Tag: Johnny Brenda's

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sweeping Promises Shares Horror-Themed Visual for Brooding and Uneasy “Good Living Is Coming for You”

Sweeping Promises — Lira Mondal (vocals, bass, production) and Caufield Schnug (guitar, drums, production — can trace their origins to a chance meeting in Arkansas, which led to a decade of playing together in an eclectic assortment of projects. Their relentless practice has made perfect: Meticulously controlling every aspect of their craft, from the first note they write together, through production and engineering, using space as a key element of their sound, to the final mastering process, each song is an unspoiled fingerprint unique to their long-held dynamic chemistry. 

The duo’s full-length debut, 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out was released through Feel It Records. Written before the pandemic, the album’s material managed to pair the anxious urgency of a commanding live performance with a gauzy production, creating a distorted sense of time. That resonated with tons of folks during quarantine, who turned the album into a life-saving flotation device — and fittingly the album received rapturous praise from Stereogum, Pitchfork, and NPR. Around then, Feel It Records and Sub Pop agreed to join forces to distribute the duo’s work across North America and globally, starting with 2021’s “Pain Without a Touch.”

Slated for a Friday release through Feel It Records across North America and Sub Pop globally, the duo’s highly-anticipated sophomore album, Good Living Is Coming For You was recorded and produced by Mondal and Schung in their Lawrence, KS-based home studio. In some way, the album’s title and its material is informed by more than a half-century of underground music revolutionaries, who have taken whacks at the mundane mainstream. English punks spat “NO FUTURE” at germ-free adolescents. Ohio New Wavers devolutionized mankind with whips. Athens art school students chomped at hero worship. MetroCard carrying riot grrls rebirthed the bomp with a gasoline gut. The duo read pandemic minds with 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out. With their forthcoming sophomore album, the return with a new message that initially offers hope wrapped around relief. But maybe it’s warning. Or darker still, a threat. 

While the duo have amassed acclaim for unfussy, monolithic anthems, Good Living Is Coming For You is a decided change in sonic direction and approach: They’ve eschewed the brutalist ambience of their Boston subterranean, concrete laboratory and the single mic recording technique of its immediate predecessor. Recorded in a nude painting studio bathed in light with high-ceilings, their Lawrence-based studio is a reverb-rich space, that helps influence the album’s overall sound. Thematically, the album’s material touches upon power struggles, accepting aging, breaking restraints and more, delivered with a fervent urgency. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release I’ve managed to write about two of its singles:

  • Album opener “Eraser,” a gritty and furious ripper built around enormous shout-along worthy hooks and choruses, thunderous drumming, angular and propulsive bass lines, and distortion pedaled guitars paired with Mondal’s powerhouse delivery and copious amounts of reverb. While sonically recalling riot grrrl punk, complete with righteous and urgent fury, “Eraser,” as the duo explain is “a malevolent creep – an overly ambitious, shadowy force who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. She watches your every move, mirrors your motions, and ultimately uses your voice against you without you ever noticing what she’s done. She’s unchecked ambition, a paranoid girl Friday, an overriding impulse to reflect rather than project. She must be stopped at all costs.”

  • “You Shatter,” a synth punk ripper that sounds like a synthesis of Freedom of Choice-era DEVO, Memphis synth punks Nots and the Go-Go’s. “‘You Shatter’ is our ode to being a hammer,” the duo say of the song. 

The soon-to-be released album’s third and latest single, album title track “Good Living Is Coming for You” is a brooding and uneasy track built around a metronomic-like groove, wiry guitar blasts paired with Mondal’s forceful croon. The result is a song that manages to sound a bit like Wire — but while evoking an encroaching sense of doom. The end is very much nigh, folks.

Directed by experimental filmmaker Jessica Bardsley, the accompanying video for “Good Living Is Coming for You” draws from 70s and 80s horror films. “For this video, we collaborated with one of our closest friends, experimental filmmaker Jessica Bardsley (Life Without Dreams, Goodbye Thelma),” the members of Sweeping Promises explain in press notes. Drawing from the glamorous and bloodthirsty aesthetic of ‘70s and ‘80s horror films (Daughters of Darkness, The Hunger, The Lair of the White Worm, Dream Demon), the visual companion to ‘Good Living Is Coming for You’ channels the song’s unshakable feeling of discontent and encroaching domestic doom through the confines of a DIY horror flick as seen by some nameless sleepless soul on late-night cable, the line between movie and infomercial blurred to infernal effect.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Norwegian instrumental tropical funk/pop outfit and JOVM mainstays Orions Belte —Øyind Blomstrøm (guitar), Chris Holm (bass) and Kim Åge Furuhaug (drums) — features members who have spent the bulk of their lives and professional careers as touring musicians. Naturally, they’ve been on the road — a lot. When Blomstrøm’s and Holm’s paths crossed for what seemed like the umpteenth time, they bonded over a mutual desire to create instrumental music, and they then decided to start a band together. The duo then recruited Holm’s Bergen scene pal Kim Åge Furuhaug to complete the band’s lineup. 

With the release of 2018’s Mint, the Norwegian trio quickly established a genre-defying, style-mashing sound that draws from a wide and eclectic array of sources including 70s Nigerian rock, postcards from the French Riviera, Formula One races at Monza and 1971’s “Fight of the Century” between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. 

2019’s Slim EP featured inventive reworkings of songs they love by artists they love, including Ghostface Killah‘s “Cherchez La Ghost,” Milton Nascimento‘s Tudo O Que Você Podia Ser”– and an original cut that pays homage to Norwegian beat group The Pussycats and the Mac Miller. 

Although the past handful of years have arguably been some of the most challenging years in recent memory for musicians and other creatives, the Norwegian trio managed to remain extremely busy: In 2020, they released a handful of singles including “Bean” and 600m per minute, an EP of experimental compositions that derived its title from an elevator in Tokyo that can transport 40 people at a time a maximum speed of 600 meters per minute. The EP found the trio pushing the boundaries of instrumental music as they possibly could. 

2021’s sophomore album Villa Amorini derived its name from a popular Bergen nightclub; the place in town where everything happened — and where you needed to be, to be a part of it. Originally opened in the 80s as a fine dining spot, the business gradually evolved into an extravagant nightclub, where you’d see artists and DJs in loud t-shirts and oversized sunglasses. The album saw the trio meshing elements of underground pop, psych and world music, while further cementing their reputation for their ability to pull in listeners of diverse genres and styles. And with that understanding in mind, it shouldn’t be surprising that the album’s material sets up a particular scene: the energy and vibe of a busy downtown sidewalk with intricately layered arrangements meant to draw you in and leave the listener wondering where it will lead. 

A few weeks after Villa Amorini‘s release, the trio followed up with a Lagniappe Session EP in collaboration with Aquarium Drunkard. That June saw the release of their first live album, Scenic Route, which featured recordings from their live-streamed outdoor shows from the previous year. 

Continuing their reputation for restless prolificacy, the Norwegian trio released a 3LP box set consisting of a solo album from each member — just like KISS did in 1978, they’ll gladly mention. Released last November through their longtime label home Jansen Records, each individual album in the box set displayed each member’s unique talents and tastes while still being a part of of the larger Orions Belte universe. 

  • Chris Holm’s solo self-titled album, released last November was a trippy, psych pop affair
  • Øyvind Blomstrøm’s solo self-titled album, which was released early last year, featured a funky mix of psych folk, psych funk and psych blues
  • Kim Åge Furuhaug solo self-titled album was also released last November and coincided with the release of the box set. Furuhaug’s solo album was a sonic left-turn from his work with Orions Belte: The album was a jazz album co-written and co-produced with Matias Tellez that features some of Norway’s finest jazz musicians, including Ole Morten Vågan (upright bass), Andreas Ulvo (piano, keys, organ) and Lars Horntveth (saxophone, clarinet, percussion, guitar).

The restlessly prolific Norwegian trio’s third full-length album Women is slated for an October 6, 2023 release through their longtime label home Jansen Records. Much like their previously released work, all the songwriting and production is done by the band members themselves, but with Women they’ve consciously put a lot of effort into making everything bigger and more powerful than before. String arrangements flow easily throughout the album’s material and is meant to describe a sensation that they describe as feeling “like releasing a million balloons at once while lying looking at the night sky, and dreaming of road trips on bumpy country roads through the Amazon in Brazil.”

Women will feature the previously released single “Silhouettes,” a track that manages to further cement their uncanny knack for trippy and irresistibly funky grooves but while arguably being the darkest song of their growing catalog: The song bounces back and forth between ethereal verses and crunchy, earthy guitar riffage paired with soaring hooks, paired with a supple bass line and a cacophonous string arrangement by Norwegian violinist and composer Ola Kvernberg. “Silhouettes” reveals a mischievous and adventurous group of musicians boldly pushing their sound and approach in new directions while still being rooted in their penchant for trippy grooves.

The album’s latest single is the incredibly breezy “Jai Alai.” Built around a percussive and driving drum pattern, glistening and twinkling 80s-like synths, a Steely Dan-like guitar solo paired with a dreamy Tropicalia-like coda with acoustic guitar sand shimmering mandolin paired with a bemusedly delivered lyric, “Jai Alai” is mischievously anachronistic song that sounds as though it could have been released in 1974 or maybe 1984 but while dripping in self-deprecating irony.

“‘Spent some time alone with you, a friend of mine told me to’ – everybody has gotten bad advice like this at some point,” the members of the Norwegian JOVM mainstay outfit say of the new single. “And sometimes things can go a lot faster than you thought, like Jai Alai – the world’s fastest sport. This track has a summery feel to it, percussive patterns, an in-your-face guitar solo and a dreamy ending with acoustic guitars and mandolins.”

Along with the single and album announcements, the band also announced that they’ll be embarking on yet another Stateside tour this fall that includes an October 16, 2023 stop at Baltimore’s Metro Gallery and an October 17, 2023 stop at Johnny Brenda‘s in Philly. Sadly, there isn’t a NYC date, but Johnny Brenda’s is one of my favorite venues in Philly. And you can load up on cheesesteaks while you’re there! Check out the rest of the tour dates below.

Orions Belte Tour Dates:
10/4 – Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst*
10/5 – San Luis Obispo, CA @ Fremont Theatre*
10/6 – Ventura, CA @ Ventura Music Hall*
10/7 – Pomona, CA @ Glasshouse*
10/8 – Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom*
10/11 – Los Angeles, CA @ Vencie West
10/12 – Berkeley, CA @ Cornerstone
10/13 – Portland, OR @ Jack London Revue
10/14 – Bellingham, WA @ The Shakedown (Bellingham Exit)
10/15 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
10/16 – Baltimore, MD @ Metro Gallery
10/17 – Philadelphia, PA @ Jonny Brenda’s
10/18 – Boston, MA @ Deep Cuts
* w/ Psychedelic Porn Crumpets
 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Protomartyr Shares Punchy “Polacrilex Kid”

Detroit-based post-punk outfit Protomartyr — Joe Casey (vocals), Greg Ahee (guitar), Alex Leonard (percussion), and Scott Davidson (bass) — have become synonymous with caustic, impressionistic assemblages of politics and poetry, the literal and oblique over the course of five albums — 2012’s No Passion All Technique, 2014’s Under Color of Official Right, 2015’s The Agent Intellect, 2017’s Relatives In Descent and 2020’s Ultimate Success Today. 

Protomartyr’s sixth album, the Greg Ahee and Jake Aron co-produced, 12-song Formal Growth In The Desert is slated for a Friday release through Domino Recording Co. Although the band’s Joe Casey had a humbling experience staring at awe-inspiring Sonoran rock formations and reckoning with his own smallness in the scheme of things during the recording sessions at Tornillo, TX-based Sonic Ranch, the album’s title isn’t necessarily a nod to the sand and sun-blasted expanses of the southwest. Detroit or anyplace else on Earth can be its own desert. “The desert is more of a metaphor or symbol,” Casey says, “of emotional deserts, or a place or time that seems to lack life.” And fittingly, the desert brings an existential awareness that is ultimately internal. 

The “growth” referenced in the album’s title came from a period of profound, life-altering transitions for the band’s Casey, including the death of his mother, who struggled with Alzheimer’s for 15 years. Now, 45, Casey had lived in the family home in northwest Detroit all his life. In 2021 though, a rash of repeated break-ins signaled that it was time to move out. Protomartyr’s music — this time more spacious and dynamic than ever before — helped pull Casey up. “The band still being viable was very important to me,” Casey adds, “and it definitely lifted my spirits.”

Having long served as the band’s unofficial musical director, Greg Ahee knew what Casey had been going through and the challenges he’d been processing, and as he was conceptualizing the music, he thought about how to make it all “like a narrative film.” The cinematic sensibility also manifest itself in Casey’s song-as-story-like lyrics, which reportedly see him critiquing ominous techno-capitalism, processing aging, the future and the possibility of love. But the underlying them as Casey describes it, is a testament to “getting on with life,” even when it feels impossibly hard. 

 Post quarantine, the band regrouped with an understandable sense of uncertainty, questioning if and how to continue after the turbulence of the past few years. They found themselves channeling that ambivalence to hone a song they named after a chapter from a 1950’s teen dance manual. “Elimination Dances,” Formal Growth In The Desert‘s second single referred to a game where “‘you get tapped out when you lose the dance,” and that felt an apt metaphor for just surviving. “Life is a struggle, but “you might as well keep dancing until the tap comes,” Casey says.

Fittingly “Elimination Dances” is a cinematic yet tense and uneasy waltz built around rolling and propulsive drumming, angular and wiry bursts of guitar and a sinuous bass line paired with Casey’s urgent, snarling delivery. The song partially recounts Casey’s experience feeling small in the vast and indifferent desert, the existential acknowledgement of time and the struggle to survive with your dignity and wits intact. 

“Polarcrilex Kid,” the final single off the album derives its title for the chemical name for nicotine gum, something that Joe Casey refers to as an “unwanted friend I’ve become acquainted with since getting on the quit smoking/start smoking again tilt-a-whirl.” Built around propulsive, staccato drumming, tense, wiry guitar busts paired with Casey’s punchy delivery, “Polarcrilex Kid” is woozy mix of punk and post punk with remarkably cinematic elements — i.e., the shimmering pedal steel solo towards the song’s coda. Thematically, the song tackles a familiar Protomartyr concern: Can you hate yourself and still deserve love?

Directed by LooseMeat.Biz – David Allen, Nathan Faustyn — the accompanying video for “Polarcrilex Kid” brings back memories of shitty public access TV — in particular, Uncle Floyd and the like. But it also serves as a preview to the band’s forthcoming appearance on The Marty Singer Telethon, premiering on Highland Park TV on Thursday at 7:00pm Eastern. Hosted by the imitable Marty Singer, who appeared in the video for “Processed By The Boys” and Sarah McMahon and will feature a collection of talented performers, including Stoney Sharp, the wrangler; the Mt. Sinai Hospital Dance Team and more. Fittingly, the video features the band performing with a collection of weird, surrealistic performers.

Protomartyr will be supporting Formal Growth In The Desert with an extensive intentional tour that includes a two night stay at Bowery Ballroom — June 15, 2023 and June 16, 2023. It also includes a two night stay at one of my favorite rooms in Philly, Johnny Brenda‘s — June 17, 2023 and June 18, 2023. Check out the full list of dates below. Also, there’s a pre-order link for the album, which is also below.