Tag: Carla Geneve

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Rising Aussie Singer-Songwriter Carla Geneve Releases an Intimate Visual for “Don’t Wanna Be Your Lover”

With the release of last year’s self-tiled debut EP, the Perth, Australia-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Carla Geneve quickly established herself as one of Australia’s rapidly rising artists — thanks in part to material centered around a unique brand of brutally honest songwriting and a captivating live show. Building upon a growing profile, Geneve has played sold out shows and festivals including Laneway Festival and Falls Festival, and she’s toured with Cat Power, Kurt Vile, Belle & Sebastian, Fred Armisen and a lengthy list of others. 

2020 looks to be a big year for the Aussie singer/songwriter and guitarist: her self-titled debut has been given a second repress on white vinyl, and the new pressing is actually a new edition that features two new singles — her first two singles, “Greg’s Discount Chemist” and “Listening.”  The expanded white vinyl EP is slated for a March 13, 2020 release through Dot Dash Recordings in Australia, RevolverUSA in North America and across the UK and European Union through Proper Music Group. Geneve and her backing band are currently opening for fellow Aussie singer/songwriter Julia Jacklin on her national tour, which includes stops in Sydney, Adelaide, and her hometown. Along with that, she’s playing at A Festival Called Panama before heading to Austin to play at this year’s SXSW. (You can check out those tour dates below.)

Geneve’s highly-anticipated full-length album is slated for release later this year. And her latest single, the anthemic and grunge rock-like “Don’t Wanna Be Your Lover” is the album’s first official single. Centered around fuzzy power chords, a rousing and enormous hook and Geneve’s pop star belter vocals, the song is an earnest exploration of the grey areas between platonic and romantic relationships — particularly about “how two people might want different things but knowing that that doesn’t undermine the connection you have,” Geneve says in press notes. Of course, the song feels and sounds as though it were written from personal experience — and as a result, it has the ache of confusion and uncertainty over where a relationship stands and what it should be. 

Directed by Duncan Wright, the recently released video plays with gender roles and norms, while exploring the intersection between masculinity and femininity — while at one point showing Geneve being pulled, pushed and shoved about in a variety of ways. “‘Don’t Wanna Be Your Lover’ introduces Carla Geneve visually to the world for the first time,” Duncan Wright says about the video. “The video aims to promote Carla’s bold and unique outlook through a wide range of emotions, vulnerabilities, tension and braveness.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Wistful Sounds and Visuals of Soaked Oats’ “Coming Up”

Comprised of Oscar Mein (vocals, keys), Henry Francis (guitar), Max Holmes (guitar) and Conor Feehly (drums), the up-and-coming Dunedin, New Zealand-based indie rock act Soaked Oats are one of the first Kiwi bands to sign to highly-regarded Australian label Dot Dash/Remote Control Records, the label home of acclaimed acts like Methyl Ethel, Carla Geneve, Gabriella Cohen and Total Giovanni, which marks a huge career step forward for the band. 

Slated for a June 14, 2019 release, the band’s newest EP Sludge Pop will feature their previously released, attention-grabbing tracks “Driftworld” and Shuggah Doom.” The EP’s latest single “Coming Up” is a wistful and reflective track, centered around shimmering guitars, twinkling keys, a motorik-like groove and an anthemic hook — and while being a striking road trip anthem, the song possesses the tacit understanding that things are fleeting; that the good times do end — and that eventually all you’re left with is the t-shirt, the pictures and nostalgia. “I had just written the first half of the lyrics as a poem. I was trying to personify a low morning in the immediate surroundings of a bedroom,” the band’s Oscar Mein says of the song’s creative process. “Henry [Francis] sent through a demo he had done, titled “coming up from behind,” and I started playing around with applying the poem to the song while working within the title he had given it. I wrote the last few lines in a more positive headspace with Tom Bell at Chicks Hotel, where we recorded it. Tom Healy added a bunch of nice stuff to this song, and it wouldn’t be what it is without him, especially that acoustic guitar that chimes through when we get grooving and the synth parts, too — plus a lot of other tasty bits.” 

Directed by Jake Munro, the black and white video for “Coming Up” follows the band during their travels in a 34 foot 1980s RV that they called home for their 10 week, 20,000 mile DIY-styled US tour last year. The viewer follows the band through urban, suburban and rural America, passing through mobile home parks, farms and waterfalls — with stops at underground DIY venues. Unsurprisingly, the video further emphasizes the song’s nostalgic vibes, while capturing the longing for a profound experience you’ve once had. “The footage was captured on mountains of rolls of Super 16 and Super 8mm film. Jake (Munro) and I retreated to a cabin on New Zealand’s wild west coast of the South Island and spent days trawling through it all to find the excerpts that fitted and established the progression found within the song,” Mein says of the video. “Jake threw the word ‘painstaking’ around to describe his experience of the process. We had a good time. The main destinations we see in the video are Virginia, Nashville, New Orleans, and NYC.”