Tag: post punk

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Vancouver-based Post Punk Act SPECTRES Release a Nostalgia-Tinged Visual for Shimmering Hook Driven “Northern Towns”

Vancouver, British Columbia-based post-punk act SPECTRES was founded back in 2005  by its frontman Brian Gustavon. And since the band’s formation, they’ve been cited as one of the acts at responsible for kicking off their homeland’s rented interest in the post-punk sound. Initially inspired by the British anarcho-punk scene of the late 70s and early 80s, the Vancouver-based post-punk meshed that scene’s ethos with post punk stylings and an uncanny knack for crafting hook driven, catchy material. But over time the band’s sound has evolved to the point where it subtly yet increasingly meshes elements of New Wave and punk.

“The band started as a way to creatively explore 1980s British anarcho-punk and while creatively we have drifted in new directions, this core influence still holds a lot of inspiration for us,” the band’s Zach Batalden  (guitar) says in press notes. Bands like The Mob, Crisis, Crass and Zounds are all still very important for us. From there we took a deep interest in ’80s post-punk and new wave with bands like The Sound, The Chameleons, Theatre of Hate and Modern English, central to the way our sound has developed.”

Slated for a March 6, 2020 release through Artoffact Records, the Vancouver-based post-punk act’s forthcoming Jason Corbett-produced album Nostalgia lyrically finds the band touching upon the alienation of modern life and the search for hope in an increasingly terrifying world. “Deepening political partisanship, aging, and finding one’s own way through alienating times are common themes the on the Nostalgia LP,” says Batalden. Sonically, the material fnds the band continuing their ongoing exploration of a decidedly post-punk like sound with Gustavon’s plaintive and melodic vocals ethereally floating over chiming guitars and propulsive beats. “For the new album, Nostalgia, we were listening to a lot of Flying Nun bands like The Bats, The Verlaines and The Clean as well,” Batalden adds. 

“Northern Towns,” off the band’s “Provincial Wake” 7 inch is centered around layers of chiming guitars, propulsive drumming, Gustavson’s plaintive vocals and an enormous, radio friendly hook the Vancouver-based act’s sound brings Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen,The Cure and even Siouxsie and the Banshees to mind. And while featuring a pitch perfect, era specific production that’s deceptively anachronistic, the song possesses a bittersweet and nostalgic air that feels very modern.Interestingly,  the single also manages to be a nice little taste of what we should expect from the band’s forthcoming album.

The recently released video by Wayne Moreheart is comprised of archival footage taken from the My VHS Videos 80s, 90s, 00s YouTube channel. As a result, the video manages to capture the bittersweet nostalgia at the core of the song, as well as the world of small town kids with big dreams of making it big without knowing how to get there. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Bambara Teams Up with Palberta’s Ani Ivry-Block and Public Practice’s Drew Citron on the Brooding and Atmospheric “Sing Me to the Street”

Throughout the course of this nine-plus year history of this site, I’ve spilled quite a bit of virtual ink covering long-time JOVM mainstays Bambara. Last year, the Brooklyn-based trio — brothers Reid and Blaze Bateh and their childhood friend William Brookshire — released their critically applauded third, full-length album Shadow on Everything. Sonically, the album’s material was a decisive and new direction for the band: the material found the band moving away from the noise rock and punk rock of their previously released material — 2013’s DREAMVIOLENCE and 2017’s Swarm — to incorporate a more Western Gothic-inspired take on punk rock and while still centered on their tight and forceful rhythm section, the album had the band place Reid Bateh’s vocals at the forefront, symbolically placing the damaged characters and seedy locales of his lyrics on center stage. And in some way, it captures something wholly and uniquely American.

While Shadow on Everything was constructed around one central narrative with each of its songs sort of functioning like chapters in a novel, the band’s fourth album Stray, which is slated for a February 14, 2020 release through Wharf Cat Records, plays more like a short story collection, featuring a group of inter-related characters, set in the band’s native Georgia. Interestingly, Stray’s second and latest single is the slow-burning  David Lynch soundtrack-like “Sing Me to the Street.” The brooding and meditative song features an atmospheric arrangement of shimmering and swirling synths, a sinuous baseline, Blaze Bateh’s metronomic drumming. Interestingly, while continuing a run of material centered around Reid Bateh’s moody and dramatic baritone, Palberta’s Ani Ivry-Block and Public Practice’s Drew Citron’s harmonies serve as an ethereal counterpart, giving a brief glimpse of gorgeousness through the gloom. Many of the Stray’s characters are named, like the album’s hard charging and explosive “Serafina” but as the band’s Reid Bateh explains in press notes, he used a different approach for “Sing Me to the Street,” ‘”Sing me to the Street’ is about loneliness, isolation, and the dreamy allure of chaos. The song follows an unnamed character wandering the streets of a vast city that feels both alive and abandoned, as he attempts to silence the persistent song of oblivion singing in his head.”

Co-directed by Will Hart and Bambara, the recently released video for “Sing Me to the Street” was filmed by Will Hart, and the video captures and evokes the loneliness and unease of an enormous city at night — and it does in a way that feels indebted to film noir and French New Wave cinema. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Emerging from a period of creative hibernation, the emerging British post punk trio JC Palmer released their first single in some time, “Violence.” Centered around explosive bursts of cascading guitars, angular and propulsive bass and thunderous drumming, the trio’s latest single is a noisy and paranoid track that feels as though it’s about to burst at the seams. And while being clearly indebted to Entertainment! and Solid Gold-era Gang of Four, “Violence” as the band explains  “is a song about learning the validity of anger and traversing friction between you and those you care about.”

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

The Los Angeles-based post-punk act Dancing Tongues, featuring core duo Alex Lavayen and Kevin Modry, can trace its origins to the breakup of the duo’s previous band. In the aftermath, the pair relocated to Los Angeles, where they began writing material inspired by the post punk of the late 1970s and 1980s — i.e., The Gun Club, The Cure and Talking Heads.

In 2016, Lavayen and Modry formally started the band, and bay the end of the year, they released their debt EP Positions late that year. Over the next two years, the band played shows in and around San Francisco, Los Angeles and Orange County while slowing building a community of fans and fellow artists. During that same period, the duo who had long held legitimate day jobs in music and art decided that it was time to channel all of their creative energy into the band. And as a result, they furiously wrote the material that would comprise their Jonny Bell-produced full-length debut Hypnotic Tales of Sex and Distress. Reportedly, the album thematically addresses the dissatisfaction, confusion and distractions we all experience as we desperately attempt to navigate through an overabundance of information. Each individual track on the album is meant to mark a chapter in a hypnotic journey that specifically deals with a different story — from the inherent anxieties of creative pursuits, commitment, identity, responsibility, love and romance, and escapement.

The album’s latest single “Body Language” will further cement the band’s reputation for crafting hook-driven material that’s deeply indebted to Joy Division and the like; but the slick production, stubbly pushes the song’s sound into the New Wave direction, making the song subtly nod at Billy Idol.  In some way, the new song finds the band at their most ambitious — but without steering too far from what’s won them attention so far. As the band explain in press notes, the song is about the odd (and yet inherent) push and pull sensation of almost every romantic relationship in which there are periods in which you feel so deeply connected to that person, that it’s like nothing can pull you apart,  and the moments in which you somehow feel disconnected and incomplete. And in those moments, you try your best to maneuver something that’s confusing and complicated — with all the bullshit and baggage of your own life.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Over the better part of the past year, I’ve written quite a bit about the Brooklyn-based post-punk JOVM mainstays Russian Baths. And as you may recall, with the release of their debut EP Penance, the band — Luke Koz, Jess Ress, Evan Gill Smith and Jeff Widner — quickly established a reputation for crafting a brooding 120 Minutes-era alt rock-like sound.

Building upon a growing profile, Russian Baths will be releasing their highly-anticipated full-length debut Deepfake through Good Eye Records next week.  Reportedly, the album finds the members of the Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays pushing a sound long rooted in juxtapositions to its extreme:  feedback and dissonance seem to swallow softly whispered harmonies, arpeggiated synths and booming 808 like drumming are paired with angular and shrieking guitars, propulsive drumming and motorik-like grooves.

Often centered around surgical imagery, the album’s material touches upon themes of personal regret, cultural guilt, reflection on systems in collapse — and while evoking the zeitgeist of the moment, the material alternates between voices seemingly so close that they seem in the room right beside you and at other times, from an impossible distance. So far I’ve written about two of the album’s previous singles. The album’s first single was the aggressively abrasive “Tracks,” which to my ears was one part post-punk, one part noise-rock and one part shoegaze that evoked the uneasy, claustrophobic air of paranoia and distrust of someone, who has frequently been forced to ask difficult questions of themselves and their relationships with others. The album’s second single “Responder” found the band crafting an atmospheric track with elements of shoegaze, post-punk, brooding 120 Minutes-era alt rock and Western Gothic in a way that brought Shadow on Everything-era Bambara to mind.

Interestingly, Deepfake‘s third and latest single “Wrong”  may arguably be the most grunge rock-like song rebased from the album to date, as it’s centered around alternating quiet-loud-quiet sections, featuring fuzzy power chords, thunderous drumming and howled vocals. Sonically, the song manages to evoke a slow-burning and seemingly unending sense of dread and unease of a world going impossibly mad before your eyes.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Youth Sector is a rapidly rising Brighton-based art rock act, comprised of Nick Tompkins (guitar, vocals), Josh Doyle (bass), Brad Moore (guitar), Harvey Dent (synth) and Karl Tomlin (drums) that has received critical praise from a number of British press outlets, including DIY Magazine, The Line of Best Fit, Dork Magazine, Gigwise and So Young Magazine, and airplay from BBC Radio 1 personalities Huw Stephens and Abbie McCarthy, as well as BBC 6 Music‘s Tom Robinson.

Building upon the growing buzz surrounding them, the up-and-coming British indie quintet’s latest single, the Theo Verney-produced “Tonight” continues a run of decidedly 80s New Wave-inspired tracks, complete shimmering synth arpeggios and rousingly anthemic hooks — but with a more introspective and somber tone. And while reportedly drawing a bit from early New Order, the track manages to equally recall The Cars but with a punk rock sneer.

“This song aims to shed light on the contagious quality of apathy in society, and how we favour small distractions in order to avoid confronting some of our toughest challenges,” the band’s Nick Tompkins explains in press notes. ” We’re seeing this constantly in the way the world deals with the climate crisis, where it only seems to be an urgent issue to those willing to make sacrifices while others are happy living in denial.”

Look for new material from the band in 2020.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Ganser’s EP Title Track “You Must Be New Here”

With the release of last year’s critically applauded full-length debut, Odd Talk, the Chicago, IL-based post-punk act Ganser — founding members Alicia Gaines (bass, vocals) and Nadia Garofalo (keys, vocals) with Brian Cundiff (drums) and Charlie Landsman (guitar) received attention nationally for an angular post-punk sound heavily indebted to Sonic Youth and Magazine paired with incisive lyrics critiquing larger social issues. 

Now, as you may recall the members of the Chicago-based JOVM mainstays have spent the bulk of this past year in the studio, recording the material. which will comprise their forthcoming EP You Must Be New Here. Slated for a November 8, 2019 release, You Must Be New Here continues the band’s ongoing collaboration with Brian Fox — but joined in the control both with Electrelane‘s Mia Clarke. The EP’s first single “Buio” featured the angular and driving post-punk sound that first caught my attention and the rest of the blogosphere — but with a clean and precise studio sheen. And yet, at its core the song was centered around acutely self-aware observations on the tenuous and dysfunctional relationship between the author/creator and their audience.  

“You Must Be New Here,” the EP’s latest single and title track features shimmering key arpeggios, twisting and turning guitars and a stuttering rhythm that creates a tense and uneasy air while Alicia Gaines’ vocals vacillate between intention, magical thinking and making uneasy bargains with reality within a turn of a phrase. Importantly, the song is underpinned by a desperate fight for some semblance of agency within chaos and uncertainty. And in some way, it captures our current zeitgeist with a vivid accuracy. 

The lyric video takes place in a sunny, suburban-styled kitchen. The band’s Alicia Gaines has her back to us as she’s washing dishes and singing parts of the song to herself. She’s so lost in her own thoughts that she barely notices her bandmates, who come in and out of the kitchen to make themselves cups of coffee. The ordinariness of the situation gives the lyric video a surreal air. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Small Planets is a Los Angeles-based post punk act, comprised of founding trio Jeff Love (guitars), Josh Spincic (bass) and Phil Drazic (drums) with Jessica Hernandez (vocals) and Ryan Silo (guitar) that can trace its origins to when its founding trio caught Slowdive play a show at The Ace Theater back in 2015. After an exhaustive two year search, the band added Jessica Hernandez and Ryan Silo to complete their lineup — and with their lineup finalized, they developed a sound that has been described as Interpol meets Joy Division and The Cure.

Last year, the band went into the studio with Joshua Mazzachi to record their recently released self-titled full-length debut, an album that finds the band writing a love letter to the classic and beloved post-punk sound. “Tonight,” their self-titled debut’s single is a perfect example of the band’s sound: centered around shimmering and atmospheric synths, an angular, a propulsive bass line, dramatic drumming, Hernandez’s ethereal yet plaintive vocals. And while indebted to 4AD Records, the aforementioned The Cure and Joy Division and others, the track is imbued with a subtly modern and loving touch.

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

With the release of their breakthrough single “air” earlier this year, the Hackney, UK-based trio deep tan drew comparisons to early Warpaint, Wild Beasts, and Foals. Building upon their growing momentum in their native UK, the trio recently released a double a-side single “shimmer” and “constant inconsistencies” through Practise Music, the label home of rapidly rising act Squid, along with Konradsen, Osquello and others.

“shimmer” is a slick and atmospheric track centered around a sinuous and propulsive bass line, subtly twinkling synths handclap-led percussion, an infectious hook and sultry vocals – and while nodding a bit at their breakthrough single, because of its subtle use of electronics, the track sonically reminds me a bit of Kalaboogie-era Doomsquad. “constant inconsistencies” is more of a confrontational post-punk inspired song featuring a sinuous bass line leading a motorik-like groove, squiggling blasts of guitar, stuttering drumming paired with sultry vocals. Interestingly, while drawing from a more cold-wave side of post-punk, the track reminds me a bit of JOVM mainstays Ganser. Both singles reveal an emerging band that’s remarkably versatile and self-assured.

“Both tracks explore sides of people they don’t like. ‘shimmer’ is about surface-level people with malice that runs deep,” the band explains in press notes. “People who operate with cruel intentions, who mask their agenda with a pretty convincing, shiny veneer. Whereas ‘constant inconsistencies’ is about someone who isn’t there for you when you need them, whether thats for support in a serious crisis or just for a pint: It’s a commonly felt thing, everyone has had someone where they’ve thought ‘You love them, but where the fuck are they?’”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Black Fever’s Old-Timey Visual for “Marketing”

With the release of 2010’s Romanticism, 2012’s Revisionist, 2014’s A Little Help EP and 2015’s Midnight Century, the Toronto-based post-punk act The Black Fever — Shoe (vocals, guitar), Pat Bramm (bass, backing vocals) and Dan Purpura (drums) — have firmly established a sleek and propulsive take on post punk that focuses on melody and concise songwriting.  

Recorded over two intense and breakneck recording sessions, their Ian Gomes-produced EP Unarticulated Wants was released earlier this year, and the EP’s first single is the hook-driven, Editors meets Radio 4-like “Marketing.” Centered around a propulsive and angular bass line, thunderous drumming and Shoe’s plaintive vocals, the track seethes with frustration over the fact that every single moment of daily life is inundated with advertisements. It’s inescapable and oppressive manipulation to convince you to spend early and often on that new shiny thing that will make you more attractive and more interesting to others, that will help you lose weight, restore your receding hair line, keep your erection, and just make you feel whole. And yet, there’s a gnawing emptiness that can’t be resolved by possessions or by spending. 

“We need to find a better balance between ads and public art — for art’s sake.” the band said in an emailed statement. Naturally, the song expresses a concern over what the over saturation of advertising and marketing messages does to the human soul and mind. 

The recently released video for “Marketing” is centered around incredibly manipulative stock footage of old commercials. Although the context for each commercial has been removed, each commercial is meant to make you feel something — envy, pleasure, lust. hunger, despair, all in the desperate attempt to get you to buy right now. And it should feel infuriating and fucked up. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of their debut EP Penance, the Brooklyn-based indie rock act and JOVM mainstays Russian Baths — Luke Koz, Jess Ress, Evan Gill Smith and Jeff Widner — quickly established a reputation for crafting a brooding 120 Minutes-era alt rock-like sound. The Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays highly-anticipated full-length debut Deepfake is slated for a November 8, 2019 release through Good Eye Records,  and the album reportedly finds the members of Russian Baths pushing a sound centered around juxtapositions to its extreme: feedback and dissonance seem to swallow softly whispered harmonies, arpeggiated synths and boom 808s are paired with angular and shrieking guitars, propulsive drumming and motorik-like grooves.

Centered around surgical imagery, the album reportedly touches upon themes of personal regret, cultural guilt, reflections on systems in collapse — and while evoking our current zeitgeist, the album’s material is sung by voices that are seemingly so close that they’re in the room right beside you and other times, from a seemingly impossible distance. Now, as you may recall earlier this year, I wrote about album single “Tracks,” an aggressively abrasive song that in many ways was one part shoegaze, one part post-punk, one part noise rock and one part grunge, as the band paired fuzzy and distorted power chords with thunderous drumming and plaintive falsetto vocals. But at its core, the song evokes the uneasy, claustrophobic air of paranoia and distrust of someone, who is forced to ask difficult questions of themselves and of their relationships.

Deepfake‘s latest single “Responder” finds the Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays meshing elements of shoegaze, noise rock, atmospheric post punk, brooding 120 Minutes alt rock and Western gothic centered by Jess Ress’ plaintive and ethereal vocals, dramatic drumming and shimmering bursts of guitar. And while sonically bearing a bit of resemblance to Shadow on Everything-era Bambara, the track evokes a profound and confusing sense of regret and loss.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Hecks Return with a Shimmering Synth-Driven Take on Post Punk and New Wave

Over the past few months, I’ve written a bit about the Chicago-based indie act The Hecks. Formed back in 2012 as a duo featuring founding members Andy Mosiman (guitar, vocals) and Zach Herbert (drums, percussion), […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Night Dreamer’s Contemporary Take on New Wave and Goth

Deriving their name from a composition written and recorded by the legendary jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter, Night Dreamer is a new collaborative project that combines the divergent talents and musical voices of Smashing Pumpkins’ Jeff Schroeder and Southern California-based classically trained, New Wave multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Mindy Song into one unified, artistic vision. Introduced to each other through mutual friends, the duo can trace the origins of their latest project back to early 2017 when they met up for an experimental session at Schroeder’s Chicago-based studio. . “I had no plan other than to just get together with Jeff and see where things might go,” Night Dreamer’s Mindy Song recalls in press notes. “But then once we got going, it was an immediate explosion of sound and inspiration.”

As the story goes. about an hour into their first time working together, Song and Schroeder came up with “Treasure,” the title track off their forthcoming debut EP, Treasure. Slated for an October 11, 2019 release, the EP was mainly recorded at The Cave Studio with Josiah Mazzaschi, a producer, mixer and engineer, who’s worked with The Jesus and Mary Chain and Built to Spill among others — and the EP’s material reportedly finds the band meshing elements of dream pop, noise, heavy metal, goth and New Wave among others. Interestingly, each individual track is imprinted with a singular sonic aesthetic that came about roughly halfway through the Treasure EP recording sessions.“At first we went down a more traditional route in the recording, with live drums and live bass, but then Mindy asked if she could mess around with those tracks and take it in a different direction,” Schroeder recalls.

Working on her own after Schroeder returned to Chicago for tour rehearsal, Song started to reshape the material through the use of drum machines and synths, which managed to amplify the intensity of Schroeder’s guitar playing. “Usually it’s difficult to blend guitar with electronic music in a way that works,” says Schroeder. “But what Mindy sent back to me was so much more exciting than what we’d done before, and put us on a completely different trajectory.”

Treasure’s first single is the shimmering and mesmerizing “Another Life.” Centered around buzzing guitars, tweeter and woofer rattling 808-like beats and Mindy Song’s expressive and plaintive vocals, the song feels like a subtle modernization of the work of New Wave/goth titans like Sixousie and the Banshees and The Cure — but instead of wallowing in the darkness, the song manages to have an upbeat message of rising above one’s currently shitty circumstances, that things do get better in time.

Directed by John Isberg, the recently released video finds the members of Night Dreamer performing the song in an abandoned loft. Shot in warm yet simultaneously soft light, the video finds the duo escaping into the emotion and message of the song.