfons’ fifth TR/ST album, the TR/ST and Nightfeelings co-produced Performance is slated for a Friday release through Dais Records. The album’s title alludes to a friend’s offhand remark about the Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s intrinsically performative nature. Recorded in Los Angeles, the album’s material reportedly seethes with dread, lust, reckoning and abandon. Sonically, the production pair achieved a thick, smoky balance of eerie synths and fog machine low end paired with bruised, crooning vocals. The result is an album of material that moves between beauty and bitterness, rousing anthems and crushing anguish rooted by emotional turmoil, the lingering ghosts of guilt and the memories of those wronged and those still unforgiven.
Alfons’ voice is the anchor in the storm, singing a collage of impressions and confessions with a smeared, stream of consciousness logic. He’s both observer and instigator, performer and playwright, liberated by the stage and the night.
Last month, I wrote about the Cecile Believe and Nightfeelings co-produced “Dark Day,” an ethereal yet uneasy track featuring eerily atmospheric and glistening synth arpeggios, skittering industrial clang and clatter serving as a foggy and unsettlingly brooding bed for Alfons’ bruised and aching vocal. “I think there’s something in the song about the flashes that come to you when you try to fall asleep, flashes that show you where you have unfinished business,” Alfons says of the song. “It was such a pleasure working with Cecile Believe and Nightfeelings on production for this track.”
Performance‘s latest single, album title track “Performance” continues a run of brooding and uneasy material, anchored around a foggy, strobe-lit fueled production featuring bursts of glistening synth arpeggios, skittering, reverb-soaked beats. Alfons’ aching and bruised delivery ethereally floats over the menacing soundscape.
Directed and edited by Bryan M. Ferguson and featuring cinematography by George Harwood, the accompanying video for “Performance” follows Alfons as he arrives at a grim karaoke bar. While he’s lost in his own performance, the sparse crowd is lost in their thoughts. You can almost feel the despair through the screen.
New Audio: Kelly Finnigan Shares Strutting “Be Your Own Shelter”
Perhaps best known as the frontman of the acclaimed West Coast psych soul outfit and JOVM mainstays Monophonics, Kelly Finnigan is an acclaimed producer, keyboardist and solo artist in his own right.
Finnigan’s highly-anticipated sophomore studio album A Lover Was Born is slated for an October 18, 2024 release through Colemine Records. Distance as a measure of time and place reportedly informs the album with a grit and grace that turns passion into virtue. The album also sees the Monophonics frontman rooting himself — and in turn, his work — in the best traditions of midwest soul labels like King, Curtom, Dakar and the Boddie Recording Company. And as a result, A Lover Was Born is a testimony that those deep cut grooves aren’t resigned to nostalgia, but rather, they are at the burning heart of longing and hope.
The journey that Finnigan takes listeners on through Lover‘s 11 tracks echo the state of motion and growth since his solo debut, 2019’s The Tales People Tell. Both solo albums bookend a prolific period of output that includes two Monophonics albums, 2020’s It’s Only Us and 2022’s Sage Motel; a Christmas album, 2020’s A Joyful Sound; a mixtape, last year’s From Me To You; and production work for other artists including The Ironsides, Alana Royale, The Sextones and others. “There’s nothing like making records,” says Finnigan. “It feels like that’s my purpose — the reason I was put on this earth.”
Written in California, Ohio and Staten Island, Finnigan collaborated with old friends in and outside the studio. “I enjoy working alone but it’s not how you want to make a record…almost everybody I brought in for this album I’ve worked with, toured with or spent a great deal of time with. The album features contributions from The Ironsides’ Max and Joe Ramey, Parlor Greens‘ Jimmy James, Orgōne’s Sergio Rios, Dap Kings‘ Joey Crispiano and Jay “J-Zone” Mumford.
Last month, I wrote about “Love (Your Pain Goes Deep),” a song anchored around a hard-hitting, strutting groove that sounds as though it could have been written and recorded between 1966-1970, paired with twinkling Rhodes, a supple bass line, shimmering funk guitar, bursts of cinematic strings and a lush horn line. The song’s deliberately crafted arrangement serves as a satiny bed for Finnigan’s pleading and effortlessly soulful delivery. At its core, you can feel the yearning, hurt and longing of the song’s narrator in very lived-in terms.
A Lover Was Born‘s latest single “Be Your Own Shelter,” features a strutting and stomping piano-driven groove reminiscent of early Staxx Records, early Motown and Northern Soul and a soulful backing chorus paired with Finnigan’s imitable delivery. Continuing a remarkable run of effortless yet crafted soul, “Be Your Own Shelter” is anchored around a necessary message, that when the shit inevitably hits the fan, that you will need to be your own shelter.
New Audio: Homer Teams Up with Kirby on Lush, Quiet Storm-like “Rollin'”
Acclaimed New York-born and-based drummer, songwriter and producer Homer Steinweiss has a storied career that started in earnest when he was just a teenager. He has been instrumental in helping bring the raw-but-receptive soul sound back into the mainstream through his work with Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley. Steinwess has also been behind the kit for nearly every contemporary soul outfit that has mattered.
The New York-born and-based musician is now one of the most in demand drummers in the world, playing with the likes of Clairo, Solange, Adele, Silk Sonic and Bruno Mars, among a lengthy list of others. And much like his longtime bandmate Dave Guy, Steinweiss is stepping into the spotlight as a both a musician and producer with Ensatina, his first solo album released under the moniker Homer.
Slated for a November 15, 2024 release through Big Crown Records, Ensatina is reflection of who Steinweiss is now and a testament of how struggle often brings about much-needed changes. He was dealing with considerable emotional turbulence; at the same time that his band Holy Hive broke up, a long-personal relationship fell apart, putting him in an uncertain place mentally. The fallout was significant enough for him to seek professional help. “I was going through these super manic highs and then very depressive lows,” Steinweiss explains. “And being in all that, it’s just so tough to imagine that the other side is there, that it’ll be ok.” But, with time, professional help, and support from friends and family, Homer made it through and has been forever changed. This album is a product of that period of his life.
For Steinweiss, creating the album was a refuge, and it put him back on track. Creatives across the world have an innate understanding of that. But the album is also a glimpse into the different energies that influences that make the man and the artist tick. And fittingly, the album is the beginning of a new, interesting chapter of Steinweiss’ life and career.
Last month, I wrote about Ensantina‘s first single, “Deep Sea,” feat. Hether, a slow-burning and woozy love song set over a hypnotic back beat, a gorgeous, dreamy trumpet line and a strummed acoustic guitar line. The lush and meditative arrangement compliments Hether’s dreamily romantic delivery and lyrics, which includes a sweet nod to Steinwess now wife. The song seems to suggest that when we’re struggling in life’s deep sea, love — in all of its forms — can be the lifeline.
The track between the two friends came together quickly, with Steinweiss remarking, “It’s my favorite song on the album. Hether, as a friend, saw me through my highs and lows, and this track captures the full energy of what was happening during the time we were recording.”
The album’s second single, album opening track “Rollin'” features the self-proclaimed “granddaughter of soul” KIRBY. The song is anchored around a lush and swaggering, Quiet Storm-like soundscape with skittering and plinking 808s, broodingly regal horns, bursts of strummed guitar. KIRBY’s ethereal delivery, which alternates between scatting and cooing lyrics, floats over the lush production.
Steinweiss fell in love with the melody scratch track, and, as he puts it, “the first take, that scratch take is always the one with the most feeling to it.” He ultimately decided to keep the first take for the album, loving the way it forces the listener to come up with their own interpretation of what exactly KIRBY is singing.