Tag: indie rock

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Chicago’s Smut Shares Heartbreaking “Let Me Hate”

Chicago-based indie outfit Smut — Tay Roebuck (vocals), Andrew Min (guitar), Bell Cenower (bass, synth), Sam Ruschman (guitar, synth) and Aidan O’Connor (drums) — will be releasing their new album How the Light Felt on November 11 through Bayonet Records.

While 2020’s Power Fantasy EP saw Smut dipping its toe into more experimental waters, How the Light Felt reportedly sees the band diving head-first into their vast array of 80s and 90s influences, including Oasis, Cocteau Twins, Gorillaz, and Massive Attack — while pushing their sound in a new direction. 

How the Light Felt‘s material can be traced back to 2017: Following her sister’s death, Tay Roebuck turned to writing to help her navigate a labyrinth of grief and heartache. “This album is very much about the death of my little sister, who committed suicide a few weeks before her high school graduation in 2017,” Roebuck explains in press notes. ” “It was a moment in which my life was destroyed permanently, and it’s something you cannot prepare for.” 

Roebuck’s bandmates composed the song’s arrangements, excavating underutilized 90s guitar tones and drum beats to build an expansive sonic world for her lyrics. “A couple weeks after the funeral we played a show and I couldn’t keep it together,” Roebuck says, “but we just kept playing and started writing because it was truly all I felt I had, it was all I could do to feel any sense of purpose. For the past five years now I’ve been chipping my way through grief and loss and I think the album itself is just the story of a person working through living with a new weight on top of it all.”

While rooted in profound heartbreak and loss, the album’s material pairs nostalgic inducing guitar tones, lush yet unfussy production, lived-in lyricism, and earnest vocals in a way that turns pain into a bittersweet yet necessary catharsis. Certainly, if you’ve lost a loved one, the album will likely resonate with you on a deeper level than most. 

Earlier this month, I wrote about “After Silver Leaves,” an infectious 120 Minutes era MTV alt rock-inspired anthem centered around reverb-drenched guitar jangle, driving rhythms paired with Roebuck’s gorgeous and expressive vocals, an enormous, sing-a-long worthy hook and a scorching guitar solo. While sonically recalling Reading, Writing and Arithmetic-era The Sundays, “After Silver Leaves” is rooted in deeply personal, embittering experience. 

“This song is about a former relationship I was in, it was really horribly abusive. But the approach to this one was to just spell it all out and see how silly it feels once shit really hits the fan,” Roebuck says. “The song sounds so happy, but I’m talking about driving someone to a hospital when they’ve overdosed. And having to detach myself and realize that maybe it’s not my job as a teenage girl to save some sad sack of a guy. I think a lot of young women will relate to that, unfortunately.”

How the Light Felt‘s latest single “Let Me Hate” continues the 120 Minutes MTV-era vibe with Roebuck’s gorgeous and plaintive vocal paired with glistening, reverb drenched guitars, a gently propulsive rhythm section and a soaring chorus. But unlike its immediate predecessor, “Let Me Hate” directly addresses the aftermath of a tragic death with an unvarnished honesty. And as a result, the song is equally frustrated, grief-stricken, confused, angry, lost and embittered — within a turn of a phrase.

“For years after my sister’s death I could not dream about her. I’d hear my family members talk about her visiting them in dreams and telling them she’s okay or misses them, there was a lot of mysticism going on the first few years,” Smut’s Tay Roebuck explains. “When I did start having dreams she was always out of reach, walking into another room as I entered or people would be assuring me she was present somewhere if I could find her. ‘Let Me Hate’ is about the first time I had a dream where my little sister spoke to me after she died. I knew if I let her go she’d slip away and when I woke up I was angry at myself. So it’s a very literal song.”

Created by the band’s Aidan O’Connor, the accompanying lyric video features photos from the band’s summer North American tour with indie darlings Wavves.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Luminous Wavez Share Brooding Yet Hopeful “Have No Fear”

Transatlantic indie duo Luminous Wavez — British-born artist Leaone (pronounced Lee-own) and Patience Gloria‘s Mike Dobbins — can trace their origins back to the long days and nights of COVID pandemic lockdowns.

Their sophomore EP together, Ashes of the Artists features Dobbins penned lyrics informed by binge listening sessions of Johnny Cash, Chris Cornell, Leonard Cohen, and Nick Cave and demonstrate the hard-won maturity from lived-in experience. This is paired with Leaone’s haunting baritone delivery and remarkable knack for catchy melodies.

Ashes of the Artist EP‘s latest single, “Have No Fear” is a Nick Cave meets The National-like track built around a hauntingly sparse and cinematic arrangement of sharply arpeggiated strings, strummed acoustic guitar and dramatic, padded drumming paired with Leanoe’s brooding baritone. Interestingly, “Have No Fear” may arguably be the most hopeful song on the EP as it features a narrator, who manages to persevere in the face of a variety of obstacles.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Toulouse, France’s Edgar Mauer Shares Gorgeous and Introspective “By any means”

Founded back in 2020 by its founder, singer/songwriter and musician Maëve Couderc as a way to work around various gender roles, the Toulouse, France-based indie outfit Edgar Mauer became a full-fledged band when sound engineer Alain Flary and drummer Camille Bigeault joined. Since then, the band has developed a sound that meshes elements of Bristol trip-hop and Kate Bush-like pop with a modern touch. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Elma Capser,” a slow-burning bit of dream-pop centered around Coudec’s yearning vocal, Bigeault’s tribal-like drumming and Flary’s glistening guitar lines paired with a soaring hook and chorus. Sonically, “Elma Casper” brought The Sundays, The Cocteau Twins and even Mazzy Star to mind. And much like those acts, the song itself is rooted in the deeply personal, with a novelist’s attention to psychological detail. 

The band explained, that the song’s inspiration came from a mysterious name scrawled on a wall in Paris — Elma Casper. Couderc wound up writing lyrics, imagining what Elma Casper’s life would be, while also wondering if someone scrawled her name on a random wall, if they would be as a curious as she was. They also add that the song is an ode to the feelings and experience we leave behind when living and leaving a place, accepting our own trajectory.

The Toulouse-based trio’s latest single “By any means” continues a run of gorgeous and introspective dream pop-inspired material featuring shimmering, reverb-drenched guitars, Couderc’s achingly plaintive vocal paired with an enormous hook and chorus. While sonically, “By any means” will bring back some fond memories of 4AD Records classic heyday and 120 Minutes-era MTV, the song as the band explains is a self-empowerment anthem.

Directed by Patrycja Toczek and the band, the video stars Edgar Mauer’s Couderc as a bored version of herself in the park on a lovely day, when she encounters a cheery monster played by Léna Base, who spends the day with Couderc. Throughout their time together, they play a variety of games — and we see Couderc eventually cheer up. The video itself possesses a goofy, DIY charm that’s just adorable.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Jonty Lovell is a Tottenham-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and creative mastermind behind the rising indie rock project common goldfish. As a musician, Lovell initially made a name for himself busking along the Hackney Wick and playing the London gig circuit. And as a producer and songwriter, under the moniker J Love, the Tottenham-based artist has been credited on songs that have received critical applause from media outlets like Mixtape Madness, New Wave Magazine, and GRM Daily.

With common goldfish, Lovell’s sound and approach is informed by the music of his childhood. “Growing up I was exposed to a lot of music, with my family all having quite different tastes. Deciding who had control of the CD player could often lead to arguments, but as the youngest child, I seem to remember rarely getting to choose. The soundtrack of my early childhood featured the likes of The Beatles, The Police, Moby, Blur, Gorillaz, and Eminem and Dr. Dre – it was quite an eclectic mix that lured me in.”

As a teenager, The xx‘s debut album further inspired Lovell. “I was by no means a great technical guitarist, and so I think this inspired confidence to continue writing music,” he explains. As a a university graduate, he began to take music seriously, honing his craft with an old laptop his friend gave him, which had Abelton on it. At this point of his life, Floating Points, Four Tet, Nightmares on Wax, and Caribou were influences on him and his sound and approach. Lovell then took his self-taught production style, eclectic music latests and finessed live instrumentation and his vocals.

Earlier this year, I wrote about Lovell’s common goldfish debut single, “Feel The Fuzz,” an upbeat, optimistic and decidedly late 80s-early 90s Manchester-like bop featuring fuzzy guitar lines, blown out breakbeats, a funky and propulsive bass line and common goldfish’s easygoing delivery paired with a euphoric boy-girl led hook and subtly modern production sheen. If you’re a child of the 80s and 90s as I am, “Feel The Fuzz” will bring back nostalgic memories of The Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Stereo MCs and the like, complete with an uplifting much-needed message to the listener. 

“The track embodies the sense of dreamer’s optimism (‘the fuzz’) and the feeling that led me to change career paths and pursue my passion in music,” the creative mastermind behind common goldfish explains in press notes. “We only lead one life, ‘Feel the Fuzz’ is about helping people see that they should value their experiences over materials and not always seek the easy options in life.”

Over the summer, Lovell released his sophomore common goldfish single “Shout Louder,” which landed praise from the likes of Backseat Mafia, CULTR, CLOUT, and Lost in The Manor among others.

Building upon the growing buzz surrounding him, the Tottenham-based artist has played a series of public shows in iconic locations across London, including Tottenham’s DIY skate park and on top of a boat, floating down Regent’s Canal.

Lovell’s third and latest single, the expansive “I Don’t Feel Today” continues a remarkable and ongoing run of Brit Pop-inspired material with the song prominently featuring twinkling keys, blown out, skittering backbeats, relentless and propulsive bass line, squiggling guitar lines paired with the Tottenham-based artist’s knack for crafting infectious, feel good hooks. Unlike its immediate predecessors, “I Don’t Feel Today” sees Lovell making a very subtle nod to 60s psych pop with bursts of spacey organ.

Interestingly, the song is rooted astutely incisive social observation, with its narrator feeling lost, confused and dispirited by modern life“We are living more and more on top of each other but for some reason we’re becoming increasingly isolated from one another. The rise of independence and individualism has been at the expense of community and a sense of belonging,” Lovell explains in press notes. “With the pace of life getting faster and faster, we’re spending more and more time in front of screens on a never-ending quest for instant gratification. I do worry that we’re losing our sense of reality and what matters most – human interaction and connection.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Courtney Barnett Performs “Turning Green” on “Late Night with Seth Meyers”

With the release of 2012’s I’ve Got a Friend Called Emily Farris EP and 2013’s How to Carve a Carrot Into a Rose, Melbourne-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Courtney Barnett received critical acclaim from outlets across North America, the UK and Australia for work that paired witty and rambling conversational-like lyrics delivered with an ironic deadpan paired with enormous, power chord-driven arrangements.

While those successes may have seemed to come about overnight, they actually didn’t; Barnett carved out a reputation for being one of Melbourne’s best guitarists, which was cemented with a stint in Dandy Warhols’ Brent DeBoer’s side project Immigrant Union and a guest spot on on Jen Cloher‘s third album, In Blood Memory.

Barnett’s full-length debut, 2016’s Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit, which featured “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party” and the T. Rex-like “Elevator Operator was released to critical praise across the world. The acclaimed Aussie artist collaborated with Kurt Vile on 2017’s critically and commercially successful Lotta See Lice, which landed at #5 on the Aussie charts, #11 on the British charts and #51 on the American charts. 

Her sophomore solo album, 2018’s Tell Me How You Really Feel, which featured the motorik groove-driven “City Looks Pretty” continued an enviable run of critical and commercial success. Barnett supported Tell Me How You Really Feel with a three month world tour that included some of her biggest tour steps in Australia at the time. 

Barnett’s Stella Mozgawa co-produced third album Things Take Time, Take Time was released earlier this year through Mom + Pop Music and Marathon Artists. Centered around intimately detailed songwriting, Things Take Time, Take Time finds the acclaimed Aussie crafting a journey through heartbreak, recovery and all the soft moments in between that speak to the feelings and experiences that are innately human. 

Now if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of this year, you may recall that I’ve written about “Before You Gotta Go,” a lovely ballad that’s one-part frustrated kiss-off and one-part gracious send-off rooted in bittersweet, lived-in experience: the hope that the last words between you and a soon to be former lover, won’t be unkind.

Along with an extensive North American tour, Barnett has made the rounds of the late night, Stateside talk show circuit. Earlier this year, Barnett played the introspective garage rocker “If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight,” an empathetic portrayal of the desperate self-doubt and awkwardness of a crush that’s more than likely equally requited yet not exactly confirmed or expressed on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Barnett was recently on Late Night with Seth Meyers, where the acclaimed Aussie singer/songwriter and her backing band played a loose and jammy rendition of garage rock anthem “Turning Green,” complete with Barnett playing a roaring solo.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Kansas City’s Bolinas Shares “120 Minutes”-Era MTV-like “Ge”

Chris Thomas is a Kansas City-born and-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind Bolinas, a bedroom pop-turned heavy solo recording project. Back in 2012, Thomas, in search of greener pastures packed the entirety of his belongings into his Volkswagen and hit the road for Seattle. But while traveling through the upper Midwest and Mountain states, his catastrophically burst into flames. Thomas, escaping with only a camera, documented a raging inferno fueled by all of his possessions, right before being stranded in South Dakota’s Badlands. Shaken, he continued on Seattle with a persisting resolve.

Since then, the Kansas City-born singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has been busy: He has worked as a both a tour manager and guitar tech for bands like Youth Lagoon, Hunny, and Wallows. He also spent several years in Los Angeles, bartending and using side gigs as a way to replace his lost gear and establish himself in the music industry.

When the pandemic put everything on pause, Thomas returned to Kansas City, where he began tracking the material that became his forthcoming Bolinas debut Heavy Easy Listening with his friends and former bandmates from the Kansas City metropolitan area. “I’ve been a guitar tech, carpenter, cabinet maker, bartender, retail sales associate, liquor store clerk… Blue collar to the core. . . ,” Thomas says in press notes. “I think that spirit is embedded in Bolinas. I’ve spent a lot of years handing people guitars to go out and live my dream while I’m off stage in the shadows. We play music because we love it and these people, after all we’ve been through, are my family.”

Naturally, Thomas’ formative years in Kansas has helped to bring a mix of influences to Bolinas. “We were so close to Lawrence, KS and Omaha, so their influence on me was massive. 90’s alt rock of Shiner, post rock/space rock of The Appleseed Cast and HUM, quintessential emo of The Get Up Kids, raw post punk of Cursive, and psych folk of Bright Eyes really taught me about music and helped me craft a style. While I was sort of a fan of the screamo of the early 2000’s, it never really influenced my music in a big way. All of my former bands were usually the “softest” on the bill and relied on post rock crescendos rather that hardcore breakdowns. I never really felt like I had a place in the music scene in those years.”

Sonically, the album features guitar tones with the heaviness and distortion of bands like Nothing, DIIV and Greet Death but with dynamic rhythms and emo pop melodies from bands like Jimmy Eat World, Swirlies, and Cursive. Interestingly, for a while Thomas felt like his sound was “not quite ’emo’,” “too wordy for shoegaze, too heavy to be pop,” but the album reportedly sees him settling into a sweet spot that should win over fans of heavy shoegaze, dream pop and indie rock.

Discussing the themes of the record, Thomas says “Obviously writing about heartbreak isn’t a groundbreaking concept, but I wrote most of this record while in various stages of the grieving process from heartbreak, monetary struggles, to the recovery from alcoholism and drug abuse. The hurt you feel, the denial, the acceptance or dismissal of failures, the anger toward yourself and others, the indifference you can sometimes have towards new romantic interests because you’re not ready to move on, jealousy, loneliness, and searing pain of having to watch someone you love so desperately move on from you.”

While it has been a long and winding road from 2012 to finally recording and releasing his debut album as Bolinas, the album’s cover, Thomas’ photo of his Volkswagen on fire has gradually become a personal symbol of strength and resilience for him. “It may be a grainy photo, but I think it’s a perfect metaphor for how I’ve felt about my choices in life sometimes” Thomas says. “It really marked the start of this adventure that’s been the decade from 25th to my 35th year on this earth, and the constant struggle to be better… I hope that people can listen to these musical anecdotes of how much of a fuck up I can be, uneasy to be around, and lonely I have been; and realize that you can always come back from it. A monument to accepting and forgiving yourself and others for being human.”

Heavy Easy Listening‘s latest single, the woozy “Ge” derives its name for the abbreviation for the element Germanium on the periodic table. Interestingly enough, Germanium is a hard-brittle metalloid that is found in the components of many fuzz pedals — including the one that Thomas used to record the song. Centered around painterly textured layers of fuzz pedaled guitars, thunderous drumming, Thomas’ achingly tender and plaintive delivery and an enormous and rousingly anthemic hooks “Ge” will bring back memories of 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock.

Thomas admits that he chose to name the song after Germanium because “I really like reading ‘hard-brittle’ because I know I can have a hard exterior, but I can also be brittle emotionally.” It’s a good fit for the lyrics of the song, which depict a forlorn lover who knows that they’ve screwed things up and are now powerless to fix it.”

“Sometimes I lay awake recounting things I’ve said to people that I regret…” Thomas continues. “I find myself talking in circles, getting frustrated, and then resorting to incoherent insults that confuse both parties. They’re definitely not something I mean, I struggle to understand why I even said them, and I always regret them. All of this contributes to the line ‘My knack for ruining the only good things I have going’. I’ve found myself in this situation so many times… It’s so hard to watch someone, you still love so deeply, move on and find happiness with someone else. Though you are truly happy for them, it’s still so hard to wish so dearly that you could have been ‘the one’. However, this song displays my willingness to change for the better and maybe that’s the takeaway.”

The accompanying video shot by BK Peking and Tracy Nelson is a slickly edited visual featuring countless takes of Thomas breaking out into a sprint in down the tree-lined suburban streets of his childhood. In each take, we see Thomas’ outfits change ever so subtly throughout. Symbolically, the small things change — but the larger, overarching things never seem to change.

Heavy Easy Listening is slated for an October 7, 2022 release though Sub Rosa Selects/Rose Garden Recordings.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sam Himself’s Lovingly Schlocky Send-Up of Country Western Specials

With the release of 2020’s Slow Drugs EP and last year’s critically applauded full-length debut Power Ballads, Swiss-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sam Himself had quickly made a name for himself both nationally and internationally: Power Ballads was called a “well-crafted set of atmospheric post-punk” by KEXP; the album landed on the national charts while receiving airplay across both the States and Europe. The Swiss-born, Brooklyn-based artist also earned two Swiss Music Award nominations.

Sam Himself was supporting the highly buzzed around Slow Drugs with a European tour when the COVID-19 pandemic threw a monkey wrench into everyone’s plans and hopes — including his plans to return back to NYC, his home for the past decade. The resulting shock and sense of powerlessness in almost every aspect of his life wound up inspiring the sardonically titled Power Ballads.

Early in his career, the Swiss-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has proven to be remarkably prolific. Building upon that reputation, Himself’s Daniel Scheltt-produced sophomore album is slated for an early 2023 release. Unlike its predecessor, the new album’s material reportedly brims with the hope and promise of a reopening world, where it’s possible to record, perform and even tour together. While continuing his successful collaboration with Schlett, the album also sees the Swiss-born, Brooklyn-based artist working with longtime musical collaborators JD Werner (bass) and Chris Egan (drums).

“I definitely didn’t plan to cut an entire album when I went back into the studio earlier this year, but the initial session went so well, we walked out with just under ten songs,” the rising artist explains in press notes. “On a whim, I asked Daniel for more dates before everyone was gonna be busy again for months. He was all for it, provided that I had more songs ready to record – which of course I didn’t, but that didn’t stop me. I bluffed, the dates went on the calendar and just like that, I had about a week to write two whole songs from scratch.”

Recorded with his backing band in the same room at Schlett’s Brooklyn-based Strange Weather Studio, the album’s second and latest single, “Golden Days” is a slick and well-crafted synthesis of Bruce Springsteen/Sam Fender-like arena rock power ballad and atmospheric Patsy Cline-meets-Daughn Gibson-like country as you’ll hear glistening synth arpeggios, chugging guitar doused in a little bit of reverb paired with a big hooks and even bigger choruses and Himself’s unique delivery which displays vulnerability, assertiveness and resilience within the turn of a phrase. Throughout the song, it’s narrator manages to turn heartbreak and regret into the resilience of a teachable moment — about both life and fittingly, himself. (No pun intended here.)

“I got the chorus for Golden Days together pretty quick, but I heard it as a more of a slow, Western ballad type of thing; I’d just been on tour, meaning days and days in the van listening to nothing but Country – ask my band, they love it! – so all I could come up with was, like, Patsy Cline!” Himself says in press notes. ” Luckily for me, JD (Werner) is a prolific songwriter in his own right who just makes stacks of demos at all times! I told him about my conundrum, he offered to show me some of the material he’d been working on. The very first demo he shared gave me the instrumental parts for the verses and those beautiful guitar themes. Then all I had to do was write some words, find a vocal melody, speed up my Country chorus and that’s how we made Golden Days.” 

Filmed by Stefan Tschumi, the accompanying video for “Golden Days” stars Sam and his touring band, Benjamin Noti and Georg Diller in a lovingly schlocky and hokey homage to classic Country Western TV specials, like Grand Ole Opry, The Porter Wagoner Show, The Johnny Cash Show and others, full of showbiz cliches, performative nostalgia for the gold ol’ days, and some self-parody as well.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New VIdeo: Warhaus Shares Lush and Groovy “Desire”

Maarten Devoldere is a Belgian singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known for being co-lead vocalist and one-half of the core songwriting duo behind the critically applauded Belgian indie rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Balthazar. Devoldere is also the creative mastermind behind the equally applauded solo recording project Warhaus. 

With Warhaus, Devoldere further cemented a reputation for crafting urbane, literate and decadent art rock with an accessible, pop-leaning sensibility. It shouldn’t be surprising that Devoldere’s Warhaus debut, 2016’s We Fucked A Flame Into Being derived its title from a line in DH Lawrence’s seminal, erotic novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Thematically, the album touched upon lust, desire, the inscrutability of random encounters, bittersweet and regret with the deeply confessional nature of someone baring the deepest recesses of their soul.

Devoldere’s sophomore Warhus album, 2017’s self-titled saw the acclaimed Belgian songwriter and artist thematically moving away from decadence, lust and sin towards earnest, hard-fought and harder-won love — with much of the material being informed by his relationship with vocalist Sylvie Kreusch. Interestingly, the recording sessions were much more spontaneous and heavily influenced by Dr. John‘s Night Tripper period: The album features heavy nods to voodoo rhythms and New Orleans jazz despite the fact that his backing band wasn’t known for being jazz musicians.

The Belgian songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s third Warhaus album, Ha Ha Heartbreak is slated for a November 11, 2022 release through Play It Again Sam. Ha Ha Heartbreak‘s material was written during a three week stay in Palermo. All Devoldere needed was the solitude of a hotel room, a guitar, a microphone and a recently broken heart.

The sorrow was too difficult to handle, so he went to Sicily to escape. But as it always turns out, those who try to outrun life and heartache quickly run into themselves. But the album sees Devoldere wrapping his sorrow into hooks, instant singalong choruses and irresistible melodies. Sonically, the material is light yet lush featuring strings, sensual vocals, horns and even playful piano parts. The end result is an album that’s a deep and moving emotional exploration yet something musically very rich.

Album opening track and first single “Open Window” the first bit of new Warhaus material in five years was centered around Devoldere’s brooding baritone, strummed acoustic guitar, a Quiet Storm-like groove, twinkling piano and a gorgeous, cinematic string arrangement. It’s the sort of song that you can gently sway along to with eyes closed and drifting off into your own nostalgia-induced dreams — or delusions.

Perhaps unsurprising, the song thematically is rooted in a heartbroken delusion that should feel painfully familiar to most of us: the delusional hope against hope that the breakup isn’t permanent, that they’ve just temporarily lost their minds and will return soon. But in the end it’s all vapor and blind, foolish denial.

“Open Window is about keeping reality at bay in that comfortable bubble of denial. Definitely my favourite stage of heartbreak,” Delvodere explains. 

Ha Ha Heartbreak‘s second and latest single “Desire” is a lush and sultry bop centered around mournful horns, soaring strings, an infectious, two-step inducing groove and twinkling keys paired with Devoldere’s breathy baritone. The song’s narrator desperately addresses just about every god he can imagine, but as he says in the song, “No matter what I turn to/it’s failing me.”

“Trying to love without attachment? Trying to stop the hedonic treadmill from spinning? Trying to reincarnate as Celine Dion’s voice? Follow me on Instagram for misinformation. This song’s dedicated to all those false idols out there. Love, Warhaus,” Devoldere says of the new single.

Directed by Pieter De Cnudde features Devoldere in a musty, old apartment as a bored man, fulfilling Sisyphean-like tasks on old analog devices, including an old train monitoring system and a phone operator bank, which at one point he’s connected to by umbilical cord. The visual continues a run of brooding and surreal visuals, rooted in heartache and despair.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays The Orielles Share Woozy “The Room”

Since forming in Halifax, UK over a decade ago, while their members were still in their teens, JOVM mainstays The Orielles — siblings Sidonie B. Hand-Halford (drums) and Esmé Dee Hand-Halford (vocals, bass) and their best friend Henry Carlyle (guitar, vocals) — have released three critically applauded albums, 2017’s Silver Dollar Moment, 2020’s Disco Volador and last year’s La Vita Olistica, which has seen the band move from lo-fi DIY indie rock to Stereolab and A Certain Ratio-inspired avant pop. 

When all of the band’s live dates to promote their sophomore album were scrapped as a result of the pandemic, the JOVM mainstays spent 2020 creating La Vita Olistica, a high-concept art film written and directed by the Hand-Halford sisters, which they toured in cinemas during the following year. This was the beginning of a series of creative breakthroughs that would result in Tableau, the band’s forthcoming album. 

One of those breakthroughs came about when the band was booked to host a monthly show on Soho Radio. Those broadcasts quickly became impromptu research and development sessions for the ideas that would feed into the album. “Doing that monthly meant we had a reason to meet up and bring two hours of music between us which we’d play, discuss, hold physically and share,” the band’s Henry Carlyle says in press notes. “We were listening to much more contemporary music than before,” Esmé Dee Hand-Halford adds. 

Another breakthrough came while remixing another band’s track in a studio in Goyt, UK. This wound up becoming what the band dubbed the Goyt method, a central creative process behind the forthcoming album. “To Goyt it” Sidonie B. Hand-Halford explains, “that’s getting all these pieces and rearranging them. We had vocal melodies and ideas that we’d then run through and sample, and play them on sample pads. We were being editors, really.”

The JOVM mainstays also completely revamped their long-held creative process: Where they had previously only gone into the studio once songs had been tightly crafted at the demo stage, the band began to consider new practices in line with the contemporary sound they were aspiring to craft. No demos, and a lot of improvisation. They also used experimental 1960s-era tape looping and Autotunes. The album also sees them drawing from the likes of Burial and Sonic Youth. And for the first time, no outside producer — but the band collaborated with friend and producer Joel Anthony Patchett. 

Mostly recorded during last summer while the band was holed away in Eastbourne, UK, the album not only sees the band quickly adopting contemporary production, but concepts from the art world and minimalism, as well. Sidonie B. Hand-Halford researched the graphic scoring method of Pulitzer Prize-nominated trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith. They also used Oblique Strategies, the playing cards designed to aide creativity created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt in the early 1970s. “We’d been speaking about wanting to use them for ages, and then we found a set of cards at the studio in Eastbourne,” explains Sidonie, “before each song, we’d pick out a card and that would be our motif for playing that take.”

Slated for an October 7, 2022 release through Heavenly Recordings, Tableau is a double album that reportedly rewards serious immersion, because it’s both complex and diverse. And while the album will likely challenge preconceptions, this is something that the band suggests they’ve been doing throughout their career anyway. “All through our whole career we’ve had to prove ourselves so, so much” Carlyle says. “You can’t disconnect the age and the gender thing either” Esmé Dee Hand-Halford says. “People belittle your age because they see women in the band. Whereas lad bands, if they’re eighteen it’s apparently exactly what people want to see.” Being from a small town in West Yorkshire may have added to that also, but Sidonie counters that “being from Halifax has also been a blessing, it’s kept our egos in check.”

Of course along with that, the album is also the product the product of the unique telepathy between three singular musicians that have grown in symbiosis for over a decade — and the three of them vibing and trading ideas together in a room. “As creators, for the fact we’ve produced it ourselves, it feels like a starting point” Esmé Dee Hand-Halford suggests, “even though everything that’s going previously has counted, this now feels like Ground Zero.” For the future, now, it’s all gates open.

Last month, I wrote about Tableau‘s expansive first single “BEAM/S.” Clocking in at 7:53, “BEAM/S” is an shapeshifting and cinematic bit of dream pop-meets-avant-garde jazz/pop featuring twinkling and fluttering synths, jangling and chugging guitars, ethereal vocals and a soaring string arrangement. Sonically, the song evokes continuous and unending change and uncertainty — while continuing the band’s genre-bending approach with the song revealing nods to dream pop, slowcore, avant-garde pop and even Afrobeat. 

“This is a song that has travelled, grown and adapted with us through all of the seasons,” Esmé Dee Hand-Halford explains. “This is why the lyrics kind of reflect that, the song reflects the changing of conditions. The warping of time, memories and relationships that you foster along the way. The original track was jammed at practice, Henry would bring his recording gear and it came about in quite an off the cuff way. I can’t remember how we really began jamming that. We further developed it whilst jamming at Eve Studios. We added distortion pedals and made it really big, but then going into the studio months later, maybe a year or more, we pared it back slightly. The majority of the song is just us in a room, a big room at that, which did the track a lot of justice. We wrote a visual score inspired by Wadada Leo Smith for this one, and then in the later half you hear the group percussion which is the final fallout of the song, and has nods to Afrobeat, where the majority of the song is taking this slowcore, emo feel to it. The track was originally titled ‘Brian Emo.’

Tableau‘s second and latest single “The Room” is a breakneck and woozy synthesis of drum ‘n’ bass, Larry Levan-like house and post punk centered around a propulsive and supple bass line, glistening synth arpeggios, wiry bursts of guitar and skittering beats. Interestingly, “The Room” feels like it may arguably be among the more jammy and free-flowing tracks on the entire album.

“This was the first track for this record, completely randomly and not part of the album sessions,” The Orielles’ Sidonie B. Hand-Halford explains. “It was recorded in Autumn/Winter of 2020, at Eve Studios. We had spent a day there, just jamming ideas. Obviously we’d spent the past five or six months in lockdown, not really able to spend much time with one another, so we were all bursting with ideas and hadn’t jammed together in so long. Obviously the way we write is very jammy, very reactionary with each other, and we really missed that. Putting us together in this room at Eve Studios, it was magical really. I feel like we wrote, or sketched ideas, for the majority of the record within an hour or two. We were just in this room at Eve with keyboards, modular synths, everything you could ask for, and just wrote loads of ideas. The lyrics were written line-by-line by each of us, randomly, so we muddled them up and picked them up at random. The first lyric was ‘the moon is in the room’, and I believe she got that from a Clarice Lispector novel? The whispering was definitely inspired by bands like Portishead or Art of Noise.“

Directed by the band, and shot on Super-8, the accompanying video features an almost line-by-line interpretation of the song’s lyrics and meaning — with an entirely playful, DIY spirit.

“‘The Room’ video is perhaps a visual representation of the way in which the song itself was written,” the band explains. “Providing ourselves with limitations and instruments that are more unfamiliar to us (in the video’s case, the Super-8). We thought that the lyrics and the vocal delivery lent themselves well to quite a literal video, we broke the song down line-by-line to create interpretations of the words and their meanings together. We really like the simplicity of this video, inspired by a lot of Agnes Vardas early works as well as Peter Tscherkassky’s more avant-garde films.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Austin indie outfit High Heavens can trace the bulk of their origins back to 1996: Austin-based emo punk troubadours Glorium were invited to do a southern US tour with DC punk legends Fugazi. During this tour, Glorium’s guitarist Ernest Salaz met and befriended Fugazi’s front of house engineer Nick Pelicciotto, who also played in Edsel and New Wet Kojak.

Salaz went on to play with I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness but he remained friends with Pelicciotto. Back in 2017, the duo started High Heavens, a band built on their mutual musical interests over the past decade. The band’s first lineup featured Jeremy Erwin (keys), Crime in Choir’s Jonathan Saggs (bass), and John Matthew Walker (vocals).

Their Stuart Sikes-produced full-length debut, Springtime Don’t Call features album title track “Springtime Don’t Call.” The band was able to play one last year but tensions arose: Erwin had enough of Austin and moved to Colorado; Pelicciotto and Skaggs decided to purse other musical interests. As a result of this massive lineup change, the band itself went through a radical transformation.

Salaz and Walker decided to record a few more songs with Sikes — without a band. Salaz then reached out to his former Glorium bandmate, George Lara who’s now playing with ’60s Chicano soul outfit Eddie & The Valiants and San Antonio-based pop outfit The Please Help to record some bass parts and Lara’s The Please Help bandmate Juan Ramos to record some drum parts. Additional recording was done at The BBQ Shack by Austin-based guitarist Jason Morales, who has played with Tia Carrera, Black Mercy, Migas and Olympia, WA-based Helltrout. The band’s old friend . . . And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead’s Conrad Keely contributed sax and Rhodes on “Hundred Bullets” and additional keyboard on their latest single “Life is a Loan Shark.”

“Life is a Loan Shark” is a slow-burning and dreamy bit of nostalgia-inducing pop centered around Walker’s plaintive delivery, twinkling Rhodes, atmospheric synths, supple bass lines and gently strummed guitar. Featuring key work from Jeremy Erwin, “Life is a Loan Shark” is inspired by Angelo Badalamenti‘s Twin Peaks score and Richie Valens — but also seems to nod at Scott Walker, thanks in part to its melancholy and heartbroken air.

The band explains that the song is about boyhood memories and lost love.

High Heavens is currently rehearsing with a new lineup and will be playing shows across Texas in November. So for my Texan friends, be on the lookout.

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Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Chicago’s Smut Shares Jangling and Anthemic “After Silver Leaves”

Chicago-based indie outfit Smut — Tay Roebuck (vocals), Andrew Min (guitar), Bell Cenower (bass, synth), Sam Ruschman (guitar, synth) and Aidan O’Connor (drums) — will be releasing their new album How the Light Felt on November 11 through Bayonet Records.

While 2020’s Power Fantasy EP saw Smut dipping its toe into more experimental waters, How the Light Felt reportedly sees the band diving head-first into their vast array of 80s and 90s influences, including Oasis, Cocteau Twins, Gorillaz, and Massive Attack — while pushing their sound in a new direction.

How the Light Felt‘s material can be traced back to 2017: Following her sister’s death, Tay Roebuck turned to writing to help her navigate a labyrinth of grief and heartache. “This album is very much about the death of my little sister, who committed suicide a few weeks before her high school graduation in 2017,” Roebuck explains in press notes. ” “It was a moment in which my life was destroyed permanently, and it’s something you cannot prepare for.”

Roebuck’s bandmates composed the song’s arrangements, excavating underutilized 90s guitar tones and drum beats to build an expansive sonic world for her lyrics. “A couple weeks after the funeral we played a show and I couldn’t keep it together,” Roebuck says, “but we just kept playing and started writing because it was truly all I felt I had, it was all I could do to feel any sense of purpose. For the past five years now I’ve been chipping my way through grief and loss and I think the album itself is just the story of a person working through living with a new weight on top of it all.”

While rooted in profound heartbreak and loss, the album’s material pairs nostalgic inducing guitar tones, lush yet unfussy production, lived-in lyricism, and earnest vocals in a way that turns pain into a bittersweet yet necessary catharsis. Certainly, if you’ve lost a loved one, the album will likely resonate with you on a deeper level than most.
 

How the Light Felt‘s lead single “After Silver Leaves” is an infectious, 120 Minutes era MTV alt rock-inspired anthem centered around reverb-drenched guitar jangle, driving rhythms paired with Roebuck’s gorgeous and expressive vocals, an enormous, sing-a-long worthy hook and a scorching guitar solo. While sonically recalling Reading, Writing and Arithmetic-era The Sundays, “After Silver Leaves” is rooted in deeply personal, embittering experience.

“This song is about a former relationship I was in, it was really horribly abusive. But the approach to this one was to just spell it all out and see how silly it feels once shit really hits the fan,” Roebuck says. “The song sounds so happy, but I’m talking about driving someone to a hospital when they’ve overdosed. And having to detach myself and realize that maybe it’s not my job as a teenage girl to save some sad sack of a guy. I think a lot of young women will relate to that, unfortunately.”

Directed by Aidan O’Connor, the accompanying black and white video for “After Silver Leaves” is loosely inspired by iconic 80s music videos, helping to further emphasize the 120 Minutes MTV-like vibe.