JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates the 57th anniversary of Scott Weiland’s birth.
Tag: singer/songwriter \
New Video: SUNSAY Shares Soulful and Introspective “Papa’s Song”
Andrey Zaporozhets is a Ukrainian singer/songwriter and musician, whose career started in earnest back in 2000. Zaporozhets first captured audiences as one-half of 5’nizza. With bandmate Sergey Babkin, the duo gained recognition for a unique and authentic sound that paired acoustic guitar with soulful vocals and harmonies and thoughtful lyrics.
5’nizza went on hiatus in 2007. Zaporozhets stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with his solo recording project SUNSAY. Through the release of seven studio albums, two EPs and a handful of standalone singles, the Ukrainian artist has firmly established a sound that pairs soulful vocals and expressive and introspective lyrics that reflect his personal journey and experience. Thematically anchored in a message of finding common ground within and around us, Zaporozhets believes that his work has the power to create and inspire unity.
SUNSAY’s latest single “Papa’s Song” is the first bit of new material from the Ukrainian singer/songwriter and musician in over two years. Anchored around a classic, cinematic soul-inspired sound featuring a glistening Rhodes, shuffling rhythms, soaring strings, a supple bass line and soulful backing and lead vocals, “Papa’s Song” recalls What’s Going On-era Marvin Gaye and contemporaries like Monophonics and others. Lyrically and thematically, the new single is arguably one of the Ukrainian artist’s most personal to date. Written as a tribute to his father, the song explores the complex and conflicting emotions between fathers and sons, while reaching a point of understanding and accepting his father for the complicated, flawed, whole person he was with a sense of forgiveness.
Directed by Sam Bagdasarov, the accompanying video for “Papa’s Song” is shot in a gorgeous, cinematic black and white. We follow a young boy and the grown Zaporozhets but their roles are reversed, almost like the movie Big: The boy, wearing a false mustache for a significant portion of the video, plays the role of the parent with Zaporozhets playing the role of the child. Through this view, and the wisdom he’s earned through his life, the grown Zaporozhets comes to a deeper, empathetic understanding of his father; an understanding that he wouldn’t have come to when he was younger.
New Audio: Homer Teams Up with MINOVA and Michael Rault on Slick and Swaggering “So Get Up!
Acclaimed New York-born and-based drummer, songwriter and producer Homer Steinweiss has a storied career that started in earnest when he was just a teenager. He has been instrumental in helping bring the raw-but-receptive soul sound back into the mainstream through his work with Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley. Steinwess has also been behind the kit for nearly every contemporary soul outfit that has mattered.
The New York-born and-based musician is now one of the most in demand drummers in the world, playing with the likes of Clairo, Solange, Adele, Silk Sonic and Bruno Mars, among a lengthy list of others. And much like his longtime bandmate Dave Guy, Steinweiss is stepping into the spotlight as a both a musician and producer with Ensatina, his first solo album released under the moniker Homer.
Slated for a November 15, 2024 release through Big Crown Records, Ensatina is reflection of who Steinweiss is now and a testament of how struggle often brings about much-needed changes. He was dealing with considerable emotional turbulence; at the same time that his band Holy Hive broke up, a long-personal relationship fell apart, putting him in an uncertain place mentally. The fallout was significant enough for him to seek professional help. “I was going through these super manic highs and then very depressive lows,” Steinweiss explains. “And being in all that, it’s just so tough to imagine that the other side is there, that it’ll be ok.” But, with time, professional help, and support from friends and family, Homer made it through and has been forever changed. This album is a product of that period of his life.
For Steinweiss, creating the album was a refuge, and it put him back on track. Creatives across the world have an innate understanding of that. But the album is also a glimpse into the different energies that influences that make the man and the artist tick. And fittingly, the album is the beginning of a new, interesting chapter of Steinweiss’ life and career.
So far I’ve written about two of Ensantina‘s singles:
- “Deep Sea,” feat. Hether, a slow-burning and woozy love song set over a hypnotic back beat, a gorgeous, dreamy trumpet line and a strummed acoustic guitar line. The lush and meditative arrangement compliments Hether’s dreamily romantic delivery and lyrics, which includes a sweet nod to Steinwess now wife. The song seems to suggest that when we’re struggling in life’s deep sea, love — in all of its forms — can be the lifeline. The track between the two friends came together quickly, with Steinweiss remarking, “It’s my favorite song on the album. Hether, as a friend, saw me through my highs and lows, and this track captures the full energy of what was happening during the time we were recording.”
- The album’s second single, album opening track “Rollin‘” features the self-proclaimed “granddaughter of soul” KIRBY. The song is anchored around a lush and swaggering, Quiet Storm-like soundscape with skittering and plinking 808s, broodingly regal horns, bursts of strummed guitar. KIRBY’s ethereal delivery, which alternates between scatting and cooing lyrics, floats over the lush production. Steinweiss fell in love with the melody scratch track, and, as he puts it, “the first take, that scratch take is always the one with the most feeling to it.” He ultimately decided to keep the first take for the album, loving the way it forces the listener to come up with their own interpretation of what exactly KIRBY is singing.
Ensatina’s latest single “So Get Up!” feat. MINOVA and Michael Rault is a strutting and swaggering bit of hook-driven, genre-blurring funk anchored around dusty and skittering boom bap, twinkling synth oscillations and glistening and arpeggiated synth melodies serving as a lush and euphoric bed for MINOVA’s ethereal and expressive delivery. Sonically resembling a slick synthesis of 80s synth funk, Rush Midnight and Tame Impala, “So Get Up!” reveals an artist with an adept production style.
New Video: Montréal’s APACALDA Shares Cinematic and Woozy “She’s Not Coming”
Cassandra Angheluta is a Romanian-born, Montréal-based singer/songwriter and the creative mastermind behind the solo recording project APACALDA. Deriving its name from the Romanian word for “warm water,” Angheluta’s solo project is both a reflection of her movement through her art and life, and a reminder to reconnect with the warmth that can calm and ground her, despite the chaos and unpredictability of outside circumstances.
Much like countless other artists, the Romanian-Canadian artist has found that through creating music, she can process and alchemize emotional traumas from throughout the course of her life, while giving her a sense of peace. Her work typically touches upon themes of devastation and transcendence.
With 2022’s self-titled, debut EP, which featured collaborations with Robert Robert; FHANG‘s Luca Fogale‘s and Half Moon Run‘s Sam Woywitka; FHANG’s, Patrick Watson‘s and TEKE :: TEKE’s Mishka Stein; Half Moon Run’s Isaac Symonds and the Esca Quartet, Angheluta quickly established a fresh take on indie rock, electro pop and New Wave/post-punk, crating a sound that has been described as melancholic, dreamy, enigmatic and hauntingly beautiful.
The Romanian-Canadian artist’s Miskha Stein and Sam Woywitka co-produced full-length debut, There’s a Shadow In My Room and It Isn’t Mine is slated for release next year. Thematically, the album delves into mental illness, obsession, jealousy and deceit.
The album’s first single “She’s Not There” features distorted and churning guitar tones, skittering and propulsive beats, atmospheric synths serving as a woozy and uneasy bed for Anghuleta’s achingly plaintive yet defiant delivery, evoking the turmoil and restlessness of its narrator. According to the Montréal-based artist, “She’s Not Coming” tells the story of a woman, who chooses to end her life, despite her outward devotion to God. While capturing the hidden struggles behind its narrator’s stoic exterior, the track sheds light on the pervasive nature of suicide. “I write these songs as an extension of healing—I want to be a medium. I often feel others’ pain and I want to express it in honour of them,” Angheluta says.
Directed by Mallis, a Montréal-based filmmaker, art director and production designer, known for visually rich storytelling, the accompanying video for “She’s Not Coming” was funded by The MVP Project and shot in Georgia, not too far from Angheluta’s homeland. While anchored in the themes of its accompanying song, the video follows the final journey of Louisa, an elderly woman, who ends her life, and is based on the true story of a friend, whose mother’s death was suspected to be a suicide. The friend’s mother was a deeply religious woman, who ultimately chose to leave the church. This lead to her exclusion from her religious community.
The friend’s mom was known to walk along the shores of a beach near her home. One morning, local news outlets reported that a woman’s body washed ashore. The friend knew it was his mother, realizing that he’d never speak or see her again. “Through her story, we really wanted to emphasize the impact of community on someone’s mental and emotional well-being,” the director and artist explain.
New Video: Shrines Shares Eerie “Witch Season”
Arguably best known for stints with Ponyhof and Will Butler, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and musician Carrie Erving is the creative mastermind behind the indie electro pop recording project Shrines. Erving’s work, which sees her deftly weaving elements of pop, electronic music, indie rock and Irish sean-nós (traditional Irish folk singing) into a shimmering take on art-pop that The New York Times has described as “spellbinding.”
Erving’s latest Shrines EP, the four-song Rosana Cabán-produced Seasons is slated for an October 18, 2024 release. The EP’s material explores the fragility of the individual seasons, documenting the collective cognitive dissonance of the fluctuations between celebration and trepidation that come about during a time of rapidly escalating climate change. Each of the EP’s songs lyrically suggest to the listener that allowing ourselves to save the present moment may be one of the keys to grappling with one of the largest challenges of our moment.
Seasons‘ latest single “Witch Season” is an eerie and brooding bit of electro pop featuring buzzing bass synths, gently oscillating atmospheric synths, skittering beats paired with Erving’s soaring vocals. Sonically, the song reminds me of a synthesis of Stevie Nicks, Bjork and Portishead while being a homage to fall and spooky season, evoking creepy crawlies and spirits lurking around the corner.
Directed by Brody Bernheisel, the accompanying video follows the Brooklyn-based artist in a flowing, black dress, driving to the woods where she fittingly dances around a bonfire. Visually, the video seems to draw from Madonna‘s “Like A Prayer” and Victoria + Jean’s “Harlight Sverige.”
New Audio: Rebecca Haviland and Whiskey Heart Shares Strutting and Anthemic “Monday Nights”
New York-born and-based singer/songwriter Rebecca Haviland has deep musical roots: Her grandparents were professional musicians in Westchester’s vibrant supper club scene in the 1950s. “Their house was a musical sanctuary,” she recalls, where impromptu family jam sessions lit the spark of her passion for music.
After high school, Haviland pursued music studies and interned at Mamaroneck-based Acme Studios. There, studio owner Peter Denenberg discovered her talent and offered her the chance to record an EP. “That single experience changed the course of my life,” Haviland says. Her debut gig at The Bitter End — where Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan also started their careers — marked the start of Haviland’s career.
Over the course of her two decade career, Haviland, along with her backing band Whiskey Heart — Martin Sexton‘s Chris Anderson, Dispatch‘s Kenny Shaw, Cross, Stills & Nash‘s Todd Caldwell and Nicky Barbato have captivated audiences with their pairing of Haviland’s powerhouse vocals and introspective songwriting with an effortless blend of roots rock, soul and Americana.
Whiskey Hearts 2013 full-length debut garnered awards in the International Songwriting Competition and Unsigned Only Competition. 2018’s Don DiLego-produced Bright City Lights, which featured “Bright City Lights” and “You and I” was released to praise from Paste Magazine, who wrote that the album was “hauntingly beautiful.” The video for “Bright City Lights” also earned an International Songwriting Competition nod.
In 2019, Haviland and Whiskey Heart recorded two live albums at Memphis‘ iconic Sun Studios. The albums featured both originals and covers like John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery.” 2022’s holiday album, A Holiday to Remember featured both classic and original holiday tunes.
Over the past decade, Haviland has nurtured young musicians as a professor at SUNY Purchase’s Music Conservatory, where she shares her industry insights and inspires students to push their creative boundaries.
Currently Haviland and her Whiskey Heart bandmates are working on their forthcoming Paul Loren-produced album. Slated for a 2025 release, the ten-song album draws inspiration from the likes of Aretha Franklin, Linda Ronstadt, Brandi Carlile and Jason Isbell. To build up buzz for the album, the band will be releasing the Late Nights EP on November 15, 2024.
The album’s first single “Monday Nights” is a gritty and soulful rocker featuring a glam rock-inspired riff, rousingly anthemic, raise-your-beer-in-the-air-and-sing-a-long hooks and choruses, a strutting bass line paired with Haviland’s Ronnie Spector-like delivery. It’s the sort of song that should amp you up for a night of hijinks, carousing and rabble-rousing. But it also captures a sadly-lost sense of infinite possibilities and weirdness that you used to encounter on a random night out in New York. (I think of this one time, where I met these two British brothers. One of them was trying to score coke in the bar. I was standing by them, thinking “Should I even be here?” I wound up bar hopping with one of the brothers. He had a fistful of $20 bills and he was willing to pay for everything.)
“I really wanted to write a song with a heavy riff and an Elvis Costello meets the Stranglers vibe; old school New York with a don’t give a fuck attitude,” Rebecca Haviland says. “The lyric and production of this song really capture the vibe and inspiration behind the entire EP. It’s about the old music scene in New York, a time when you could go out on Monday nights, also known in the New York music scene as ‘Musicians Night Off,’ and bang around on Bleecker Street or in the East Village hanging at different music venues and meeting up with friends, seeing some killer music, or playing your own show that everyone in the scene would come out and support. Sometimes we would even have multiple gigs on the same night, just walking down the street to the next club and playing another set. Every club would feel so alive and inspiring. You could feel the musicians and audience feeding off each other. It was a time before social media, when you would just head out to the neighborhood to find out what was going on. This is the New York that made me who I am, and even now 20 years later, the city has changed a lot, but it’s still my favorite night to play a gig or go out and see music.”
New Video: Homer and KIRBY Share Mind-Bending Visual for Lush “Rollin'”
Acclaimed New York-born and-based drummer, songwriter and producer Homer Steinweiss has a storied career that started in earnest when he was just a teenager. He has been instrumental in helping bring the raw-but-receptive soul sound back into the mainstream through his work with Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley. Steinwess has also been behind the kit for nearly every contemporary soul outfit that has mattered.
The New York-born and-based musician is now one of the most in demand drummers in the world, playing with the likes of Clairo, Solange, Adele, Silk Sonic and Bruno Mars, among a lengthy list of others. And much like his longtime bandmate Dave Guy, Steinweiss is stepping into the spotlight as a both a musician and producer with Ensatina, his first solo album released under the moniker Homer.
Slated for a November 15, 2024 release through Big Crown Records, Ensatina is reflection of who Steinweiss is now and a testament of how struggle often brings about much-needed changes. He was dealing with considerable emotional turbulence; at the same time that his band Holy Hive broke up, a long-personal relationship fell apart, putting him in an uncertain place mentally. The fallout was significant enough for him to seek professional help. “I was going through these super manic highs and then very depressive lows,” Steinweiss explains. “And being in all that, it’s just so tough to imagine that the other side is there, that it’ll be ok.” But, with time, professional help, and support from friends and family, Homer made it through and has been forever changed. This album is a product of that period of his life.
For Steinweiss, creating the album was a refuge, and it put him back on track. Creatives across the world have an innate understanding of that. But the album is also a glimpse into the different energies that influences that make the man and the artist tick. And fittingly, the album is the beginning of a new, interesting chapter of Steinweiss’ life and career.
The album’s second single, album opening track “Rollin’” features the self-proclaimed “granddaughter of soul” KIRBY. The song is anchored around a lush and swaggering, Quiet Storm-like soundscape with skittering and plinking 808s, broodingly regal horns, bursts of strummed guitar. KIRBY’s ethereal delivery, which alternates between scatting and cooing lyrics, floats over the lush production.
Steinweiss fell in love with the melody scratch track, and, as he puts it, “the first take, that scratch take is always the one with the most feeling to it.” He ultimately decided to keep the first take for the album, loving the way it forces the listener to come up with their own interpretation of what exactly KIRBY is singing.
The accompanying animated video by Alex Cascone evokes a gentle yet mind-bending psilocybin trip that features a regal looking lizard and morphing geometric shapes.
New Audio: Kelly Finnigan Shares Strutting “Be Your Own Shelter”
Perhaps best known as the frontman of the acclaimed West Coast psych soul outfit and JOVM mainstays Monophonics, Kelly Finnigan is an acclaimed producer, keyboardist and solo artist in his own right.
Finnigan’s highly-anticipated sophomore studio album A Lover Was Born is slated for an October 18, 2024 release through Colemine Records. Distance as a measure of time and place reportedly informs the album with a grit and grace that turns passion into virtue. The album also sees the Monophonics frontman rooting himself — and in turn, his work — in the best traditions of midwest soul labels like King, Curtom, Dakar and the Boddie Recording Company. And as a result, A Lover Was Born is a testimony that those deep cut grooves aren’t resigned to nostalgia, but rather, they are at the burning heart of longing and hope.
The journey that Finnigan takes listeners on through Lover‘s 11 tracks echo the state of motion and growth since his solo debut, 2019’s The Tales People Tell. Both solo albums bookend a prolific period of output that includes two Monophonics albums, 2020’s It’s Only Us and 2022’s Sage Motel; a Christmas album, 2020’s A Joyful Sound; a mixtape, last year’s From Me To You; and production work for other artists including The Ironsides, Alana Royale, The Sextones and others. “There’s nothing like making records,” says Finnigan. “It feels like that’s my purpose — the reason I was put on this earth.”
Written in California, Ohio and Staten Island, Finnigan collaborated with old friends in and outside the studio. “I enjoy working alone but it’s not how you want to make a record…almost everybody I brought in for this album I’ve worked with, toured with or spent a great deal of time with. The album features contributions from The Ironsides’ Max and Joe Ramey, Parlor Greens‘ Jimmy James, Orgōne’s Sergio Rios, Dap Kings‘ Joey Crispiano and Jay “J-Zone” Mumford.
Last month, I wrote about “Love (Your Pain Goes Deep),” a song anchored around a hard-hitting, strutting groove that sounds as though it could have been written and recorded between 1966-1970, paired with twinkling Rhodes, a supple bass line, shimmering funk guitar, bursts of cinematic strings and a lush horn line. The song’s deliberately crafted arrangement serves as a satiny bed for Finnigan’s pleading and effortlessly soulful delivery. At its core, you can feel the yearning, hurt and longing of the song’s narrator in very lived-in terms.
A Lover Was Born‘s latest single “Be Your Own Shelter,” features a strutting and stomping piano-driven groove reminiscent of early Staxx Records, early Motown and Northern Soul and a soulful backing chorus paired with Finnigan’s imitable delivery. Continuing a remarkable run of effortless yet crafted soul, “Be Your Own Shelter” is anchored around a necessary message, that when the shit inevitably hits the fan, that you will need to be your own shelter.
New Audio: Homer Teams Up with Kirby on Lush, Quiet Storm-like “Rollin'”
Acclaimed New York-born and-based drummer, songwriter and producer Homer Steinweiss has a storied career that started in earnest when he was just a teenager. He has been instrumental in helping bring the raw-but-receptive soul sound back into the mainstream through his work with Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley. Steinwess has also been behind the kit for nearly every contemporary soul outfit that has mattered.
The New York-born and-based musician is now one of the most in demand drummers in the world, playing with the likes of Clairo, Solange, Adele, Silk Sonic and Bruno Mars, among a lengthy list of others. And much like his longtime bandmate Dave Guy, Steinweiss is stepping into the spotlight as a both a musician and producer with Ensatina, his first solo album released under the moniker Homer.
Slated for a November 15, 2024 release through Big Crown Records, Ensatina is reflection of who Steinweiss is now and a testament of how struggle often brings about much-needed changes. He was dealing with considerable emotional turbulence; at the same time that his band Holy Hive broke up, a long-personal relationship fell apart, putting him in an uncertain place mentally. The fallout was significant enough for him to seek professional help. “I was going through these super manic highs and then very depressive lows,” Steinweiss explains. “And being in all that, it’s just so tough to imagine that the other side is there, that it’ll be ok.” But, with time, professional help, and support from friends and family, Homer made it through and has been forever changed. This album is a product of that period of his life.
For Steinweiss, creating the album was a refuge, and it put him back on track. Creatives across the world have an innate understanding of that. But the album is also a glimpse into the different energies that influences that make the man and the artist tick. And fittingly, the album is the beginning of a new, interesting chapter of Steinweiss’ life and career.
Last month, I wrote about Ensantina‘s first single, “Deep Sea,” feat. Hether, a slow-burning and woozy love song set over a hypnotic back beat, a gorgeous, dreamy trumpet line and a strummed acoustic guitar line. The lush and meditative arrangement compliments Hether’s dreamily romantic delivery and lyrics, which includes a sweet nod to Steinwess now wife. The song seems to suggest that when we’re struggling in life’s deep sea, love — in all of its forms — can be the lifeline.
The track between the two friends came together quickly, with Steinweiss remarking, “It’s my favorite song on the album. Hether, as a friend, saw me through my highs and lows, and this track captures the full energy of what was happening during the time we were recording.”
The album’s second single, album opening track “Rollin'” features the self-proclaimed “granddaughter of soul” KIRBY. The song is anchored around a lush and swaggering, Quiet Storm-like soundscape with skittering and plinking 808s, broodingly regal horns, bursts of strummed guitar. KIRBY’s ethereal delivery, which alternates between scatting and cooing lyrics, floats over the lush production.
Steinweiss fell in love with the melody scratch track, and, as he puts it, “the first take, that scratch take is always the one with the most feeling to it.” He ultimately decided to keep the first take for the album, loving the way it forces the listener to come up with their own interpretation of what exactly KIRBY is singing.
New Audio: Schande Shares Noisy and Rousingly Anthemic “Palimpsest”
California-born, London -based singer/songwriter and guitarist Jen Chochinov has been crafting catchy, propulsive rock in DIY circles since the 1990s as a solo artist and in full-bands. Solo and full adventures throughout her career have included a split 7″ with The Cribs and James Murphy’s pre-LCD Soundsystem band Speedking, playing the UK’s Indie Tracks Festival, playing Happy Birthday to Me‘s Athens Pop Festival.
Since relocating to London back in 2013, she has continued playing shows throughout the UK and US both solo and with her full band. In 2018 and 2019, Chochinov was a touring member of Thurston Moore‘s Guitar Ensemble, playing shows throughout the UK and Europe alongside Nøght‘s and Thurston Moore Group’s James Sedwards, My Bloody Valentine‘s and Thurston Moore Group’s Deb Googe, Sonic Youth‘s Steve Shelley, Thurston Moore Group’s and The Oscillation‘s Jim Doulton and Wobbly‘s Jonathan Leideker.
Chochinov is also the frontperson of the British-based noise rock outfit Schande. The outfit, which also features Italian-born Gio Vilaraut (bass) and Canadian-born Ryan Grieve (drums) will be releasing their full-length debut Once Around through Thurston and Eva Moore’s Ecstatic Peace Library’s The Daydream Library Series on September 27, 2024.
Inspired by the works of Hannah Arendt and Adriana Cavarero, One Around thematically focuses on notions of personal existence and subjectively. As Chochinov puts it, the record consists of “contemplations on the teh ways in which we do and do not disclose ourselves to each other, our responsibilities towards ourselves and others, and the ways we do or do not acknowledge the experience ion others. Mirrored by the band’s creative process, which often sees Chochinov writing the lyrics to instrumentals formed out of jams and group revisions, the album aims to explore the ways in which the most personal journeys depend on others, something the collective of expats navigate daily as they establish and reinvent themselves in their adoptive home of the UK.
Once Around‘s latest single “Palimpsest,” is a breakneck, New Wave-like ripper anchored around Chochinov’s angular guitar jangle, Villaraut’s driving bass lines and Grive’s forceful timekeeping. Chochinov’s insouciant delivery ethereally floats over the chaotic fray, seemingly emphasizing the indifference that the narrator’s expressing throughout. Sonically, “Palimpsest” recalls 120 Minutes MTV-era alt-rock, complete with rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.
“I can’t help but hear the Siouxsie influence every time we play the song. Plus, let’s be honest, ‘palimpsest’ is just a great word,” Chochinov says. “I used a tuning I learned from my friend Darren who I had a recording project with years ago, forgot about it, and then when I started playing around with a 12 string guitar Thurston lent me it all came flooding back, like ‘oh yeaaaaaah. I wonder how this guitar would sound in that tuning?’ As it turns out, ‘rad’ is the answer to that question — just really dynamic and expansive and effortlessly creates a prismatic life of its own. Lyrically, the song reflects on patterns of behaviors that leave room for improvement.”
New Video: Sierra Spirit Shares Yearning and Wistful “bleed you”
Sierra Spirit Kihega is Tulsa-born, Connecticut-based Native American singer/songwriter, musician and creative mastermind behind the rising solo recording project Sierra Spirit. Storytelling is in Kihega’s blood. Growing up as a member of the Otoe-Missouria tribe and the Keetoowah Band of Cherokees, she spent afternoons and weekends driving around with her grandmother and visiting family on the reservation. With a black coffee in one hand and the steering wheel in the other, Kihega’s grandmother imparted life lessons through ancestral stories. “A central part of our culture is storytelling, and my grandmother turned everything into a beautiful story, big or small,” Kihega says. “I wouldn’t be the writer I am today if it weren’t for listening to her.”
Though she now currently resides in Connecticut, her music dwells with the red dirt of Oklahoma, where she was raised. “I’d always been a writer, but I started writing songs when I became very homesick,” she says. She missed long drives across flat stretches of arid landscape, the “insane sunsets,” and the proximity to family and community.
When she began sharing music online, she quickly found a community of fans, many of whom are fellow Indigenous creatives, who found kinship and understanding in the stories Kihega told. “There are things I need to heal from and it’s important to share, because I want other people who have experienced similar things to feel less alone,” she says. Before she signed to Giant Music, she had already earned both a growing fanbase and a critical acclaimed with the self-release of her first two singles “ghost” and “televangelic,” both of which appear on her debut EP. Those songs caught the attention of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, who recently awarded her a BMI Abe Olman Scholarship, which is given in the interest of encouraging and supporting the careers of young songwriters.
Kihega’s highly-anticipated debut EP coin toss is slated for an October 10, 2024 release through Giant Music. With coin toss, the Oklahoman-born artist renders a self-portrait in intimate detail, touching on themes of loss, addiction and mental illness. Inspired by artists like Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers, Spirit’s lyrics are frank vignettes. Although the collection of songs are personal, she stresses that the struggles she and her family have faced aren’t uncommon in Native communities.
“As a kid, I didn’t see an Indigenous experience reflected back at me in the media. Native people were always these outdated constructs in westerns,” Spirit says. “I want to be a voice for my community, amplifying that we’re still here. The culture is moving.”
Kihega writes to memorialize people and experiences, but she also writes to overcome a history of mental illness. As a child, she was quiet and reserved, which made her fear she came across as unapproachable. “I had such intense anxiety that I spent my younger years keeping to myself out of fear of being misunderstood,” she says. Years have passed since, but Spirit still fixates on those lonely formative years when she felt like a self-described “pushover” and “kicked puppy” around her peers.
Earlier this summer, Kihega shared EP single “i’ll be waiting (pug),” which Flood called “a gentle and heartfelt appreciation for her late grandmother on the Cherokee side of her family, who went by the song’s parenthetical nickname.” The song draws on the Johnny Cash and country music she grew up listening to, while detailing the painful loss of her beloved grandmother, when Spirit was a teenager.
Featuring bursts of banjo and slide guitar, which nod to the country music she grew up with, the EP’s latest single “bleed you” is remarkably catchy tune that seems to bring Soccer Mommy and others to mind. But at its core is a nostalgic portrait of the Oklahoma of her youth and of a dangerously obsessive, heartsick kind of love.
“Have you ever loved someone to the point that it scares you?” Spirit shares. “You take the worst parts of them into account in an effort to make that feeling go away. But the harder you try the closer, the stronger you’re pulled in. This love grows to near obsession to the point that you want to consume their mind, body, and soul. You want in their skin and in their head. Nothing is close enough and no amount of their attention is good enough – you’ll always want more.”
Directed by Pierce Pyrzenski, captures Spirit as one-half of a pair of star-crossed lovers on the beach at golden hour and sunset, full of youthful yearning and optimism. Though clearly, not shot in Oklahoma, there are nods to her teenage years, when kids would drive around, hang out, chat and dream big.
New Audio: JOVM Mainstay MAGON Shares Nick Drake-like “Portobello’s On The Run”
Over the course of the past handful of years, I’ve spilled copious amounts of virtual ink covering the remarkably prolific, Israeli-born, Costa Rican-based singer/songwriter, musician and JOVM mainstay MAGON. The JOVM mainstay’s recently released eighth […]
New Video: THE THE Shares Brooding and Feverish “Linoleum Smooth To The Stockinged Foot”
Acclaimed British post-punk outfit THE THE was founded by singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Matt Johnson back in 1979 and through various iterations and configurations, Johnson and his collaborators have developed a sound and approach that seems to inhabit its own difficult to define genre: music of long shadows, high hopes, channeled anger, feverish passions and sweetly disturbing poignancy that meshes elements of pop, rock, blues, folk and soul among others while spanning alienated electronics to twisted cinematic soundtracks, guitar tumbling swing to crimson ballads, rants and prayers to diaries and hymns.
Over the course of their 45 year history, Johnson and company have released only five full-length albums of original material, 1983’s Soul Mining, 1986’s Infected, 1989’s Mind Bomb, 1993’s Dusk and 2000’s NakedSelf. Having a long-held reputation for being unpredictable, the band has also tackled covers, such as 1995’s Hanky Panky; film soundtracks, including 2009’s Tony, 2010’s Moonbug, 2014’s Hyena and 2019’s Muscle; art installations, a the Radio Cinéola podcast series; 2017’s moving, 84 minute documentary/multimedia project The Inertia Variations and various book publications including 2018’s Matt Johnson biography Long Shadows, High Hopes: The Life and Times of Matt Johnson & THE THE.
2017’s The Inertia Variations took inspiration from British poet John Tottenham’s 2005 book of the same name — particularly the idea of “brooding, abstraction and evasion” getting in the way of the creative process. The Inertia Variations eventually resulted in not just the documentary, but also the Radio Cinéola Trilogy triple album box set.
At the end of The Inertia Variations documentary, Johnson was filmed performing a new song live in his studio, “We Can’t Stop What’s Coming,” an elegy to his older brother Andrew Johnson, an artist professionally known as Andy Dog, who died in 2016. “It was not an easy song to write,” he says. “That was the first time I’d sung in many years. I enjoyed it but found it very emotional.”
The experience prompted Johnson to revive THE THE as a live band — and it lead to the sold-out 2018 The Comeback Special world tour. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the release of the accompanying live film and album until 2021. Unsurprisingly, the pandemic also delayed the intended start of the writing and recording of the acclaimed British outfit’s first album in almost 25 years, Ensoulment. Instead, Johnson and company continued releasing a series of 7 inch singles that began with 2017’s “We Can’t Stop What’s Coming,” and continued with 2020’s “I WANT 2 B U,” and last year’s “$1 ONE VOTE!”
Slated for a September 6, 2024 release through Cinéola/earMUSIC, the 12-song Ensoulment reportedly contains echoes of the acclaimed outfit’s multifaceted and lengthy musical past while being richly representative of the mercurial band’s here and now.
Ensoulment also continues upon Johnson’s long-held reputation for being unafraid to tackle the inherent emotional complexity of the human condition — in particular, intimacy in an age of alienation; democracy in a post-truth age; empire and vassalage; the seemingly inexorable rise of AI and more. And yet, despite all of this, the album is rooted in a deep-seated hope.
“It’s vital to be hopeful,” Johnson states. “And I hope people get out of the album what we put into it. It was created under very happy circumstances, with a great vibe amongst the band and all the people that worked on it. There was a lot of thought, a lot of work, a lot of love, a lot of laughter!”
The album’s material were further refined in rehearsals, just before a six-day recording session at Bath, UK-based Real World Studios, where Johnson was joined by long-standing band members James Ellen (bass), DC Collard (keys), Earl Harvin (drums) and Barrie Cadogan (lead guitar). The album also marks the return of co-producer and engineer Warne Livesey, who worked with the band on Infected and Mind Bomb. The album also features contributions from Gillian Glover (backing vocals), Terry Edwards (horns), Sonya Cullingford (fiddle) and Danny Cummings (percussion).
Earlier this year, I wrote about the album’s first single, the Johnson and Cadogan co-written “Cognitive Dissident,” a brooding and slinky number that’s anchored around a strutting bass line and features bursts of squiggling, reverb-soaked guitar, Johnson’s breathy speak-sing delivery, sultry cooing from Gillian Glover, atmospheric electronics and skittering percussion paired with as slinky and remarkably catchy hook. Thematically, the song captures the madly topsy-turvy Orwellian nature of modern life — and honestly our current moment — with an uncanny and unsettling attention to detail.
Ensoulment’s second and latest single “Linoleum Smooth To The Stocking Foot” is a brooding and atmospheric track anchored around a discordant interplay between screeching fiddle bursts and mournful horn blasts paired with skittering and fluttering beats, hand-claps, and ethereally cooed backing vocals. The song’s arrangement evokes a narcotic-fueled, flop sweat-induced, fever dream while Johnson’s lyrics touch upon the paranoia of the nascent bio-security state, the unending class war and the re-emergence of fascism and more. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Linoleum Smooth To The Stocking Foot” captures the absurdity, the madness, the anxiety-fueled dread, the hate and fear of our slow-burning, lockstep march to dystopian hellscape.
The song’s lyrics were written from Johnson’s hospital bed, under the influence of morphine while recovering from a life-saving operation. As fate would have it, Johnson’s weeks spent in the hospital had occurred at precisely the moment that COVID-19 had become a crisis, making for an even more surreal ordeal for him — and for everyone else. The discordant interplay between horns and fiddle is redolent of Johnson’s hallucinogenic, feverishly surreal experience, which he tried to emulate by asking the musicians to improvise over the track without hearing the other’s contributions, as he manipulated the sounds in real time.
The new single is unique in the fact that apart from Johnson, who contributes vocals, guitar and bass, it doesn’t feature any of the core band members; however, the track features guest spots from Sonya Cullingford (fiddle), Terry Edwards (horns), Gillian Glover (backing vocals) and handclaps from Danny Cummings (percussion).
The single cover art features a previously unpublished piece of Johnson’s late brother Andrew “Andy Dog” Johnson, who was responsible for the distinctive aesthetic style of THE THE’s releases.
The recently released accompanying video or “Linoleum Smooth To The Stocking Foot” was was directed by Tim Pope with editing, VFX and projections People Like Us/Vicki Bennett and Peter Knight — all of whom are longtime collaborators with Johnson and THE THE. Fittingly, the video also evokes the sensation of a fever dream with Johnson’s face being in and out of focus and in and out of shadow throughout.
New Video: Steve Wynn Shares Punchy “Making Good on My Promises”
Steve Wynn is an acclaimed singer/songwriter and musician, solo artist and frontman of the revered alt-rock/indie rock outfit The Dream Syndicate and The Baseball Project.
This year will be a very busy year for Wynn: Make It Right, the acclaimed singer/songwriter’s first solo album since 2010 is slated for an August 30, 2024 release through Fire Records. The album also coincides with the release of his new memoir I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True, which will be published by Jawbone Press.
I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True is a vivid and revealing memoir that tells a tale of writing songs and playing in bands as a conduit to a world its author could once have barely imagined — a world of major labels, luxury tour buses and sold out theaters across the world, but also one of alcohol, drugs and a a low-level rock ‘n’ roll Babylon. Ultimately, it’s a tale of redemption, with music as a vehicle for artistic and personal transformation and transcendence.
Make It Right was written and recorded in tandem with Wynn’s work on the memoir. “With each chapter, I would get ideas for songs inspired by the deep dive into my past and vice versa,” Wynn explains. “The reflections became intertwined after a while, a mutual commentary between literal and metaphorical ruminating.
“The songs here aren’t directly autobiographical although the album does start with ‘Santa Monica,’ the city and boulevard where I was born and concludes with ‘Roosevelt Avenue,’ the main thoroughfare of the Queens neighborhood in New York City that I call home today. You write what you know—even when you’re not aware it’s what you’re writing about at the time.
“If the book recounted a tale of trepidation and dread and questionable choices, then that tale would turn into a song of similar intent like ‘What Were You Expecting.’ A step back for perspective and positivity, in turn, found its way into a song like ‘You’re Halfway There.’
The cataclysmic ‘one big open drain’ of ‘Simpler Than the Rain’ was resolved by the resolute ‘I’m just trying to make it right’ on the title track. A gauzy and melancholy where-did-it-go-wrong Southern California flashback on the Long Beach inspired ‘Cherry Avenue’ would steer me towards a steelier determination and reset on ‘Making Good on My Promises.’
“It was a dialogue between the memoirist and the musician, a one-man Q&A, a gentle volley in the tennis court of my mind. 40-love, game, set and match.
As I’ve found the melodies and words to stir and simmer with the stories I told in the book, I’ve simultaneously brought friends and collaborators from my recent and distant past to help flesh them out on the record. The likes of Vicki Peterson, Mike Mills, Stephen McCarthy, Scott McCaughey, Jason Victor, Dennis Duck and Mark Walton and my wife Linda Pitmon are all in the book and—look! —there they are on the record as well!”
“And much like life itself, new faces and hit-and-run collaborators would pass my radar during the sessions and provide new light as well. Chris Schlarb from California dream pop ensemble Psychic Temple added his cinematic touch, Emil Nikolaisen of Norway psych-grunge combo Serena Maneesh chimed in with his trademark sonic anarchy and then Eric “Roscoe” Ambel used his studio savvy producer chops to tie it all together at the end.
It feels perfect and very appropriate that the book and record will both be coming out in the same final week of August 2024. Not that one is needed to understand the other. Hey, you can just put on ‘Make It Right’ and use it as the catalyst to create your own life story, dig into your own past. It belongs to you now. Let it tell your own tale while I tell mine. We’re all just trying to make it right.”
Last month, I wrote about Make It Right‘s first single, album title track “Make It Right,” a slow-burning and ruminative ballad, written from the perspective of someone who has lived a full and messy life of foolish and selfish mistakes regrets, heartbreak, bitter betrayals and joyous triumphs — and with the deep, wizened empathy and understanding that people are flawed, occasionally myopic, stupid and selfish. But almost all of us are trying to make it right somehow in a mad, desperate world that’s on fire.
Make It Right‘s second and latest single “Making Good On My Promises” is a defiant, post punk-inspired ripper. Seemingly drawing from The Jam and XTC, the song is anchored around angular guitar jangle, soulful organ blast, a jaunty yet driving rhythm section and a punchily delivered hooks and choruses. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Making Good On My Promises” is written from hard-fought, harder-won experience — and in turn, the perspective of someone who’s been near the brink and survived while being acutely aware of the fact that the shoe will inevitably drop at some point.
“I wrote this song with Paco Loco, a prolific producer down in Spain,” Wynn says. “Haven’t heard of him? If you live in Spain, I guarantee you have. Dude’s a legend and I’d estimate that he’s produced half the records released down there in the last several decades. The lyrics, like most of the words on ‘Make It Right,’ fit into the overall narrative of my book—a defiant and yet tentative of a return from a temporary abyss while keeping a wary eye out for the next dip ahead. I shot the video within the confines and out on the streets in London surrounding my groovy label Fire Records. Together, we’ll make good on those promises.