Tag: indie rock

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Two Rippers from Rising London Outfit Island of Love

Rising London-based outfit Island of Love — Karim Newble (guitar/vocals), Linus Munch (guitars/vocals) and Daniel Giraldo (bass) — can trace their origins to meeting through London’s hardcore punk scene, while playing in other hands, including Newbie’s Powerplant. They’ve all shared bills with bands like Chubby and the Gang and High Vis. And with their various previous projects, the London-based trio proudly adhered to a DIY ethos: they booked their own shows, printed their own merch, designed their own very distinct artwork, and self-released material recorded at Fuzzbrain, an East London studio dedicated to fostering the underground music community by making high-quality studio and rehearsal space accessible to artists under 25 years-old at all price points.

The trio released their debut collection of demos, 2020’s Promo Tape. By the time they had written and recorded last year’s Songs of Love EP, the London-based outfit had gotten much tighter. “Promo Tape was us trying to learn to write songs individually but Songs of Love was us trying to learn to write songs as a band,” Island of Love’s Karim Newbie says.

Back in September 2021, Island of Love were invited to perform at the opening of Third Man Records’ The Blue Basement. It’s a good thing that the band showed up to the gig at all, given that they didn’t even think the email invitation they received to play was real. The very real and definitely not spam offer led to their on-the-spot signing to the label, opening slots for Jack White — and their self-titled full-length debut.

Slated for a May 12, 2023 release, the London trio’s Ben Spence-produced, self-titled full-length debut reportedly sees the band crafting material that pinballs back and forth between tones and styles while rooted in crunchy guitars and the intrinsically melodic sensibility that brings Hüsker Dü and Dinosaur Jr. to mind while featuring the shared vocal and songwriting duties of Newbie and Munch. At the core of the material is a great deal of restraint and consideration, the sort that belies their relative youth as musicians — and as a band. While the material is loud and noisy, but it built around push-pull dynamics that results in moments of tenderness and quiet that then elevates the crunch and power of the rousingly anthemic, noisier parts. The album shows the balance of it being written in bedrooms but being honed in live shows,” says Munch. “It captures a contrast.”

Sonically and even thematically. the album explores duality, balance and contrast. Sure there’s crunchy power chords exploding out of the gate and into your eardrums one moment, but there’s also melodic, sugary pop hooks paired with introspective, considered songwriting. “This album exceeded our expectations,” says Newble. “I’m really proud of it.” What we’ve done on this album is much more of an accurate representation of us and where we’re at,” Island of Love’s Daniel Giraldo adds. “The EP sounds good but the difference on the album is huge.”

When the band set about making the album, they wanted to carry over as much of that DIY spirit as possible. They continued their relationship with Ben Spence and Fuzzbrain, who helped the band record their early demos. For the band, Spence, Fuzzbrain and the community both have fostered have proven invaluable to the band. “Growing up I couldn’t afford equipment,” Newble says. “But Fuzzbrain was this space where you could go to practice and use insane equipment. We never had to bring guitars, pedals or leads. You could just show up and plug in. We would have struggled to be a band without that place.” According to Giraldo , ““It’s very much [Spence’s] record as much as it is ours.”

The London trio recently shared the first taste of the album with the double A-side single “Grow”/”Blues 2000.” “Grow” is a 120 Minutes-era MTV-like bit of alt rock centered around crunchy power chords, thunderous drumming and the sort of enormous, melodic-driven hooks that immediately brings Dinosaur Jr. and others to mind. “Grow”is the first song the trio ever wrote together, and has been pulled and reimagined from their demo release, Promo Tape. “Blues 2000” continues the 90s alt rock vibes but is rooted in dueling guitar riffage and thunderous drumming.

Both songs are fan favorite staples of their live show and are always played back-to-back.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Acclaimed Indie Trio Ivy Shares Demo Version of “I’ve Got A Feeling”

The acclaimed alt rock/indie rock outfit Ivy — Andy Chase, Dominique Durand and the late Fountains of Wayne co-founder and frontman Adam Schlesinger — can trace their origins back to several events that feel more like a movie script than real life. Dominique Durand had no intentions of being a musician, let alone fronting a band, when she left Paris for New York in 1989, but some serendipitous events transpired that would change her life: In New York, she met Andy Chase, and the pair bounded over a shared love of 80s British bands like The Smiths and Orange Juice. With Durand’s encouragement, Chase began writing his first songs on guitar, eventually placing an ad in The Village Voice for collaborators. 

That Voice ad caught the attention of Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood, who both arrived at Chase’s apartment with their own plans: They were hoping to enlist Chase for their own project, the Fountains of Wayne predecessor Pinwheel. Although the meeting didn’t yield either group the players they were seeking, Chase and Durand were impressed by Schlesinger’s energy, and they kept up a correspondence. 

Just as Chase and Durand were settling into a new life as a couple in New York, Durand was stopped at Boston Logan Airport, interrogated and then deported back to Paris. That turn of events is part of the obscured but deeply romantic origin story of the band, which was kept hidden out of the fear it would color the perception of their music. For Chase, there was no real option but to leave for France to be with the woman he loved, and figure out things from there. The pair decided that it was inevitable that they would get married, so why not just go ahead with it.

Upon the pair returning to the States with a fiancé visa in hand, Chase suggested they finish the songs he’d been working on and perform them at their wedding — with Durand singing for the first time. Soon after, with the encouragement of a bottle of wine, the pair tracked material in their apartment, Schlesinger was enlisted to play bass, and he quickly fell in love with the material and Durand’s voice. At Schlesinger’s suggestion, they began to share the demo with record labels, and they were quickly signed to Seed Records, an Atlantic Records imprint — with ever having played a live set. Waking one morning to find he’d scribbled a list of potential names on a notepad the night before, Schlesinger suggested they adopt Ivy, and the band was born. 

Tragically, Adam Schlesinger died in early 2020. But the surviving members of the band broke their long silence, to honor their old friend and bandmate, compiling home videos from studio sessions and early tours. Durand’s and Chase’s tribute captures the innocence and wonder of a shared, once-in-a-lifetime moment.

The band’s surviving members recently announced a vinyl re-issue of their seminal 1997 album Apartment Life, which is salted for a March 3, 2023 release through Bar/None Records. The album captures their singular brand of disaffected yet nuanced pop — and it will feature two previously unreleased singles here in the States “Sleeping Late” and “Sweet Mary,” which will be available digitally for the first time ever.

Of course, this will be the first time Apartment Life has been made available on vinyl: Bar/None Records will release a white vinyl edition and a limited edition blue vinyl edition will be made available through Newbury Comics. “This is probably the most important record Ivy ever made,” Ivy’s Andy Chase says of the album and of its reissue. “Me, Dominique and Adam were in NYC going from our apt to the studio every day. It was a glorious time for us – we would just wake up inspired and excited about everything we were doing. We knew we were becoming better at our craft and were excited to show the world. I think with this album we finally succeeded in demonstrating our ability to write and produce great pop songs. It was also the first and last time the three of us smoked pot for the entire duration of an album, supplied by our good friend and co producer Pete Nashel. We also had a healthy budget from Atlantic Records so we had a blast hiring horn players, string quartets, stretching our wings as producers and creating sounds in the studio we had never done before. Songs from this album appeared in countless tv shows, commercials and movies, putting us on the map in Hollywood among the music supervisors and directors, ultimately exposing us to a much larger universe. It was without a doubt the most fun we three ever had making music together. It was a special record for us and still is probably the favorite among our fanbase. For the past 20 years they have been asking for it on vinyl, and with Adam now gone, and IVY signing to Bar/None Records to re- release our entire catalogue of work, it was finally time to memorialize Apartment Life on vinyl.”

Ivy will also be partnering with Record Store Day to release Apartment Life Demos, which will feature, intimate. rough versions of the material from their cult classic sophomore album. The album will be available in participating stores on April 22, 2023 and digitally on July 21, 2023. Ivy’s Chase explains: “Me & Dominique thought it would be a fun idea to go back and find all the demo versions of each song from Apartment Life, sequence them in the same order, and release it. While at times a bit embarrassing or cringeworthy (for Dominique and I), and oftentimes funny, it’s a unique window into the world of IVY as we moved closer to getting ready to record what would be Apartment Life.

Apartment Life Demos‘ first single is the demo version of “I’ve Got A Feeling.” While being a bit rough around the edges, as a demo often is, the demo captures the sweet guilelessness that’s the heart of both the song and the album. But it also reveals a remarkable attention to craft from such a young band.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Taleen Kali Shares “120 Minutes”-Era MTV-like “Crusher”

Over the past couple of years, I’ve spilled quite a bit of virtual ink covering Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, poet, essayist, visual artist, Dum Dum Records founder, and JOVM mainstay Taleen Kali. Kail (she/they) has made a carer out of writing romantic punk songs that are simultaneously cosmic, dreamy and defiant, and informed by her Armenian heritage and her parents’ birthplaces of Lebanon and Ethiopia. But the material is underpinned by Kali’s desire to seamlessly fuse her cultural heritage and identity with the sounds of the modern countercultures she grew up embracing and exploring as a musician and singer/songwriter. 

Kali’s music career started with a stint in Los Angeles-based band TÜLIPS. After TÜLIPS closed up shop in 2016, she stepped out into the limelight as a solo artist, eventually touring across the US with Ex Hex, Alice Bag and Seth Bogart. 

The Los Angeles-based JOVM mainstay’s solo debut, 2018’s Kristin Kontrol-produced Soul Songs EP was recorded at Hollywood-based Sunset Sound Studios. The EP, which found Kali’s long-held riot grrl ethos maturing into a multifaceted punk sound and approach with elements of noise pop and New Wave was released to praise from BUST Magazine and Stereogum, who likened her sound to a contemporary Blondie. Soul Songs was also included in Pitchfork‘s Guide to Summer Albums and LA Weekly‘s Best Indie Punk Albums. 

Kali along with her backing band followed up with an unplugged version of Soul Songsand covers of The Supremes‘ “Baby Love” and Garbage‘s “#1 Crush.” She also recorded a two-song pandemic project called Changing with her TÜLIPS-era producer Greg Katz.

Taleen Kali’s Jeff Schroeder and Josiah Mazzaschi-co-produced full-length debut Flower of Life is slated for a March 3, 2023 release through Kali’s Dum Dum Records. Sonically, the album reportedly sees the rising Los Angeles further cementing her fuzzy and noisy take on psych punk paired with vocals that run the range of femme punk and shoegaze siren. 

Over the past year or so, I’ve written about the following album singles: 

  • Album title track “Flower of Life,” a grungy psych punk ripper centered around fuzzy power chords, thunderous drumming, soaring organ chords and Kali’s sneering delivery paired with mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses that sonically was a bit of a synthesis of My Bloody Valentine and riot grrl punk. “‘Flower of Life’ was a spiritual concept I held onto for a long time before writing this song,” Kali explains in press notes. “The flower is a fractal, a cycle, ever blooming, ever decaying. 

  • “Trash Talk“, a jangling Brit Pop-inspired anthem centered around a chugging motorik-like groove, fuzzy power chords, Kali’s unerring knack for rousingly anthemic hooks and a sneering “fuck off” attitude towards haters, trolls and toxic bullshit that almost anyone can relate to. 

  • “Fine Line,” a Too True-era Dum Dum Girls-like confection centered around shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, a forceful and driving rhythm section paired with Kali’s plaintive delivery and her unerring knack for well, placed, rousingly anthemic hooks. 

  • “Tomorrow Girl,” a shimmering Too True-era Dum Dum Girls-meets shoegaze-like pop confection featuring shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, Kali’s gorgeous and achingly plaintive delivery paired with a driving rhythm section and enormous hooks. Much like its predecessors, “Tomorrow Girl” is rooted in personal, lived-in experience and hard-won wisdom. 

Flower of Life‘s latest single “Crusher” is a swooning, 120 Minutes alt rock-like shoegazer them featuring swirling guitar textures, relentless four-on-the-floor and Kali’s unerring knack for enormous hooks paired with heart-proudly-worn on-sleeve earnestness and a blazing solo from Smashing Pumpkins’ Jeff Shroeder. “Crusher” manages to evoke the sweet ache of having a desperate crush. “Crusher’ is our ultimate shoegaze love song. You ever crush so hard you’ve been brought to your knees? This song is about all those impossible feelings, taking inspiration from some of the greats: Chapterhouse, Lush, Ride, and Curve,” Kali explains. “This song has always been our band favorite and it features a guitar solo from Jeff Schroeder of Smashing Pumpkins so we’ve been saving the best for last…”

Fittingly, the accompanying video for “Crusher” draws from 120 Minutes-era MTV and features romantic imagery — guitars played with roses, roses bursting into flames, shot through kaleidoscopic filters.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Silver Moth Shares Slow-Burning and Cinematic “Mother Tongue”

Silver Moth is new collective featuring a celebrated cast of musicians and artists, including Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite singer/songwriter and electro pop artist Elisabeth Elektra, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Evi Vine, Abrasive Trees‘ Matthew Rochford, Burning House‘s Ash Babb, Steven Hill and Prosthetic Head’s Ben Roberts, who has also worked with Abrasive Trees and Evi Vine. The collective can trace its origins back to a Twitter exchange between Matthew Rochford and Elisabeth Elektra about the Isle of Lewis. A couple of Zoom meetings would subsequently lead to Rochford, Elektra, Vine, Braithwaite, Hill, Babb and Roberts visiting Black Bay Studios on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, a dramatic location, where they recorded the collective’s full-length debut, Black Bay.

Slated for an April 21, 2023 release through Bella Union, Black Bay reportedly is a testament to connectivity and receptivity and captures a union of disparate minds committing to something to something greater than the sum of its individual parts. Capturing the sound of seven storied musicians yielding to shared goals, the album ranges between hushed incantations and molten guitars, 15-minute noise rock epics and healing psalms.

“Mother Tongue,” Black Bay‘s first single is a slow-burning and sprawling song centered around swirling shoegazer-like guitar textures, twinkling reverb-drenched keys, ethereal and plaintive vocals paired with jazz-like drumming. While sounding like a synthesis of A Storm in Heaven and Dark Side of the Moon, the band explains that  “Mother Tongue is a song about women and other marginalized people rising up in the face of oppression.”

Directed by Maddie Burton, the accompanying video features the gorgeous scenery of the Isle of Lewis superimposed with footage of women and other marginalized groups protesting and standing up in the face of oppression and cruelty across both time and space. “We were really excited as a band to work with video director Maddie Burton for the accompanying visuals.Maddie’s work is so beautiful, textural and evocative, all the members of Silver Moth felt her art harmonized with our music perfectly, ” the band says of the accompanying video. “Evi Vine had the idea for Maddie to include archival footage from feminist marches around the world in the video, and Maddie then overlaid the march footage with archival footage of the island of Lewis where we recorded the album. Maddie also wove in other images of nature, which felt like it added an extra layer of meaning considering the climate emergency we are all currently navigating”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montréal’s Grand Public Shares Shimmering “Lundi normal”

Montréal-based indie outfit Grand Public features a collection of accomplished local players: The band’s frontman and founder Gregory Paquet has played with The Stills, Alvvays‘ Molly Rankin and Peter Peter. The band’s other members, are three childhood friends, who have played together in several bands, including Reviews, an act that has played with JOVM mainstays Corridor, Omni, and others.

Grand Public took advantage of pandemic enforced downtime to refine their sound and write material, including their four-song Dominic Vanchesteing-produced mini album Idéal Tempo. Slated for a March 24, 2023 release, Idéal Tempo reportedly sees the Montréal-based outfit pairing angular guitar textures, ethereal melodies and hypnotic rhythms with explosive release of tension.

The mini EP’s second and latest single “Lundi normal” features reverb-drenched, angular guitar attack, ethereal vocals and rousingly anthemic hooks paired with a propulsive rhythm section. “Lundi normal” sonically recalls Junior-era Corridor but rooted in surrealistic, seemingly stream-of-consciousness lyrics.

Shot in Nouveau Système Beaubien, a famous, old-fashioned Montréal-based greasy spoon, the accompanying video captures the band’s members hanging out and bullshitting on a regular and seemingly cold Monday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Denver’s Instant Empire Shares An Anthemic Meditation on Death

Denver-based indie outfit Instant Empire — Scotty Saunders (vocals), Sean Connaughty (guitar, keys), Lou Kucera (guitar), Aaron Stone (bass) and Matt Grizzell (drums) — formed back in 2011. Since then, the Denver-based quintet have chronicled the human condition through their work, while garnering comparisons to The National, Bright Eyes, The Hold Steady, Death Cab For Cutie and Manchester Orchestra, among others.

When the pandemic struck, the members of Instant Empire started writing songs — a lot of them. During the earliest and worst days of the pandemic, writing songs gave the band an outlet to grapple with deeply universal issues that hit close to home: death, stinging, a slow-burn disintegration of hopes, dreams and expectations, the inevitable reflection on the past, and living in the wake of uncertain, uncomfortable future. Over the past few years, the members of the Denver-based indie outfit saw parents and friends die, health issues of friends, family members and even themselves, long days and nights in and out of hospitals, lost jobs, lost opportunities and an incalculable sense of isolation. Naturally, all of that would up coalescing into the material they had been writing.

The end result is the Denver-based outfit’s fourth album Standing Eight Count. Slated for a March 31, 2023 release, the album reportedly sees Instant Empire at their most expansive musically and thematically. “It felt like the canvas we were working on had been broadened,” the band’s Scotty Saunders explains. “An undercurrent of deep personal struggle permeates these songs. Broken and battered characters, on the ropes, but still standing, still fighting the good fight … this theme is woven in and out of the 11 songs that make up the album.”

“The title of the album is a boxing reference … and legitimately at the time of writing this album, life was knocking us around,” Saunders says. But what do you do, right? Hopefully, you keep getting up. Fighting the good fight. During the writing of this album, I also was spending a fair amount of time around my father-in-law, who had suffered a series of severe strokes. It was heartbreaking. He was in a really rough spot physically, but he loved watching boxing. He wasn’t a man that showed a ton of emotion, but he’d sometimes start crying in a really good match. Most nights we’d flip over to Showtime and we’d all watch these fights because they brought him some joy. None of us were super into boxing, but sometimes you just find yourself watching a shit ton of boxing because your sick father-in-law wanted to watch it … some of that probably seeped its way into the album, even if in an abstract way.”

Produced and engineered by the band’s Sean Connaughty at their own studio, the album also reportedly sees the band crafting material that aims to be a companion to listeners to all the strange and difficult times they’ll encounter — especially now.

Standing Eight Count‘s latest single, “Tiny Flashes” is an urgent and muscular song built around angular guitar, twinkling keys, a propulsive groove set up by Stone and Grizzell, rousingly anthemic hooks and a blazing guitar solo paired with Saunders’ vocal, which expresses awe, bemusement, resiliency, longing and despair within a turn of a phrase. The song deals with death and grief — but not from the perspective of the survivor; but from the perspective of th person that died.

“My father died a few months before we started writing songs for this album. Around the one-year anniversary of his death, Sean sent me a demo for what would become’ Tiny Flashes’. At the time, I’d been reading a fair amount about the idea of liminality, specifically the Buddhist beliefs in transference from life-to-heaven,” Instant Empire’s Scotty Saunders explains. ” As you’d expect, my dad was on my mind a lot at this time … and I ended up writing this song from my dad’s perspective during the time he was in transition from life to the afterlife. What would it feel like stuck in transition, holding on to the past? This was my attempt to interpret what that might feel like … I imagined you’d almost feel weightless and not rooted to anything.”

“The song plays around a bit on being suspended between life and death, and in the second verse gets really granular as I imagined what it might feel like for my dad to be suspended with only his thoughts and his memories just cycling on an infinite repeat. I tried to just list out memories he might have and might be cycling through. You have to let go to move on … but I imagined the process of actually letting go here would be awful. Almost unachievable. I imagine there would be more questions than answers as a soul passes through a liminal state — so that came out in the lyrics.

Musically, this song really underwent a metamorphosis. It started out as a really sparse piano based tune when Sean first started writing the music. As we started building out the song, and particularly once Matt came up with the drum parts, it started to sound really muscular. The last element added to this song was Lou’s guitar work, and the bridge solo he lays down here really gave this song so much attitude and vibe. We had no idea this song was going to sound like this when we began. Tiny Flashes serves as a really powerful moment in the larger context of the album, and the music ultimately provided the perfect foundation of urgency for the lyrics.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Donnie Doolittle’s Darkly HIlarious “Resurrect Me”

Donnie Doolittle is a Charlotte-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Although Doolittle studied piano and guitar as a child, he cut his teeth fronting a series of popular local bands in the early 2000s, including garage pop act Stone Figs, doom rock outfit Little Bull Lee and dark, psychedelic solo project Dreamy D.

Back in 2018, Doolittle recorded the first version of upbeat psuedo-lovesong “When a Woman,” a song inspired by 1970s Aussie thrilled Wake in Fright, while visiting his friend, producer Jesse Clasen in New York. Originally conceived as a Dreamy D, the collaboration marked a shift in his songwriting and creative process, and later became the first single under his own name. “That song just felt different: I was evolving, and I wanted to start fresh, releasing tracks under my own name,” he says. “The new music feels more true to who I am as an artist and as a person.”

As a solo artist, Doolittle crafts moody, synth driven material that hover between dark, retro-pop and melancholy rock that blends bright, pop-leaning melodies into ominous and cinematic soundscapes. Described as “Southern New Wave,” to “Goth Americana” by the press, his genre-bending sound has frequently been compared to Orville Peck, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, and Iggy Pop. He pairs each release with carefully-honed imagery and thematic narrative videos, meant to engage a range of senses. “I want to provide a full experience—to use my resources to create a palpable ambiance,” Doolittle says.

Doolittle’s Jesse Clasen-produced self-titled, full-length debut is slated for an April 7, 2023 release. The 12-song album reportedly features arrangements that weave together modern and vintage synths (most notably, the Mellotron and 80s-era Roland Juno 106) with electric guitar, bass and drums to create songs that drift mood-wise between vibrant and gloomy. Informed by Doolittle’s love of the work of Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Lee Hazlewood, the album’s cinematic arrangements help to draw listeners into multifaceted sonic worlds, laced with sharp, narrative lyrics that touch upon religion, gender, pop culture and sexuality with a light, subtly ironic touch. “I like to play around with religion and sex,” says Doolittle. “Feeling jaded about God and the world, but also firmly attached to both. I think that’s a big part of Southern culture, and who I am as an artist…for better or worse.”

Along with the album announcement, Doolittle shared the album’s latest single, the slow-burning and broodingly cinematic “Resurrect Me.” Featuring twangy and reverb-drenched guitars, glistening and atmospheric synths paired with Doolittle’s baritone paired with big hooks and a buzzing guitar solo, “Resurrect Me” manages to sound a bit like a synthesis of the Twin Peaks soundtrack, Bruce Springsteen‘s “Tunnel of Love” and Orville Peck, while rooted in a bittersweet heartache.

“I started writing this song after learning about so-called ‘resurrection men,’ body snatchers in the 18th and 19th centuries that would exhume corpses from graveyards and sell them to medical schools for research and teaching purposes,” Doolittle explains. “I was interested in the idea of someone seeing value in these buried and abandoned vessels, and putting in the work to give them a second chance at showing their worth above ground. I related to the dead people in this scenario.”

Directed by North Carolina-based producer and director Josh Rob Thomas, the accompanying video is a darkly hilarious visual that follows Doolittle’s corpse on a wild adventure as its passed along a rotation cast of odd companions. “As heavy as the inspiration was, I thought we could lighten the mood with the video. Influenced by absurd films like Weekend at Bernie’s (which didn’t age too well) and Swiss Army Man, we took my corpse on an adventure with a rotating cast of companions,” Doolittle explains. “Fun was had with most of them, but only one character cared enough to put me to rest. I’ve assembled a very talented production team and we stepped up our game for this one. I hope you enjoy it.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Whose Rules Share Breezy and Anthemic “I Don’t Care”

Marius Elfstedt is a Norwegian producer, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who grew up on a flower farm in a Hasler, Norway, a rural area roughly an hour outside of Oslo. Four years ago, while exploring his family’s farm, he came came across an abandoned cabin and then re-purposed it into a recording studio, where he writes. produces and record music with his friends and artists like Dev Lemons, Tigerstate, Selmer, Ralph Castelli, Elah Hale, Isabelle Eberdean, Mall Girl, Svømmbesseng, Joe’s Truly, Bikelane, Fish, Overcity, Pikekyss, and others.

Elfstedt works and records his own material as Whose Rules. Back in 2020, the Norwegian producer and artist released his self-titled debut EP, which he followed up with a handful of collaborative releases with Dev Lemons.

The Norwegian producer and artist’s full-length debut, Hasler is slated for a February 22, 2023 through 777 Music. The album was created from the solitude found within the walls of pandemic-related isolation within the walls of his Hasler, Norway-based studio, in the middle of the Scandinavian wilderness. Wooden log walls, haplessly strewn posters, old second-hand couches and a teeming collection of guitars and synths helped create a perfect environment to escape into a world of creation.

Written and produced entirely by Marius, Hasler is the culmination of years of sonic experimentation and rumination — both melancholic and hopeful — over adolescence gradually blossoming into adulthood. Thematically and lyrically, the material touches upon loneliness. love, friendship and self-doubt while sonically the album pairs whiting electronics and indie rock.

Hasler‘s third and latest single “I Don’t Care” is a woozy yet breezily melancholic bop featuring shimmering, strummed acoustic guitar-driven melody, fluttering synths, and a buzzing guitar solo paired with Elfstadt’s languid, delivery, instantly catchy melodicism and a penchant for easy-going yet anthemic hooks. “This is the first track I made for this LP. After a long time with writer’s block, this song pops out of nowhere,”Elfstadt explains. “The dissonant guitar melody reminded me of Weezer’s ‘Undone’ and ‘Say it Ain’t So‘ which I thought was dope.”

Directed and shot by Fabio Enzo, the accompanying video for “I Don’t Care” follows the Norwegian producer and artist on the family farm, at the studio and while watching a glorious sunset.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: SUUNS Share Sludgy and Shoegazy “Wave”

Montréal-based experimental rock outfit SUUNS— founding members Ben Shemie (vocals, guitar) and Joe Yarmush (guitar, bass) with Liam O’Neill (drums) — can trace their origins back to 2007: Shemie and Yarmush got together to make some beats, and it quickly evolved to a few songs. The duo was joined by O’Neill and Max Henry (keys) to complete the band’s first lineup. The band signed to Secretly Canadian in 2010. That year, Henry left the band as a full-time official member to pursue a scholarly career — although he continues to record with the band.

In 2020, the trio signed to Joyful Noise Recordings, who released that year’s Fiction EP and 2021’s The Witness.

Engineered by Adrian Popovich and recorded at Mountain City Recording Studio last July, the band’s latest single “Wave” evolved over an 18 month period of touring to support The Witness. “While touring The Witness, between plane rides, car rides, van rides, and text threads, we started working on new music,” SUUNS’ Ben Shemie explains. “New sounds and a new approach seemed to take shape while testing new material. What started to emerge were really slow songs, some strange experimentations, and some unclassifiable jams. Among these tunes, ‘Wave’ emerged.”

The slow-burning dirge-like “Wave” is rooted in relentless repetition, swirling and sludgy guitar textures, droning feedback and distortion, blown-out boom bap paired with Shemie’s plaintive delivery buried a smidge under the syrupy mix. Sonically “Wave” makes a nod at fellow Montrealers The Besnard Lakes before ending with a noisy, slow-burning fade out.

The accompanying video by Ilyse Krivel consists of time lapse footage of the sun setting over a body of water, superimposed by footage of rippling waves at the shore.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Chicago’s Daydream Review Shares Ethereal and Painterly “Have You Found What You’re Looking For?”

Elijah Montez is a Chicago-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, frontman, and creative mastermind behind Daydream Review. After relocating from Austin to Chicago, Montez and Daydream Review began catching the attention of Chicago’s leading tastemakers and beyond with the release of 2020’s “Blossom” and 2021’s retro-tinged, self-titled debut EP.


Last summer, the Chicago-based artist released two tracks, an A-side “Sensory Deprivation” and a B-side “Dream Sequence #29,” as a palette cleanser after his self-titled debut EP and a teaser of new material. Along with the release of material that quickly established Montez as one of Chicago’s most buzz-worthy artists, he has spent plenty of time on the road with his backing band featuring Kaitlyn Murphy (backing vocals and auxiliary percussion) and a rotating group of friends.

Montez’s Daydream Review debut, the 13-song Leisure is slated for an April 7, 2023 release through Side Hustle Records. The album reportedly sees the Chicago-based artist aiming to expand upon the layered sonic world he has created — and continuing to push the boundaries of modern psych pop with dynamic production and reflective, existential lyricism. “Leisure is about the ever-present tension between the desire for free time, for personal enjoyment and leisure, and the demands that capitalistic society places on those desires, and how it restricts the ability to enjoy that free time,” Montez explains. ” Your job and work, to me, seem to be consistent specters that haunt your ability to enjoy your free time, knowing that those demands are always awaiting you when your free time comes to an end.”

That uneasy balancing act between work and free time informed much of the album’s creation and its themes. “Leisure,” Montez adds “as a concept, became something almost otherworldly and that much more desirable, something you dream about when you have so much time funneled into work, and the repetitive act of balancing those two ends up being something almost hypnotic, and I tried to channel all of that into the sonic qualities of the album.”

“Have You Found What You’re Looking For,” Leisure‘s first single is a mellowm and ethereal slow-burn centered around painterly, shoegazy textures: glistening, delay and reverb pedaled guitar, fluttering synth arpeggios and a trippy groove are paired with Montez’s equally ethereal and plaintive delivery. At its core, the song sees its narrator asking himself — and in turn, his listener — if they’ve found what they’ve been looking for, with the tacit understanding that they may never actually find it anyway.

One of the last songs written for the album, Montez explains, “I had written roughly the first half of the song and was unsure where to take it, and I remember trying different things, and talking to myself saying, “Have you figured it out? Have you found it?” Montez adds the theme of the track spoke to the broader themes of the project as a whole, “The overarching theme of the song fits quite well in the context of the album–being dissatisfied with work, dissatisfied with the state of the world, and dissatisfied with capitalism at large, and searching for something that can fill in the void that all that dissatisfaction leaves.” 

Speaking to the production and cyclical pattern of its rhythm, Montez says, “I think that’s reflected in the sonic quality of the song, this repetition and cycling through your thoughts and having that “a-ha” moment, where you realize you’re looking for something that may not come.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: North Carolina’s Booster Club Shares a Power Pop Anthem

Raleigh–Durham-based indie outfit Booster Club features a collection of grizzled North Carolina scene vets: Steven Bailey (vocals, guitar), who has had stints with Indiobravo, The Jaded Rakes, Paloma and Waxing Myrna; Alan Levine (bass), who has played with Bob Funck Band, Coytah, and Indiobravo; and Joey Zielazinski (drums), who had had stints with Secretary Pool and The Softeners.

Formed back in 2021, the self-described “college rock revival” band specializes in a sound that’s clearly indebted to The Replacements, Pixies, Hüsker Dü and the like — and yet the material, which they deliver with an authentic fervor, “fueled by death anxiety and caffeine,” manages to stand on its own. Despite sharing some common aesthetics with pre-internet college radio artists, the band takes on forward-leaning sensibilities that allows them to veer from anthemic hooks to art-rock chaos — within the same song.

The band presents their music “warts and all” partially due to a lack of audio editing ability but mostly because the band’s Steven Bailey frequently invents parts during sessions.

The Raleigh-Durham-based outfit’s latest single “Say It Out Loud” is an anthemic, college radio jam rooted in enormous hooks, fuzzy power chords and heart-proudly on-sleeve performances from old pros. At its heart, is a reminder that craft and earnestness is absolutely timeless whether you’re 20, 40 or 60 — and that this music thing is for the young, and the forever young at heart.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Raleigh, NC-based indie outfit OCNS — childhood friends Drew Cooney, Esdras Bouassa, Isaac Buna and Grandy Zodulua — formed back in 2016. Inspired by The Neighbourhood, The 1975, The Paper Kites, and Vacation Manor, “OCNS serves to provide a soundscape rich in catchy melody, infectious groove and emotional input,” the band says.

The members of OCNS have cemented themselves as being on the forefront of a rising, contemporary North Carolina indie scene with praise from the likes of local and international press outlets, including Stitched Sound, Plastic Magazine, Wolf In A Suit, CLTure, and When the Horn Blows among others.

The Raleigh-based quintet’s latest single “How Late It Was” is a breezy, yacht rock-take on synth pop featuring glistening synth arpeggios, a sinuous bass line, groove-driven drumming, razor sharp hooks and an easy-listening-inspired guitar riff paired with Buna’s plaintive falsetto vocals singing achingly wistful lyrics. While sonically nodding a bit at The Cars “Drive” and Wang Chung‘s “Dance Hall Days” and others 80s synth-driven fare, “How Late It Was” explores the unease and heartache of a relationship petering out to a sad and inevitable conclusion through the metaphor of time passing — and of it getting late, before you noticed it.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Dayglow Performs “Then It All Goes Away” on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”

Sloan Struble is a 20-something  Aledo, TX-born, Austin, TX-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and JOVM mainstay best known as Dayglow. Struble can trace the origins of Dayglow back to when he was a teen, growing up in a Fort Worth suburb that he has referred to as a “small football-crazed town,” where he felt irrevocably out of place. 

Much like countless other hopelessly out of place young people everywhere, Struble turned to music as an escape from his surroundings. “I didn’t really feel connected to what everyone else in my school was into, so making music became an obsession for me, and sort of like therapy in a way,” Struble recalled in press notes. “I’d dream about it all day in class, and then come home and for on songs instead of doing homework. After a while I realized I’d made an album.”

Working completely on his own with a minuscule collection of gear that included his guitar, his computer and some secondhand keyboards he picked up at Goodwill, Struble worked on transforming his privately kept outpouring into a batch of songs — often grandiose in scale. “Usually artists will have demos they’ll bounce off other people to get some feedback, but nobody except for my parents down the hall really heard much of the album until I put it out,” Struble recalled. With the self-release of 2018’s Fuzzybrain, Struble received widespread attention and an ardent online following — with countess listeners praising the material’s overwhelming positivity. 

In 2019, Struble re-released a fully realized version of Fuzzybrain that featured Can I Call You Tonight,” a track that wound up being a smash-hit back in 2020, as well as two previously unreleased singles “Nicknames” and “Listerine.” 

2021 saw the release of Stubble’s sophomore album  Harmony House, an album that was inspired by the 70s and 80s piano-driven soft rock that he had captured his ears. Interestingly, around the same time, he had been watching a lot of Cheers. “At the very beginning, I was writing a soundtrack to a sitcom that doesn’t exist,” Struble recalls. And while actively attempting to generate nostalgia for something that hadn’t ever been real, as well as something most of his listeners had never really experienced. Thematically, the album concerns itself with a deeply universal theme — growing up and coping with change as being an inevitable aspect of life. 

The album featured the infectious and sugary pop confection “Close to You,” a track indebted to 80s synth-led soul — in particular Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald‘s “On My Own” Cherelle’s and Alexander and O’Neal‘s “Saturday Love” and other duets, but imbued with an aching melancholy and uncertainty. He then made his national late night TV debut on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he, along with his backing band, played “Can I Call You Tonight.” 

Last year, Struble released his third Dayglow album, People In Motion. Entirely written, played and produced by Struble, the 10-song album continues his reputation for crafting upbeat, optimistic, hook-driven pop rooted  in his desire to steer clear of conflict and offering someone something to love. 

The album featured “Second Nature.” Arguably the funkiest and most dance floor friendly single Struble has released to date,””Second Nature,” is sort of like a slick synthesis of 80s pop, Daft Punk, The 1975, and LCD Soundsystem, with glistening synths, Struble’s plaintive vocal, an infectious vocodered vocal-driven hook and an in irresistible, feel good vibe.

“‘Second Nature’ is one of the most ambitious songs I’ve made so far. I didn’t think it would be a ‘Dayglow’ song until the rest of People in Motion started to take shape,” Struble says in press notes. “I made so many versions of it— I just kept writing more and more melodies and ideas. The Logic file ended up being like this 15 minute jam that I eventually condensed to be the near 6 min song it is.

I was really inspired by songs like Lionel Richie’s ‘All Night Long,’ Michael Jackson’s ‘Wanna Be Starting Somethin’, and of course Daft Punk. I just love songs that have repeatable chord progressions that never seem to even reach their potential— they just keep going on and on. Lyrically and musically I wanted to create a song that felt like that. A song that just celebrates itself and the joy of dancing and making music. It doesn’t even feel like ‘Second Nature’— it feels completely innate and natural to make music to me. I love it more than anything and it feels like what I was made to do, and ‘Second Nature’ just grasps that idea and runs with it confidently.”

The JOVM mainstay was recently on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he performed album single “Then It All Goes Away,” an exuberant, feel good, pop anthem, which sees Struble harmonizing over a strutting bass line, twinkling keys, copious, DFA Records amounts of cowbell and the JOVM’s unerring knack for big hooks. Even in a live setting, Struble and his backing band are having themselves a helluva time, playing a fun song.

“I made “Then It All Goes Away” after coming home from my Fall 2021 North America tour. I started writing the bassline during my morning coffee and I finished the full composition by the end of the day. It felt so fresh and natural to write-I was just having fun honestly. It felt like a year’s worth of unconscious ideas all came to the front of my brain at once and just spilled out. I was really just thinking of my fans the whole time making it and imagining ‘how can I make a Dayglow song that feels so familiar, yet feels like a brand new experience entirely?”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Soccer Mommy on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert

When Sophie Allison says to the assembled friends and coworkers assembled around NPR’s Tiny Desk, “We’re finally doin’ it,” she really means it. Just about three years ago, Alison released her sophomore Soccer Mommy album, 2020’s color theory to critical applause. The album marked significant strides forward in the JOVM mainstay’s songwriting and production With the rapidly growing buzz surrounding her a the album, a big year was in store for her and for her bandmates.

The best laid plans of mice and men, right? The band’s visit to NPR’s Tiny Desk, scheduled for March 30, 2020 was the first of many to be canceled because of the pandemic. That particular moment in time required a lot of lemonade-making from just about everyone: Not too long after the start of the lockdown, Allison was the first to record a Tiny Desk (Home) performance for NPR — recorded by Alison on her iPhone.

Clearly for all involved, it was a deeply emotional experience to finally welcome Alison and her backing band — Julian Powell (guitar), Rodrigo Avendano (keys), Nickolas Widener (bass) and Rollum Haas (drums) — to NPR’s Tiny Desk for their long-awaited in-person debut.

Soccer Mommy’s four-song, Tiny Desk set is career spanning set featuring slightly stripped down versions of “Shotgun” off last year’s Sometimes, Forever, “circle the drain” off 2020’s color theory, “newdemo” off Sometimes, Forever and “Still Clean,” off 2018’s Clean. The NPR Tiny Desk set reveals a remarkably self-assured performer and artist, who crafts introspective songs rooted in lived-in experience.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

The acclaimed alt rock/indie rock outfit Ivy — Andy Chase, Dominique Durand and the late Fountains of Wayne co-founder and frontman Adam Schlesinger — can trace their origins back to several events that feel more like a movie script than real life: Dominique Durand had no intentions of being a musician, let alone fronting a band, when she left Paris for New York in 1989, but some serendipitous events transpired that would change her life. In New York, she met Andy Chase, and the pair bounded over a shared love of 80s British bands like The Smiths and Orange Juice. With Durand’s encouragement, Chase began writing his first songs on guitar, eventually placing an ad in The Village Voice for collaborators.

That Voice ad caught the attention of Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood, who both arrived at Chase’s apartment with their own plans: They were hoping to enlist Chase for their own project, the Fountains of Wayne predecessor Pinwheel. Although the meeting didn’t yield either group the players they ere seeking, Chase and Durand were impressed by Schlesinger’s energy, and they kept up a correspondence.

Just as Chase and Durand were settling into a new life as a couple in New York, Durand was stopped at Boston Logan Airport, interrogated and then deported back to Paris. That turn of events is part of the obscured but deeply romantic origin story of the band, which was kept hidden out of fear it would color the perception of their music. But as the story goes, for Chase, there was no real option but to leave for France with the women he loved and then figure things out from here. The pair decided that it was only inevitable that they would get married anyway, so why not just go ahead with it.

Upon the pair returning to the States with a fiancé visa in hand, Chase suggested they finish the songs he’d been working on and perform them at the wedding — with Durand singing for the first time. Soon after, with the encouragement of a bottle of wine, the pair tracked material in their apartment, Schlesinger was enlisted to play bass, and he quickly fell i love with the material and Durand’s voice. At Schlesinger’s suggestion, they began to share the demo with record labels, and they were quickly signed to Seed Records, an Atlantic Records imprint — with ever having played a live set. Waking one morning to find he’d scribbled a list of potential names on a notepad the night before, Schlesinger suggested they adopt Ivy, and the band was born. 

Sadly, Adam Schlesinger died in early 2020. But the surviving members of the band broke their long silence that year, to honor their old friend and bandmate, compiling home videos from studio sessions and early tours. Their tribute captures the innocence and wonder of a shared once-in-a-lifetime moment.

The band’s surviving members recently announced a vinyl re-issue of their seminal 1997 album Apartment Life, which is salted for a March 3, 2023 release through Bar/None Records. The album captures their singular brand of disaffected yet nuanced pop — and it will feature two previously unreleased singles here in the States “Sleeping Late” and “Sweet Mary,” which will be available digitally for the first time ever.

Of course, this will be the first time Apartment Life has been made available on vinyl: Bar/None Records will release a white vinyl edition and a limited edition blue vinyl edition will be made available through Newbury Comics. “This is probably the most important record Ivy ever made,” Ivy’s Andy Chase says of the album and of its reissue. “Me, Dominique and Adam were in NYC going from our apt to the studio every day. It was a glorious time for us – we would just wake up inspired and excited about everything we were doing. We knew we were becoming better at our craft and were excited to show the world. I think with this album we finally succeeded in demonstrating our ability to write and produce great pop songs. It was also the first and last time the three of us smoked pot for the entire duration of an album, supplied by our good friend and co producer Pete Nashel. We also had a healthy budget from Atlantic Records so we had a blast hiring horn players, string quartets, stretching our wings as producers and creating sounds in the studio we had never done before. Songs from this album appeared in countless tv shows, commercials and movies, putting us on the map in Hollywood among the music supervisors and directors, ultimately exposing us to a much larger universe. It was without a doubt the most fun we three ever had making music together. It was a special record for us and still is probably the favorite among our fanbase. For the past 20 years they have been asking for it on vinyl, and with Adam now gone, and IVY signing to Bar/None Records to re- release our entire catalogue of work, it was finally time to memorialize Apartment Life on vinyl.”

The surviving members of Ivy shared the re-issue’s first single, “Sleeping Late,” which was originally released as a bonus track for the Japanese edition of the album. Centered around a jaunty, Beatles-esque arrangement paired with Durand’s innocent, seemingly naive delivery. The song sees the trio managing a difficult balance of being cute without being twee, and tongue-in-cheek irony without sneering or mean-spiritedness.

“Despite being quite ambitious and driven, Dominique, Adam and I were not early risers, at all. Although ‘Sleeping Late’ started as a joke between us, underneath its cutesy, ironic exterior lives a more serious quintessential urban tale about being stuck at home and not wanting to leave,” Chase says. “Dominique always loved the Velvet Underground song ‘After Hours,’ loved the way Mo Tucker sang it, and tried to embody Mo’s innocent naivety and spirit in her vocal performance. We kept it simple and dry, inspired by early Beatles productions. We didn’t put it on the Apartment Life album since it was meant to be silly and sort of tongue and cheek, but we ultimately used it as a bonus track for the Japanese release, figuring over there most people wouldn’t understand the lyrics and never know what lazy idiots we were.”