JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Annie Lennox’s 70th birthday.
Tag: Eurythmics
Throwback: Happy Belated 72nd Birthday, Dave Stewart!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Dave Stewart’s 72nd birthday.
New Video: FACS Share Tense and Uneasy “North America Endless”
Back in 2013, Chicago-based post-punk act Disappears — founding member Brian Case (vocals, guitar) along with Noah Leger (drums), Jonathan van Herirk (guitar) and Damon Carruesco (bass) — released two related yet very different efforts that are among some of my favorite albums of the past decade or so — the atmospheric and tempestuous Kone EP and the tense, raging Era.
In 2017, Carruesco left the band. Disappears’ remaining members — Case, Lager and van Herrik — eventually decided to continue onward, but under a new name, and new sonic direction and songwriting approach as FACS. With 2018’s full-length debut as FACS, Negative Houses, the trio quickly established an intense, cathartic and heavy sound, although it’s not always obvious.
The Chicago-based outfit’s fifth album, last year’s Still Life in Decay was a decidedly focused that saw the band at what may arguably be their most solidified. The apocalyptic chaos of their previous album was pushed away in favor of examination with a remarkable and uneasy clarity, while being a sort of addendum to 2021’s Present Tense. Although Alianna Kalaba made an amicable last stand with the band on the album’s material, the album saw the band’s incredibly tight rhythm section dancing and twisting around each other like a double helix rather than inside it, creating a lattice, in which Case wove his guitar lines in and around, much like creeping vines as you’d hear on album tracks “When You Say” and “Slogan.”
The JOVM mainstays — currently Case, Van Herik and Leger — will be releasing the “North America Endless”/”Take Me to Your Heart” single through Sub Pop. The limited release will be on white vinyl and limited to 1,000 copies, and features the original A-side “North America Endless” and on the B-side, a cover of Eurythmics “Take Me to Your Heart.”
“North America Endless” sees the trio at their most forceful yet melodic. Anchored around a shimmering and reverb-soaked, sustain-driven guitar line, thunderous and angular drumming paired with Case’s delivery, which evokes and expresses the anxiety, despair, cognitive dissonance and dissociation of modern American life.
“We had been talking a lot about how to incorporate melody in a new way with the material we were starting to write after Still Life in Decay, and this was one of the first experiments with that,” FACS’ Brian Case says of the new single. “I had this inverted Polvo thing I had been playing around with that Jonathan married to a really nice Frippy sustained lead, and it kind of just wrote itself. Lyrically, it’s about the dissociation needed to live in this country and the powerlessness that can bring. Noah’s beat at the end of the song is one of my favorites from him.”
Regarding the cover of Eurythmics’ “Take Me to Your Heart,” Case says the song is “A band favorite, we’ve been kicking around a version of this since we first started FACS, but for some reason just got around to completing it now. This song has a lot of elements we keep in focus when we write – repetition, space, off-the-grid melodies, and mantra-like lyrics that can be construed in a few ways based on what perspective you view them from.”
The tense Joshua Ford-directed accompanying video for “North America Endless” follows a woman through the slow-burn descent into numbing dissociation and madness.
New Audio: Emerging French Artist Valery Rodriguez Tackles Eurythmics’ Smash-Hit “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”
Valery Rodriguez is a Paris-based singer/songwriter, actor, and video director. As an actor, Rodriguez played Banzai in the first Parisian production of The Lion King. He also staged a show based on Afro-American history, titled The Black Legends Show.
Rodriguez steps out into the limelight as an artist and as a director with his cover of Eurythmics‘ smash-hit “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” According to the Paris-based artist, the video is forthcoming — but in the meantime, I can talk about the single: Rodriguez’s cover slows the tempo down for the song’s first half, which creates a brooding and uneasy air within a stark atmospheric production that slowly builds up into an up-tempo, club banger with glistening synth arpeggios, soulful, gospel meets Broadway-like harmonizing, thumping percussion and a gorgeous string arrangement before a gentle fadeout.
The French artist explains that Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” held a personal meaning for him: the song gave him the strength he needed to be resilient during the toughest moments of the pandemic. And as a result, the song feels as though it evokes clearing skies after a particularly turbulent period.
New Video: Indya Love Releases a Gorgeous and Meditative Visual for Haunting “Good Morning”
ythmics’ Dave Stewart. Writing and performing as Indya Love, Stewart’s debut single, the self-produced “Good Morning” is centered around a hauntingly sparse arrangement in which the younger Stewart accompanies her gently plucked acoustic guitar with gently cooed vocals. Her father adds a bit of electric guitar for a bit of country twang.
Recorded at Bay Street Studios in the Caribbean, “Good Morning” manages to be a gorgeous and atmospheric track that upon repeated listens reveals an unsettling and much darker edge: it’s one part, cooed greeting to a lover upon waking up together in bed, one-part wistful reminiscence about a dysfunctional yet wildly passionate relationship and one-part classic murder ballad.
ontinuing with the DIY ethos, the self-directed and self-shot, black and white video for “Good Morning” is inspired by Man Ray’s work and evokes the brooding emotions at the heart of the song.
New Video: The Breezy and Surreal Sounds and Visuals of Sunmonks’ “Greens”
Although they officially formed in 2012, the Auburn, CA-based electro pop/experimental pop act Sunmonks can actually trace its origins to when the act’s primary members Geoffrey CK and Alexandra Steele met in 2005. And in […]
New Audio: Fever High’s Breezy, New Single “All Work” Channels 80s Pop
Comprised of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Reni Lane, who released a solo album on Universal Motown, and has collaborated and/or toured with The Like, Joseph Arthur, Eurythmics‘ Dave Stewart, Linda Perry, Howie Day and others; Anna […]
New Audio: Fake Tears’ Latest Single “Second Wind” Channels 80s Synth-Based Goth Pop
Comprised of Larissa Loyva and Elisha May Rembold, the members of the duo Fake Tears are extremely accomplished in their own right. Loyva has released two solo albums under the moniker, Kellarissa and has been […]
NPR Music and KCRW’s Metropolis Launch feat. Cut Copy at Le Poisson Rouge 11/19/13
NPR Music and KCRW’s Metropolis Launch Event feat. Cut Copy Le Poisson Rouge November 19, 2013 Although I cover an astounding number of diverse shows over the course of the year, I have to admit […]