Tag: [PIAS]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: HighSchool Shares Breakneck and Hook-Driven “149”

Rising London-based post-punk outfit HighSchool — Melbourne-born, London-based duo Rory Trobbiani and Luke Scott, along with live backing members Lilli Trobbiani and Lucy Lamb — exploded into the scene with their debut, six-song EP, 2021’s Forever at Last, an effort that saw the band distilling circa-’86 indie lo-fi, New Wave, goth and post-punk through a new, very modern lens.

With self-directed, deeply arresting videos for each of the EP’s six tracks and multiple vinyl runs selling out, the band began to receive attention globally. Beginning with a stint residing London, the duo and their live band played shows across the UK, European Union, North America, Japan and back in Australia, making a run of the international festival circuit, while sharing stages with CHVRCHES, Sam Fender, NewDad and Wet Leg among others.

The rising post punk outfit followed up with 2022’s Only a Dream, which was recorded with Dan Carey and released through his Speedy Wunderground and 2023’s “Colt.” The duo signed to [PIAS], who released their sophomore EP, last year’s Accelerator. Accelerator saw the duo taking their sound to a much darker, reflective place while being an effort that revealed new layers and added depth with each listen. The band went on to support the EP with a successful UK tour with Wunderhouse.

Building upon a growing profile, the band has received praise from NME, The Fader, Clash, DIY, Dork Magazine, The Line of Best Fit, Paper Magazine, Rolling Stone ANZ, So Young and airplay from triple j, BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 1, KEXP and several others across the globe.

The band’s highly-anticipated full-length debut is forthcoming, and the album’s first single, the Ben Hillier and Finn Billingham-produced “149” is a breakneck, mind-melting mix of shoeagze, New Wave and jangle pop and Brit pop that reveals a band with an unerring knack for catchy hooks. And at its core, the song captures languorous, boring and seemingly carefree summers in your teens and early 20s.

“‘149’ is about slow, teenage suburban summers – long, dry days, sprinklers on cracked lawns, the smell of cut grass and cheap beer, halogen-lit tennis courts and supermarket car parks. Nothing to do but kick rocks, ride your bike, hang at the skatepark or by the pool. 

You end up at a shit house party you weren’t invited to, with the girl you’ve had a crush on all year – the one you thought never noticed you. Someone’s playing Benny Benassi on a light-up Bluetooth speaker. People spill onto the porch, your breath tastes like warm wine from a sack. Maybe you hold hands or she kisses you. ‘149’ is a brief moment in the noise, knowing it won’t last. And that’s the point”. 

The accompanying, self-directed video finds the band and friends commandeering a London double-decker bus and driving around London. The band plays an impromptu set onboard. But the video has some impromptu origins: The band borrowed the bus from Nev, who lives next door to the band’s studio. Nev runs a dub radio broadcast out of his kitchen; but he happened to own a party bus. It’s the sort of surreal set up that can only occur late at a night in a big city, with indelible characters.

“The video captures the feeling we wanted for ‘149’ — the dizzying elation of a rambunctious night out, full of promise and unpredictability. It’s about the seemingly endless possibilities a party can bring, and that fleeting feeling of being pulled out of your head and into the present, knowing it can only last until the night ends.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Belgian Duo Portland Releases an Atmospheric Ode to Heartbreak and Resolve

Belgian indie pop duo Portland — Jente Pironet and Sarah Pepels — can trace their origins back to when the duo lived at the same student housing unit while studying at Hasselt, Belgium‘s PXL Music School. The duo also a shared the same love of music with a specific soft spot for Elliott Smith. In fact, the project’s name is a nod to Smith’s hometown. From the start, it was clear that the duo had a palpable chemistry: Their voices blend and complement each other perfectly.

The duo took part in and won several local talent competitions before signing to [PIAS] back in 2018. Their full-length debut, 2019’s Your Colours Will Stain was released to critical and commercial acclaim with the album peaking at #6 on the Belgian album charts, thanks to success of the melancholy and dreamy sound of singles like “Killer’s Mind, “Ally Ally” and “You Misread Me.” Adding to a growing profile, the Belgian pop duo made the rounds of the national and international touring circuit with sets at Rock Werchter, Pukklepop, and The Great Escape, as well as several festivals across the Benelux region (Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg) and France.

Earlier this year, the duo relocated to the UK to record their highly-anticipated, 12-song, sophomore album Departures with Oliver Baystom. Slated for a March 17, 2023 release, the album reportedly sees the duo growing into their own as performers and songwriters. The material is more direct and to the point, while displaying more intricate melodies and arrangements. Casting aside the need to show off their vocal range or tricks on every song, the duo let the songs guide them to find the perfect tone and harmonies to complement the melodies and rhythms. The end result is an album of moving, beautiful and dream-like music.

Departures‘ latest single, the Sarah Pepels-penned “Stardust” is a slow-burning and beguiling song featuring an atmospheric and brooding arrangement of organ, keys and woodwinds. Pepels’ delicate vocal gently tiptoes through the arrangement, with the song and vocalist slowly growing louder and gaining confidence while getting to the song’s chorus. The song is rooted in deeply personal yet universal experience: lost love, lives turned upside down and putting the pieces of a broken life and heart back together while being a celebration of one’s inner strength and resolve.

“In January 2021, I was heartbroken, I had to leave a lot of memories and a part of my life, my love, behind,” Portland’s Sarah Pepels explains. “I didn’t know where to go, but I knew, I had to write music to put those thoughts and heavy emotions into. I needed to be alone, so I went cat-sitting at my niece’s apartment. I locked myself up for four days with nothing but the warmth and company of the furry kittens. It turned out to be a very intense and cathartic journey. And so ‘Stardust, a song that means the world to me, was born.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Liverpool’s Courting Shares Acerbic “Tennis”

Liverpool-based post-punk quarter Courting — Sean Murphy-O’Neill (vocals, guitar), Sean Thomas (drums, vocals), Josh Cope (guitar) and Connor McCann (bass) — exploded into the the national scene with last year’s Grand National EP, a critically applauded effort that led to coverage from the likes The Needle Drop, CRACK, Dork, NME, Clash and London Evening Standard — and landed on a number of end of year lists, including NME‘s 100, Dork‘s Hype List 2022, Daily Star‘s Ones to Watch 2021 and DIY‘s Hello 2021. Adding to a rapidly growing national profile, the act landed two singles on BBC Radio 6′s playlist.

Building upon last year’s incredible momentum, the Liverpool-based post-punk outfit recently signed to [PIAS] and they announced a run of UK tour dates slated for September and October. Along with that, they released a new single “Tennis,” the first bit of new material from the band since the release of last year’s Grand National.

The James Dring-produced “Tennis” sees the members of Courting expanding upon their sound with smatterings of electronic fuzz, bloops, bleeps and feedback that explodes into cacophony paired with angular guitar lines, a driving bass line, forceful rhythms and an enormous, shout-along worthy hook-driven chorus paired with Murphy-O’Neill’s sardonic lyrics delivered with vocals, which vacillate between a restrained monologue and a bristling and acerbic spittle and bile-fueled singing. The song captures the push and pull, and the bitter and endless back and forth within a dysfunctional, transactional relationship with an uncanny sense of realism.

“‘Tennis’ is a paypig’s personal redemption narrative, set in ‘the city’, and told in two parts. A twisted tale of two lovers’ back and forth, bound by cricket, bodybuilding, and money. A story as old as time,” the members of Courting explain. “We named the song ‘Tennis’ as a logical (but unrelated) sequel to our two previously released sports-related songs. To us, this felt like a natural ending to that idea. Dynamically, the second part of the song is supposed to represent a shift in tone for the character in which they realise their own worth and leave the situation that is set within the first part of the song.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays White Lies Tackle Mortality and Its Acceptance in “Am I Really Going To Die”

Acclaimed London-based post-punk act and JOVM mainstays White Lies — Harry McVeigh (vocals. guitar), Charles Cave (bass, vocals) and Jack Lawrence-Brown (drums) — released their fifth album FIVE back in 2019, and the album continued a remarkable run of commercially and critically applauded material that often sees the band balancing arena rock bombast with intimate and confessional, singer/songwriter pop lyrics, which seemingly come from a very lived-in, real place that feels uncomfortably familiar.

White Lies’ highly anticipated sixth album, the Ed Bueller and Claudius Mittendorfer co-produced As I Try Not To Fall Apart is slated for a February 18, 2022 release through [PIAS]. Recorded over two breakneck studio sessions, As I Try Not To Fall Apart reportedly features the JOVM mainstays’ most expansive material to date with the songs possessing elements of arena rock, electro pop, prog rock and funky grooves while still maintaining their penchant for crafting infectious hooks. 

Late last year, I managed to write about two of the album’s singles:

  •  “As I Try Not To Fall Apart,” a rousingly anthemic yet psychologically precise character study of a desperate man, who feels hopelessly stuck in a socially prescribed “appropriate” gender role, while also trying to express his own vulnerability and weakness.
  • “I Don’t Want To Go To Mars” arguably one of the most mosh pit friendly, guitar-driven rippers the band has released in some time that tells a story of its main character being sent off to a new colonized Mars to live out a sterile and mundane existence. The band goes on to say: “Fundamentally the song questions the speed at which we are developing the world(s) we inhabit, and what cost it takes on our wellbeing.” 

“Am I Really Going To Die,” As I Try Not To Fall Apart‘s third and latest single is a glittery, glam rocker song centered around a disco-like bass line, glistening synth arpeggios and an enormous, arena rock friendly hook that sounds as though it were inspired by Roxy Music, and Duran Duran. But under the dance floor friendly grooves, the song thematically touches upon mortality, and the uneasy acceptance of the inevitable.

“‘Am I Really Going to Die’ is a song with familiar subject matter for White Lies but a new chapter musically. It’s the first part of a two-song narrative about a self-important hot-shot given a terminal diagnosis, and the various stages of his coming to terms with it,” White Lies’ Charles Cave explains. “‘AIRGTD’ is loosely inspired by the great Danny Huston’s character in Ivan’s XTC, and musically by Station to Station era Bowie.”  

Directed by Balan Evans, the recently released video could be thought of in two different but similar ways: as from the perspective of a dying person, becoming aware of their impending mortality while their friends or strangers look on with concern, shock, indifference, malice and in at least one instance, the authorities are attempting to revive the person. You can also view it from the perspective of the onlooker, who stumbles upon a dying person or a dead person with the same sense of concern, shock and so on. But no matter what, there’s fear, despair, confusion by all involved.

 “This song has so much story in it, it was quite easy to come up with this idea. It sort of spilled out of the lyrics,” Balan Evans explains. “I was talking to a friend who was recounting being hit by a car and waking up on the ground with people hanging over him and it felt like a unique perspective. This point of view felt rich with storytelling potential, something I wanted to explore and experiment with and most importantly it matched so well with the themes of the song.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Acclaimed Melbourne-Based Act Mildlife Performs “Citations” on South Channel Island

2017 was a breakthrough year for the now-acclaimed Melbourne-based outfit Mildlife — multi-instrumentalists Jim Rindfleish, Adam Halliwell, Kevin McDowell and Tom Shanahan: Their full-length debut Phase, a mind-bending mix of jazz, krautrock and trippy grooves quickly became a word-of-mouth sensation among open-minded DJs and crate-diggers searching for that perfect, as-of-yet undiscovered-but-incredible beat. Their emergence — and their profile — was solidified by some extensive touring that demonstrated a loose-limbed live approach that thrilled and won over new fans, including the BBC’s Gilles Peterson.

By the end of 2017, the album received critical praise from  Resident Advisor, Uncut,and The Guardian, as well as airplay on BBC Radio 6. Adding to a growing profile, the album landed a handful of award nominations including Best Album at the 2018 Worldwide FM Awards,  Best Independent Jazz Album at the 2018 AIR Awards and Best Electronic Award nomination and win at the The Age Music Victoria Awards. DJ Harvey also included album track “Magnificent Moon” on his Pikes compilation Mercury Rising, Vol. II.

The Melbourne-based quartet have also opened for Stereolab, JOVM mainstays King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Harvey Sutherland. Their first national headlining tour was sold out, and they immediately followed up with a ten-date UK and European tour, which was culminated with a homecoming set at Meredith Music Festival.

Mildlife released their sophomore album Automatic through Heavenly Recordings late last year. The album, which debuted at #10 on the Aussie charts, saw the band crafting much more danceable material, centered around tightly structured arrangements that allow room for melodic improvisation paired with ethereal vocals. Interestingly, the album manages to further cement the Aussie outfit’s approach and reputation for effortlessly gliding between live performance and studio songwriting. Capping off the year, Automatic won an ARIA Award for Best Jazz Album.

Unable to play shows in person and in front of living, breathing, sweating and dancing humans, the mebmers of Mildlife travelled by boat to a long-abandoned 19th Century island fort on South Channel Island to play for fairy penguins and abalone poachers.

The end result: Live from South Channel Island, a 70 minute concert film and live album, in which the band recreate their live show while framed by Port Philip Bay. Live from South Channel Island is slated for an April 29, 2022 release through Heavenly Recordings/[PIAS] — and the band shared the album’s first single, an expansive live rendition of the Wish You Were Here era Pink Floyd meets jazz fusion-like “Citations,” which appears on Automatic. Of course, the accompanying live footage is at simultaneously eerie and jaw-dropping.