Hailed by Stereogum as “an unholy lo-fi pile-up of garage rock, punk and 90s-style noise rock,” Melbourne-based punks CIVIC — Jim McCullough (vocals) – Lewis Hodgson (guitar) – Roland Hlavka (bass) – Jackson Harry (guitar) – Matt Blach (drums) — have developed a reputation for reimagining the reckless intensity of proto-punk for an era of unending and unceasing uncertainty.
Earlier this year, the Aussie outfit released their acclaimed album Taken By Force through ATO Records. They supported the album with a European tour, which brought their brand of masterfully controlled chaos, which blurs the line between furious catharsis and unbridled fun. And they’ll be embarking on their first Stateside tour this fall. The tour will include an October 7, 2023 stop at Elsewhere Zone One, an October 8, 2023 stop at Johnny Brenda’s and several others across the country, as well as sets at this year’s LEVITATION Festival and Gonerfest. All tour dates and ticket info can be found below.
Along with the tour announcement, the members of the acclaimed Melbourne-based punk outfit share a new single, the blistering ripper “Hourglass.” Built around scorching riffage, breakneck drumming, an angular bass line and Jim McCullough’s snarled delivery, “Hourglass” is a mosh pit friendly anthem that’s furiously cathartic yet upbeat. The song manages to evoke the sensation of wanting to bust out of rut, even if you don’t know how.
“Off the back of Taken By Force we wanted to create something new, an evolution of sound for us,” CIVIC’s Jim McCullough explains. “We’d dropped down to a 4 piece so already Lewis [Hodgson] had more space to come through with his guitar parts, be more experimental, less chaotic; more defined. Lyrically I am touching on aspects of change, more specifically the process during change. Going through some kind of shit and sediment and coming out the other side; a hopeful development of a refined version. We start again”
Directed, filmed and edited by Oscar O’Shea, the accompanying video follows a Mickey Mouse sweater-wearing man with headphones rocking out throughout various locations in suburban Melbourne, while the band drives around aimless and goofs off in a claustrophobia-inducing room. Proudly DIY and endlessly goofy, the video accurately captures the sense of wanting to bust out of a rut.
Restlessly prolific Norwegian instrumental tropical funk/pop outfit and JOVM mainstays Orions Belte —Øyind Blomstrøm (guitar), Chris Holm (bass) and Kim Åge Furuhaug (drums) — will be releasing their third full-length album Women on October 6, 2023 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:
“Silhouettes,” a track rooted in the trio’s penchant for trippy and irresistibly funky grooves, but while also 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, 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.
“Jai Alai,” a track 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.”
Women‘s latest single “When You’re Gone, I’ll Be Gone” is a slow-burning, Quiet Storm-like jam built around a two step-inducing groove and shimmering guitar serving as a silky bed for Live Miranda Solberg, a.k.a. Louien’s delicate delivery. The song is a bittersweet, nostalgia-inducing song that’s part lament over the breakup of a relationship and part begrudging acceptance.
Solberg is a rising star in the Norwegian indie/folk scene, who received Norwegian Grammy nod last year, and is a current member of Silver Lining.
The band will be embarking on 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)
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 June 30, 2023 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.
Last month, I wrote about 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.”
Good Living Is Coming For You‘s second and latest single, “You Shatter” is 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.
Sweeping Promises will be embarking on an extensive tour schedule to support the album, The tour includes an August 8, 2023 stop at Johnny Brenda‘s, one of my favorite rooms in Philly, and an August 10, 2023 stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Check out the tour dates below.
Good Living Is Coming For You is available now to preorder from Feel It Records & Sub Pop. LP pre-orders from Feel It Records will be on white/black marbled vinyl, and those from megamart.subpop.com will receive copies on red vinyl (while supplies last).
Tour Dates
Tue. Aug. 01 – St Louis, MO – Off Broadway Wed. Aug. 02 – Cincinnati, OH – MOTR Pub Thu. Aug. 03 – Nashville, TN – Blue Room at Third Man Fri. Aug. 04 – Atlanta, GA – 529 Sat. Aug. 05 – Durham, NC – The Pinhook Mon. Aug. 07 – Washington, DC – Songbyrd Music House Tue. Aug. 08 – Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s Thu. Aug. 10 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg Fri. Aug. 11 – Brattleboro, VT – The Stone Church Sat. Aug. 12 – Somerville, MA – Crystal Ballroom Mon. Aug. 14 – Montreal, QC – Bar Le Ritz PDB Tue. Aug. 15 – Toronto, ON – The Garrison Wed. Aug. 16 – Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop Fri. Aug. 18 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall Sat. Aug. 19 – Milwaukee, WI – Back Room at Colectivo Sun. Aug. 20 – Minneapolis, MN – 7th Street Entry Sat. Sep. 09 – Denver, CO – Lost Lake Mon. Sep. 11 – Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court Tue. Sep. 12 – Boise, ID – Neurolux Thu. Sep. 14 – Vancouver, BC – Wise Hall Fri. Sep. 15 – Seattle, WA – Madame Lou’s Sat. Sep. 16 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Tue. Sep. 19 – San Francisco, CA – The Chapel Wed. Sep. 20 – Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room Fri. Sep. 22 – San Diego, CA – Casbah Sat. Sep. 23 – Tucson, AZ – Club Congress Tue. Sep. 26 – Austin, TX – Empire Control Room Wed. Sep. 27 – Denton, TX – Andy’s Fri. Sep. 29 – Memphis, TN – Gonerfest
Years ago, Chilean-American singer/songwriter and guitarist Chris Bowers Castillo moved to the Chilean port city of Valparaíso and became a walking tour guide. “I would dress up as Wally and give tours to families and kids,” he remembers with a laugh. “It was great, because I got to know the city incredibly well. I’d walk for hours, then spend the rest of the day partying and drinking, probably way too much. But I also wrote lots of new songs.”
When he got to to Denver, Bowers Castillo searched for a moniker that reflected the evocative and subtly rebellious musical concepts he had brewing and his head, and eventually settled on Kiltro. a Chilean slang word for a stray dog or a mutt. He then teamed up with Will Parkhill (bass) and Micheal Devincenzi (drums). He then recruited Fez García (percussion) to join the band for their live shows. “I wanted to do a project mixing different styles and aesthetics,” Castillo explains. “Valparaíso is my favorite city in the world and will always influence my music. There were street dogs everywhere, and I’m a mutt myself.”
Slated for a June 2, 2023 release, the Denver-based outfit’s forthcoming sophomore album Underbelly reportedly represents a bold, new chapter for the band, as they seamlessly fuse Latin roots music with American rock music. “When we first started the band, I was playing folk songs – focusing on my interior spaces and finding catharsis through melody,” Bowers Castillo says. “I’ve always been attracted to music that is melancholy and personal. Then we added the rhythmic component, and I realized that having a bit of noise and chaos can add emotional depth. Underbelly reflects everything that happens inside your soul when the world stops on its tracks.” “We tried a lot of new things on this record,” Kiltro’s Will Parkhill adds. “We were living through unprecedented times and coming to terms with all of it. The album is a reflection of that. At the end of the day, we wanted to create the kind of music that we didn’t hear anywhere else.”
The album’s first single “Guanaco” is built around a sinuous and propulsive groove paired with glistening guitars, Latin-influenced percussion, four-on-the-floor, Bowers Castillo’s gently cooed Spanish delivery and a sleek, almost dance floor friendly hook. Sonically, “Guanaco” sees the Denver-based outfit specializing in the sort of off-kilter funk reminiscent of Fear of Music–More Songs About Buildings and Food–Remain in Light-era Talking Heads but with a defiant, genre-defying flair.
“A guanaco is a South American animal that is a bit like a llama. It’s known for spitting,” Bowers Castillo explains. “In Chile, it has another meaning, and is colloquially used to refer to police vehicles that shoot water at protestors. We wrote this song in the wake of the 2019 protests for a new constitution in Chile. The line “ya viene el guanáco” means simply “here/now comes the guanáco,” which against a driving, melancholic backdrop, had an almost fairy tale quality to it. I felt it communicated a sense of foreboding and nervous anxiety. Taken more literally, it means a beast is coming, here. Of course, a guanaco is not a terrifying thing, but a police line in riot gear with the machinery of dispersion and violence, is.
He continues “To be clear, the aim was never to make an explicit political point. Rather, I wanted to capture that peculiar environment of communal tension and mounting emotional energy, be it conviction or catharsis, or fear. The album had yet to take shape in those months, but I was certain the song would make an apt intro to whatever came next. I hope you enjoy it.”
“All The Time In The World,” Underbelly‘s second and latest single is a decidedly folk turn, built around simmering reverb-soaked acoustic guitar, Latin-influenced rhythms and atmospheric synths with Bowers Castillo’s plaintive delivery. And at its core, “All The Time In The World” simultaneously evokes a wistful and bittersweet nostalgia over things that are lost and can never return and a hope for a bright new future ahead.
Written during quarantine, “All The Time In The World” was a breath of fresh hair for the band while making the record in dark times. “It’s a reminder that no mater how the world may spiral, it’s important to stop and take a breath,'” the band explains.
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” and their highly-anticipated sophomore album Good Living Is Coming For You.
Slated for a June 30, 2023 release through Feel It Records across North America and Sub Pop globally, 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.
“Eraser,” the forthcoming album’s opening track and first single, is a gritty and furious ripper built around enormous, shout-along worthy hooks and choruses, thunderous drumming, angular and propulsive bass lines, 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.”
Along with the release of Good Living Is Coming For You‘s first single, the duo announced an extensive list of tour dates to support the album. The tour includes an August 8, 2023 stop at Johnny Brenda‘s, one of my favorite rooms in Philly, and an August 10, 2023 stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Check out the tour dates below.
Good Living Is Coming For You is available now to preorder from Feel It Records & Sub Pop. LP pre-orders from Feel It Records will be on white/black marbled vinyl, and those from megamart.subpop.com will receive copies on red vinyl (while supplies last).
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 GrowthIn The Desert is slated for a June 2, 2023 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.” 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 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 and latest single refers 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.
Years ago, Chilean-American singer/songwriter and guitarist Chris Bowers Castillo moved to the Chilean port city of Valparaíso and became a walking tour guide. “I would dress up as Wally and give tours to families and kids,” he remembers with a laugh. “It was great, because I got to know the city incredibly well. I’d walk for hours, then spend the rest of the day partying and drinking, probably way too much. But I also wrote lots of new songs.”
When he got to to Denver, Bowers Castillo searched for a moniker that reflected the evocative and subtly rebellious musical concepts he had brewing and his head, and eventually settled on Kiltro. a Chilean slang word for a stray dog or a mutt. He then teamed up with Will Parkhill (bass) and Micheal Devincenzi (drums). He then recruited Fez García (percussion) to join the band for their live shows. “I wanted to do a project mixing different styles and aesthetics,” Castillo explains. “Valparaíso is my favorite city in the world and will always influence my music. There were street dogs everywhere, and I’m a mutt myself.”
Slated for a June 2, 2023 release, the Denver-based outfit’s forthcoming sophomore album Underbelly reportedly represents a bold, new chapter for the band, as they seamlessly fuse Latin roots music with American rock music. “When we first started the band, I was playing folk songs – focusing on my interior spaces and finding catharsis through melody,” Bowers Castillo says. “I’ve always been attracted to music that is melancholy and personal. Then we added the rhythmic component, and I realized that having a bit of noise and chaos can add emotional depth. Underbelly reflects everything that happens inside your soul when the world stops on its tracks.” “We tried a lot of new things on this record,” Kiltro’s Will Parkhill adds. “We were living through unprecedented times and coming to terms with all of it. The album is a reflection of that. At the end of the day, we wanted to create the kind of music that we didn’t hear anywhere else.”
The album’s first single “Guanaco” is built around a sinuous and propulsive groove paired with glistening guitars, Latin-influenced percussion, four-on-the-floor, Bowers Castillo’s gently cooed Spanish delivery and a sleek, almost dance floor friendly hook. Sonically, “Guanaco” sees the Denver-based outfit specializing in the sort of off-kilter funk reminiscent of Fear of Music–More Songs About Buildings and Food–Remain in Light-era Talking Heads but with a defiant, genre-defying flair.
“A guanaco is a South American animal that is a bit like a llama. It’s known for spitting,” Bowers Castillo explains. “In Chile, it has another meaning, and is colloquially used to refer to police vehicles that shoot water at protestors. We wrote this song in the wake of the 2019 protests for a new constitution in Chile. The line “ya viene el guanáco” means simply “here/now comes the guanáco,” which against a driving, melancholic backdrop, had an almost fairy tale quality to it. I felt it communicated a sense of foreboding and nervous anxiety. Taken more literally, it means a beast is coming, here. Of course, a guanaco is not a terrifying thing, but a police line in riot gear with the machinery of dispersion and violence, is.
He continues “To be clear, the aim was never to make an explicit political point. Rather, I wanted to capture that peculiar environment of communal tension and mounting emotional energy, be it conviction or catharsis, or fear. The album had yet to take shape in those months, but I was certain the song would make an apt intro to whatever came next. I hope you enjoy it.”
Created by the band’s Chris Bowers Castillo and Will Parkhill, the accompanying video for “Guanaco” is a surrealistic fever dream of found footage from old documentaries, sci-fi films and other weird shit seemingly randomly stitched together.
Philadelphia-based guitarist Caitlin D’Agostino has dreamt of playing in an all-women rock band since she was in high school. And after playing in the City of Brotherly Love’s punk scene for a handful of years, she decided to put in dream in motion in late 2018 when she started Vixen77, her latest band, which references female energy and the influence of the ’77 punk rock revolution. Fittingly, the band specializes in a loud, aggressive, rebellious and downright fun take on rock ‘n’ roll that’s nostalgia-inducing — and necessary.
The band re-emerged from pandemic-related lockdowns with a new lineup featuring D’Agostino, Elizabeth Cartwright (bass), Jaz (bass), Sarah Novack (drums) and Samatha Joan (vocals, harmonica), and since then have released a string of attention-grabbing singles, which has lead to packed, headlining shows in the Philly area and an opening slot for Wayne Kramer on his current MC5 tour.
Building upon a growing profile, the Philly-band punk outfit’s highly-anticipated full-length debut Easy Access is slated for a Friday release through Megaforce Records. Recorded in a breakneck 72 hour recording session at Retro City Studios, Easy Access‘ 12 songs navigate life through love and rock ‘n’ roll. And so far, the album has earned support from KEXP, Sirius XM, WXPN and others.
Vixen77 shared the last pre-album release, “Royalty” earlier today. “Royalty” is a gritty and defiant AC/DC-like rocker centered around D’Agostino’s bluesy power chord-driven riffage, a locked in and chugging propulsive rhythm section paired with Joan’s self-assured, snarl. The new single sees the Philly-based outfit adding their names to a lengthy and growing list of women-led acts who boldly and unashamedly kick ass and take names.
“‘Royalty’ is about feeling a sense of purpose in playing music and doing it on your own terms,” the band says. “It’s about loving and playing music your whole life and centering so much of your energy on it. It’s also a good memento mori and reminder to live in the moment because we’re here for a short time, so do what you love.”
Luis Vasquez is an Oakland, CA-based singer/songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind the critically applauded industrial/dark wave/post-punk recording project The Soft Moon. Vasquez’s latest Soft Moon album, the recently released Criminal is reportedly one of his most confessional albums he has released to date, as the material is written through a stark lens of shame and guilt, in which the material thematically focuses on a man at war with himself, battling with self-hatred, insecurity, self-entitlement paired with the fear of those things transforming him into the type of person he normally despises.
Criminal’s latest single is the broodingly stark and atmospheric “Give Something,” a track that pairs his falsetto with thumping beats, razor sharp synths and industrial clang and clatter. Interestingly, as Vasquez explains in press notes, the track focuses on his inability to reciprocate love and tenderness to another person. “Having no control over the constant urge to sabotage all things that are good for me, there is irony and frustration in knowing that in the end, the impossibility of love is what ultimately will save me from my myself.” It’s a plaintive and gut wrenchingly urgent call for help from a deeply troubled, emotionally damaged yet incredibly self-aware person.
Directed by Kelsey Henderson and featuring video effects and color by Victoria Keddie, the recently released video for “Give Something” focuses on a split screen throughout — one the left, a topless woman with her back to the screen and a couple seemingly in the middle of intense coitus, with the same woman from the left hand side grabbing and scratching the back of her lover with a desperate, painful grip that leaves marks. At points the visuals go through stuttering visual effects that on one level makes it look as though the woman may be abusing herself — or her lover — out of selfish motivations.
