Tag: Josh Homme

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Gateway Drugs Releases a Shimmering and Heartbreaking Ballad

Formed in 2010, the rising Los Angeles-based act Gateway Drugs — siblings Gabe, Noa and Liv Niles, who all share vocal and instrumental duties, and their longtime friend James Sanderson (bass) — emerged into the psych rock scene with the 2015 release of their full-length debut, Magick Spells, an album that helped to establish their noisey and melodic take on shoegaze that Hellbound has likened to “The Stooges meets My Bloody Valentine and The Brian Jonestown Massacre — a little dark, a little eerie and a little grainy and all intoxicating.”

Slated for a May 8, 2020 release through Future Shock Records, the Los Angeles-based psych rock quartet’s, ten song, Sune Rose Wagner-produced sophomore effort PSA was recorded during a 12 day recording session at Josh Homme’s Pink Duck Studio. Centered around what the band says was some of the quickest and most direct songwriting process of their young careers, the album as the band told Foxes Mag “. . . is much more intimate and raw than our first album. All of the songs were recorded live for the most part.”

While further establishing their noisy and melodic take on psych rock, the material reportedly finds the band writing more introspective material, drawing from a wild and chaotic few years for the band — and for the world at large. According to the members of Gateway Drugs, the album reflects “everything that is wrong in the here and now: the weakness of the world laid bare, and the almost total state of apathy we all find ourselves in due to feeling powerless to effect any change with respect to all of this. PSA is an attempt to connect with others, who feel the same way and regain a sense of our ability to change things for the better.”

Now, as you may recall, last week, I wrote about, the brooding and hook-driven  “Slumber,” PSA’s second single, a track that reminded me a bit of the aforementioned Brian Jonestown Massacre, Riot City Blues-era Primal Scream, while being an earnest reflection on unrequited love that focused on the rejection and heartbreak of a jilted suitor. PSA’s third and latest single is the slow-burning ballad “I’m Always Around.” Centered around shimmering guitars, the song was written and sung by the band’s Liv Niles — and is essentially, a bitter and heartbreaking goodbye letter to a lover ad a relationship that seems bound to come to a close. 

“The song reflects my nostalgia at the time towards my relationship that was failing, my sadness knowing he would hate me one day for choosing myself over him,” the band’s Liv Niles explains in press notes. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Aussie Punk Trio The Chats Release a Mischievous Visual for Mosh Pit Ripper “The Clap”

Coolum, Australia-based punk trio The Chats — Eamon Sandwith (vocals, bass), Josh Price  (guitar, vocals) and Matt Boggis (drums) — can trace its origins back to when its members started the band in their friend’s bong shed back in 2016, when the band’s members were still in high school. 2017 saw the release of their debut EP, Get This In Ya, which the band recorded in four hours. The following year,  the band quickly rose to national and international attention with the release of “Smoko” and its accompanying video. Dave Grohl loved the video for “Smoko” so much that he wound up showing it to Josh Homme, who then asked the Aussie punk trio to open for Queens of the Stone Age during their Australian tour that year.

The Chats also won the attention of the legendary Iggy Pop, who asked the band to open for him during his Australian tour last year. (Reportedly, he peppered the band with questions like “What’s a smoko?” and “What’s a dart?”) Adding to a momentous year, the band toured across Australia, the UK and their first Stateside shows — with their Los Angeles show being attended by Home, Grohl and Arctic Monkeys’ frontman Alex Turner. They closed out last year with a return UK tour, selling out London’s O2 Forum. 

Understandably, the past couple of years have been a whirlwind for the rapidly rising Aussie punk trio: the band has spent that time balancing touring, writing songs and whenever their gigs took them to Victoria, stopping by engineer Billy Gardner’s Geelong-based studio to recording the material they had written. And as a result, it took the band 18 months to record their highly-anticipated full-length debut High Risk Behaviour, which is slated for a March 27, 2020 release through the band’s own Bargain Bin Records/Cooking Vinyl Australia. “If we’d just done a week and slogged it out we could have had an album before now but we just kept going in there and making newer and better songs so it’s hard to put a stop on it,” the band’s Sandwith says in press notes. “Some of the songs were first-take and we were like, ‘That’s good, whatever’ We’re really not perfectionists.” (Interestingly, although, the band found themselves in the middle of a bidding war between a couple of major labels, they were determined to continue to do everything their own way, steadfastly maintaining the DIY ethos they started with.) 

The Aussie punk act’s full-length debut, derives its title from personal experience: the band’s Matt Boggis has routinely been hassled by local police for skating in places he shouldn’t be — and he’d frequently get tickets listening the offense as “High Risk Behaviour.” The album’s 14 songs clock in at a total of 28 minutes with about half of its songs not even reaching the two-minute mark. ““I don’t want to make the songs boring, so I just keep them short and sweet,” Sandwith says of their creative process. “We try not to think about it or complicate it too much. You don’t want to force it or the song’s going to turn out crap.” Reportedly, the end result features  material that’s centered around a three-chords-is-probably-one-too-many approach, Sandwith’s partially spoken, partially  sung vocals while displaying youthful exuberance and drunken rowdiness. (Yes, in some way, FIDLAR does come to mind — but Aussies are crazier.) “I think they’re good songs,” says Sandwith. “And at the end of the day, if I like it then fuck it, who cares if other people do?”

Clocking in at a little over two minutes, High Risk Behaviour’s latest single “The Clap” is a cretinous bit of punk rock, centered around scuzzy power chords, shouted call and response vocals and a mosh pit friendly hook that makes the band — and in turn, the song  — sound indebted to to ’77 era punk, complete with a snotty, zero fucks given air. Featuring the band’s Josh Price taking on vocal duties, the song is a mosh pit friendly ripper that’s partially a cautionary tale about a sexual encounter gone very wrong and a sexually transmitted infection that’s painful and just doesn’t seem to leave. 

Directed by Matt Weston, the recently released video for “The Clap” finds the band’s Price heading to the clinic in severe pain. Of course, while trying to get treatment, the doctors are completely disgusted by Price’s condition. But they find the time to treat him — in a  way that seems painful, repulsive and absurd. Much like the song itself, the video is fucking hilarious. 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

The Los Angeles, CA-based desert punk act, ExSage is essentially the solo, recording project of its creative mastermind, primary songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and frontwoman Kate Clover, who throughout the project’s run has chosen local musicians as part of her touring band, although with the project’s recently released sophomore EP, Total Devotion, Clover has specifically chosen an all female backing band. As it turns out, Clover had initially overlooked being the only woman member of the project, and she believes that it’s a highly symbolic (and necessary) change, that she hopes will inspire women to pursue what they believe in — especially grabbing instruments and kicking ass.

Interestingly, the project’s sophomore EP was inspired by a midnight drive through the Los Angeles area and she was driving, she heard Suicide’s “Ghost Rider” on a left-of-the-dial radio station. Returning home, Clover feverishly wrote new material — with a deeply personal mission: to be true to herself, no matter the cost. Additionally, the material on the EP is reportedly inspired by the work of PJ Harvey, Let Love In-era Nick Cave and Black Sabbath while lyrically, the material draws from French Surrealistic poetry — namely the work of Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. And although  “Under Your Spell,” the EP’s first single is inspired by Suicide, sonically the song to my ears, reminds me much of Only in Dreams and Too True-era Dum Dum Girls, PJ Harvey and Josh Homme’s renowned Desert Sessions compilation, thanks to a blazing psych rock meets stoner rock-like power chord-based turn towards the song’s last one-third, but the song is under-pinned by a urgent and insatiable desire.