Tag: New Noise Magazine

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Deathlist Releases a Brooding Visual for Murky Album Single “You Won’t Be Here For Long”

Jenny Logan is a Portland, OR-based multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter, who has spent the past few years being very busy as a member of grunge pop trio Loveboys, post-punk act Miss Rayon, guitar pop act Sunbathe, and her solo recording project Deathlist. With her Deathlist, Logan has released a handful of material including 2017’s S/T debut, 2018’s attention-grabbing Fun. and last year’s A Canyon and Loved, which have helped established her sound — a sound that’s influenced by New Order, Suicide and The Jesus and Mary Chain. 

Logan’s fifth Deathlist album You Won’t Be Here for Long is slated for a May 29, 2020 release. Recorded and mixed by Victor Nash at Destination: Universe, the forthcoming album thematically explores loss, grief, survival and love. You Won’t Be Here for Long’s latest single, album title track “You Won’t Be Here For Long” is a slow-burning and murky dirge centered around droning synths, a sinuous bass line, Logan’s husky vocals and tweeter and woofer rocking beats. And while clearly being indebted to the pulsating minimalism of Suicide, the song as Logan explained to New Noise Magazine “is about the temporariness of everything and how stranger it is what we still exist at all.” Considering how dire everything in our world is at the moment, the song’s overall theme seems both prescient and fitting. 

Shot in Red Rock Canyon, outside of Las Vegas, the video is split between black and white home video recorder footage of Lewis hiking and wandering in the desert, and footage of her lying down in a bed of flowers. It emphasizes the eeriness of the song — while illustrating our smallness and fragility within a larger, indifferent universe. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

If you follow me through my various social media pages, you’d know that this weekend has been very busy as I’ve been attending the second annual international beer, food and music festival OctFest on Governor’s Island this weekend — and although today is the second and final day of the festival, I’m looking forward to catching Nile Rodgers and Chic; but in the meantime, there’s a bit of business to attend to, so let’s get to it, huh?

Comprised of Joe Parella, Jon Rodney, Joe Cowell and Chris Donofrio, the Asbury Park, NJ-based indie rock band Deal Casino formed back in 2013. The band cites Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, The Band and Led Zeppelin as some of their influences but more importantly, since their release the band has released a series of EPs before releasing their self-titled, full-length debut last year to praise from Stereogum, New Noise and others. LLC, the Asbury Park-based quartet’s sophomore album is slated for a November 2018 release and its latest single “Happy People” is centered around jangling guitar chords, a chugging and propulsive rhythm section and wobbling and droning synths.  Infused with a Wes Anderson soundtrack quirkiness, the song is actually bitterly ironic, as its narrator openly questions how people can be happy with themselves and the world around them when so much is dreadfully wrong — and although these happy people may seem superficially content, the song’s narrator points out that he’d rather not put on the happy mask that erases reality; even if it’s absurd and painful.

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Although she is all of 25, the New York-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and studio engineer Eva Lawitts has had a rather accomplished music career –beginning  as a high schooler, she’s had stints in the likes of Vagabon, Citris and others, touring across the US a number of times — and as a studio engineer, she runs Wonderpark Studios with Chris Krasnow.

Interestingly, Lawitts’ solo recording project Stimmerman finds the accomplished New York-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and studio engineer stepping out on her own as a creative mastermind and frontperson; in fact, with her Stimmerman debut, Pleasant Vistas in a Somber Place EP, Lawitts wrote, arranged and performed all of the vocal, guitar and bass parts with Beach Fossils‘ touring drummer Russel Holzman and acclaimed trumpeter Adam O’Farrill on an effort that as she told New Noise Magazine were drafts of a songs written for a new album by a now-defunct band she was in. “I had completed most of the instruments by fall 2016, the band I had written the songs for broke up in December, and I spent the firs half of 2017 racing around on tour with a horde of other musicians and bands, mostly getting really depressed in vans and hotels around about the sudden lack of direction in my life, and attempting to complete these songs on my own,” she explained. And as a result, the EP’s material reflects a childish moroseness and an impotent bitterness and frustration.

Reportedly, the EP’s latest single “Tough Talk” were culled from half-remembered conversations during a particularly intense period of touring, as well as her running commentary on those memories, followed by a sort of conclusion about how even attempting to reach a conclusion about what it all was supposed to mean was futile, and those observations give the song a bilious fury and frustration — while sonically, the song finds Lawitts drawing from prog rock, indie rock, noise and punk in a way that reminds me of The Mallard‘s Finding Meaning in Deference.

.