Tag: singer/songwriter \

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Robert Finley Shares Slow-Burning Ballad “Nobody Wants To Be Lonely”

69 year-old Winnsboro, LA-born, Bernice, LA-based singer/songwriter and JOVM mainstay Robert Finley‘s highly-anticipated fourth album, Black Bayou is slated for an October 27, 2023 release through Easy Eye Sound. Black Bayou sees the JOVM mainstay continuing his wildly successful collaboration with Dan Auerbach. Much like its immediate predecessor, the new album’s material is a deeply personal portrait — but this time of Finley’s Louisiana, from an insider, who has lived there all of his life. Sonically, the material coalesces all of the vibrant sounds of the bayou, including gospel, blues, rock and more. 

The result is a vivid collection of songs that depicts life in North Louisiana — with Finley playing the role of charismatic and knowledgeable tour guide. “I think that’s one of the biggest things about the album is it tells the truth and the truth will set you free,” Finley told American Songwriter.

“It’s amazing to realize how much of an impact Louisiana has had on the world’s music,” Dan Auerbach says in press notes, “and Robert embodies all of that. He can play a blues song. He can play early rock and roll. He can play gospel. He can do anything, and a lot of that has to do with where he’s from.”

Recorded at Auerbach’s Nashville-based Easy Eye Sound Studio, Black Bayou saw the pair adopting a much different creative process. Rather than write songs beforehand, as they did on 2017’s Goin’ Platinum and 2021’s Sharecropper’s Son, they devised everything in the studio, with Auerbach leading a backing band of some of the world’s best players, including: Auerbach’s Black Keys bandmate Patrick Carney (drums), G. Love & Special Sauce‘s Jeffrey Clemens (drums), Eric Deaton (bass), legendary Hill Country blues guitarist Kenny Brown and vocalists Christy Johnson and LaQuindrelyn McMahon, Finley’s daughter and granddaughter.

They worked quickly, devising their parts spontaneously and usually getting everything in one take. “I started singing, and they started playing,” Finley explains. “That’s how we made the album. It wasn’t written out. Nobody used a pencil and paper. We just sang and played together in the studio.”  The album and its material reveals Finley as a truly original Louisiana storyteller, who evokes the place and its unique — and deeply influential culture — for the rest of the world. 

In the lead up to the album’s release, I’ve managed to write about two of the album’s singles:

“What Goes Around (Comes Around),” a swampy, blues rocker that subtly recalls Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s “Green River” built around an irresistibly funky and shuffling 12 bar blues-driven groove paired around the collaborators’ unerring knack for anthemic hooks and choruses. The song serves as the perfect vehicle for his whiskey soaked gospel-like croons and shouts warning the listener about the weighty impact of karma.

“You gotta reap what you sow… do to another what you would have done to you. Be real, tell the truth. For all those out there hurting, you just have to keep the faith,” the JOVM mainstay says of the song. “I’ve seen it over the years, especially with my career – you got to put joy out into the world and it will come back. It’s never been anything short of the truth for me.” 

“Sneakin’ Around” is a classic blues and soul tale of deception, deceit and a bit of deserved comeuppance, featuring Finley’s heartbroken yet defiantly proud narrator describing how he found out his lover was repeatedly cheating on him. This is paired with a swampy and gritty, Motown-meets-Muscle Shoals-like groove complete with a big horn line, and a scorching guitar solo. 

“Whatever is in the dark is gonna come to the light, so don’t play around,” Finley says. 

Black Bayou’s third and latest single “Nobody Wants To Be Lonely” is an old school, fried slice of deep southern soul built around R&B/soul guitar licks, a laid back funky groove and a steady drum pattern paired with Finley’s achingly tender vocal. The song offers a message of understanding, resilience and hope in the face of isolation, aging — and our inevitable mortality. Although rooted in some of Finley’s experiences and those of folks he knows, the song speaks of a universal, deeply embittering experience.

“This song is about the many people who have been forgotten,” Finley explains. “Their kids drop them off and go with their lives. I go down occasionally and perform at the old folks home in Bernice. Just take my guitar and play for thirty minutes or so, try to get them to dance, try to bring some joy to them.”
 

Continuing his ongoing collaboration with director Tim Hardiman, the accompanying video begins with Finley waking to a Dear John letter from his lover. But all is not lost. Throughout there’s a sense of hope: We see Finley reunite with a bunch of old pals to play the song. Sunlight streams through the dark halls that Finley walks down, as well.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Andrew Sands is a London-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind rising shoegaze project SANDS. Influenced by Neil Young, David Bowie, The Smiths, David Lynch, Talk Talk, Echo and the Bunnymen and a long list of others, Sands’ own music sees him seamlessly blending rock, psych rock and elements of pop. 

Since starting the project back in 2017, the London-based artist has released a handful of EPs and singles, including 2017’s S/T EP and “Let’s Run”/”Echoes,” 2018’s Waves Calling EP and “Tomorrow’s Gone”/”Burning Man” and 2019’s Nothing Can Go Wrong EP.

Sands’ highly-anticipated full-length debut, The World’s So Cruel is slated for an October 13, 2023. In the lead up to the album’s release, I’ve managed to write about two of its singles:

Written and produced at several London studio locations. including Hackney, South Bermondsey and his apartment, the album’s first single, the high energy “Transmission” featured glistening synths, buzzing guitar riffs, a relentlessly propulsive rhythm, a rousingly anthemic series of hooks and choruses paired with Sands’ plaintive delivery and managed to bring The Stone Roses and the Madchester sound to mind — but with a subtly modern take.

“Transmission” is inspired by the busy and eclectic Northeast London neighborhood that Sands once lived in. The lyrics capture the restless energy and activity of the neighborhood in a way that feels very familiar to me as a native New Yorker. And it does so in a way that feels a bit like a contented sigh of being home, and of awe of everything going on around you.

Built around reverb-drenched guitars, skittering and swaggering boom bap-like drum patterns, along with a glitchy bridge and a scorching guitar solo, The World’s So Cruel‘s second single “When It Starts to Rain” is a slick Stone Roses-like vehicle for the London-based artist’s plaintive vocal and his penchant for crafting remarkably catchy hooks and choruses. The track sonically evokes the sense of daydreaming your way through busy, crowded streets, completely immersed in your thoughts and memories, as though you were in a hallucinatory fever dream of the present and your nostalgia.

The album’s third and latest single “Through This Avenue/The Game” is a road trip anthem built around shimmering and hypnotic guitar work, delicate cymbal-driven percussion, bursts of soaring keys, twinkling organ and the London-based artist’s yearning and vulnerable delivery paired with rousingly anthemic, sing-along friendly choruses.

“‘Through This Avenue /The Game’ is a tribute to 13th Floor Elevators and Roky Erikson. I love his music, voice and the look in his eyes. Fierce and vulnerable at the same time, which I hope can be two traits to describe this track too,” Sands explains. “As in Transmission it draws inspiration from life in that London neighbourhood, but more in a nocturnal setting to the whole picture, like being the soundtrack to that.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Kendra Morris Returns with a Sardonic Sendup of Domesticity and Cohabitation

While celebrating a recent birthday, the acclaimed Florida-born, New York-based JOVM mainstay Kendra Morris was shaken by the realization that old habits were holding her back from growth. Something needed to change — and fast. She began writing new songs and rethinking of her old ones. Less-than-perfect takes were tolerated. She put a moratorium on love songs. As Morris puts it: “I needed to scare myself into growth.” The result is the acclaimed artist’s Torbitt Schwartz, a.k.a. Little Shalimar-prorudced fourth album I Am What I’m Waiting For.

Officially released today, through Karma Chief/Colemine Records, the album is a sophisticated, playful and joyful reinvention and an unfiltered expression of Morris’ weird universe that sees her delving deep into the little details. “How do you put yourself into a record?  I wanted to make it feel like you cracked open the ooze in my head,” Morris says. Fittingly, the album is an unvarnished self-portrait of Morris with all of life’s odd imperfections that captures the artist at the time of its creation. 

The 11-song album pairs Morris’ towering and effortlessly soulful vocal with a sound that features elements of dusty funk, R&B and touches of indie rock. Thematically, the album at points touches upon the mundane conflicts of domesticity and cohabitation, the Butterfly Effect, her fear of flying and even an attempt to expand the birthday song canon among others.

Last month, I wrote about “What Are You Waiting For,” a seamless synthesis of Muscle Shoals soul, psych soul, and Spoon-like indie rock built around a gritty, swaggering groove and Morris’ sultry and effortlessly soulful delivery. The song is a bold and playfully defiant feminist anthem that champions self-reliance and realness above all.

“Dominoes,” I Am What I’m Waiting For‘s third and latest single continues a run of material that meshes elements of Muscle Shoals-era soul, psych soul and Spoon-like indie rock paired with a swaggering and strutting groove and Morris’ powerhouse delivery. But at its core is a playfully sardonic skewering of the conflicts of domesticity and cohabitation that points out that hell can often be other people — including those you love.

Created by Morris and Julia Haltigan, and filmed in Morris’ Brooklyn home on VHS tape, the video features her husband and adorable pasta-loving dog Jerry and stop motion animation by Morris. The video goes through some of the scenarios discussed in the song. And while you can empathize with the fact that the scenarios are infuriating, there’s also the tacit and knowing nod that love is also accepting your dearest one’s irritating habits and quirks.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Indonesia’s Bottlesmoker Shares a Tribal and Urgent Remix of Rome in Reverse’s “Here it’s all over”

Antonella Pacifico is an Italian-born, Copenhagen-based, self-taught musician and producer, whose career started in earnest with a stint in a Rome-based post rock outfit. Pacifico relocated to Copenhagen to focus on solo music production — and in 2014 her own project, Rome in Reverse, which sees her crafting a sound with elements of melted club dance music, blissed-out trance techno, ambient dub and dreamy trip hop driven by thumping electronic beats.

Released earlier this year, “Here it’s all over” is a slow-burning and melancholy track built around glistening and atmospheric synths, skittering tweeter and woofer rattling thump paired with Pacifico’s yearning delivery. Last year, Pacifico toured Southeastern Asia and discovered rising Indonesian electronic music production duo Bottlesmoker.

Bottlesmoker — Angry and Noble — have created a unique, crowd-pleasing sound and approach that meshes elements of tribal beats, psychedelic vibes and pop. The Indoneisan duo have opened for an eclectic array of internationally acclaimed acts including Ladytron, Architecture in Helsinki, Porter Robinson, Tycho, M83, and Battles. They’ve also played sets across the global festival circuit with stops at Laneway Festival, Big Mountain Music Festival, Zandari Festa and others.

Pacifico was captivated by their exceptional talent and was seeking a collaborator, who could truly connect with the emotion at the core of “Here it’s all over” — and she recruited Bottlesmoker. Bottlesmoker’s remix of “Here it’s all over” pairs Pacifico’s yearning delivery in a hallucinogenic and hazy production featuring layers of tribal beats and glistening synth oscillations, giving the yearning at the core of the song a forceful immediacy.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: Jenn Champion Shares Meditative “Famous”

Born Jennifer Hays, the Tucson, AZ-born, Seattle, WA-based multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter and producer Jenn Champion can trace the origins of her music career to when she met her then-future Carissa’s Wierd bandmates Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke at the local pizza shop, where they all worked at the time. In 1997, the trio moved to Olympia, WA for about a year, before settling in Seattle, where the trio formed Carissa’s Wierd.

The trio released three albums before splitting up in 2003 — but interestingly, the trio cultivated a rabid cult following, which has resulted in the release of three compilation albums of their work, including 2010’s They’ll Only Miss You When You’re Gone: Songs 1996-2003, which was released through Hardly Art Records.

Since Carissa’s Wierd’s breakup, Champion has moved forward with several acclaimed solo projects including the guitar and vocal-based pop project S, with which she has released four albums, including 2010’s I’m Not As Good At It As You and 2014’s Chris Walla-produced Cool Choices. While critics and fans have raved over her open-hearted and willingness to eschew conventions while crating sad songs meant to be cried to and with.

The last half of Champion’s last S album found her moving towards an electronic-based sound with album track “No One”  being a complete embrace of electronics. “I feel like a door got opened in my mind with electronic and digital music. There was a room I hadn’t explored before and I stepped in,” Champion said at the time. And although she intended to follow up Cool Choices with “a rock record — guitar, a lot of pedals, heavy riffs,” her plans had changed. “I couldn’t pull myself away from the synthesizers and I realized the record I really wanted to make was more of a cross between Drake and Billy Joel than Blue Oyster Cult.”

After the release of “No One,” Champion’s music publisher partnered her with Brian Fennell, an electronic music artist, songwriter and producer best known as  SYML and the pair co-wrote “Leave Like That,” which was featured on SYML‘s Hurt For Me EP.

Champion and Fennell hit it off so well that after Champion had written the demos for 2018’s Silent Rider, she enlisted Fennell as a producer. Fennell agreed and then they spent the next five months working on and refining the album’s material. “In the studio with Brian, I was more open than I had ever been,” Champion recalls, and as a result the material evolved into a slickly produced collection of dance floor friendly anthems. But the album saw Champion maintaining the earnestness and vulnerable that has won her critical praise — all while imploring the listener to dance, dance, dance, dance, dance their heartache, outrage and disappointments away for a little bit.

Champion’s long-awaited third album The Last Night of Sadness is slated for an October 13, 2023 release through Gay Forever. The self-produced and self-recorded The Last Night of Sadness will remind the listener of her technical skill as a musician, but more important, it places her production process front and center. “I’ve always been able to be vulnerable in my music but with these songs and what I was feeling I wanted to keep this album pure. I was afraid that if I let it go outside of me, I’d dilute it,” Champion explains. “Sadness is in the title but this is the most confident record I’ve ever made. I took away all the places I could hide.”

When asked what it was she wanted to express with the album as a whole, Champion says “Suffering. And what a miracle it is to be heavy.” So yes, the album is heavy. But it’s also open and vulnerable the way you can only be when grieving. The album’s material sees the Seattle-based artist grappling with morality — of others, of herself and of the world in general. And yet it isn’t hopeless or joyless. There are moments of reprieve, in which you’re reminded that life is ultimately about the small joys and small victories.

The Last Night of Sadness‘ first single “Famous” is an 80s synth pop-inspired mid-tempo ballad built around glistening synth arpeggios, a poppy drum machine-driven groove paired with an incredibly catchy hook and Champion’s earnest, heartbroken delivery. At its core, is a wizened, self-aware narrator, who is coming to terms with their life — and they do so with an unvarnished, vulnerable honesty as she reflects on a rebellious youth and the gradual compromises and adjustments of adulthood. But the song is rooted in an existential dread and uncertainty that comes as you get older.

“I wanted to make a song about coming to terms with fame versus success and what it feels like to realize I have what I want,” the Seattle-based artist says. She continues, “As an artist sometimes it feels like fame and success are used interchangeably and over the course of my career in music I’ve seen how fame can bring with it all this money and opportunity but is also a gilded cage. This song is one that just came to me on a run one morning as I looked out over the city and I had to pull out my phone and start writing. I’ve gone through a reset of my priorities in the last few years and this song and this album are about the journey through existential dread that has me where I am now.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Robert Finley Shares Swampy and Swaggering “Sneakin’ Around”

 69 year-old Winnsboro, LA-born, Bernice, LA-based singer/songwriter and JOVM mainstay Robert Finley grew up one of eight children in a family of sharecroppers. As a child, Finley as unable to regularly attend school and often worked with his family in the cotton fields. When he was a teenager, he briefly attended a segregated school, but he was forced to drop out in the 10th grade to help the family out financially.

Finley has lived a full, complicated and often messy life: He’s an army veteran. He was also a skilled carpenter. He has survived house fires, a bad accident and went through a divorce. He started to lose his sight in his early 60s as a result of glaucoma. And although, he was forced to retire from carpentry, Finley realized that he now had an opportunity to pursue a lifelong dream — becoming a professional singer and musician.

The Louisiana-born and-based JOVM mainstay believes that his sight was improved by the power of prayer — and that his faith has also helped him focus on launching a music career in his 60s. According to Finley “losing my sight, gave me the perspective to see my true identity.”

Acclaimed musician, producer and Easy Eye Sound label head Dan Auerbach immediately saw Finley’s potential, quickly proclaiming that the Louisiana-born and-based artist is “the greatest living soul singer.” As Auerbach recalls in press notes, “He walked in like he was straight out of the swamp.” He adds, “He had leather pants, snakeskin boots, a big Country & Western belt buckle, a leather cowboy hat and a three-quarter-length leather duster. The final touch was the folding cane the legally blind Finley wore on his hip, in a holster. Basically, he was dressed for national television.” 

Auerbach went on to produce Finley’s 2017 breakthrough sophomore album Goin’ Platinum, an album released to widespread critical acclaim from the likes of the Associated Press, who praised Finley’s ability to lend “instant credibility to any song” and The Observer, who wrote “Finley’s versatile voice ranges from prime Motown holler to heartbroken falsetto croon.” Finley went on to support the album with international touring across 10 countries — with his live show drawing praise from a number of publications, including The New York Times and several others. He was also profiled on PBS NewsHour, which led him to becoming a contestant on the 2019 season of America’s Got Talent, eventually reaching the semi-finals. 

Finley’s third album 2021’s Sharecropper’s Son continued the JOVM mainstay’s successful collaboration with Auerbach, and features songwriting and cowrites from Finley, Auerbach, Bobby Wood and Pat McLaughlin. And much like other Easy Sound releases, the album featured an All-Star backing band of acclaimed players that included Auerbach (guitar); Kenny Brown (guitar), a member of R.L Burnside‘s backing band; studio legends Russ Pahl (pedal steel) and Louisiana-born, Nashville-based Billy Sanford (guitar); Bobby Wood (keys and as previously mentioned songwriting); Gene Chrisman (drums), who’s a Memphis and Nashville music legend; as well as contributions from The Dap Kings‘ Nick Movshon (bass), Eric Deaton (guitar); Dave Roe (bass), who was member of Johnny Cash‘s backing band; Sam Bacco (percussion) and a full horn section. 

Sharecropper’s Son may arguably be the most personal album of Finley’s growing catalog, drawing directly from his life and experience. “I was ready to tell my story, and Dan and his guys knew me so well by then that they knew it almost like I do, so they had my back all the way,” Finley says in press notes. “Working in the cotton fields wasn’t a pleasant place to be, but it was part of my life. I went from the cotton fields to Beverly Hills. We stayed in the neighborhood most of our childhood. It wasn’t really all that safe to be out by yourself. One of the things I love about music is that, when I was a boy growing up in the South, nobody wanted to hear what I had to say or what I thought about anything. But when I started putting it in songs, people listened.”

Finley’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Black Bayou is slated for an October 27, 2023 release through Easy Eye Sound. Black Bayou sees the JOVM mainstay continuing his wildly successful collaboration with Dan Auerbach. Much like its immediate predecessor, the new album’s material is a deeply personal portrait — but this time of Finley’s Louisiana, from an insider, who has lived there all of his life. Sonically, the material coalesces all of the vibrant sounds of the bayou, including gospel, blues, rock and more.

The result is a vivid collection of songs that depicts life in North Louisiana — with Finley playing the role of charismatic and knowledgeable tour guide. “I think that’s one of the biggest things about the album is it tells the truth and the truth will set you free,” Finley told American Songwriter.

“It’s amazing to realize how much of an impact Louisiana has had on the world’s music,” Dan Auerbach says in press notes, “and Robert embodies all of that. He can play a blues song. He can play early rock and roll. He can play gospel. He can do anything, and a lot of that has to do with where he’s from.”

Recorded at Auerbach’s Nashville-based Easy Eye Sound Studio, Black Bayou saw the pair adopting a much different creative process. Rather than write songs beforehand, as they did on 2017’s Goin’ Platinum and 2021’s Sharecropper’s Son, they devised everything in the studio, with Auerbach leading a backing band of some of the world’s best players, including: Auerbach’s Black Keys bandmate Patrick Carney (drums), G. Love & Special Sauce‘s Jeffrey Clemens (drums), Eric Deaton (bass), legendary Hill Country blues guitarist Kenny Brown and vocalists Christy Johnson and LaQuindrelyn McMahon, Finley’s daughter and granddaughter.

They worked quickly, devising their parts spontaneously and usually getting everything in one take. “I started singing, and they started playing,” Finley explains. “That’s how we made the album. It wasn’t written out. Nobody used a pencil and paper. We just sang and played together in the studio.”  The album and its material reveals Finley as a truly original Louisiana storyteller,. who evokes the place and its unique — and deeply influential culture — for the rest of the world.

Earlier this year, I wrote about Black Bayou‘s first single “What Goes Around (Comes Around),” a swampy, blues rocker that subtly recalls Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s “Green River” with the song built around an irresistibly funky and shuffling 12 bar blues-driven groove paired around the collaborators’ unerring knack for anthemic hooks and choruses. The song serves as the perfect vehicle for his whiskey soaked gospel-like croons and shouts warning the listener about the weighty impact of karma.

“You gotta reap what you sow… do to another what you would have done to you. Be real, tell the truth. For all those out there hurting, you just have to keep the faith,” the JOVM mainstay says of the song. “I’ve seen it over the years, especially with my career – you got to put joy out into the world and it will come back. It’s never been anything short of the truth for me.” 

Black Bayou’s second and latest single “Sneakin’ Around” is a classic blues and soul tale of deception, deceit and a bit of deserved comeuppance, featuring Finley’s heartbroken yet defiantly proud narrator describing how he found out his lover was repeatedly cheating on him. This is paired with a swampy and gritty, Motown-meets-Muscle Shoals-like groove complete with a big horn line, and a scorching guitar solo.

“Whatever is in the dark is gonna come to the light, so don’t play around,” Finley says.

Directed by Andy M. Hawkes, the accompanying video for “Sneakin’ Around” continues a run of stylishly shot visuals that features the dapper Finley surrounded by a collection of young beauties at the bar, as he tells his tale. We also see Finley performing the song in the bar and in slick studio footage. Throughout, the video, we see Finley as a swaggering, larger-than-life figure with stories to tell.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: SANDS Shares Buoyant and Energetic “Transmission”

Andrew Sands is a London-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind rising shoegaze project SANDS. Influenced by Neil Young, David Bowie, The Smiths, David Lynch, Talk Talk, Echo and the Bunnymen and a long list of others, Sands’ own music sees him seamlessly blending rock, psych rock and elements of pop.

Since starting the project back in 2017, the London-based artist has released a handful of EPs and singles, including 2017’s S/T EP and “Let’s Run”/”Echoes,” 2018’s Waves Calling EP and “Tomorrow’s Gone”/”Burning Man” and 2019’s Nothing Can Go Wrong EP.

Sands’ highly-anticipated full-length debut, The World’s So Cruel is slated for an October 13, 2023. The album’s first single “Transmission” was written and produced at several London studio locations, including Hackney, South Bermondsey and his apartment. Built around glistening synths, buzzing guitar riffs, a relentlessly propulsive rhythm, a rousingly anthemic series of hooks and choruses paired with Sands’ plaintive delivery, the high energy “Transmission” manages to bring The Stone Roses and the Madchester sound to mind — but with a subtly modern take.

“Transmission” is inspired by the busy and eclectic Northeast London neighborhood that Sands once lived in. The lyrics capture the restless energy and activity of the neighborhood in a way that feels very familiar to me as a native New Yorker. And it does so in a way that feels a bit like a contented sigh of being home, and of awe of everything going on around you.

The lyric video is shot at a Northeast London market and captures some of that thrumming activity from a seemingly endless array of people coming and going, of money and goods changing hands.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Sydney Cruse is a Mandeville, LA-born, New Orleans-based singer/songwriter and musician, who has spent her entire life singing and performing — and can trace her songwriting back to when she was eight.

Cruse’s latest single “Lost My Head” is a decidedly 120 Minutes MTV-era alt rock-like anthem built around fuzzy power chords, an enormous, shout-along worthy hooks paired with the Louisiana-born and-based soulful, riot grrl-like delivery. But at its core is deeply lived-in lyricism informed by real life experience.

Inspired by Soundgarden‘s “The Day I Tried To Live,” the song tells the story of an ex-lover starting from the day the narrator and ex met through their entire relationship and breakup. The song concludes with the narrator running into their ex about a year later, and realizing that they were a fool for being with such a shitty person. We’ve all been there at some point in our lives.

“Lost My Head” is the title track of Cruse’s forthcoming full-length debut, Lost My Head slated for a September 1, 2023 release.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Monophonics’ Kelly Finnigan Shares a Crafted Soul Ballad

Kelly Finnigan is an acclaimed singer/songwriter, keyboardist, producer and owner of  San Rafael, CA-based Transistor Sound Studio. While Finnigan is perhaps best known as the frontman of the equally acclaimed West Coast-based soul outfit and JOVM mainstays Monophonics, he is also a highly-regarded solo artist, who has released two albums — 2019’s full-length debut The Tales People Tell and 2020’s Christmas album,  A Joyful Sound. 

Monophonics third album, 2020’s It’s Only Us, which featured “Chances,” and “It’s Only Us” received praise from the likes of Billboard, Flood, Cool Hunting and American Songwriter, while selling 10,000 physical copies and amassing over 20 million streams across the various digital streaming platforms. Thematically, It’s Only Us touched upon unity in a fractious and divisive world, strength, resilience, acceptance — and of course, love.

The acclaimed JOVM mainstays fourth album, last year’s Sage Motel derived its title from an actual place — the Sage Motel. What started out as a quaint motor lodge and common pitstop for travelers and truckers in the 1940s, Sage Motel morphed into a bohemian’ hang out by the 1960s and 1970s: Artists, musicians and vagabonds of all stripes would stop there as seedy ownership pumped obnoxious amounts of money into high-end renovations, eventually attracting some of the most prominent acts of the era. But when the money ran out, the motel devolved into a hot sheet hotel. 

If the hotel’s walls could talk, they’d tell you tales of human highs and lows, of a place where big dreams and broken hearts live, and where people find themselves at a crossroads — sometimes without quite knowing how they got there.

Thematically, Sage Motel tackled all of those subjects while seeing the band further cementing their reputation as one of the world’s premier psychedelic soul bands. 

Finnigan’s new mixtape From Me To You is a collection of 16 songs that will be released exclusively on cassette tomorrow through Colemine Records. It’s an extremely limited release that won’t be available on vinyl, CD or digital streaming for some time. “I want to share what I’ve been working on. It’s not a proper album, and it doesn’t have the same vibe all throughout,” Finnigan says of the mixtape. “It’s a collection of different ideas, which is how I used to share the music I loved with my friends.”

“Owning a physical copy of a song and using a specific piece of equipment to hear it – that was a huge part of my musical upbringing,” the acclaimed singer/songwriter, musician and producer says of the cassette-only format of the mixtape. “This is a selection of different songs on a tape. It’s how I want people to experience it. (The cassette has just sold out online, but it’ll be available at local retail shops across the country on release day.)

From Me To You‘s lead single “Leave You Alone” was written and recorded back in 2019 during The Tales People Tell sessions and was recorded at Finnigan’s Transistor Sound. The track features Monophonics’ and The Ironsides‘ Max Ramey (bass) and Joe Ramey (sax) — and features Finnigan playing all other instrumentation on the track. Sonically, “Leave You Alone” is a classic R&B-meets-soul jam rooted in Finnigan’s uncanny knack for pairing old-school craftsmanship with earnest, seemingly lived-in lyricism.

Inspired by Bettye Swann, “Leave You Alone” is a love song told from the perspective of a jilted woman, who recognized that it’s long been time for her to move away and on from a faithless, no-good lover. It may arguably be among the most seemingly lived-in songs of Finnigan’s career, while capturing its central character with an uncannily precise attention to psychological detail.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New VIdeo: JOVM Mainstay Kendra Morris Shares a Swaggering Feminist Anthem

JOVM mainstay Kendra Morris is an acclaimed Florida-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, musician, and multi-disciplinary artist. As a singer/songwriter and musician, the acclaimed Florida-born, New York-based artist can trace the origins of her music career to discovering the joys of multi-tracking and harmonizing with herself on a karaoke machine in the closet of her childhood home.

Morris went on to play in cover bands in Florida before relocating to New York with her band, which played her original material. Her first band split up and she dealt with the aftermath by writing material alone on an 8-track recorder in her closet. Sometime after, she met longtime collaborator and producer Jeremy Page and signed to Wax Poetics, who released her full-length debut, 2012’s Banshee. 

The JOVM mainstay self-released her sophomore effort 2016’s Babble. She then went on to collaborate with DJ Premier, 9th Wonder, MF DOOM, Czarface, Ghostface Killah, Dennis Coffey and Dave Sitek among others. And while being a grizzled, New York scene vet, Morris’ work generally embodies a broader sense of American culture, drawing from a wide array of influences across music and film dating back to the mid 20th Century. 

Last year’s Nine Lives was the Florida-born, New York-based JOVM’s mainstay’s first full-length album in about a decade. The album represented a major turning point in her life both professionally and personally for Morris: The album heralds the beginning of a new chapter, an evolution to the next level of adulthood — and the first on her new label,  Karma Chief Records. Thematically, the album’s material encapsulates moments from what could easily be nine lifetimes lived over a chronological time period — or nine lives lived simultaneously in parallel and convergent realties in the multiverse.

While celebrating a recent birthday, Morris was shaken by the realization that old habits were holding her back from growth. Something needed to change — and fast. She began writing new songs and rethinking of her old ones. Less-than-perfect takes were tolerated. She put a moratorium on love songs. As Morris puts it: “I needed to scare myself into growth.” The result is the Florida-born, New York-based artist’s highly-anticipated, Torbitt Schwartz, a.k.a. Little Shalimar-prorudced fourth album I Am What I’m Waiting For.

Slated for an August 25, 2023 release through Karma Chief/Colemine Records, the forthcoming album is reportedly a a sophisticated, playful and joyful reinvention and an unfiltered expression of Morris’ weird universe that sees her delving deep into the little details. “How do you put yourself into a record?  I wanted to make it feel like you cracked open the ooze in my head,” Morris says. Fittingly, the album is an unvarnished self-portrait of Morris with all of life’s odd imperfections that captures the artist at the time of its creation.

The 11-song album pairs Morris’ towering and effortlessly soulful vocal with a sound that features elements of dusty funk, R&B and touches of indie rock. Thematically, the album at points touches upon the mundane conflicts of domesticity and cohabitation, the Butterfly Effect, her fear of flying and even an attempt to expand the birthday song canon among others.

I Am What I’m Waiting For‘s first single “What Are You Waiting For” is a seamless synthesis of Muscle Shoals soul, psych soul, and Spoon-like indie rock built around a gritty, swaggering groove and Morris’ sultry and effortlessly soulful delivery. The song is a bold and playfully defiant feminist anthem that champions self-reliance and realness above all.

The accompanying video for “What Are You Waiting For” was created from VHS footage shot by Morris’ friends Yvonne Ambrée and Leah Levitt, filmed in Morris’ neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Manhattan’s Chinatown. Edited by Morris, the video is rooted in a familiar premise. “A lot of my life in New York is either getting from point A to B or just waiting around,” the JOVM mainstay explains. “New York is the city of Hurry Up and Wait.”  

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Lumoy’s Sultry “Bet On You”

Lumoy is an emerging, Sydney-based singer/songwriter, musician, who cites an eclectic array of influences on her work, including house music’s gospel, 70s soul and R&B, Middle Eastern and Gregorian chant, international pop and more. Over the past couple of the emerging Aussie artist has been working with Paris-based musician and fashion photographer Steve Wells on her debut EP, Maintenant an effort that sees her drawing from her own varied influences and tastes paired with soulful and bluesy vocals. She also is working on writing meditation music, and seeking other multidisciplinary creative projects.

The EP’s latest single “Bet On You” is a bluesy number that’s one- part Pretenders/Chrissie Hynde and one-part Divinyls “I Touch Myself,” with the song being built around a 12 bar blues-like guitar line, a steady backbeat paired with Lumoy’s sultry delivery and a soaring hook. The song evokes an aching, desperate, swooning longing for someone that’s begun to drive you a bit crazy.

“Bet On You” is “a track about being intoxicated and willing to give myself away to a drug I couldn’t get enough,” the emerging Aussie artist explains of the song.

Maintenant is slated for an August 25, 2023 release.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 95th Birthday, Burt Bacharach!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 95th anniversary of Burt Bacharach’s birth.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Drew Kohl is a Nashville-based singer/songwriter. Relocating to Nashville back in 2014, Kohl quickly immersed himself in the city’s country/Americana scene, dressing the part and writing and performing folk-styled material. He has toured with the likes of Kiely Connell and Ray LaMontagne — and he has played at The Chicago Theater, Louisville Palace and lengthy list of other venues. But after spending several years in the scene, Kohl became increasingly disillusioned. He suddenly shifted to electric guitar and sought refuse in late night writing sessions that drew from Pavement, Elliott Smith, Johnny Marr and others.

Kohl found those late night writing sessions liberating — he explored new sounds and darker thematic concerns. The end result is his latest music project Cold Equations and the project’s forthcoming Paul Moak-produced self-titled debut, which was recorded at Smokestack Studio. “The first LP I wrote, “Ghost Town”, was super liberating – I didn’t have to fit into the ‘Country- Americana mold’ so I felt free to explore new sounds and lyrical themes,” the Nashville-based Kohl explains. “The Americana genre started feeling super restrictive and I didn’t really resonate or identify with the aesthetic anymore. So I withdrew from performing for a while and started writing indie rock songs in my bedroom which eventually became the songs on this upcoming album. This is the record I always wanted to make.”

After meeting Ryan Dishen (drums) at a punk show and later John O’Brien (bass), Cold Equation quickly became a full-fledged band that started writing, revising and rehearsing the material that Kohl originally wrote during those late night sessions.

“Identity Crisis,” the self-titled album’s latest single is a decidedly 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock anthem built around fuzzy power chords and the sort of mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses that would make Dave Grohl proud. As Kohl explains, the song is inspired by the sensation of something very familiar suddenly becoming unfamiliar — and facing someone, who suddenly acts out of character. But the twist is that the song’s narrator is the one, who’s having the crisis.

The self-titled album is slated for a June release.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Javier Moreno Teams up with Adrian Garcia on Breezy Bop “Enamorado”

Javier Moreno is an emerging Barcelona-born singer/songwriter and guitarist. Moreno started playing guitar when he turned 11, after listening to Dire Straits and Paco de Lucia. In 2006, he relocated to Bristol, then to London, where he wound up fronting Los Amigos, a Latin music band that spent 13 years touring across the UK, Europe and elsewhere.

Moreno is currently working on his Joe Dworniak-produced third album. But in the meantime, his latest single “Enamorado,” a collaboration with Mexican singer and producer Adrian Garcia is a breezy, feel good bop that’s a slick synthesis of modern production, old-school craft and funky Latin groove.