Tag: Lines

New Audio: SAOL Shares Earnest and Rousingly Anthemic “Lines”

Irish singer/songwriter and musician Zoë Gough is the creative mastermind of the recording project SAOL, a project that showcases a genre-bending sound that weaves elements of shoegaze, indie rock and grunge paired with vivid lyricism, catchy hooks and an uncanny knack for melodicism. The project is rooted in Gough’s dedication to engaging with music as a social platform while documenting her journey to situating herself within an Ireland that has undergone rapid change while holding onto the strands of the past that tie together the future and finding a way forward.

Gough’s work with SAOL has been played on RTE, RTE 2xm, Galway City Flirt FM and has received national radio play on Ireland’s Radio Nova while drawing comparisons to Hole, The Cranberries, My Bloody Valentine, Sinead O’Connor, and Garbage.

The Irish artist’s latest single “Lines”is a hook-driven tune anchored around earnest songwriting and performances, rousingly anthemic sing along worthy hooks and choruses, fuzzy power chords paired with her powerhouse delivery. While drawing comparisons to Hole, The Cranberries, Smashing Pumpkins and contemporaries like Soccer Mommy and Snail Mail, “Lines” draws out the prolonged process of loss and reckons with being the one left alone.

Emerging Swedish industrial synth pop act LINES can trace its origins to when its founding trio — Erik, Fred and Nisse — traveled to Berlin, with the expressed purpose of losing themselves in that hedonism of its nightlife. As the story goes, as though under the influence of a higher power, lines were drawn and blueprints made of the sort of music that they wanted to create. Although the band was born in Berlin, the band’s roots are in Stockholm‘s indie scene. Interestingly, they manage to continue a long-held tradition of high-powered synth-based and hook-driven synth pop pioneered by the likes of The Knife, Teddybears and others but thematically centered around isolation, escapism and what the band calls “obsessive and destructive love” — and they do with some subtle political leanings. “We’re not Rage Against The Machine in our police, but we try to express some kind of social commentary between the lines.”

Along with crafting politically charged material, the trio are boldly and defiantly DIY — writing, producing and mixing their own work in their self-built studio. They’ve also self-directed and produced the bulk of their videos and thrown their own 24 hour release parties; however, the band is ambitious and they have their sights set on using their non-conformist pop to make a connection with audiences in their native Sweden and beyond.    Perhaps unsurprisingly, the band’s the band has a growing national and international profile — their single “You” has amassed more than 6 million streams, and renowned Swedish pop artist Tove Lo has championed them.

The trio’s latest single “People,” which finds the trio collaborating with Adele Kosman is centered around lush layers of arpeggiated synths, thumping beats and an infectious, sing-along worthy, anthemic hook that I can envision people shouting along to, while having their arms draped around their friend’s shoulders. The track will further cement the Swedish trio’s growing reputation for wildly euphoric and futuristic synth pop.

Brooklyn-based band Farewell Republic released their debut full-length effort earlier this year and it was praised by several media outlets such as Spin, the Washington Post, and the Village Voice. The band will be releasing […]