Siksika Nation, Alberta, Canada-based trio Double Rider (formerly Third Generation) — Hannah and Lennon Owlchild and Erin Many Heads — grew up in a rather musical home: their late grandfather Matthew Many Heads was a singer/songwriter.
The trio started the band back in 2014. And in their first year or so as a band, they quickly established a sound that draws simultaneously from classic and modern rock. Although, they do write their own material, they have also taken some of their late grandfather’s songs and recorded them in a new light with a modern context, as a loving tribute both to their grandfather and to their people. “Our grandfather gave us his songs and his music as gifts,” the members of Double Rider say in press notes. “These gifts are full of stories and speak about love and loss; the history of our people and the present day.” The band adds “It’s real and speaks to historical trauma to native people; but emphasizes the solidarity and power that Blackfoot people have, has, and will continue to have.”
In early 2020, the Canadian trio went on their first tour, The First Nations Music Tour, alongside a collection of notable Indigenous artists. Although the pandemic forced them, like countless other bands to pause some of their plans and hopes, they were able to record and release their self-titled debut EP earlier this year, which features songs written by their grandfather.
The self-titled EP’s latest single is the folky rocker “Walk With Me.” Prominently featuring some shimmering Harvest-era Neil Young and The Byrds-like acoustic guitar paired with a strutting bass line, a simple yet propulsive backbeat and plaintive vocals, the song is a sweet, old-fashioned love song about finding that special someone, reminiscing about those early moments with them — and knowing that they’d be there with you through life’s most difficult and trying times.
After teasing their first new bit of music in over nine — nine! — years, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs — Karen O. (vocals), Nick Zinner (keys, guitar, drum machine, bass) and Brian Chase (drums) — announced their long-awaited and highly anticipated fifth album, Cool It Down last month.
Cool It Down is slated for a September 30, 2022 release through Secretly Canadian and features cover photography by Alex Prager. The eight-song album reportedly is an expert distillation of the band’s gifts and 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. This is how our new story begins, we present to you with heads bowed and fists in the air ‘Spitting Off the Edge of the World’ featuring Perfume Genius.
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’.”
The trio are in a middle of a handful of summer and fall dates that includes a highly anticipated October 1, 2022 stop at Forest Hills Stadium. Check out the remaining tour dates below.
Tour Dates
September 18: Riot Fest @ Chicago, IL
October 1: Forest Hills Stadium @ New York, NY [Special Guest TBA, The Linda Linda]
October 6: Hollywood Bowl @ Los Angeles, CA [Japanese Breakfast, The Linda Lindas]
Los Angeles-based indie outfit Night Talks — Soraya Sebghati (vocals), Jacob Butler (guitar) and Josh Arteaga (bass) — released their sophomore album Same Time Tomorrow earlier this year.
Recorded between 2019 and 2020, Same Time Tomorrow sees the band firmly establishing a pop rock sound centered around Sebghati’s pop star belter vocals, shimmering guitar lines, propulsive bass, forceful drums and anthemic choruses. The album as the band explains “is a refined rock/pop album with plenty of material to dance, cry and feel to.” When the pandemic forced a change to their release plans, the members of the band took the opportunity to make its roll out special: They used their newfound free time to give each of the album’s songs an accompanying music video. And each video was conceptualized, directed, edited, costumed, set-designed and colored by the band.
“On And On,” Same Time Tomorrow‘s latest single debuted on KROQ’s Locals Only show back in February and since then, it has been in the top five, including eight weeks at #1 — and once you hear it, you’ll see why it’s been topping the charts: Simply put, it’s a big, heart-worn-on-sleeve, pop anthem featuring twinkling synths, glistening guitars, propulsive rhythms, Sebghati’s powerhouse vocals and their penchant for enormous, arena friendly choruses and hooks. The first time I heard it, I could picture a room full of sweaty concertgoers singing along with the song’s chorus — while pointing at a deeper, universal truth within all of our relationships
“The song ‘On And On’ came from my realization that though relationships will come and go throughout your life, they often follow similar paths,” Night Talk’s Soraya Sebghati explains. “The relationships I had with friends and family when I was a kid have changed considerably in my adult life, but they have a lot of the same rhythms. The phrase ‘Same Time Tomorrow’ represents a willingness to show up and put in the work to fix or maintain a relationship, especially when you’re in a rough patch. Things might be difficult, but that doesn’t mean you’re done– it just means that you’ll show up the next day and try again.”
Directed by the band, the accompanying video for “On And On” is a mischievous and playful take on dystopian sci-fi films in a way that seems indebted to the Alien film series, B-movies and Mel Brooks. “We wanted to make a video that was both a little scary and a little funny — a little Mel Brooks, a little bit Alien,” Sebghati explains. “It was a lot of fun to create our characters and to build the little world we inhabited. Our friends at Big Bud Press helped us out with the custom embroidered jumpsuits we were, and our friends Alexis Sones and Emily Thomas created and built the alien/miniature spaceship.”
With the release of 2019’s self-titled, full-length debut, Toronto-based dream pop outfit Tallies — Dylan Frankland (guitar), Sarah Cogan (vocals, guitar) and Cian O’Neill (drums) — exploded into the national and international scenes: The album received praise from the likes of Under the Radar, DIY Magazine, The Line of Best Fit, MOJO, Bandcamp Daily, Exclaim!, KEXP and others. Adding to a rapidly growing profile, the Toronto-based dream poppers have opened for Mudhoney, Hatchie, Tim Burgess and Weaves, and they played at the inaugural New Colossus Festival.
The band’s Graham Walsh and Dylan Frankland co-produced sophomore album Patina was recorded at Palace Sound, Holy Fuck‘s Baskitball 4 Life and Candle Recording, and is slated for a Friday release through Kanine Records here in the States, Hand Drawn Dracula in Canada and Bella Union in the UK and EU. The album, which was understandably delayed as a result of the pandemic is simultaneously a labor of love and a bold step forward for the Canadian trio: Firmly rooted in their penchant in juxtaposing light and dark, the album continues to see the band drawing from Lush, Beach House and Cocteau Twins, but with a greater emphasis on shimmering guitars, earnest, lived-in songwriting — and a well-placed, razor sharp hook.
The album will feature:
The previously released “No Dreams of Fayres,” an ironically upbeat single that sonically brought The Sundays‘ “Here’s Where The Story Ends,” while documenting Sarah Cogan’s struggles with depression — in particular, the moments, when she was trying to work it out, but just couldn’t find the energy to do so. “‘No Dreams of Fayres’ is a reflection of thoughts that I remember going through my mind when I stayed still in bed,” Tallies’ Sarah Cogan explains in press notes. “Feeling as though staying still in bed was the only thing that would help the sadness – basically, disconnecting myself from family, friends, and having a life. Finding the way out of depression was hard but possible. ‘No Dreams of Fayres’ is also about the realization of letting yourself feel real feelings but not mistaking them for emotions. I had to learn to get a grip of what I wanted out of life and go for it with no self-sabotage – which was music, as cliché as it sounds. It pulled me out of bed, physically and mentally.”
“Special,” continued a remarkable run of upbeat shoegazer-inspired jangle pop featuring Cogan’s plaintive vocals, Frankland’s shimmering, reverb-drenched guitar lines and O’Neill’s propulsive drumming paired with their unerring knack of razor sharp, anthemic hooks. Despite its breezy nature, the song is underpinned by an aching and familiar yearning: “‘Special,’ as Sarah Cogan explains “is about longing to be seen and heard by those who matter to you most. Sometimes, feeling invisible is particularly painful when the indifference comes from someone whose opinion means a lot to you.”
“Memento,” the last single before Patina‘s release on Friday, is a slow-burning ballad featuring Cogan’s achingly plaintive and soaring vocal, Frankland’s shimmering and reverb-drenched guitar lines, and O’Neill’s simple yet propulsive time-keeping paired with the band’s penchant for rousing hooks and choruses. While sounding inspired by 120 Minutes-era MTV college rock/alternative rock, “Memento” is centered in a hopeful and powerful message — one that’s much-needed in our wildly uncertain and perilous time.
“I am a firm believer in ‘what goes down must come up’, people usually say the opposite, but this is a motto I’ve used throughout my life,” Tallies’ Sarah Cogan explains. “When things aren’t going well, they have a tendency to bounce back. ‘Memento’, to me, is my pick-up song. When I sing ‘gotta get you on your way now’, I’m saying that it’s time to move on and move forward. I’ve had many moments in my life where I’ve lost momentum and felt directionless like I’d fallen into a black hole. It’s hard to crawl out of the hole and get back on track. I think there are a lot of people who spend their time thinking about how they need to get back on track. Listen to this song and remind yourself it’s time to look forward and lean into the future.”
Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Justis Karr at IMMV Productions, the accompanying video features slickly edited, nostalgia-inducing stock footage, including a mother playing with and holding her newborn, kids at school, an exhausted mom taking car of her household of screaming kids, an elderly woman playing with a cat and fixing tea and psychedelic imagery sometimes superimposed over the band performing the song. Interestingly, the visual manages to further emphasis the song’s overall themes with exhausted, broken people trying to figure out ways to push forward — sometimes on a daily basis.
The Saint Sauveur-based artist stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with his debut EP 2016’s playing with time, an alternative/experimental folk effort. His full-length debut, 2019’s Malcolm Burn-produced Cocoon consisted of material featuring elements of indie rock, folk and reggae. Album single “Be Amazing” was added to almost 400 Spotify playlists, including Folk & Friends,Folk Favourites and more.
2020 saw borza collaborating on two singles with French artists from Québec and Belgium. Last year, he released a remix of “Be Amazing.” The French Canadian artist began this year with “1 on 1,” which saw him adopting a more rock orientated sound.
borza’s latest single “As high as you can go,” is an anthemic and swaggering, grunge-inspired ripper centered around distorted and fuzzy power chords, thunderous drumming, rumbling bass lines and a rousing, raise-your-beer-in-the-air chorus paired with the French Canadian artist’s punchy delivery. The end result is a song that sonically nods at the likes of Dinosaur Jr. but rooted in an urgent and forceful earnestness.
Interestingly, “As high as you can go” began as a folk song that eventually morphed into an energetic, grunge-like ripper meant to elicit excitement — while “reminding listeners that an abundance of love is possible, so it’s wroth taking chances.”
Since their formation in Cincinnati back in 1986, The Afghan Whigs — currently Greg Dulli (vocals, guitar), John Curley (bass), Patrick Keeler (drums), multi-instrumentalist Rick Nelson and the band’s newest member, Blind Melon’s Christopher Thorn (guitar) — have a long-held reputation for refusing to play by convention: During the flannel and plaid of the early 90s grunge era, the members of The Afghan Whigs stood apart from their contemporaries for wearing suits and for being more likely to slide into a soulful groove than a power chord-driven riff.
Reuniting after an 11 year hiatus in 2012, the JOVM mainstays released two critically applauded albums, 2014’s Do to the Beast and 2017’s In Spades, that found the band writing and recording music that furthered their story together, while pushing their sound in new directions.
Slated for a September 9, 2022 release through Royal Cream/BMG, the JOVM mainstays’ ninth album — and first in five years — the Christopher Thorn co-produced How Do You Burn? reportedly picks up on the sound and appraoch of 2014’s Do to the Beast and 2017’s In Spades and pushes it even further. With the pandemic forcing Greg Dulli to abandon plans to support his critically applauded solo album Random Desire, the band began working on How Do You Burn? in September 2020 and continued over the next 14 months in remote recording sessions: Dulli, Thorn and Keeler in California; Curley, Jon Skibic (guitar) and Nelson laying down and engineering their own parts in Cincinnati, New Jersey and New Orleans respectively. “Once we got the system down, we started flying,” Greg Dulli says.
The album features guest spots from a collection of frequent and longtime collaborators including — the late Mark Lanegan, a collaborator of Dulli’s in The Twilight Singers and The Gutter Twins, as well as a close friend. Lanengan sung backup vocals on two album tracks. “It was Mark who named the album,” Dulli says in press notes. Susan Marshall, who contributed to 1998’s 1965 contributes vocals on album track “Catch A Colt.” Van Hunt,who toured with the band in 2012 and contributed to 2014’s Do to the Beast, contributes vocals on “Jyla” and “Take Me There.” And last but definitely not least, Marcy Mays, lead vocalist on Gentlemen‘s “My Curse” contributes vocals to “Domino and Jimmy,” a song that Dulli had specifically written with Mays in mind.
So far I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:
“I’ll Make You See God,” which is arguably one of the hardest and aggressive songs they’ve written and recorded in close to 30 years.
“The Getaway,” a widescreen ballad that pairs Dulli’s whiskey and cigarette-like croon with a gorgeous string arrangement, twinkling keys and Dulli’s unerring knack for crafting earnest, lived-in material with enormous, arena rock friendly hooks.
How Do You Burn?’s third and latest single “A Line of Shots,” a woozy yet anthemic ballad featuring heavily distorted and delay pedaled guitars, Greg Dulli’s imitable croon paired with a slow-burning groove and the band’s unerring knack for rousing, fist-up-in-the-air choruses. Perhaps unsurprisingly, “A Line of Shots” was so much of a crowd favorite during the JOVM mainstays’ May 2022 US tour that the band decided that the song needed its own moment in the sun.
The JOVM mainstays are about to embark on a UK and European Union tour that starts on July 23, 2022 and ends on August 10, 2022. The band will take a few weeks off and then go on a month-long US tour that includes a September 15, 2022 stop at Brooklyn Steel. They’ll cap a big year with a return to European Union and UK. Tour dates are below.
With the release of 2016’s full-length debut, the folky Don’t Let The Kids Win, acclaimed Melbourne-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Julia Jacklin quickly carved out a reputation for being a direct lyricist, willing to excavate the parameters of intimacy and anger in songs that are simultaneously stark and raw, loose and playful. 2018’s sophomore album Crushing managed to draw the listener in even closer.
Jacklin’s third album PRE PLEASURE is slated for an August 26, 2022 through Polyvinyl Record Co. Conceived upon returning home at the end of an extensive world tour to support Crushing, PRE PLEASURE‘s material was finished in a frantic few months of recording in Montreal with co-producer Marcus Paquin. “The songs on this record took either three years to write or three minutes,” Jacklin says.
Jacklin teamed up with her Canadian touring band, which features The Weather Station’s Ben Whiteley (bass) and Will Kidman (guitar), Folly and the Hunter’s Laurie Torres (drums) and Adam Kinner (drums), as well as string arrangements by Owen Pallett recorded by a full orchestra in Prague.
“Making a record to me has always just been about the experience, a new experience in a new place with a new person at the desk, taking the plunge and just seeing what happens” Jacklin says of traveling to Canada to work with a new producer for the third time in as many albums. “For the first time I stepped away from the guitar, and wrote a lot of the album on the Roland keyboard in my apartment in Montreal with its inbuilt band tracks. I blu-tacked reams of butcher paper to the walls, covered in lyrics and ideas, praying to the music gods that my brain would arrange everything in time.”
The album reportedly sees Jacklin expanding upon her signature sound while thematically conjuring the ripples and fault lines caused by unreliable communication.
Last month, I wrote about album single “I Was Neon,” a relentless motorik groove-driven track featuring buzzing guitars, Jacklin’s plaintive delivery and an enormous, arena rock friendly hook. And while being an anthemic bit of rock-leaning pop — or perhaps pop-leaning rock? — the song is rooted in earnest, lived-in lyricism that simultaneously expresses crippling self-doubt with a deeply, intelligent, almost winking self-awareness of how ridiculous it all is.
“I first wrote ‘I Was Neon’ for a band called rattlesnack, a short-lived much loved 2019 side project that I played drums in,” Jacklin explains. “I rewrote it for my album in Montreal, during a time when I was desperately longing for a version of myself that I feared was gone forever. I was thinking of this song when I made the album cover, this song is the album cover really.”
PRE PLEASURE‘s latest single “Love, Try Not To Let Go” is a shimmering and swooning Fleetwood Mac-like track featuring Jacklin’s achingly tender delivery floating over twinkling keys, reverb-drenched guitars before exploding into thundering guitar chords during the song’s bridge. It’s a fittingly gorgeous yet brooding arrangement for a song that describes the confusing mix of hesitation and desire one feels towards love, heartbreak and moving forward.
Directed by Jacklin and Nick Mckk, the accompanying, playful video for “Love, Try Not To let Go” expands upon the color palette on the cover art and follows Jacklin skipping and dancing down a suburban Melbourne street while singing the song’s lyrics, with a stop to embrace a tree –and in the background, you can see peeks of the city’s skyline in the distance. The video also stars a neighborhood cat — because well, of course it would.
Angelina Beroe is an emerging singer/songwriter and producer, who specializes in a sassy take on art rock and baroque pop that draws from Kate Bush, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Serge Gainsbourg and Brian Wilson. However, her latest single, the swooning “In Love” brings JOVM mainstays Still Corners to mind as the song features a gorgeous yet subtly brooding arrangement of shimmering, reverb-drenched guitars, a supple bass line, glistening keys paired with an infectious hook and Beroe’s sultry cooing.
“In Love,” as Beroe explains is focused on the many facets and stages of infatuation, and the element of obsession that comes with it. The end result is as one that suggests that love is in its own way an obsession that could become dangerous.
Directed by Beroe, the accompanying video for “In Love” is fittingly a sultry fever dream fueled by obsession, lust and classic movies.
Adding to a growing profile, the Manchester-based quintet landed a slot opening for The National at Manchester’s Mayfield Depot, a former rail yard and mail distribution center, next month. They’ll also be making the rounds of the British festival circuit throughout the Summer.
The band’s highly-anticipated follow-up to Landscapes Unchanged, Such As This EP is slated for a September 23, 2022 release through Simonie Records. The forthcoming EP’s latest single, the swooning, jangle pop-meets-Brit pop-like “There Is No Substitute” begins with a slow-burning, meditative introduction that slowly builds up in intensity before ending with a cathartic, roaring coda.
“The first part of the song is a meditation on how our worlds and lives are shaped and influenced by others, the costs and benefits of that. The emotional intensity and urgency ramps up a lot in the second part,” Mewn’s Daniel Bluer explains in press notes. ” It has a feeling I relate to a lot, building up of heightened emotions and tension and racing towards this catharsis or release through whatever means possible. I hope the end of the song achieves this.”
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.
Earlier this year, I wrote about two singles off the Aussie artist’s full-length debut Drifting:
The Husky andStarsailor-like Going Nowhere,” which featured an anthemic Brit Pop inspired hook while revealing a songwriter with a deliberate attention to craftsmanship and an uncanny knack for a big, catchy hook.
“Transcend,” a dreamy 120 MinutesMTV-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 sounds as though it were inspired by Starfish era The Church.
Drifting‘s latest single, the dreamy, Cocteau Twins meets Starfish-era The Church-like “Limelight” is centered around layers of shimmering and jangling guitars, bursts of mournful horns, the Aussie artist’s plaintive vocal paired with a soaring hook. “Limelight” may arguably be the most dream pop leaning — and the most beautiful song on the entire album.
The accompanying visual features a mix of edited footage, stock footage and graphics in a trippy yet DIY fashion.
Beirut-based outfit Sandmoon — Sandra Arslanian (vocals, guitar), Sam Wehbi (guitar), George Flouty (bass) and Dan Shurki (drums) — have developed and honed a unique take on indie rock that draws from the Arslanian’s multicultural, international background: the Sandmoon frontperson is Armenian-Lebanese and was born in Beirut and spent her formative years in Belgium.
Throughout their growing catalog, which includes 2014’s full-length debut, Home, 2016’s #InTheEnd EP, 2018’s Put A Gun/Commotion EP and 2020’s Fadi Tabbal-produced sophomore album Put A Gun/Commotion, the members of the Beirut-based quartet have infused Western indie rock with subtle Middle Eastern intonations and melancholy and an unerring sense of melodicism.
Adding to a growing profile in Lebanon, the band wrote the soundtrack to Phillipe Aractingi’s 2016 film Listen, which received Best Soundtrack Award at 2017’s Lebanese Movie Awards.
Sandmoon’s Sandra Arslanian has also been very busy with a number of side projects including “Odyssée, Ode to the City” with poet Corinne Boulad, which has been selected in festivals in Beirut, Germany, Italy, Greece and California — and has won Best Spoken Word Poetry Award at the Monologues & Poetry International Film Festival.
Sandmoon’s highly-anticipated third album While We Watch the Horizon Sink is slated for release later this year. The album’s first single, the slow-burning and atmospheric “Wake Up” is centered around painterly and shoegazer-like textures: twinkling synth arpeggios, slashing, reverb-drenched guitars, Arslanian’s plaintive vocals, cinematic keys paired with a soaring hook. While the band describes the song as sounding “like a crossover of Radiohead and Laura Marling with an imperceptible Middle Eastern flavor,” the song sonically to my ears recalls shoegaze titans like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive.
The band explains that the song is “about looking beyond the surface, going to the essence of things.”
Directed by Selim Mourad, the accompanying video for “Wake Up” is shot in a gloriously cinematic black and white and captures small every day details — a woman and her child folding laundry on the terrace, clothes in the spin cycle of a washer before following what appears to be a religious cleansing ceremony, complete with women patiently whispering comforting things.
“I believe suffering stops when we open our eyes,” Mourad explains. “As most of us keep struggling, we can rest assured that we are nonetheless never unattended, never alone. Beautiful beings, often through their feminine energy, are patiently whispering the sweet words of remembrance in our ears.”
Pierre Grech is a Toulon, France-based singer/songwriter, composer, producer and guitarist, who has long been influenced by folk, indie rock, hip hop, jazz, contemporary classical and electronica. Grech began writing songs as a child but he can trace the origins of his music career 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.
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 more. But over the past few years, the French singer/songwriter, guitarist, composer, arranger and producer has been refining and honing his songwriting and compositional approach, as well as his guitar playing. The end result is Grech’s latest project _telemaque_,which finds the Toulon-based artist drawing from his long-held influences while crafting pop that’s energetic yet sensitive.
If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year or so, you may recall that Grech’s _telemaque_ debut June EP, which featured the gorgeous, OK Computer-era Radiohead-like June last year.
His full-length debut _telemaque_ album is forthcoming — and the album features “December Sun,” which Greech says is the most rock-leaning song on the album. Interestingly, “December Sun” saw the French artist refining his overall sound and approach: While still drawing from Radiohead, the song subtly nods at krautrock and folk
Gre h’s latest _telemaque_ single, is the breezy samba meets OK Computer/Kid A-era Radiohead-like “Your liquid smile.” Featuring guest spots from Kentaro Suzuki (bass) and Joakim Toftgaard (trombone), “Your liquid smile” is 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.
“It’s a song on the theme of simple joys, as its title does not quite indicate,” Greech explains. “This piece has the sole ambition to please. Like a good dish of spaghetti with tomato sauce. You will see it with your ears.”
The accompanying video is shot on grainy, security camera-like VHS tape and follows someone making a simple dish of spaghetti and tomato sauce, complete with ingredients and instructions. It’ll make you hungry — while reminding you of life’s simple pleasures: a good meal, a good pint or a glass of wine, dear friends, a lovely song and so on.
