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.
Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, poet, essayist, visual artist, Dum Dum Records founder and head, and JOVM mainstay Taleen Kali (she/they) has made a career out of crafting romantic punk songs with a cosmic sound that features elements of shoegaze, psychedelia, and grunge that’s simultaneously dreamy and defiant. Kali has also been influenced by melodies and imagery from her Armenian heritage and her parents’ birthplaces of Lebanon and Ethiopia, managing to fuse her cultural heritage and identity with the sounds of the modern countercultures she grew up embracing and eventually exploring as a musician.
Kali’s music career started in earnest 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.
Her solo debut, 2018’s Kristin Kontrol-produced Soul Songs EP was recorded at Hollywood-based Sunset Sound Studios and was mixed by Machine’s Brad Laner. The EP, which found Kali’s riot grrl ethos maturing into a polished multifaceted punk sound 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 and her backing band followed up with an unplugged version of the EP 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 course of this year, I’ve managed to write about two of the album’s released 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.'”
Flower of Life‘s third and latest single, the Too True-era Dum Dum Girls-like “Fine Line” is a gorgeous pop 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 to 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.”
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 small: When Byrd was three, he played 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: Byrd’s work pairs intensely personal songwriting with shoegazer textures and pop accessibility.
At the end of 2020, Byrd along with 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.
The German artist’s latest single “Over You/Over Me” features Byrd’s plaintive and balmy vocals floating over a textured, shoegazer-like soundscape paired with a motorik groove and an enormous hook. 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.”
Sophie Allison’s latest Soccer Mommy album, the Daniel Lopatin (a.k.a. Oneohtrix Point Never)-produced Sometimes, Forever was released earlier this year through Loma Vista/Concord. The critically applauded album sees Allison pushing her sound in new directions — but without eschewing the unsparing lyricism and catchy melodies that have won her attention across the blogosphere and elsewhere.
Inspired by the concept that neither sorrow nor happiness is permanent, Sometimes, Forever is a fresh peek into the mind of a bold, young artist who synthesizes everything — retro sounds, personal tumult, the disorder of modern life — into music that feels built to last for a long time. The album’s material is also partly inspired by the uncomfortable push and pull between her desire to make meaningful art, her skepticism about the mechanics of careerism, and the mundane, artless administrative chaos that comes with all of it.
If you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of the past year or so, you might recall that this has been a busy year for the JOVM mainstay — and I’ve written about:
Sometimes, Forever single “Shotgun,” an infectious banger centered around a classic grunge song structure — quiet verses, explosive choruses paired with layers of distorted guitars, Allison’s achingly plaintive vocals, an enormous hook, thunderous drumming and a throbbing groove. “Shotgun” manages to liken a young romance to a sort of chemical high — but without the bruising and sickening comedown, which always comes after. But throughout the song, its narrator focuses on small moments in a love affair that’s imbued with a deep, personal meaning, “‘Shotgun’ is all about the joys of losing yourself in love,” explains Allison. “I wanted it to capture the little moments in a relationship that stick with you.”
Over the summer, rising indie electro pop outfit Magdalena Bay recently remixed “Shotgun” turning the track into a futuristic, glittery, club banger featuring glistening synth arpeggios, tweeter and woofer rattling thump and wobbling low end paired with Allison’s plaintive vocals fed through gentle amounts of vocoder and other effects. While being a decidedly bold and adventurous, the Magdalena Bay remix retains the core elements of the original — Allison’s penchant for earnest, lived-in lyricism, enormous hooks and the song’s overall woozy feel.
Right before, she started her current tour, which including a sold-out stop at Webster Hall earlier this month that I covered for the fine folks at Musicology.xyz she released a standalone single: “Darkness Forever (Sophie’s Version),” a decidedly lo-fi and woozy take on the album track centered of the around bubbling synths, strummed guitar, skittering and blown out beats paired with Allison’s ethereal and plaintive cooing. While the album version manages to be spectral and brooding with a stormy guitar solo to punctuate it all, Sophie’s version is creepier and evokes an uneasy sense of dread. “This version of ‘Darkness Forever’ is really exciting for me because it’s kind of what got me inspired to start working on the rest of the album,” Allison explains. “It felt new and fresh, and I had a lot of fun making it. When I was done with it, I felt very ready to work on more stuff for the record.”
Sometimes, Forever single “Feel It All The Time” is a slow-burning bit of singer/songwriter indie rock with bursts of glistening and twangy pedal steel serving as a meditative rooted in Allison’s introspective lyricism, which sees her using the metaphor of an old truck to compare the feeling of aging — way too fast.
“‘Feel It All The Time’ is a song that felt really easy and honest for me as soon as I wrote it,”explains Sophie Allison. “It uses this idea of an old truck to kind of compare this feeling of aging too fast. There are also these glimpses of light and freedom, from something as simple as the wind in your hair, that can make you feel alive.”
Directed by directed by Zev Magasis follows Allison in golden hour driving around in her beloved, beat-up truck with defiantly feminist bumper sticker — there’s a goddess on the loose, y’all! — and playing around as a knight, complete with mask and sword and riding a horse as though she were jousting.
Over the past three years or so, I think I’ve spilled more virtual ink covering wildly prolific JOVM mainstays LutchamaK and Israeli-born Paris-based singer/songwriter, guitarist MAGON.
Continuing upon a remarkably prolific period, MAGON released his fourth album, A Night in Bethlehem, earlier this year. I managed to write about three of the album’s singles — two in the lead-up to the album’s release:
“Halley’s Comet,” a dreamy bit of glam-like psych pop featuring glistening and reverb-drenched, post punk-inspired guitars, a simple back beat and fluttering and spacey feedback. Thematically, the song touched upon the immensity of historical and cosmic time: the narrator wonders how life and humanity will be the next time Halley’s Comet passes by our section of the cosmic neighborhood in 2061.
“A Night in Bethlehem,” the album’s title track and second single, which featured a chugging, motorik groove paired with angular bursts of guitar, a razor sharp hook, intergalactic feedback and Magon’s ironically detached vocals. Thematically, the song explored the surrealist fringes of mysticism.
“This Man,” another bit of glam-inspired psych featuring Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie groove paired with a steady yet propulsive backbeat, some lysergic guitar solos, a supple bass line and Magon’s imitable, ironically detached deadpan. But at its core is a narrator, who yearns for something deeper, more profound and more true in a mad, mad, mad world.
The day after the release show for A Night in Bethlehem, MAGON, along with his girlfriend and daughter relocated to Costa Rica. Interestingly, the JOVM mainstay’s latest single “Simple Mind” sees the Israeli-born artist gently refining his sound with hints of surf rock and jangle pop while retaining the hook-driven nature of his previously released material. Written during a major life transition, “Simple Mind” features a narrator, who’s closing a chapter in his career and life and is moving on to a new start, new possibilities and new horizons.
Animated by Violette Legoupil and Ronan Hubert-Duprat, the accompanying video for “Simple Mind” is rooted in a sort of Biblical return to nature while being mind-bending and lysergic.
Though 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 LizardJane 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.”
. . . And Out of The Void Came Love‘s first single “Undertow,” is an atmospheric and brooding song centered around an arrangement of twinkling keys, reverb-drenched, guitar textures, dramatic, glistening bursts of pedal steel, 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.”
Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, poet, essayist, visual artist, and Dum Dum Records founder and label head Taleen Kali (she/they) has made a career out of crafting romantic punk songs with a cosmic sound that features elements of shoegaze, psychedelia, and grunge that’s simultaneously dreamy and defiant. Kali has also been influenced by melodies and imagery from her Armenian heritage and her parents’ birthplaces of Lebanon and Ethiopia, managing to fuse her cultural heritage and identity with the sounds of the modern countercultures she grew up embracing and eventually exploring as a musician.
Kali’s music career started in earnest 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.
Her solo debut, 2018’s Kristin Kontrol-produced Soul Songs EP was recorded at Hollywood-based Sunset Sound Studios and was mixed by Machine’s Brad Laner. The EP, which found Kali’s riot grrl ethos maturing into a polished multifaceted punk sound 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 and her backing band followed up with an unplugged version of the EP 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.
Earlier this year, I wrote about 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” Flower of Life‘s latest single is 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.””
Yeah Yeah Yeahs — Karen O. (vocals), Nick Zinner (keys, guitar, drum machine, bass) and Brian Chase (drums) — released their long-awaited and highly-anticipated fifth album Cool It Down earlier this year through Secretly Canadian. The eight-song album is an expert distillation of the band’s gifts that will impel the listener to move, cry, and listen closely.
“To all who have waited, our dear fans, thank you, our fever to tell has returned, and writing these songs came with its fair share of chills, tears, and euphoria when the pain lifts and truth is revealed,” Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O wrote in a statement to the band’s fans. “Don’t have to tell you how much we’ve been going through in the last nine years since our last record, because you’ve been going through it too, and we love you and we see you, and we hope you feel the feels from the music we’ve made. No shying away from the feels, or backing down from what’s been gripping all of us these days. So yes we’ve taken our time, happy to report when it’s ready it really does just flow out.”
“The record is called Cool It Down which is snagged from a lesser known Velvet Underground song. I told Alex Prager whose photo graces our record cover that her image speaks to sweeping themes in the music and sums up how I, Karen, feel existentially in these times! But there’s always more to the story. . . “
Cool It Down‘s first single, the Dave Sitek-produced “Spitting Off the Edge of the World,” featuring Perfume Genius is a slow-burning and cathartic power ballad centered around glistening and droning synths, Chase’s thunderous drumming, a distortion-driven guitar solo by Zinner, arena rock friendly hooks paired with the lush interplay between Karen O’s and Perfume Genius imitable vocals. Sonically “Spiting Off The Edge of the World” to my ears sounds like a slick yet subtle synthesis of Show Your Bones and It’s Blitz! — and as a result, the song is simultaneously urgent yet an exercise in restraint.
Lyrically, the song reflects on the current state of the environment, and the need for honesty about the damage we’re inflicting on the Earth. “I see the younger generations staring down this threat, and they’re standing on the edge of a precipice, confronting what’s coming with anger and defiant,” Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O explains. “It’s galvanizing and there’s hope there.”
The album’s second single., the Andrew Wyatt-produced “Burning” is a dance floor anthem built over a twinkling piano loop inspired by The Four Seasons’ “Beggin’” and features Zinner’s fiery guitar sprawl, thumping beats, Chase’s funky drum patterns pared with Karen O’s imitable croons and shouts. The song captures the Karen O being engulfed in the tumult and unrest of Los Angeles in 2020 — with fire and smoke bearing down on the city and everything its in path. Sonically, the song sounds like a subtle refinement of It’s Blitz!-era YYYs that nods at Fever to Tell.
“Back when I was 19 living in the East Village, one night a roommate dragged me out of the apartment for an impromptu drink across the street,” Karen O writes. “I left a votive candle burning on a plastic yaffa block which, in my absence set flame to my room. Within an hour and-a half of having one drink down the block, firefighters had come and gone extinguishing the fire. I came home to find that a natural disaster had occurred (to my room) and most of my stuff, lost in the flames. All electronic goods were melted and demolished like my laptop, cameras etc. but oddly enough the items that held the most sentimental value remained intact like sketchbooks, a favorite sweater with hearts across the chest, and photographs. I had photos of my parents in their youth where the fire burnt around the two of them as if there was some intangible force field protecting them, many photos like that, mysteriously leaving the beloved subjects untouched.”
If the world is on fire I hope the most beloved stay protected and that we do all we can to protect what we cherish most in this life. ‘Burning’ is a song about that feeling, smoke signals for the soul. Begging to cool it down, just doing it the best we know how. Nick and I nodded to Frankie Valli’s ‘Begging’, with the line ‘oooh lay your red hand on me baby.’ We’ve cut a rug to many a soulful sixties bangers in our day, it was in our DNA by the time we wrote ‘Burning’.”
Cool It Down‘s third and latest single “Wolf” is a pulsating, It’s Blitz!-meets-Giorgio Moroder-like club banger centered around glistening synth arpeggios, thumping four-on-the-floor paired with Karen O’s imitable delivery expressing yearning vulnerability, longing, and feral lust within the turn of a phrase.
Directed by Allie Avital, the accompanying video stars Severance‘s Britt Lower as a bored and frustrated wife, who rediscovers the wild within — and without. Lower’s performance in which we see her quickly move from bored, frustrated and hemmed in to completely wild — and with teeth bared sees her carrying the emotional weight of the video.
“It was our great fortune to collaborate with the powerhouses Allie and Brit on this video for ‘Wolf.’ Allie casts a spell with the gorgeous world she weaves — always with teeth that bite, and Brit embodies all the contradictions in the themes of ‘Wolf,’ so enamored with her performance that’s got as much heaven as it does hell,” Karen O. says of the accompanying video. “We were beside ourselves with excitement when Allie cast Brit as the lead in the video, YYYs are serious nerds for Severance, what luck when the stars align.”
“’Wolf’ has so much narrative built into the lyrics, and it was such a dream to delve into these themes of hunger, connection, and wildness,” Allie Avital says. “Britt Lower and I used a movement-based technique to play with the nuances of this character as she seeks various forms of connection and moves from feeling trapped to wild to rediscovering a new form of intimacy with her husband. As a director, it’s rare to find such open minded artists like Karen, Nick, and Brian and I’m so grateful they put so much trust in our creative process.”
“When I heard the title of the song and description of the role were both ‘WOLF’ it was a full body ‘yes.’ To get to work on a story about a woman discovering the wild within and without was a dream. And to do so alongside legend Karen O….I mean, I’m speechless,” Britt Lower says.
Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland-based indie outfit Just Mustard — Katie Ball (vocals), David Noonan (guitar, vocals), Mete Kalyon (guitar), Rob Clarke (bass) and Shane Maguire (drums) — formed back in 2016. Their self-produced and self-recorded full-length debut, 2018’s Wednesday was released to critical acclaim: The album was nominated for that year’s Choice Music Prize.
The Irish quintet signed to Partisan Records, who released their sophomore album, Heart Under earlier this year. Heart Under may arguably be one of the most acclaimed and commercially successful albums of the year so far: The album landed at #1 on the Independent Album Chart in their native Ireland — and currently at #7 on the Meteoritic Best Albums of 2022 Chart with an overall score of 89.
Heart Under is an album that challenges the listener, and asks them to forget what they know at every turn — with the the Irish outfit reconfiguring and stretching the ideas and ambitions of a rock band, while turning a year of lockdown and personal struggles into a breathtaking, personal artistic statement.
The band caps off a momentous year with the release of a special deluxe edition of Heart Under that will consist of of a double LP in a gatefold jacket and obi strip, a booklet with exclusive in-studio photos, handwritten lyrics from the band’s Katie Bell and a print of English artist Graham Dean’s In The Water Waiting, the painting that comprises the album’s cover art. The deluxe edition of Heart Under is slated for a Friday release through Partisan Records. Along with that, the acclaimed Irish outfit will be embarking on their first North American headlining tour. The tour includes a November 5, 2022 stop at Baby’s All Right. Tour dates as always are below.
“Blue Chalk,” Heart Under‘s latest single is a brooding and atmospheric song centered around swirling and textured, A Storm in Heaven-like synth oscillations, thumping and propulsive heartbeat-like beats paired with Katie Ball’s ethereal and soaring vocal. The song evokes the oppressively heavy weight of grief.
Directed by the band’s Katie Ball and the help of the band’s friend Seán McMahon, the accompanying under water — and with colored flashing lights. “The song ‘Blue Chalk’ defines the heaviness that the whole of Heart Under exists beneath. The kind that comes with grief and you feel like you are trying to navigate life with the weight of the sea on your chest keeping you down. I wanted to make this video since we started writing ‘Heart Under’ and to me, it visually represents a lot of the emotion in the album. It was filmed in 4hrs in freezing cold water with the help of our friend Seán McMahon.” Just Mustard’s Katie Ball explains.
Brooklyn-based indie rock trio Hello Mary — Helena Straight (guitar, vocals), Mikaela Oppenheimer (bass), and Stella Wave (drums, vocalsmutl) — can trace their origins back to high school: Oppenheimer and Straight started th band when they were high school freshmen. When they met Wave through happenstance, the trio became an inseparable unit with the band consisting of good friends, who are also bandmates.
With the release of a handful of singles and their debut EP, 2020’s Ginger, the Brooklyn-based trio have quickly established and cemented a sound that meshes elements of shoegaze, indie rock and grunge paired with the band’s multipart harmonies. Their Bryce Goggin-produced, self-titled, full-length debut is slated for a March 3, 2023 release through Frenchkiss Records. The album reportedly sees the band referencing 90s alt rock, Elliot Smith and Jeff Buckley — while nodding at contemporaries like Palberta,Spirit of the Beehive and Palehound, acts that don’t shy away from unusual time signatures, careening feedback and unconventional harmonies.
The album will feature several previously released singles including “Rabbit,” “Sink In,” “Stinge,” and “Looking Right Into the Sun,” all of which were recorded in a proper studio and won attention outside of the Brooklyn music scene. Hello Mary’s Stella Wave describes those singles as the first proper introduction to the band.
The album’s material — both lyrics and music — were written in tandem, with the trio knotting their perspectives into a singular consciousness. “We collaborate on everything,” Oppenheimer says, “from our lyrics to guitar parts and even bass and drums sometimes.” Unsurprisingly, the album was written during our current period of immense uncertainty and unease. “We were battling things personally, the world was battling COVID,” Wave says. “This might sound vague,” Wave adds “but to me, this album is about accepting the state of things as they are at a given moment, whether it’s your relationship to another person or the world around you.”
The self-titled album’s latest single “Spiral” is a decidedly 120 Minutes-era MTV-like anthem centered around swirling guitar textures, Oppenheimer’s and Straight’s gorgeous and ethereal harmonies paired with Oppenheimer’s driving baseline and a steady backbeat. The song’s narrator directs their angst and unease to an unknown other, who may have wronged them — or fucked them over.
“‘Spiral’ is about the feelings of paranoia and jealousy that can come with relationships, and how these feelings can become so strong that they turn into delusions,” the band explains.
Directed and edited by Isaac Roberts, the accompanying video for “Spiral” was shot on what appears to be grainy Super 8 at The Slipper Room and Tompkins Square Park, and captures the spiraling jealous and paranoia of someone in an unsteady relationship.
With the release of their first four albums, The Murlocs — King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Ambrose Kenny-Smith (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Cook Craig (bass) along with ORB’s Cal Shortal (guitar) and Crepes‘ and Beans’ Matt Blach (drums) and Tim Karmouche (keys)— firmly established a reputation for crafting fuzzy psychedelic blues, which they supported as an opener for the likes of Gary Clark, Jr., Mac DeMarco, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Pixies, Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks, Wavves and of course, Kenny-Smith’s and Craig’s primary gig, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard — and as a headlining act, as well.
Recorded at Button Pushers Studio, last year’s Tim Dunn-produced, 11-song Bittersweet Demons found the band lovingly reflecting on the people, who have left a profound impact on their lives — the saviors, the hell raisers and other assorted and mystifying and complex characters they’ve come across. While being among the most personal and complex batch of material they’ve written in their growing catalog, the album saw the band bouncing between and around sun-blasted pop, blues punk and wide-eyed psychedelia.
Rapscallion, The Murlocs’ sixth and latest album was released last month through ATO Records. Self-produced by the band during the early stages of the pandemic, Rapscallion‘s 12 songs were recorded in the home studios of the band’s Kenny-Smith, Shortal, Blach, Cook Craig and Karmouche. Conceived and written as a coming-of-age novel in album form, the album’s material is partly inspired by Kenny-Smith’s adolescence as a nomadic skate kid. The album’s world is wild and squalid, populated by an outrageous cast of misfits — teenage vagabonds, small-time criminals, junkyard dwellers and truck-stop transients among others. The end result is an album that thematically — and narratively — is steeped in danger, delirium and wide-eyed romanticism of youth.
Sonically, Rapscallion is reportedly a marked departure from Bittersweet Demons‘ garage rock leanings, with the album’s material featuring strains of stoner metal and post punk. And while darker and more formidable, the album’s songs are still fueled by the same freewheeling energy they’ve brought to the stage.
In the lead up to the album’s release, I wrote about three of its singles:
“Virgin Criminal,” a decidedly post-punk song centered around buzzing and angular guitar attack, a forceful motorik groove, Kenny-Smith’s punchy and breathless delivery paired with the band’s unerring knack for rousingly anthemic hooks. And at its core is a tale of an unnamed protagonist, who describes his first crime, an ill-fated convenience store robbery, which ends in murder — and the wild thrill the narrator gets from being an outlaw.
“Compos Mentis,” a slow-burning and pensive ballad featuring fuzzy and distorted guitars, twinkling keys and a motorik-like groove paired Kenny-Smith’s imitable delivery. While seeing the band exploring a more contemplative — and perhaps even softer — side, “Compos Mentis,” asks a far deeper, far more vexing question: Are we in control of our own minds?
“Bellarine Ballerina,” a roaring and rollicking, mosh pit friendly ripper centered around buzzing power chords, thunderous drumming ad a relentless motorik groove. But the song is underpinned by a never-heard-before sense of malice and unease.
The JOVM mainstays will be embarking on a headlining fall North American tour that includes a November 9, 2022 stop at Webster Hall. As always tour dates are below. You can check out the following link for ticket information and to purchase: https://unclemurl.com/shows. To celebrate the occasion, the Aussie JOVM mainstays shared live footage of the band performing album track “Living Under a Rock” at The Forum: The live footage offers fans and critics, who haven’t seem them, a taste of their explosive and rollicking live show– while capturing the band playing a furious ripper. “Some people live a sheltered life by choice and some people are born into it,” The Murlocs’ Ambrose Kenny-Smith says. “‘Rapscallion’ has had enough of living under a rock. It’s time for a fresh start.”
Fans will also have an opportunity to connect with the band directly at their Reddit r/indieheads AMA taking place, Sunday November 6, 2022 at 7:00PM ET/9:00am Melbourne.
David Haynes Holding, Sr. (bass, guitar) has had a lengthy music career that includes playing in several different projects during the legendary late 70s-early 80s Athens, GA music scene, a scene made famous by R.E.M. and The B52s. As a member of Dorothy’s Dream, Holding, Sr. recorded and released two albums.
Inspired by his father, David Haynes Holding, Jr. (vocals. guitar) grew up in Atlanta with dreams of rock stardom. Back in 2006, a 16 year-old Holding, Jr. founded and fronted The Last Relapse. After a six-year run. a couple of hundred shows across the Southeastern US and their full-length debut Machine, the band went on an indefinite hiatus.
In 2020, Sr. and Jr. began working on music again — first separately and then collaborating on material together. The older Holding has been wildly busy and prolific: Since 2020, Sr. has released five solo albums that see him working in an eclectic variety of musical styles and genres. He has also released two albums under the moniker Soci3ty. The younger Holder has been busy writing and recording material with a couple of former members of The Last Relapse on a new project yet to be announced.
Interestingly. Jr. and Sr. collaborate together on a family musical project that they’ve dubbed The Holdings. The duo’s debut EP Father & Son was released earlier this year. The EP’s lead single, the slow-burning and trippy “Stay Home” is centered around swirling guitar textures and vocals that drift and soar over the song’s arrangement. While sonically bringing Strays-era Jane’s Addiction to mind — at least to my ears — the song thematically touches upon love, life and surviving this brave new world we’re currently in.
“It was really awesome collaborating with my Dad on this album,” the younger Holding says. “He got me interested in music from a young age and we’ve always had similar music taste so it was cool to work on some original music together for the first time.”
