Tag: indie rock

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

M. Byrd is a German-born and based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalists and producer, who can trace the origins of music career, and his passion for music to when he was three: A young Byrd used to play drums in front of the TV. Eventually, he found his dad’s guitar. Encouraged by a teacher, he picked up electric guitar and attended countless roots jam sessions at local joints. Influenced by Alice Coltrane, Tom Petty, Elliott Smith and David Lynch, Byrd began writing his own material. 

The German-born and-based artist turned heads back in 2020 with the release of “Mountain” and “Morning Sun,” tracks that amassed millions of streams and praise from Ones to Watch, Earmilk, Atwood Magazine and several others while firmly cementing his sound and approach: Intensely personal songwriting paired with shoegazer-inspired textures and pop-leaning accessibility.

At the end of 2020, Byrd and producer Eugen Koop holed up in Detmold, Germany in a WWII-era British Corps squash hall-turned recording studio, where they worked on The Seed, the German artist’s forthcoming, full-length debut, an effort that sees Byrd personally playing guitar, synths and bass. The album’s material reportedly draws you in to inspire your own evolution. As Byrd says ““When you listen to the album, I hope you feel like you can grow with me. Maybe you’ll find confidence in yourself. We’re planting this thought with The Seed. 

Late last year, I wrote about “Over You/Over Me,” a song centered around Byrd’s plaintive and balmy vocal floating over a textured, shoegazer-like soundscape paired with a motorik groove and enormous hooks. Much like his previously released work, the new single is rooted in a bright, hopeful sense of the future. “I dreamt there were snakes all over my apartment,” Byrd recalls. “A snake is a symbol for drastic change in your life and you’re repressing it. There’s a lot of change for  me.  I’m  starting  to  be  a  full-time  musician.  There’s  still  a  pandemic.  I  tried  to  dress  up  this darkness nicely. I talked to a friend who is into interpreting dreams, and she said that snakes in dreams meant that I was going through a profound change in my life. I remembered a quote I once read in an essay by Freud:  ‘A  dream  is  the  liberation  of  the  spirit  from  the  pressure  of  external  nature,  a detachment of the soul from the restraints of matter.”

The Seed‘s second and latest single, album title track The Seed is an anthemic bit of indie rock seemingly indebted to 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock centered around Byrd’s uncanny knack for crafting rousingly anthemic hooks with earnest, deeply personal songwriting paired with a lush, Toad the Wet Sprocket meets Starsailor-like arrangement.

“We realized then that nothing will ever be, no matter how far away you feel from something that’s happening in the world, independent from the suffering out there,” the German singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist explains. “It was a hard realization but we needed to figure out a way to deal with it. Listening to the whole album reminded me of holding a seed in my hands. It felt like the start of something and symbolized birth in times of chaos. The song and the album, we decided, had to be called nothing more and nothing less – The Seed.”

The Seed is slated a June 16, 2023 release through Nettwerk Music Group.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Richmond, VA-based shoegazer outfit Keep formed back in 2013. And since their formation, the Richmond-based act have developed a sound that is heavily influenced by 80s goth and post-punk, 90s shoegaze and grunge, as well as post 2000s indie rock. 

Their full-length debut, Happy In Here is slated for a February 3, 2023 release through Honey Suckle Sound. Last month, I wrote about album single “Dasani Daydream,” a brooding track centered around shimmering, shoegazer-like guitar textures, ambient synths, thunderous drums and achingly plaintive vocals paired with enormous hooks. Rooted in earnest songwriting and performance, the track sonically reminded me of  A Storm in Heaven and The Life and Times

Happy In Here‘s latest single, “Everything” is a centered around swirling and stormy shoegazer-like guitar textures and thunderous drumming paired with achingly plaintive vocals in a classic grunge song structure — alternating quiet, loud, quiet sections. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Everything” brings A Storm in Heaven and The Life and Times to mind — but also, A Northern Soul and harder fare to mind.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Golem Dance Cult Shares an Anthemic Ripper

Split between France and England, the emerging, self-described “industrial heavy rock dance” duo Golem Dance Cult features longtime friends and experienced musicians: producer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Charles Why, who has played in Lotsa Noise, Nexus and L-Dopa and vocalist Laur, who has played in Sparkling Bombs, Kevin K Band, Vague Scare and Other-ed. In many ways, Golem Dance Cult can trace its origins back to when its members were teenagers, playing in their first band together, a band in which Laur played drums.

During most of the band’s short run together, the duo have written and worked on material remotely, as a result of the distance between the pair and because of pandemic-related restrictions. But their work is structured around a couple of simple, agreed-upon parameters:

  • They had to work spontaneously, with each member following their instincts.

  • Mistakes should be expanded upon.

What the duo eventually settled on was a rock-inspired approach with electronic production but without the formal structure — or strictures — of either genre.

Back in 2021, the duo released their debut EP Grotesque Radio, which featured the Bauhaus-like “Nosferatu Waltz,” a goth/horror track with a playful nod to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. The duo start off the year with “Dalek Rhetoric,” a song which derives its title from the Dalek in Dr. Who. As the band explains: “Dalek are extraterrestrial killing machines with a binary thinking pattern: you are either a Dalek or they were will destroy you. This seems fitting with the mentality of the world we live in.”

Centered around buzzing power chords, thunderous drumming, rousingly anthemic hooks and arena rock bombast, “Dalek Rhetoric” manages to bring White Zombie and others to mind — with a nasty, gritty edge.

The accompanying video features footage of the band performing the song in desolate and forgotten places paired with edited footage of the Dalek in Doctor Who, reels of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which the band has dubbed another Dalek-like move, and edited footage from Phantom from Space, Plan 9 From Outer Space. Max Schreck’s Nosferatu and Bela Lugosi’s Dracula also make return cameos — because, of course.

Golem Death Cult’s sophomore album Legend of the Bleeding Heart is slated for release this year.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Taleen Kali Returns with Shimmering “Tomorrow Girl”

Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, poet, essayist, visual artist, Dum Dum Records founder, and JOVM mainstay Taleen Kali (she/they) has made a career out of crafting 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 its all 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 Songs and 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. “‘Trash Talk’ is a track that speaks out against haters, trolls, and toxic bullshit in the hope that it gives a voice to anybody who’s been silenced or worn down,” Kali explains. “I wanted to write a song that embodies my favorite jangly Brit-pop songs and the energy of ‘do no harm, but take no shit.’”

  • “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. “‘Fine Line’ kicks off side B of the record. I wanted tTo explore the ways we feel marked by love and pain. How much of an impact the smallest of impressions can make. And how they can feel when they fade,” the JOVM mainstay explains. “I wrote this song in the summer of 2018 right when the last album Soul Songs was coming out. The process of putting out my first solo record was so strange and cathartic that a handful of new songs just came spilling out during that time, and this was the first one. I really wanted there to be a demarcation for side B of Flower of Life so ‘Fine Line’ is written in a minor key, setting the tone for the 2nd half of the album.”

Flower of Life‘s fifth and latest single “Tomorrow Girl” continues in a similar vein as its immediate predecessor with the song being 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.

“‘Tomorrow Girl’ is about finding your future self when the present isn’t cutting it. I wrote this song when I desperately wanted change. Sometimes when we want change we seek the wrong kind of love, we take drastic measures, we make dumb mistakes,” Kali explains. “This song is my dumb mistake. There are so many punk songs titled ‘____ Girl’ and I wanted to write a song in that tradition from a female POV. So, it’s a song about a girl, but we don’t know if the subject of the song is a love interest or if it’s the narrator having an inner conflict, which I wanted to leave purposefully vague; an inherently queer song.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Denver’s Jordan Lucas Shares a Hook-Driven Bop

Jordan Lucas is a Georgia-born, Denver-based singer/songwriter and musician . Lucas can trace the origins of his music career to high school, when he discovered both the guitar — and the guitar heroes. Once he was obsessed with guitar, Lucas started to discover all the things the instrument could do and the pedal effects, endless possibilities opened up for him.

Lucas began to brach out to different styles, genres and instruments, and began to realize that it isn’t necessary to hew your sound and approach to what’s heard on the radio — or even deemed popular. During what was an eye-opening stage of his life and career, the Georgia-born, Denver-based supported other acts, joined bands and did studio work. Moving around a bit, he started a band with a few friends called My Instant Lunch, in which he played guitar and contributed backing vocals and some songwriting. His experience with My Instant Lunch helped to lay the foundation of his own songwriting.

Once My Instant Lunch split, Lucas relocated to Denver, where he started to build a life, while establishing himself as a songwriter and musician. And while he loved working and writing with other artists, he wanted to focus on his own work. In 2020, he began focusing on his own work as a solo artist. Back in 2020, Lucas started working on his full-length debut, Serious Musician, which touches upon his professional journey, his mental health, life experiences and hopes for the future while evoking the outward expression of all the different musical influences and experiences over the years.

Centered around shimmering guitars, glistening keys and a propulsive backbeat paired with Lucas’ plaintive vocals and a rousingly anthemic hook”Wake Up,” Serious Musician‘s first single brings Danish JOVM mainstays Palace Winter to mind — with the song being rooted in deliberate attention to craft.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

David Quinn, best known DWQ is an emerging Dublin-based singer/songwriter, musician and producer, who specializes in melodic indie rock and electronic music rooted in soulful vocals, thoughtful lyrics and catchy riffs. His latest single “Requiem Dance” sees the emerging Dublin artist pairing a soulful reverb-drenched vocal delivery, that brings Michael Hutchence and Tears for Fears to mind with a 90s Brit pop-like arrangement centered around funky guitars and enormous hooks.

’This song is a message from the grave to loved ones. I have always been struck by the mix of emotions at funerals, there is always a sadness yes, but there can be an immense joy and solemn celebration when reflecting the life of someone close to you and the relationship you had with them,” Quinn explains. “I wanted this song to be a call to celebration’ and not mourning’. It’s far from a sad song, it’s very positive and full of melodies, lyrics, overlapping rhythms and sounds that keep the listener engaged right to the end.”

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Gray Days is the (mostly) solo recording project of a rather mysterious Aussie singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who writes and records all the parts of his music — with the exception of drums and tricky lead guitar parts. He makes his music in his garage and then takes it to a friend’s studio, where that friend engineers and mixes the material. 

The Aussie singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist released his full-length debut Drifting earlier this year. The album featured three single that I managed to write about over the course of the year:

  • Going Nowhere,” an anthemic Brit Pop-inspired song that revealed a songwriter with a deliberate attention to craftsmanship and an uncanny knack for a big, catchy hook. 
  • “Transcend,” a dreamy 120 Minutes MTV-like track centered around shimmering and twangy guitars, a sinuous bass line, the Aussie artist’s plaintive delivery, a big hook and a wah wah pedaled solo, that sounded as though it were inspired by Starfish era The Church.
  • “Limelight,” a song centered around layers of shimmering guitar jangle, mournful horns and a soaring hook that may be the most dream pop leaning of the Aussie artist’s catalog to date.

The JOVM mainstay closes out 2022 with “Chasing,” a standalone single and first bit of new material since the release of Drifting. Featuring strummed guitar, reverb-drenched, electric guitar jangle, a propulsive rhythm section paired with earnest, seemingly lived-in lyricism and rousingly anthemic hooks, “Chasing” continues a remarkable run of material inspired by Starsailor-like Brit Pop and Dishwalla-like alt rock.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dayton’s Nick Kizirnis Shares Bluesy and Mournful “The Distance”

Nick Kizirnis is a Dayton, OH-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, who has spent the past two-plus decades writing genre-twisting and genre-defying material on over ten solo albums, while also collaborating playing in bands like The Mulchmen, Tobin Sprout’s Eyesinweasel, Cage and others with a collection of up-and-coming local musicians.

Over the past decade or so, the Dayton-based artist has focused on guitar-driven compositions; but his latest solo album The Distance sees Kizirnis returning to writing lyrics and arrangements while simultaneously being a step forward stylistically. As Kizirnis explains, he had a desire to push himself beyond anything he had previously done. “I wanted ti to be new and different from what people had heard from me,” the Dayton-based musician and songwriter says.

Kirzirnis’ long-time friend, Austin-based drummer Mark Patterson had just temporarily relocated to Dayton to visit family and prepare touring and recording as a member of acclaimed indie outfit Son Volt. Patterson had offered to work on the material that Kizirnis had worked on, enhancing the material’s arrangements based on his experience playing in the Austin scene. During the creative process for the Patrick Himes-produced The Distance, Kizirnis began to feel that writing for his voice was limiting the material. He recruited Cincinnati-based singer/songwriter and cellist Kate Wakefield, one-half of the duo Lung, to contribute vocals.

Wakefield’s background as an opera singer, plus her years of recording and performing helped pushed the fledgling album and recording sessions into high gear. “Kate brought a completely new dimension to the songs,” Kizirnis says. “The moment she sang them, they were transformed into something so much more.”

Brooding album title track “The Distance” features contributions from Deke Dickerson’s Crazy Joe Tristchler (guitar), Himes (Hammond B3 organ) and Wakefield (cello and vocals). Along with Kizirnis, Tristchler, Himes and Wakefield craft a bluesy and mournful soundscape that recalls The Heartless Bastards and crying-in-your-beer honky tonk. The song’s narrator realizes that their relationship has come to the end of the road, and that its time for both parties to pack up their things and sadly move on,

The Katie Marks 2D animated video for “The Distance” features the song’s central couple falling in and out of love. And as they part ways, we see an animated Kizirnis playing guitar in a desolate, roadside honky tonk.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Linsley Hartenstein is an emerging Nashville-based singer/songwriter and the creative mastermind behind the solo recording project Darity. Hartenstein derives the project’s name partially from the word “solidarity” and partially from the word “darity,” which according to the artist is defined as “the sum of.” Fittingly, the Nashville-based artist sees her new project as the result of collective influences and changing of hands, resulting in “out of the box” songwriting and production.

Hartenstein has been pretty busy this year, releasing three EPs — You Choose What Remains, Stay Home and Sunroom Sessions. “Pretending” which interestingly enough appears on both You Choose What Remains and Stay Home a slick synthesis of 90s singer/songwriter alt rock and 90s pop with the song being centered classic 90s alt rock-like song structures — the familiar alternating dreamily contemplative verses paired with power chord-driven and stormy choruses before closing out with a dreamy coda. But at its core, the song manages to display the Nashville-based artist’s penchant for rousingly cathartic hooks rooted in earnest, lived-in lyricism: “Pretending” actually speaks about how no matter how much a victim may pretend nothing happened, trauma linger and sit with you.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Silversun Pickups — Brian Aubert (vocals, guitar, keys). Nikki Monniger (bass, vocals), Chis Guano (drums, percussion, programming, vocals) and Joe Lester (keys, samples, sound manipulation, guitar and vocals) — released their Butch Vig-produced, sixth album Physical Thrills earlier this year. The album’s material came together serendipitously during a particularly dark period: The acclaimed Los Angeles-based outfit started 2020 touring to support 2019’s Widows Weeds. The pandemic halted the rest of their tour and forced the band to retreat to their homes.

With touring on hold, Silversun Pickups’ Brian Aubert channeled his energy into taking care of his son. Although his focus initially shifted from the band to domestic affairs, he found that he couldn’t escape the new melodies that had been germinating in his head. “I would sneak off and start writing these songs, and I didn’t know what they’re for because I didn’t really think about Silversun on any level. I was just doing it to keep myself calm and keep myself company,” Aubert explains. The songs were so different from what he’d previously written for Silversun Pickups that he initially thought he might have been writing a musical. He would describe them as “dream shanties” with gentler vocals, horror-inspired sounds and newer elements coming to mind. But the material isn’t meant to be somber; instead, Aubert manages to explore his own comfort — and discomfort — in seemingly indefinite, newfound isolation.

When Aubert presented the new material he had been working o to his bandmates, they readily embraced what would be a new direction for the band. They decided to continue their collaboration with Butch Vig, who had produced and recorded Widow’s Weeds at his Wisconsin home studio. Once Aubert made plans to visit Vig and play him what he had worked on, more music came. Aubert immediately began recording material with Vig, with the rest of the band joining later.

When Aubert revealed the new material to his bandmates, they readily embraced the new direction—and so did producer Butch Vig. The band reunited with Vig, who first worked with SilversunPickups on Widow’s Weeds, recording the album at the famed producer and Garbage-member’s home. Once Aubert made plans to visit Vig and play him what he had, the music began pouring out. He immediately began recording with Vig, having the rest of the band join later.

With the album arguably being the most exploratory of the band’s catalog, each of the band’s members felt much more free to explore and traverse new ground: Guanlao, who usually shies away from drum fills, took inspiration from The Beatles documentary Get Back and Ringo Starr’s drum work on Let It Be threw some in on the album. Monniger’s vocals were showcased much more than on their previously recorded material. And Joe Lester took on a larger writing role, writing the piano part for “We Won’t Come Out,” which became the backbone of the song.

Although the album features an eclectic mix of sounds and melodies, each song on the album is interconnected with each other, and meant to be experienced as a whole body of work. “All of our records are designed for people who want to listen to them all the way through and hopefully stick around with it,” says Aubert. “After a while, maybe you’ll catch on to the little things—not just the [pattern of] the dream songs, but maybe you’ll hear that, and you’ll hear a melody from the first song in the last song. There are crossover things happening.” Monninger adds, “We’ve been together for twenty-two years; it’s really interesting that we still love doing this. We know that we’re fortunate to still be together after all these years, seeking out the silver lining. I feel like we still have many more things to say, and we’re so happy with how this album turned out.”

Silversun Pickups close out 2022 with a slow-burning and shoegazey, Butch Vig-produced cover of Low’s “Just Like Christmas” that pulls out the gentle yearning and wistfulness out a bit further to the forefront. All proceeds from the song will be donated to Union Gospel Mission, a charity of Alan Sparkhawk’s choice — in Mimi Parker’s name. Silversun Pickups suggest that you should consider directly supporting and listening through Bandcamp — and based on the fact that it’s worthwhile cause, you should.

We’ve been fans of Low’s beautiful music for a long time now. When we heard the news about Mimi’s passing, we were incredibly sad. With Alan’s blessing, we decided to cover one of their Christmas songs, with hopes of raising money for a cause dear to Alan in Mimi’s name. Low’s Christmas is a classic. It was the first one I ever heard that made me feel holiday music could be cool.”

The band will resume touring to support Physical Thrills in 2023. Check out the tour dates below.

Tour Dates
Fri, Feb 17, 2023                     Birmingham, AL          Iron City
Sun, Feb 19, 2023                   Knoxville, TN               Mill & Mine
Mon, Feb 20, 2023                  Asheville, NC               Orange Peel
Tue, Feb 21, 2023                   Louisville, KY               Mercury Ballroom
Thu, Feb 23, 2023                   McKees Rock, PA        Roxian Theater
Fri, Feb 24, 2023                     Cincinnati, OH             Bogarts
Sat, Feb 25, 2023                    Chicago, IL                   Radio Show
Tue, Feb 28, 2023                   Little Rock, AR             The Hall
Thu, Mar 2, 2023                    New Orleans, LA         House of Blues
Sat, Mar 4, 2023                     San Antonio, TX          The Aztec Theatre
Sun, Mar 5, 2023                    Ft Worth, TX                Tannahill’s
Mon, Mar 6, 2023                   Dallas, TX                    House of Blues
Tue, Mar 7, 2023                    Houston, TX                House of Blues
Thu, Mar 9, 2023                    Austin, TX                    Emo’s
 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Frais Dispo (formerly Foreign Diplomats) Share Gorgeous and Melancholy “Juillet”

Featuring the members of Montreal-based indie rock outfit Foreign Diplomats — Élie Raymond (guitar, vocals), Antoine Lévesque-Roy (bass), Thomas Bruneau Faubert (trombone, synths), Charles Primeau (guitar) and Antoine Gallois (drums) — Frais Dispo is simultaneously a sort of side project for the members of Foreign Diplomats and a new direction for the band. The project’s self-titled marks the members first album with lyrics written and sung entirely in French.

Deriving, its title from the French name for the month of July, “Juillet,” the first single off the new project’s first album is a melancholy yet accessible bit of pop rooted in the sort of thoughtful and deliberate craftsmanship that gives the song a sweetly anachronistic air. Centered around a gorgeous arrangement of strummed acoustic guitar, jangling and reverb-soaked electric guitar, atmospheric synths, a supple bass line, propulsive rhythm section paired with big razor sharp hooks and Raymond’s achingly plaintive and wistful vocals, “Juillet” manages to subtly recall Fleetwood Mac and others. The band explains that the song is a reflection on the languorousness of every day life and the passing of time in a small town. Everything is the same, including the simultaneous longing for the past — and for something different.

Directed by Léonard Giovenazzo, the accompanying video for “Juillet” begins around the fall as we see two buddies stealing apples from an apple orchard with their dog. We quickly fast-forward to a very Canadian winter with our two friends hitching a ride on the back of a pickup truck. Throughout the video, we see gorgeously shot scenes of rural, Canadian life, including man riding his horse and taking it back to the stable, another man ice fishing and so on, before we see the band in Western-styled garb performing on a cold night in a barn. The seasons pass and people do what they do to get by — and it’s all pretty much the same.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Louisville, KY’s Future Fossils Shares a “120 Minute”-Era Indie Rock Jam

Louisville, KY-based indie side project Future Fossils — Second Story Man‘s and Julie of the Wolves‘ Carrie Neumayer (guitar, vocals), Parlour‘s and Work Shirt’s Clayton Ray (drums) and Brittany Segura (bass) — can trace their origins back to when the band’s founding members Neumayer and Ray started jamming together as a therapeutic outlet during the summer of 2020.

Although the band’s founding duo had seemingly incompatible aesthetic sensibilities, they were both quickly surprised when they discovered a generative and dynamic creative process that worked for them. Neumayer and Ray sculpted songs from improvisational writing sessions centered around rock instrumentation — vocals, guitar and drums– and samples and beats Ray created on an Akai MPC.

Brittany Segura joined the band in 2021, helping the band flesh out their sound. As a trio, the band went into La La Land Studios to record their self-titled, debut EP with engineer Anne Gauthier, who encouraged an experimental approach to the recording and production process. But interestingly enough, the EP’s lead single, “Trees” sees the band adopting a straightforward, 120 Minutes-era MTV indie rock/alt rock approach centered around jangling guitars, thunderous drumming and enormous hooks paired with Neumayer’s plaintive vocals. As the band explains, the song’s lyrics make a metaphorical connection between trees, the human heart and grief.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Veils Share Lush and Contemplative “No Limit of Stars”

Born in London, acclaimed singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and frontman of The Veils, Finn Andrews spent his teenaged years attending high school in Auckland. Largely disinterested in school, Andrews spent the bulk of his free time playing in several bands — and writing the material that would later comprise The Veils full-length debut, 2004’s The Runaway Found. When he was 16, a set of demos he sent to record companies created some buzz and led to invitations for him to return to London to record an album. 

Andrews and The Veils were signed almost immediately to Blanco y Negro, an indie/major hybrid imprint led by Rough Trade label head Geoff Travis. The band released a handful of singles including the promo-only single “Death & Co,” their commercial single debut, “More Heat Than Light,” and “The Leavers Dance,” a single distributed exclusively at gigs. By 2003, increasing contractual disparities and creative differences between the head of Warner and Travis wound up delaying plans for the band’s full-length debut. 

Blanco Y Negro closed up shop and the dispute turned into a court battle with The Veils regaining ownership of their masters from Warner. By mid-2003, Travis signed the band to Rough Trade. The band went on to record four more songs with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, including “Guiding Light,” “Lavinia,” and “The Wild Son,” which led to the release of the band’s full-length debut, The Runaway Found. Although the album was released to rapturous critical applause, Andrews felt unhappy with the band’s creative direction — and after alleged altercations between him and the other members, The Veils’ first lineup split up two months after their debut album’s release. 

In early 2005, Andrews went on a solo tour of the States and Japan, eventually returning to New Zealand, where he rehearsed with high school friends Liam Gerrard (keys) and Sophia Burn (bass) in Gerrard’s bedroom, quickly amassing an album’s worth of material. When the trio returned to London, Dan Raishbrook (guitar) and Henning Dietz (drums) joined the band, completing the band’s second lineup. 

Early the following year, then-newly minted quintet started recording sessions with Nick Launay in Los Angeles, which resulted in their sophomore album, that year’s Nux Vonica. Released to critical applause, with the album landing on the Best of Year lists of both American and British journalists, Nux Vonica had a darker, heavier and much more complex sound, bolstered by string arrangements by former Lounge Lizard, Jane Scarpantoni. 

Over the course of the next 16 months, the band played over 250 shows across 15 countries. But during the Stateside leg of the tour, the band announced that Liam Gerrard was leaving the band to return home, due to personal reasons. The band continued onward as a quartet, and while living out of a classic garage in Oklahoma City, started recording demos at The Flaming Lips‘ studio between Stateside tour dates of the East and West coasts. 

By mid-2008, they returned to London to work on their third album with Graham Sutton. The three-week session at West Point Studios resulted in 2009’s Sun Gangs, an album that continued a remarkable run of critically applauded material — with the album appearing on a number of Best of Lists that year. 

2011’s Finn Andrews and Bernard Butler co-produced Troubles of the Brain EP marked several major changes for the band: They had left Rough Trade, their longtime label home of nine years and started their own label Pitch Beast Records. 

2013’s Time Stays, We Go was recorded in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles and was supported with a 150-date world tour with sold shows across North America, Europe and New Zealand. Once the tour ended, Andrews told NME in an interview that the band had moved into their own studio in East London and had already begun work on a new record, slated for release in 2016. He also mentioned that he had been commissioned to write an orchestral piece to commemorate the Antipodean dead of World War I, which would be performed in Belgium. 

2016’s Total Depravity was recorded in Los Angeles, London, NYC and Porto and features production by El-P, Adam Greenspan and Dean Hurley. The same month of the album’s release, David Lynch announced that Andrews would appear in the Twin Peaks reboot. The band with Andrews performed album single “Axolotl,” on episode 15. 

Following the release of Total Depravity, Andrews released a solo album and supported it with a world tour. One night, while lashing out at a particularly intense moment on piano, he broke his wrist on stage. “It sounds wild and Jerry Lee Lewis-esque, but it was an absolute fucking nightmare,” Andrews says. He played on and finished the tour, but it wasn’t until after he got the wrist examined much later, that he learned that was a major mistake. “The scaphoid bone in my wrist had died, which I didn’t know was possible. My sister said that at least it was a really ‘on brand’ injury for me.”

Andrews’ convalescence necessitated a lengthy hiatus from touring, so he spent his free time at home writing songs. “I was in a cast and couldn’t use my right hand. I sang the melody lines, then recorded the right hand piano part, then the left hand part,” Andrews recalls. “It might have been an interesting, avant-garde process if it wasn’t also just profoundly annoying.” 

When his wrist had healed enough to allow him to play again, The Veils also found themselves in need of a new label, but in the meantime Andrews was determined to write and record an album regardless. Tom Healy invited Andrews to his studio, where they listened to the massive amount of songs he had written throughout the previous year. “Tom was incredibly patient. It was a really laborious process,” Andrews says. “I brought a lot of junk down there and we had to sift through it all to try and find the parts worth saving.”

During the past two years of intermittent recording between pandemic-related lockdowns, Andrews’ wife gave birth and he wound up writing even more songs. By the time the songs were recorded with a backing band that featured Cass Basil (bass), Joseph McCallum (drums) and longtime bandmates Liam Gerrard (piano) and Dan Raishbrook (lap steel, guitar) and guest spots from NZTrio, who play string arrangements by Victoria Kelly. and Smoke Fairies, who contribute backing vocals, it was clear that the album’s material should be split into two halves to best suit such varied songs. But for a while, the overall meaning of the songs was eluded Andrews. “Then my daughter was born, and suddenly the whole record made sense to me,” he says. The music was telling a story, and somewhat strangely for The Veils, it seemed to have a happy ending.

The Veils’ forthcoming album . . . And Out of The Void Came Love is informed by and is the result of the past two-plus years of convalescence confinement, uncertainty and questioning. Structurally, the album is meant to listened in two sittings with a short break in the middle. Or as Andrews instructs us, “Make a coffee or smoke a cigarette – but don’t mow the lawn or go to the movies or something, that takes too long.”

Last month, I wrote about . . . And Out of The Void Came Love‘s first single “Undertow,” an atmospheric and brooding song centered around an arrangement of twinkling keys, reverb-drenched guitar textures, dramatic, glistening bursts of pedal steel and padded drumming paired with Andrews’ hushed delivery. As The Veils’ frontman explains, “In the year before I started writing this album, I really didn’t think I’d ever write another album again. I was done. I’d irreparably broken my wrist on stage. Then this song came shimmying down the drainpipe, and it really seemed to be willing me to carry on. It is, embarrassingly enough, a song about writing songs, written at what I admit was a pretty low ebb for me emotionally. Both my parents are writers, and though I am grateful to it for the life it continues to afford me, it is a complex genetic inheritance.”

The album’s second and latest single “No Limit of Stars” pairs Andrews’ plaintive and emotive delivery with a lush and swooning soundscape that nods at indie folk, shoegaze and classic Nashville country. Throughout the song Andrews’ narrator contemplates many of the themes of album including “the certainty of death, the power of new life, and the dizziness of contemplating yourself in an unknowably vast cosmos,” Andrews explains.

Directed by Tim Flower, the accompanying video was shot on 16mm film. The video stars Lucas Armstrong as “Warren” and Ella Finer as “The Voice.” The Voice has prepared a gorgeous presentation for Warren, depicting various aspects of human life. We also see the band performing in front of some of that same footage. The video its heavily inspired by the 1970s thriller The Parallax View.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Toulon, France-based singer/songwriter, composer, producer and guitarist Pierre Grech has long been influenced by folk, indie rock, hip-hop, jazz, contemporary classical and electronica. Interestingly, the Toulon-based artist has had a lengthy career that can be traced back to the early 2000s: He was the frontman of experimental electronica act SLiDD — and around the same time, he co-wrote and arranged material on three Jen H. Ka albums. 

Both as a solo artist and bandleader, Grech has played shows across Paris and Southern France with re-arranged and re-imagined renditions of his material in several different iterations, including electro rock, acoustic, cello-guitar duo, rock trio and others. But over the past few years, Grech has been refining and honing his songwriting and compositional approach, and his guitar playing. This has resulted in his latest project,  _telemaque_,which finds the Toulon-based artist drawing from his long-held influences while crafting pop that’s energetic yet sensitive. 

Grech has been rather prolific over the past couple of years: Last year, he released his _telemaque_ debut June EP, which featured the OK Computer-era Radiohead-like, EP title track “June.” He followed that up with two more singles:

  • “December Sun,” which is supposed to appear on his full-length debut. Reportedly, the most rock-leaning song on the album, “December Sun” saw the French artist continuing to refine his sound and approach with the song still drawing from Radiohead but also nodding at krautrock and folk.
  • “Your liquid smile,” the breezy samba meets OK Computer/Kid A-era Radiohead-like single that features guest spots from Kentaro Suzuki (bass) and Joakim Toftgaard (trombone), and was centered around a loose yet hypnotic groove featuring a supple bass line and skittering beats, a looping guitar-driven melody and a mournful, modal trumpet line, which gives the song a wistful, nostalgic air. 

The French JOVM mainstay will be releasing a new EP, We see you when you don’t see us in Spring 2023. The EP’s first single “The Sailor” continues a run of gorgeous, folk-leaning indie rock centered around strummed guitar, Grech’s plaintive vocal, a gorgeous horn and string arrangements. “The Sailor,” which is inspired by The Odyssey and William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus, was written shortly before the birth of Grech’s third child — and is rooted in earnest yet metaphorical songwriting.

In the case of “The Sailor,” Grech uses the metaphor of a sailor, who has come through a storm and is sailing a calm sea. But the song is actually addressed as a message to his children, offering advice on how to live life — to appreciate life’s beauty, fragility in its joys and tribulations.