Tag: Echo and the Bunnymen

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Now, if you had been frequenting this website over the past few years, you may have come across a couple of posts featuring the Brooklyn-based indie rock act Lazyeyes, and as some of you may recall, the band, which initially began as a trio and now currently consists of Jason Abrishami (guitar, vocals), Sam Maynard (guitar, vocals), Jeremy Sampson (drums) and Jermey Rose (bass, vocals) received quite a bit of attention after the release of their 2013 self-titled EP: The Deli Magazine named the band the “Best Psych Rock/Shoegaze band,” Purple Sneakers praised the EP as a “moody and anthemic record, equal parts shoegaze and dream pop,” Stereogum described their sound as a “a muscular, riff-happy brand of guitar based dream-pop” and they were a featured artist in the November 2014 issue of NME — and adding to a growing profile, tracks from the EP received airplay from BBC Radio, XM Radio and a number of FM stations across the globe.

2015’s self-released, sophomore EP New Year was eventually picked up and reissued by Burger Records‘ cassette imprint Weiner Records, and “Adaptation,” the EP’s first single received quite a bit of attention across the blogosphere, including this site. Some time has passed since I’ve last written about them — but their long awaited full-length debut Echoes is slated for a summer release through Egghunt Records and 2670 Records. Interestingly, Echoes first single, album title track “Echoes” is a brooding and seamless synthesis of 80s British post-punk and shoegaze as you’ll hear angular and propulsive bass chords, four-on-the-floor drumming and towering, pedal effected guitar pyrotechnics paired with rousingly anthemic hooks — and while the song may initially strike you as drawing influence from Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, it reveals a band confidently expanding upon the sound that first captured attention.

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Other Lives at Music Apartment

Currently comprised of Jesse Tabish (piano, guitar, vocals), Jonathon Mooney (piano, guitar, percussion, trumpet) and Josh Onstott (bass, keys, percussion, guitar and backing vocals), the Portland, OR-based indie rock trio Other Lives initially formed in Stillwater, OK back in 2004, recording and releasing an album under the name Kunek before changing their name, as they went through a decided change in sonic direction and approach that necessitated a rebranding. And if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of its almost 8 year history, you may recall that the trio have received both national and international attention for a lushly orchestrated sound reminiscent of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The National and Ocean Rain-era Echo and the Bunnymen while nodding at Joy Division ,The Darcys and Caveman. 

Much like JOVM mainstays Warhaus, the members of Other Lives were invited to perform an intimate and career spanning set of their gorgeous, genre defying yet accessible and emotionally immediate material for Music Apartment. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Surreal and Chaotic Visuals for FACIAL’S “Black Noise”

FACIAL is a Los Angeles, CA-based post-punk band, who have described their sound on their Facebook Fan Page as “the noise that cuts like a chainsaw through the thick buildup of residue in your mind, left behind by years of dealing with the dull banality of life. They take the dead parts of your brain killed by mundane reputation and blast it away with a pressure hose, while the low end rattles all the barnacles off your body and pounds you the way you are always afraid to ask for. Sweet melodies interchange with primal screaming as you fluctuate between comfort and discomfort, horror and jubilation, familiarity and utter confusion.” 

With their sophomore album Facade slated for release on Friday through Chain Letter Collective, the Los Angeles-based post-punk trio reportedly finds the band blowing away the facades and exposing the ugly truths underneath whether it’s their hometown, their country or within themselves. As a result, the material burrows down into the uncomfortable realities that we’ve long tried to push aside such as primal urges, anger, hate, selfishness, envy, jealousy rather than the superficial and alternate reality we show to the world that we are happy, cooperative, peaceful, benevolent members of a kind, cooperative society. And interestingly enough, album single “Black Noise” is a darkly moody, tense and angular track that nods at Echo and the Bunnymen’s Heaven Up Here and others but with a menacing and muscular tone, as though capturing the murky depths of the id.

Directed by Jack Mikesell and co-produced by Jared Robbins and Matt Macnelly, the recently released visuals for “Black Noise” employ a chaotic, dream-like logic with the video beginning with the members of the trio walking through a model town like gods, before quickly cutting to an interpretive dance sequence reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” — that is until a group of young women come by to kick the band’s ass and smash everything in their sights, which in some way seems to evoke our own destructive urges going absolutely wild. Towards the end of the video, the young women join in on the interpretive dance. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Fittingly 80s-Inspired Visuals for Count Vaseline’s “Russia”

Stefan Murphy is a singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and the creative mastermind behind the mostly Berlin, Germany-based New Wave and post-punk-inspired recording project Count Vaseline. Interestingly, Murphy started the project during a creative spell — and after a handful of live shows, Murphy went to the U.S. to write and record his Count Vaseline debut Yo No Soy Marinero, a deeply personal effort that focuses on what may have been one of the more difficult times of his own life — and as a result, the album is kind of a debaucherous romp that celebrates both his trials and tribulations and creativity while in Berlin.

Of course, Murphy’s decision to decision to stay in the US was followed by an earth-shattering Presidential election that still has countless people reeling, and his recently released sophomore effort Cascade thematically focuses on the depressingly cyclical patterns of both world history and world politics and the overall sense of pervasive doom; however, the album’s latest single “Russia” is an account of two lovers desperately trying to break free from the constraints and horrors of the modern world. And while deliberately performed at 117 beats per minute — the same beats per minute as Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” — the song manages to sound like what would happen if Duran Duran had covered Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Bring on the Dancing Horses” but with a young Ian McCulloch taking up vocal duties.

Directed by Kevin Brannigan and David Thomas Smith, the recently released video for “Russia” is decidedly an 80s-inspired video — in particular seemingly drawing influence from the music videos for Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Lips Like Sugar,” and “The Killing Moon,” and others, as it features a brooding, Slavic-looking woman vamping and strutting in front of a screen showing images of everyday Russian life while cutting to stock footage of warfare in Russia and elsewhere and of Russian gymnasts.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Stefan Murphy is a singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and the creative mastermind behind the mostly Berlin, Germany-based New Wave and post-punk-inspired recording project Count Vaseline. Interestingly, Murphy started the project during a creative spell — and after a handful of live shows, Murphy went to the U.S. to write and record his Count Vaseline debut Yo No Soy Marinero, a deeply personal effort that focuses on what may have been one of the more difficult times of his own life — and as a result, the album is kind of a debaucherous romp that celebrates both his trials and tribulations and creativity while in Berlin.

Of course, Murphy’s decision to decision to stay in the US was followed by an earth-shattering Presidential election that still has countless people reeling, and his recently released sophomore effort Cascade thematically focuses on the depressingly cyclical patterns of both world history and world politics and the overall sense of pervasive doom; however, the album’s latest single “Russia” is an account of two lovers desperately trying to break free from the constraints and horrors of the modern world. And while deliberately performed at 117 beats per minute — the same beats per minute as Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” — the song manages to sound like what would happen if Duran Duran had covered Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Bring on the Dancing Horses” but with a young Ian McCulloch taking up vocal duties.

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Soviet Soviet is Pesaro, Italy-based post-punk trio, who have received both national and international attention for a uniquely Italian take on the genre, while clearly drawing from familiar sources such as Joy Division/New Order and Echo and the Bunnymen, and shoegazers like RIDE, Slowdive, and others as you’ll hear on the wistfully nostalgic and anthemic “Endless Beauty” off the band’s recently released effort Endless.

Directed by fellow countryman Giulio Letizi, the recently released video for “Endless Beauty” features the members of the band performing the song in front of a projection screen that displays 60s stock footage of crashing waves, brilliant sunrises and sunsets and palm trees, cocksure surfers surfing but in wildly psychedelic hues, which creates both an aching nostalgia for a seemingly less complicated pass, while simultaneously being a reminder that like clockwork, another summer will soon be here. As the band explains of the video concept “We love this concept and these images complementing our music. We shot the live images of the band inside an old cinema where are from in Pesaro, Italy. ‘Endless Beauty’ reminds us of this kind of imagery — the beach, the surfers and days at the beach. We live in a coast city and love the sea.”

If you’ve been actively following the music blogosphere as I do, you’d likely know that the band’s Stateside tour and forthcoming SXSW appearances have been cancelled, due to visa issues that resulted in the members of the band being detained for the better part of a day before they were deported and sent back home. Based on the official statement from the band, the experience was both humiliating and terrifying; but I hope that maybe one day they will return to play in front of Stateside audiences — and soon.
Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Echo and the Bunnymen Live at Shepherd’s Bush Empire

Live footage of Echo and the Bunnymen live at Shepherd’s Bush Empire.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Dreamlike and 80s MTV-Inspired Visuals for Radar Eyes’ “Community”

Featuring Anthony Cozzi (vocals, guitar), Russell Calderwood (guitar), Nithin Kalvakota (drums) and Lucas Sikorski (bass), Chicago, IL-based quartet Radar Eyes initially received attention for a fuzzy, garage rock sound, and with Cozzi’s relocation to Los Angeles, the quartet’s forthcoming effort Radiant Remains was in some way meant to be a swan song for the band — while being a sonic change in direction as the band’s material took on a decidedly 80s post-punk rock sound that channeled the likes of Crocodiles, Heaven Up Here and Ocean Rain-era Echo and the Bunnymen, Starfish-era The Church and others as you’ll hear on the album’s moody and shimmering first single “Community.” And much like the material that influenced it, “Community” reveals that the band has the ability to write material that possess an incredibly anthemic and rousing hook.

Directed by Laura Callier and featuring desert footage shot by Jason Ogawa, the recently released music video for “Community” manages to mesh the feel, spirit and imagery of contemporary videos with that of videos from MTV’s heyday — including a Peter Gabriel “Shock the Monkey”-like motif, in which the lead singer sits in front of screen in which various images are projected; sequences in which the band’s lead singer, dressed entirely in black is wandering around the desert, followed around by an equally mysterious man dressed entirely in white; along with some introductory sequences in which the band are hanging out with a bunch of folks at an outdoor bar. The video itself possesses a dreamlike logic while hitting upon the song’s sense of longing to fit into someplace.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Moodily Psychedelic Visuals for Heat’s “Lush”

Comprised of Susil Sharma (vocals, guitar and synths) Matthew Fiorentino (guitar, synth), and Raphael Bussières (bass), the Montreal, QC-based indie rock/post-punk trio Heat have received praise from Brooklyn Vegan and NME for a swaggering and moody material that’s “equal parts hooks, melody and attitude.” The band’s latest single “Lush” off their new album, Overnight is moody and seductive track in which the band pairs shimmering synths, angular guitar chords played though reverb, thumping, four-on-the-floor drumming, and a sinuous bass line with a razor sharp hook to create a sound that nods heavily at The Psychedelic Furs and Echo and the Bunnymen — but with a slick, dance floor-friendly feel.
Directed by Charles Andre Coderre, the recently released video feels as though it could have been released sometime in the 80s as it employs the use of split screens — in one half, a man may be sleeping or it may turn into heavily treated footage of daily life somewhere — mainly people walking around a busy Chinatown. It’s a trippy yet fitting accompaniment to a propulsive and wistfully moody song

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Post Rock/Post Punk Sounds of San Francisco’s The Soonest

Led by San Francisco, CA-based singer/songwriter Young Lee and featuring a rotating cast of collaborators including members of indie rock bands such as WATERS, Hazel English’s backing band, Doe Eye, There’s Talk, and Elsa y Elmar, The Soonest have released a handful of EPs at traditional recording studios that have won attention both locally and regionally for a layered and moody, 80s post-punk/post-rock leaning sound; in fact, Lee was asked to write the score to the documentary Weaving Shibusa.

Mixed by Greg Francis and mastered by TW Walsh, the project’s recently released full-length debut effort, Doors to the City was recorded in an empty Bay Area church, and the high wooden ceilings helped create the enormous, wall of sound like sound that you’ll hear on Doors to the City’s first single “Start a War,” a single that pairs Lee’s lilting and dramatic vocals with layers upon layers of angular guitar chords, a forceful, motorik-like groove consisting of a sinuous bass line and propulsive drumming, and an anthemic hook. Sonically, the song manages to channel Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen — including deeply urgent and visual lyrics that describe an uneasy and fraught relationship.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Last month, I wrote about Brooklyn-based indie rock/shoegazer act Dinowalrus. Currently comprised of frontman Pete Feigenbaum, who has spent some time as a touring guitarist in Titus Andronicus; Max Tucker; Meaghan Omega; Dan Peskin; and John Atkinson, who joins the band as a touring member, the members of the band have received attention for a  sound that possesses elements of post-punk, krautrock, shoegaze, synth pop and psych rock — i.e., much like the single I wrote about last month “Tides” off the band’s forthcoming full-length FAIRWEATHER. The album’s second and latest single “Light Rain” is a shimmering and swooning track — thanks to shimmering guitar chords, ethereal synths and a propulsive groove– that sounds as though it cribs from Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen and Starfish-era The Church.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Magic Trick is the recording project of singer/songwriter Tim Cohen, featuring a rotating cast of collaborators and friends. And if you’ve been frequenting this site for some time, you might recall that I wrote about two singles of Cohen and Company’s third full-length album River of Souls, an effort that at points reminded me quite a bit of Flowers-era Echo and the Bunnymen. Cohen’s fourth Magic Trick album Other Man’s Blues reportedly found the renowned singer/songwriter at a crossroads as it was written and recorded during a year that was split between two completely different lives and world — part of the year with his partner and their newborn daughter, the second part was as a touring musician, touring with Magic Trick and the Fresh & Onlys, and the week he spent recording Other Man’s Blues at Phil Manley‘s Lucky Cat Studios in San Francisco.

As the story goes, Cohen arrived at the studio with a color-coded composition book of songs he had been writing while bouncing to and fro, and the book would have to suffice in lieu of rehearsal time with the 13 musicians — including James Kim (drums),  Beach House‘s James Barone, The Aislers Set’s Alicia Van Heuval and Paul Garcia splitting time on bass, Once and Future Band‘s and Danny James‘ Joel Robinow on keys, The Cairo Gang and The Muggers‘ Emmett Kelly (guitar), backing vocals from Van Heuval, Noelle Cahill and Anna Hillburg, who also plays trumpet, as well as San Francisco-based musicians Dylan, Edrich, Tom Heyman, and Marc Capelle. And although some may think that with such a large roster of musicians, that the sessions were the product of grandiose ambition; but actually, the sessions were the result of an open door policy at the studio in which, friends would stop by, hang out, drink tequila, bullshit and jam together, creating a loose, freewheeling, improvised affair in which the songs were shaped by the session players — and the material reportedly manages to shift from baroque pop, post-punk, R&B, jam rock paired with Tim’s lyrics about family, himself, his experiences and thoughts about being a father and a musician, about life and its perpetual changes.

The album’s latest single “First Thought” is a shuffling and twangy country blues that sounds as though it could have been released sometime between 1972-1975 while gently nodding at psych rock and gospel with an extended jam band coda featuring an impressive guitar solo. And what makes the song impressive is the fact that Cohen and Company manage to make the song feel both completely improvised, as though a bunch of friends were jamming late night over whiskey, tequila and weed, while the song possess a careful attention to craft. Lyrically, the song deals with self-doubt, uncertainty and acceptance but with a wry, mischievous wit, revealing that Cohen is an unheralded songwriter.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Led by its founding member and creative mastermind David Eugene Edwards, Wovenhand much like Edwards’ previous projects have a long-held reputation for intense and anthemic music that showcases Edwards’ Romantic and incredibly dramatic crooning — and for a relentless experimentation and reinvention. His previous project 16 Horsepower  was well-received for a sound based around antique Americana while Wovenhand’s earliest incarnations specialized in hushed ballads; however, with the newest and most current lineup, featuring Planes Mistaken For Stars‘ Chuck French (guitar) and Neil Keener (bass), Ordy Garrison (drums) and Crime and The City Solution‘s Matthew Smith (piano, synth) the band has written and recorded some of the heaviest and most forceful material to date on their latest effort Star Treatment slated for release on September 9, 2016 through Sargent House Records globally — with the exception of Europe.

As Edwards explains, the soon-to-be released album’s title isn’t a reference to our contemporary obsession with celebrity; rather it’s a reference to the concept of astrolatry — or humanity’s enduring interest in the stars of the night sky. “It’s ethereal in its concept,” Edwards says. “There are many layers, as always. I’ve been paying attention to the stars in the sky and in literature, and it’s a theme throughout the album.” He adds, “There’s more love song style on this in general, which is nice. The idea of what love is and how it’s expressed and all these different atmospheres.” Star Treatment‘s first single and opening track “Come Brave” finds the band pairing a propulsive, rumbling and rolling drum beat, enormous power chords, Edwards crooning vocals, a swooning and urgent Romanticism and rousing, arena rock friendly-like hooks with celestial hooks in a song that sounds as though it drew from Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, complete with a dark and mysterious fury.

The band will be embarking on a world tour to support the album. Check out tour dates below.

Tour Dates:
08/26   LAS VEGAS, NV @ Hard Rock Hotel & Casino – Psycho Las Vegas 
09/12   COLOGNE, DE @ Gebäude 9 *
09/13   FRANKFURT, DE @ Zoom *
09/15   BERN, CH @ ISC *
09/16   ZURICH, CH @ Bogen F *
09/17   VIENNA, AT @ Flex *
09/18   BUDAPEST, HU @ A38 *
09/20   SALZBURG, AT @ Rockhouse *
09/21   MUNICH, DE @ Ampere *
09/22   LEIPZIG, DE @ UT Connewitz *
09/23   BERLIN, DE @ Heimathafen *
09/24   HAMBURG, DE – Reeperbahn Festival
09/26   ARHUS, DK @ Train *
09/27   OSLO, NO @ John Dee *
09/29   HELSINKI, FI @ Tavastia
09/30   STOCKHOLM, SE @ Nalen *
10/01    LUND, SE @ Mejeriet *
10/02    COPENHAGEN, DK @ Vega Jr. *
10/04    EINDHOVEN, NL @ Effenaar *
10/05    AMSTERDAM, NL @ Melkweg *
10/06    LEUVEN, BE @ Het Depot *
10/07    GENT, BE @ Handelsbeurs *
10/08    CHARLEROI, BE @ L’Eden *
10/10    LILLE, FR @ L’Aéronef *
10/11    PARIS, FR @ La Maroquinerie *
10/13    ORLEANS, FR @ L’Astrolabe *
10/14    GRENOBLE, FR @ La Belle Electrique *
10/15    FEYZIN, FR @ L’Epicerie Moderne *
10/16    TOULOUSE, FR @ La Rex *
10/18    LONDON, UK @ The Dome *
* w/ Emma Ruth Rundle