Tag: Sub Pop Records

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Washed Out Shares Shimmering “Running Away”

Back in 2021, Washed Out‘s creative mastermind Earnest Greene left Atlanta returned to the countryside he knew when he grew up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts, today, he’s preoccupied with the universe of wonder in the reality around him. 

He named the former horse farm he moved to “Endymion,” after the John Keats poem about a lovesick shepherd. It has shaped all that he’s created there, from his music to his albums’ creative direction to his planned large-scale visual-art experiments.

Greene’s fifth Washed Out Album, Notes From A Quiet Life is slated for a June 28, 2024 release through Sub Pop. The album, which reportedly is Greene’s most audacious effort to date, is anchored around a purity of vision. It’s also the first album of his catalog that Greene wholly self-produced with mixing assistance from Nathan Boddy and David Wrench. 

Earlier this month, I wrote about the album’s first single, “The Hardest Part,” a bit of classic Washed Out with subtle refinements” The atmospheric and achingly dream-like and nostalgia-inducing production is anchored around twinkling and arpeggiated keys, glistening bass synths, bursts of strummed guitar paired with Greene’s penchant for crafting catchy hooks and swooning choruses. And much like the JOVM mainstay’s most recently work, the song has Greene’s vocal front and center, with the song’s tale of love lost being the heartbroken star of the show. 

“Running Away” the album’s second and latest single continues a remarkable run of synth pop that’s simultaneously cinematic yet intimate and deeply vulnerable. Anchored around an alternating quiet verse, loud chorus, quiet verse song structure paired with Greene’s unerring knack for soaring and catch hooks, “Running Away” features a lush arrangement of glistening and twinkling synths, skittering and thumping beats that continues to be classic Washed Out — but with super clean production that places Greene’s gently vocodered yet plaintive delivery at the center.

“Starting a new album often means a lot of failed experiments,” Greene explains. “Basically, I’m just waiting around until I stumble into something new that I can build an album concept around.  For NFAQL, that song was ‘Running Away.’  It had all of the ingredients that ended up shaping the aesthetic for the album: a more minimal arrangement, sonic clarity, and more of an emphasis on classic songwriting technique.”
 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Washed Out Shares Surreal, Dream-like Visual for Achingly Nostalgic “The Hardest Part”

Back in 2021, Washed Out‘s creative mastermind Earnest Greene left Atlanta returned to the countryside he knew when he grew up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts, today, he’s preoccupied with the universe of wonder in the reality around him.

He named the former horse farm he moved to “Endymion,” after the John Keats poem about a lovesick shepherd. It has shaped all that he’s created there, from his music to his albums’ creative direction to his planned large-scale visual-art experiments.

Greene’s fifth Washed Out Album, Notes From A Quiet Life is slated for a June 28, 2024 release through Sub Pop. The album, which reportedly is Greene’s most audacious effort to date, is anchored around a purity of vision. It’s also the first album of his catalog that Greene wholly self- produced with mixing assistance from Nathan Boddy and David Wrench.

Notes From A Quiet Life‘s first single “The Hardest Part” is classic Washed Out with subtle refinements: The atmospheric and achingly dream-like and nostalgia-inducing production is anchored around twinkling and arpeggiated keys, glistening bass synths, bursts of strummed guitar paired with Greene’s penchant for crafting catchy hooks and swooning choruses. And much like the JOVM mainstay’s most recently work, the song has Greene’s vocal front and center, with the song’s tale of love lost being the heartbroken star of the show.

Unabashed and unafraid to pioneer and incorporate new technologies within his art, Greene enlisted multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and director Paul Trillo to direct the music video for the album’s lead single, “The Hardest Part.” Created using OpenAI’s Sora, “The Hardest Part” marks the first collaboration with an artist and filmmaker to be generated entirely utilizing this technology.

Before I forget some background here: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Their mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI’s Sora is an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative videos from text instructions. Although the model isn’t publicly available as of this writing, OpenAI is currently working with a number of visual artists, designers and filmmakers to gain feedback on how to advance the model to be the most helpful for creative professionals.
 
“I had the seed of this video concept 10 years ago, where we do an infinite zoom of a couple’s life over the course of many decades, but I have yet to attempt it because I figured it’d be too ambitious for a music video,” Paul Trillo says. “While the technology is experimental and cutting-edge, I wanted to do something that also felt like a classic music video that would hold your attention no matter what tech was being used in the process. I was specifically interested in what makes Sora so unique. It offers something that couldn’t quite be shot with a camera, nor could it be animated in 3D, it was something that could have only existed with this specific technology. The surreal and hallucinatory aspects of AI allow you to explore and discover new ideas that you would have never dreamed of.  Using AI to simply recreate reality is boring. I wasn’t interested in capturing realism but something that felt hyperreal. The fluid blending and merging of different scenes feels more akin to how we move through dreams and the murkiness of memories. While some people feel this may be supplanting how things are made, I see this as supplementing ideas that could never have been made otherwise. Many artists in this industry are constantly compromising and negotiating their ideas with the reality of what can be made. This offers a glimpse at a future where music artists will be given the opportunity to dream bigger. An overreliance on this technique may become a crutch and it’s important that we don’t use this as the new standard of creation but another technique in the toolbelt.”
 

“‘The Hardest Part’ is a story about nostalgia and love lost.  With the video, I wanted to bring this narrative to life in a sincere way that was also exciting and unexpected. I’ve been a fan of Paul for a long time and he is amazingly skilled at incorporating cutting-edge visual effects that elevate a story instead of simply supplementing it with shock and awe,” Washed Out’s Ernest Greene says. “He was at the top of my list of potential collaborators. 
 
“What he’s come up with is nostalgic, sad, uplifting, and often quite strange.  However, he still manages to make you feel for the characters and invested in the journey of how their lives progress.

“I think that Paul is right when he says that this video could only be made using this new AI technology.  In my opinion, the hallucinatory quality of Sora clips feels like the beginning of a new genre unto itself – one that is surreal and unpredictable and entirely unique to traditional cinema or even animation.”
 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Corridor Shares GIF-tastic Visual for “Jump Cut”

Mimi, Corridor‘s long-awaited and highly-anticipated fourth album is slated for Friday release on CD, LP and DSP globally through Sub Pop and across Canada through Bonsound. 

The eight-song album, which was co-produced by the band and Joojoo Ashworth, recorded at Montréal-based Studio Gamma and mastered by Brooklyn’s Heba Kadry Mastering, derives its name from Jonathan Robert’s cat and features — presumably — Mimi’s face on the album artwork. Thematically, the album as the band explains is about “getting older” and “figuring out new parts of life,” inspired and informed by the type of personal changes that accompany the passage of time. And while the album’s material reflects a newfound and perhaps hard-won contemplative maturity, sonically, Mimi is reportedly a huge step forward with the band expanding on the sound of 2019’s critically applauded Junior with ever more richly detailed music rooted in a distinct rhythm pulse that recalls post-punk’s own classic era of meshing dance and rock textures. 

For the acclaimed Montréalers and their fans, Mimi will feel like a fresh break — even for a band that has established themselves as being forward-thinking. Much like its immediate predecessor, Mimi sees Corridor being impossible to pin down from song to song; however, whereas the elastic guitar rock of Junior came together quickly — or as the band’s Jonathan Robert describes the process ” in a rush” — the steady-as-they-go creative pace of Mimi marked a desire to break from the “exhausting” work ethic that birthed Junior. 

“The goal was to work differently, which is the goal we have every time we work on a new album—to build something in a new way,” Robert explains. “This time, we took our time.” During the summer of 2020, the members of the band — Jonathan Robert (vocals, guitar), Dominic Berthiaume (vocals, bass), Julien Bakvis (drums) and multi-instrumentalist Samuel Gougoux — holed away in a cottage to engage in the sort of creative experimentation that would lead to Mimi‘s material. “We went there to write, and a lot of ideas came from that retreat,” Berthiaume explains. “We didn’t end up with songs as much as we did ideas, so the result is a collage of the ideas.”

After that productive writing retreat, the band continued to tinker with the songs’ raw parts digitally and remotely over the next few years with co-producer Joojoo Ashworth leading their own specific talents in the theoretical booth. This process was naturally a byproduct of not having access to their rehearsal space as the COVID-19 pandemic faded into public view, but it was also a result of the band leaning harder into incorporating electronic textures than previously. 

“For a long time, we identified as a guitar-oriented band, and the goal of making this whole record was trying to get away from that,” Berthiaume says, but while admitting that the band encountered their own challenges as a result: “We had to figure out how to make new songs without having the chance to play together. It was complicated sometimes.” 

Some of the album’s new energy and life may be owed to Samuel Gougoux joining the band full-time, after pitching in on live performances in the past. “I come more from a background of electronic music, so it was nice to involve that with the band more,” he explains. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release later this week, I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:

  • “Mourir Demain,” a song built around brightly shimmering and chiming guitars, soaring synths and post-punk-like angular rhythms that served as a lush, velvety and somewhat uneasy bed for Robert’s plaintive delivery, which sees him ruminating on his looming mortality with a brutally unvarnished yet fearful realism. “I wrote it when my girlfriend and I were shopping for life insurance,” Corridor’s Robert says with a laugh. “With our little daughter growing up, we also considered making our will. I said to myself, ‘Oh shit, from now on I’m slowly starting to plan my death.”
     

  • “Mon Argent,” which features the sort of electronic glitch and squiggle that reminds me of VHS fuzz and badly tuned TVs with rabbit ears paired with jangling and chiming bursts of angular guitars, a remarkably steady and propulsive backbeat serving as a lush and shimmering bed for Robert’s plaintive delivery to bitterly muse about the role of money in his — er, the narrator’s — life. And of course, fittingly enough, the sense of shame and failure that money, and the lack of money creates with all of us. Certainly, as a writer and photographer, this is a familiar and remarkably bitter aspect of my life that I can relate to. 

Mimi‘s latest single “Jump Cut” is a hook-driven song built around angular guitar bursts, a relentlessly propulsive motorik pulse and glistening synth oscillations that — to my ears, at least — playfully nod at Who Are You-era The Who.

Directed by award-winning filmmaker and designer Winston Hacking, the accompanying video for “Jump Cut” is a truly bonkers mix of edited found and stock footage, collage and animation that’s playfully surreal and GIF-tastic.

“Our video reflects the song’s theme of grappling with the overwhelming influence of technology and feeling adrift in its wake. Using AI to enhance archival footage resulted in a deliberate distortion, symbolizing the potential consequences of our intertwined relationship with it,” Hocking says of the video. “It invites reflection on how technology blurs the lines of our identities and infiltrates every aspect of our lives.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays METZ Share Woozy and Anthemic “Superior Mirage”

Toronto-based JOVM mainstays METZ‘s fifth studio album Up On Gravity Hill is slated for a Friday release on Dine Alone Records in Canada and on Sub Pop for the rest of the world. The album, which is the JOVM mainstays’ first album in four years was engineered by Seth Manchester and features guest appearances from Black Mountain‘s Amber Webber and string arrangements by composer Owen Pallett. 

Long known for blowing out eardrums with explosively loud songs of joyous rage, the Canadian JOVM mainstays — Alex Edkins (vocals, guitar), Chris Slorach (bass) and Hayden Menzies (drums) — have, over the course of their past couple of albums have begun exploring ways of turning abrasiveness into atmospherics. The evolution of their sound is not only a reflection of the band’s maturity as humans and as musicians, but also a changed world that demands much more nuance and compassion to comprehend and survive. Up On Gravity Hill reportedly finds the band continuing to bend the raw power of rock music to its most delicate, intricate ends. The album’s material may arguably be their deepest, detailed and unyieldingly personal batch of songs — and their most beautiful to date. 

In the lead up to the album’s release later this week, I’ve written about three of its singles. The band specifically spotlighted the evolution of their sound and approach through the release of its first two contrasting singles:

“99,” a stomping and noisy motorik chug of a song built around their long-held penchant for shout along worthy, mosh pit friendly hooks choruses that sounds subtly informed by Edkins’ work with Noble Rot. “Entwined (Street Light Buzz),” a woozy and swooning song that sees the trio retaining their penchant for power chord-driven, enormous, shout along friendly hooks and choruses with a gorgeous and meditative shoegazer-like bridge. 

“These two songs couldn’t be more stylistically and thematically dissimilar,” METZ’s Alex Edkins says. “‘Entwined (Street Light Buzz)’ is a song about the deep connection humans can foster with one another and how we carry people with us forever, even after death. ‘99’ is about the scourge of corporate greed and bottom-line thinking that runs rampant in modern society. Anything for a buck is the message being sent to younger generations.”

“Light Your Way Home,” a slow-burning shoegazer-like ballad built around the band’s long-held penchant for feedback-driven power chords, thunderous drums, enormous raise-your-beer-in-the-air-and-shout-along worthy anthemic choruses serving as a dramatic and stormy vehicle for Edkins’ achingly yearning delivery and backing vocals from Black Mountain‘s and Lighting Dust’s Amber Webber. “Light Your Way Home” finds the Toronto-based outfit at their most forcefully earnest with hearts worn proudly on their sleeves, expressing the understandably deep longing for your loved ones — presumably while living the rock n’ roll live on the road. Sonically, the track is a subtle departure from their established sound that sees the band proverbially stretching themselves upward. 

“’Light Your Way Home’ is definitely one of our favorites from Up On Gravity Hill. I was listening to lots of Jesu and Low (as I do most winters) when writing this one,” the band’s Alex Edkins says in press notes. “Lyrically, it’s about missing your loved ones to the point of losing your grip on reality. We distorted and added a mechanical slap back to the drums to create a wild and huge sound. I love how big we got the production on this one. It’s like nothing we’ve ever made before, sonically or lyrically. Amber Webber (Black Mountain, Lightning Dust) was so great to work with, and her voice just takes this song to another stratosphere. I think the video by Colin Medley perfectly captures the vibe and intent of the song.”

Up On Gravity Hill’s fourth and latest single, “Superior Mirage” sees the acclaimed Canadian JOVM mainstays pushing their sound into a bold new direction. Anchored around a propulsive boom bap-like beat, reverb soaked bursts of angular guitar and glistening synth oscillations, “Superior Mirage” is a woozy track that sees the band seamlessly blending post-punk, shoegazer textures with their long-held penchant for enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses. The result is a song that’s still mosh pit friendly yet but arguably one of the more melodic and dreamier songs of their catalog.

“It’s definitely new territory for us, and I really love the sounds we were able to achieve. We blended a Linn Drum with some homemade samples and made this ad-hoc junkyard drum sound that propels the song along,” METZ’s Alex Edkins says of the new single. “We really tried to make the backbeat the defining trait of the song. The lift on the chorus is pretty huge, too. We wanted the wall of guitars to knock you sideways.”

Directed by John Andrews, the animated video for “Superior Mirage” follows two devils speeding through the desert. After stopping to party, they come across a portal to another dimension, where they encounter the members of METZ ripping hard. Evil hasn’t been this childlike or this fun in a while, y’all!

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: METZ Teams Up with Amber Webber on Slow-Burning and Stormy “Light Your Way Home”

Toronto-based JOVM mainstays METZ‘s fifth studio album Up on Gravity Hill is slated for an April 12, 2024 release on Dine Alone Records in Canada and on Sub Pop for the rest of the world. The album, which is the JOVM mainstays’ first album in four years was engineered by Seth Manchester and features guest appearances from Black Mountain‘s Amber Webber and string arrangements by composer Owen Pallett. 

Long known for blowing out eardrums with explosively loud songs of joyous rage, the Canadian JOVM mainstays — Alex Edkins (vocals, guitar), Chris Slorach (bass) and Hayden Menzies (drums) — have, over the course of their past couple of albums have begun exploring ways of turning abrasiveness into atmospherics. The evolution of their sound is not only a reflection of the band’s maturity as humans and as musicians, but also a changed world that demands much more nuance and compassion to comprehend and survive. Up On Gravity Hill reportedly finds the band continuing to bend the raw power of rock music to its most delicate, intricate ends. The album’s material may arguably be their deepest, detailed and unyieldingly personal batch of songs — and their most beautiful to date. 

Last month, the Canadian JOVM mainstays spotlighted the evolution in their sound and approach through the release of two contrasting singles:

“99,” a stomping and noisy motorik chug of a song built around their long-held penchant for shout along worthy, mosh pit friendly hooks choruses that sounds subtly informed by Edkins’ work with Noble Rot. “Entwined (Street Light Buzz),” a woozy and swooning song that sees the trio retaining their penchant for power chord-driven, enormous, shout along friendly hooks and choruses with a gorgeous and meditative shoegazer-like bridge. 

“These two songs couldn’t be more stylistically and thematically dissimilar,” METZ’s Alex Edkins says. “‘Entwined (Street Light Buzz)’ is a song about the deep connection humans can foster with one another and how we carry people with us forever, even after death. ‘99’ is about the scourge of corporate greed and bottom-line thinking that runs rampant in modern society. Anything for a buck is the message being sent to younger generations.”

Up On Gravity Hill‘s third and latest single “Light Your Way Home” is a slow-burning shoegazer-like ballad built around the band’s long-held penchant for feedback-driven power chords, thunderous drums, enormous raise-your-beer-in-the-air-and-shout-along worthy anthemic choruses serving as a dramatic and stormy vehicle for Edkins’ achingly yearning delivery and backing vocals from Black Mountain‘s and Lighting Dust’s Amber Webber. “Light Your Way Home” finds the Toronto-based outfit at their most forcefully earnest with hearts worn proudly on their sleeves, expressing the understandably deep longing for your loved ones — presumably while living the rock n’ roll live on the road. Sonically, the track is a subtle departure from their established sound that sees the band proverbially stretching themselves upward.

“’Light Your Way Home’ is definitely one of our favorites from Up On Gravity Hill. I was listening to lots of Jesu and Low (as I do most winters) when writing this one,” the band’s Alex Edkins says in press notes. “Lyrically, it’s about missing your loved ones to the point of losing your grip on reality. We distorted and added a mechanical slap back to the drums to create a wild and huge sound. I love how big we got the production on this one. It’s like nothing we’ve ever made before, sonically or lyrically. Amber Webber (Black Mountain, Lightning Dust) was so great to work with, and her voice just takes this song to another stratosphere. I think the video by Colin Medley perfectly captures the vibe and intent of the song.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Corridor Shares a Shimmering and Glitchy Meditation on Money

Mimi, Corridor‘s long-awaited and highly-anticipated fourth album is slated for an April 26, 2024 release on CD, LP and DSP globally through Sub Pop and across Canada through Bonsound. 

The 8-song album, which was co-produced by the band and Joojoo Ashworth, recorded at Montréal-based Studio Gamma and mastered by Brooklyn’s Heba Kadry Mastering, derives its name from Jonathan Robert’s cat and features — presumably — Mimi’s face on the album artwork. Thematically, the album as the band explains is about “getting older” and “figuring out new parts of life,” inspired and informed by the type of personal changes that accompany the passage of time. And while the album’s material reflects a newfound and perhaps hard-won contemplative maturity, sonically, Mimi is reportedly a huge step forward with the band expanding on the sound of 2019’s critically applauded Junior with ever more richly detailed music rooted in a distinct rhythm pulse that recalls post-punk’s own classic era of meshing dance and rock textures. 

For the acclaimed Montréalers and their fans, Mimi will feel like a fresh break — even for a band that has established themselves as being forward-thinking. Much like its predecessor, Mimi sees Corridor being impossible to pin down from song to song; however, whereas the elastic guitar rock of Junior came together quickly — or as the band’s Jonathan Robert describes the process ” in a rush” — the steady-as-they-go creative pace of Mimi marked a desire to break from the “exhausting” work ethic that birthed Junior. 

“The goal was to work differently, which is the goal we have every time we work on a new album—to build something in a new way,” Robert explains. “This time, we took our time.” During the summer of 2020, the members of the band — Jonathan Robert (vocals, guitar), Dominic Berthiaume (vocals, bass), Julien Bakvis (drums) and multi-instrumentalist Samuel Gougoux — holed away in a cottage to engage in the sort of creative experimentation that would lead to Mimi‘s material. “We went there to write, and a lot of ideas came from that retreat,” Berthiaume explains. “We didn’t end up with songs as much as we did ideas, so the result is a collage of the ideas.”

After that productive writing retreat, the band continued to tinker with the songs’ raw parts digitally and remotely over the next few years with co-producer Joojoo Ashworth leading their own specific talents in the theoretical booth. This process was naturally a byproduct of not having access to their rehearsal space as the COVID-19 pandemic faded into public view, but it was also a result of the band leaning header into incorporating electronic textures than previously. 

 “For a long time, we identified as a guitar-oriented band, and the goal of making this whole record was trying to get away from that,” Berthiaume says, but while admitting that the band encountered their own challenges as a result: “We had to figure out how to make new songs without having the chance to play together. It was complicated sometimes.” 

Some of the album’s new energy and life may be owed to Samuel Gougoux joining the band full-time, after pitching in on live performances in the past. “I come more from a background of electronic music, so it was nice to involve that with the band more,” he explains. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about Mimi’s first single, “Mourir Demain,” a song built around brightly shimmering and chiming guitars, soaring synths and post-punk-like angular rhythms that served as a lush, velvety and somewhat uneasy bed for Robert’s plaintive delivery, which sees him ruminating on his looming mortality with a brutally unvarnished yet fearful realism. “I wrote it when my girlfriend and I were shopping for life insurance,” Corridor’s Robert says with a laugh. “With our little daughter growing up, we also considered making our will. I said to myself, ‘Oh shit, from now on I’m slowly starting to plan my death.”
 

Mimi‘s second and latest single “Mon Argent,” which has a title that translates into English as “My Money,” features the sort of electronic glitch and squiggle that reminds me of VHS fuzz and badly tuned TVs with rabbit ears paired with jangling and chiming bursts of angular guitars, a remarkably steady and propulsive backbeat serving as a lush and shimmering bed for Robert’s plaintive delivery to bitterly muse about the role of money in his — er, the narrator’s — life. And of course, fittingly enough, the sense of shame and failure that money, and the lack of money creates with all of us. Certainly, as a writer and photographer, this is a familiar and remarkably bitter aspect of my life that I can relate to.

The visualizer, by the band’s Jonathan Robert features a Lite Brite, falling pennies and dollar bills into a scale, trinkets and other bric-a-brac in a hypnotic loop.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Pissed Jeans Share a Bruising and Ripping Meditation on Harsh Truths

Allentown-based punks Pissed Jeans’ highly-anticipated sixth album Half Divorced further cements their longtime reputation for crating feral punk with their acerbic sense of humor. Thematically, the material mercilessly skewers the tension between youthful optimism and the sobering realities of adulthood but while still managing to be — perhaps inadvertently — fun. “Half Divorced has an aggression within it, in terms of saying, I don’t want this reality. There’s a power in being able to say, I realize you want me to pay attention to these things, but I’m telling you that they don’t matter. I’m already looking elsewhere,” the band’s Matt Korvette says.

Slated for a March 1, 2024 release through Sub Pop Records, the band’s members — Matt Korvette (vocals), Brad Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass) and Sean McGuinness (drums) — weren’t in a rush to finish the album, which was recorded and co-produced by Don Godwin at Takoma Park, MD-based Tonal Park. “We’re not the kind of band that bangs out a new record every two years,” Korvette says. “Pissed Jeans is truly like an art project for us, which is what makes it so fun.” The material’s distilled energy makes the album sound menacing and dangerous — with the songs unexpectedly veering into classic hardcore punk territory. Korvette says, “We realized we’d never really fucked with pop punk, and we thought, this is something that isn’t going to be immediately recognizable as cool. So let’s challenge ourselves to make it feel cool to us.”

The word divorce in the album’s title falls in line with the moments of humiliation, shame and defeat that are held up for all to see on the album. “If you say something enough or if you just allow it to exist publicly, then it loses its evil monster-in-the-closet thing,” Korvette says. 

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

  • “Moving On,” a hard-charing, balls-to-the-wall, mosh pit friendly ripper with some of the most shout along friendly anthemic hooks and choruses the band has ever written, buzzsaw-like power chords and propulsive, thunderous drumming paired with Korvette’s classic punk rock snarl. But at its core “Moving On” is as much about trying to put your best foot forward, as it is about throwing your hands up and accepting defeat. 
     

  • “Sixty-Two Thousand Dollars in Debt,” a bruising, mosh pit friendly, hardcore punk-inspired ripper that recalls classic Bad Religion, NOFX, Murphy’s Law and the like, complete with a scorching guitar solo. The song is about the heady — and all too adult — excitement of shrinking debt-to-credit ratios, which in this day and age, is a depressingly Sisyphean task. 

Clocking in at 90 seconds, Half Divorced‘s third and latest single “Cling to a Poisoned Dream” is a bruising ripper that, much like its immediate predecessor, recalls classic, mosh pit friendly hardcore punk: three scorching power chords, thunderous drumming and snarled vocals. The song thematically is an uneasy mediation of harsh, very adult truths: We’re desperately trying to survive with our sanity and dignity intact, in a world that’s rotten and may well be irreparably fucked. And in turn, that would mean the unsettling realization that we’re also completely fucked. Time is flying by. Anything we’re clinging to might be stupid and pointless, too. Fun times around here ain’t it? The only thing left is to roar into the void.

Directed by Joe Stakun, the accompanying video for “Cling to a Poisoned Dream” is shot with a fish-eye lens in a dark, strobe-lit warehouse, and features the band ripping while wearing work jumpsuits.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Throughout the course of their 20-year history together, Allentown, PA-based punks Pissed Jeans — Matt Korvette (vocals), Brad Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass) and Sean McGuinness (drums) — have never been known to go halfway: They’ve long been known for material that pairs feral vocals and acerbic, biting lyrics with buzzsaw guitars — and for their unhinged live show. 

The Allentown-based punks’ highly-anticipated sixth album Half Divorced further cements their longtime reputation for crating feral punk with their acerbic sense of humor. Thematically, the material mercilessly skewers the tension between youthful optimism and the sobering realities of adulthood but while still managing to be — perhaps inadvertently — fun. “Half Divorced has an aggression within it, in terms of saying, I don’t want this reality. There’s a power in being able to say, I realize you want me to pay attention to these things, but I’m telling you that they don’t matter. I’m already looking elsewhere,” Korvette says. 

Slated for a March 1, 2024 release through Sub Pop Records, the band’s members weren’t in a rush to finish the album, which was recorded and co-produced by Don Godwin at Takoma Park, MD-based Tonal Park. “We’re not the kind of band that bangs out a new record every two years,” Pissed Jeans’ Matt Korvette says. “Pissed Jeans is truly like an art project for us, which is what makes it so fun.” The material’s distilled energy makes the album sound menacing and dangerous — with the song’s unexpectedly veering into classic hardcore punk territory. Korvette says, “We realized we’d never really fucked with pop punk, and we thought, this is something that isn’t going to be immediately recognizable as cool. So let’s challenge ourselves to make it feel cool to us.”

The word divorce in the album’s title falls in line with the moments of humiliation, shame and defeat that are held up for all to see on the album. “If you say something enough or if you just allow it to exist publicly, then it loses its evil monster-in-the-closet thing,” Korvette says. 

Last month, I wrote about “Moving On,” a hard-charing, balls-to-the-wall, mosh pit friendly ripper with some of the most shout along friendly anthemic hooks and choruses the band has ever written, buzzsaw-like power chords and propulsive, thunderous drumming paired with Korvette’s classic punk rock snarl. But at its core “Moving On” is as much about trying to put your best foot forward, as it is about throwing your hands up and accepting defeat.
 

“Sixty-Two Thousand Dollars in Debt,” Half Divorced‘s latest single is a bruising, mosh pit friendly, hardcore punk-inspired ripper that recalls classic Bad Religion, NOFX, Murphy’s Law and the like, complete with a scorching guitar solo. The song is about the heady — and all too adult — excitement of shrinking debt-to-credit ratios, which in this day and age, is a depressingly Sisyphean task.


The band’s previously announced international tour dates to support Half Divorced, including a March 16, 2024 stop at St. Vitus. Check out the tour dates below. More dates to come soon. 
 

Tour Dates

Thu. Feb. 29 – Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios
Fri. Mar. 01 – Seattle, WA – Madame Lou’s
Sat. Mar. 02 – Los Angeles, CA – The Echo
Fri. Mar. 15 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
Sat. Mar. 16 – Brooklyn, NY – St. Vitus
Fri. Mar. 29 – Schijndel, NL – Paaspop Festival
Sat. Mar. 30 – London, UK – EartH (aka Hackney Arts Centre)
Sun. Mar. 31 – Manchester, UK – Manchester Punk Fest
Tue. Apr. 02 – Glasgow, UK – Stereo
Wed. Apr. 03 – Dublin, IE – Whelan’s
Thu. Apr. 04 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Corridor Shares a Shimmering Rumination on Mortality

Mimi, Corridor‘s long-awaited and highly-anticipated fourth album is slated for an April 26, 2024 release on CD, LP and DSP globally through Sub Pop and across Canada through Bonsound.

The 8-song album, which was co-produced by the band and Joojoo Ashworth and recorded at Montréal-based Studio Gamma and mastered by Brooklyn’s Heba Kadry Mastering, derives its name from Jonathan Robert’s cat and features — presumably — Mimi’s face on the album artwork. Thematically, the album as the band explains is about “getting older” and “figuring out new parts of life,” inspired and informed by the type of personal changes that accompany the passage of time. And while the album’s material reflects a newfound and perhaps hard-won contemplative maturity, sonically, Mimi is reportedly a huge step forward with the band expanding on the sound of 2019’s critically applauded Junior with ever more richly detailed music rooted in a distinct rhythm pulse that recalls post-punk’s own classic era of meshing dance and rock textures.

For the acclaimed Montréalers and their fans, Mimi will feel like a fresh break — even for a band that has established themselves as being forward-thinking. Much like its predecessor, Mimi sees Corridor being impossible to pin down from song to song; however, whereas the elastic guitar rock of Junior came together quickly — or as the band’s Jonathan Robert describes the process ” in a rush” — then the steady-as-they-go creative pace of Mimi marked a desire to break from the “exhausting” work ethic that birthed Junior.

“The goal was to work differently, which is the goal we have every time we work on a new album—to build something in a new way,” Robert explains. “This time, we took our time.” During the summer of 2020, the members of the band — Jonathan Robert (vocals, guitar), Dominic Berthiaume (vocals, bass), Julien Bakvis (drums) and multi-instrumentalist Samuel Gougoux — holed away in a cottage to engage in the sort of creative experimentation that would lead to Mimi‘s material. “We went there to write, and a lot of ideas came from that retreat,” Berthiaume explains. “We didn’t end up with songs as much as we did ideas, so the result is a collage of the ideas.”

After that productive writing retreat, the band continued to tinker with the songs’ raw parts digitally and remotely over the next few years with co-producer Joojoo Ashworth leading their own specific talents in the theoretical booth. This process was naturally a byproduct of not having access to their rehearsal space as the COVID-19 pandemic faded into public view, but it was also a result of the band leaning header into incorporating electronic textures than previously.

 “For a long time, we identified as a guitar-oriented band, and the goal of making this whole record was trying to get away from that,” Berthiaume says, but while admitting that the band encountered their own challenges as a result: “We had to figure out how to make new songs without having the chance to play together. It was complicated sometimes.”

Some of the album’s new energy and life may be owed to Samuel Gougoux joining the band full-time, after pitching in on live performances in the past. “I come more from a background of electronic music, so it was nice to involve that with the band more,” he explains.

Mimi‘s first single “Mourir Demain” is built around brightly shimming and chiming guitars and soaring synths and post-punk like angular rhythms serving as lush, velvety and somewhat uneasy bed for Robert’s plaintive delivery ruminating on his looming mortality with a brutally, unvarnished yet very fearful realism. “I wrote it when my girlfriend and I were shopping for life insurance,” Corridor’s Robert says with a laugh. “With our little daughter growing up, we also considered making our will. I said to myself, ‘Oh shit, from now on I’m slowly starting to plan my death.”
 

Directed by Paul Jacobs, the accompanying video for “Mourir Demain,” features hand-drawn and animated images of death and despair that’s simultaneously beautiful and unsettling.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: King Tuff Shares Quirky and Breezy “Symphony Of A Man”

Brattleboro-born singer/songwriter and musician Kyle Thomas is the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed indie rock recording project King Tuff. Thomas’ sixth King Tuff album, the SASAMI co-written and co-produced Smalltown Stardust was released earlier this year to critical praise from the likes of The AV Club and Stereogum.

The album is “an album about love and nature and youth,” Thomas explains. The Brattleboro-born artist takes the listener with him on a journey to a place where past and present collide, where he can be a dreamer in love with all that he sees. Images of his youth abound. And as a result, it’s a spiritual, tender and joyous album that might shock and surprise those with only a passing knowledge of his back catalog.

Thomas will be releasing Smalltown Stardust (deluxe dust) on all DSPs on August 18, 2023. The expanded digital-only version of Smalltown Stardust will include the album’s original 11 songs, one previously unreleased song and four different studio version of songs from the album. “For the deluxe version of Smalltown Stardust, I’ve done some digging and found a few alternate versions of songs from the record,” Thomas says. “I often try songs in different ways before I land on the final versions, and these tracks are a good representation of that! Some of these songs were kicking around for years before they finally fell into place. I wrote ‘The Wheel’ all the way back in 2005! Sometimes they just need to stew I suppose. These versions are mid-stew but I think they still taste pretty good!”

To commemorate the upcoming release of Smalltown Stardust (deluxe dust), Thomas and Sub Pop Records shared “Symphony Of A Man,” a previously unreleased single that appears on the deluxe edition. Built around what sounds like glistening Rhodes, a supple and sturdy bass line, swaggering boom bap-like drumming, mischievous bursts of mellotron or crumhorn “Symphony Of A Man” is a quirky song that sounds like it would be perfect in a Wes Anderson film — but while displaying Thomas and SASAMI’s penchant for incredibly catchy hooks.

“This is the first song Sasami and I wrote when we first started working on the record, about a mysterious, reclusive musician who I won’t name (Chris Weisman),” Thomas explains. “It was half finished and abandoned pretty early on, but I like it just the way it is! Note the crumhorn solo in the outro.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sweeping Promises Shares Horror-Themed Visual for Brooding and Uneasy “Good Living Is Coming for You”

Sweeping Promises — Lira Mondal (vocals, bass, production) and Caufield Schnug (guitar, drums, production — can trace their origins to a chance meeting in Arkansas, which led to a decade of playing together in an eclectic assortment of projects. Their relentless practice has made perfect: Meticulously controlling every aspect of their craft, from the first note they write together, through production and engineering, using space as a key element of their sound, to the final mastering process, each song is an unspoiled fingerprint unique to their long-held dynamic chemistry. 

The duo’s full-length debut, 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out was released through Feel It Records. Written before the pandemic, the album’s material managed to pair the anxious urgency of a commanding live performance with a gauzy production, creating a distorted sense of time. That resonated with tons of folks during quarantine, who turned the album into a life-saving flotation device — and fittingly the album received rapturous praise from Stereogum, Pitchfork, and NPR. Around then, Feel It Records and Sub Pop agreed to join forces to distribute the duo’s work across North America and globally, starting with 2021’s “Pain Without a Touch.”

Slated for a Friday release through Feel It Records across North America and Sub Pop globally, the duo’s highly-anticipated sophomore album, Good Living Is Coming For You was recorded and produced by Mondal and Schung in their Lawrence, KS-based home studio. In some way, the album’s title and its material is informed by more than a half-century of underground music revolutionaries, who have taken whacks at the mundane mainstream. English punks spat “NO FUTURE” at germ-free adolescents. Ohio New Wavers devolutionized mankind with whips. Athens art school students chomped at hero worship. MetroCard carrying riot grrls rebirthed the bomp with a gasoline gut. The duo read pandemic minds with 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out. With their forthcoming sophomore album, the return with a new message that initially offers hope wrapped around relief. But maybe it’s warning. Or darker still, a threat. 

While the duo have amassed acclaim for unfussy, monolithic anthems, Good Living Is Coming For You is a decided change in sonic direction and approach: They’ve eschewed the brutalist ambience of their Boston subterranean, concrete laboratory and the single mic recording technique of its immediate predecessor. Recorded in a nude painting studio bathed in light with high-ceilings, their Lawrence-based studio is a reverb-rich space, that helps influence the album’s overall sound. Thematically, the album’s material touches upon power struggles, accepting aging, breaking restraints and more, delivered with a fervent urgency. 

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

  • Album opener “Eraser,” a gritty and furious ripper built around enormous shout-along worthy hooks and choruses, thunderous drumming, angular and propulsive bass lines, and distortion pedaled guitars paired with Mondal’s powerhouse delivery and copious amounts of reverb. While sonically recalling riot grrrl punk, complete with righteous and urgent fury, “Eraser,” as the duo explain is “a malevolent creep – an overly ambitious, shadowy force who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. She watches your every move, mirrors your motions, and ultimately uses your voice against you without you ever noticing what she’s done. She’s unchecked ambition, a paranoid girl Friday, an overriding impulse to reflect rather than project. She must be stopped at all costs.”

  • “You Shatter,” a synth punk ripper that sounds like a synthesis of Freedom of Choice-era DEVO, Memphis synth punks Nots and the Go-Go’s. “‘You Shatter’ is our ode to being a hammer,” the duo say of the song. 

The soon-to-be released album’s third and latest single, album title track “Good Living Is Coming for You” is a brooding and uneasy track built around a metronomic-like groove, wiry guitar blasts paired with Mondal’s forceful croon. The result is a song that manages to sound a bit like Wire — but while evoking an encroaching sense of doom. The end is very much nigh, folks.

Directed by experimental filmmaker Jessica Bardsley, the accompanying video for “Good Living Is Coming for You” draws from 70s and 80s horror films. “For this video, we collaborated with one of our closest friends, experimental filmmaker Jessica Bardsley (Life Without Dreams, Goodbye Thelma),” the members of Sweeping Promises explain in press notes. Drawing from the glamorous and bloodthirsty aesthetic of ‘70s and ‘80s horror films (Daughters of Darkness, The Hunger, The Lair of the White Worm, Dream Demon), the visual companion to ‘Good Living Is Coming for You’ channels the song’s unshakable feeling of discontent and encroaching domestic doom through the confines of a DIY horror flick as seen by some nameless sleepless soul on late-night cable, the line between movie and infomercial blurred to infernal effect.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Sweeping Promises Shares an Urgent Ripper

Sweeping Promises — Lira Mondal (vocals, bass, production) and Caufield Schnug (guitar, drums, production — can trace their origins to a chance meeting in Arkansas, which led to a decade of playing together in an eclectic assortment of projects. Their relentless practice has made perfect: Meticulously controlling every aspect of their craft, from the first note they write together, through production and engineering, using space as a key element of their sound, to the final mastering process, each song is an unspoiled fingerprint unique to their long-held dynamic chemistry.

The duo’s full-length debut, 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out was released through Feel It Records. Written before the pandemic, the album’s material managed to pair the anxious urgency of a commanding live performance with a gauzy production, creating a distorted sense of time. That resonated with tons of folks during quarantine, who turned the album into a life-saving flotation device — and fittingly the album received rapturous praise from Stereogum, Pitchfork, and NPR. Around then, Feel It Records and Sub Pop agreed to join forces to distribute the duo’s work across North America and globally, starting with 2021’s “Pain Without a Touch” and their highly-anticipated sophomore album Good Living Is Coming For You.

Slated for a June 30, 2023 release through Feel It Records across North America and Sub Pop globally, Good Living Is Coming For You was recorded and produced by Mondal and Schung in their Lawrence, KS-based home studio. In some way, the album’s title and its material is informed by more than a half-century of underground music revolutionaries, who have taken whacks at the mundane mainstream. English punks spat “NO FUTURE” at germ-free adolescents. Ohio New Wavers devolutionized mankind with whips. Athens art school students chomped at hero worship. MetroCard carrying riot grrls rebirthed the bomp with a gasoline gut. The duo read pandemic minds with 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out. With their forthcoming sophomore album, the return with a new message that initially offers hope wrapped around relief. But maybe it’s warning. Or darker still, a threat.

While the duo have amassed acclaim for unfussy, monolithic anthems, Good Living Is Coming For You is a decided change in sonic direction and approach: They’ve eschewed the brutalist ambience of their Boston subterranean, concrete laboratory and the single mic recording technique of its immediate predecessor. Recorded in a nude painting studio bathed in light with high-ceilings, their Lawrence-based studio is a reverb-rich space, that helps influence the album’s overall sound. Thematically, the album’s material touches upon power struggles, accepting aging, breaking restraints and more, delivered with a fervent urgency.

“Eraser,” the forthcoming album’s opening track and first single, is a gritty and furious ripper built around enormous, shout-along worthy hooks and choruses, thunderous drumming, angular and propulsive bass lines, distortion pedaled guitars paired with Mondal’s powerhouse delivery and copious amounts of reverb. While sonically recalling riot grrrl punk, complete with righteous and urgent fury, “Eraser,” as the duo explain is “a malevolent creep – an overly ambitious, shadowy force who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. She watches your every move, mirrors your motions, and ultimately uses your voice against you without you ever noticing what she’s done. She’s unchecked ambition, a paranoid girl Friday, an overriding impulse to reflect rather than project. She must be stopped at all costs.”

Along with the release of Good Living Is Coming For You‘s first single, the duo announced an extensive list of tour dates to support the album. The tour includes an August 8, 2023 stop at Johnny Brenda‘s, one of my favorite rooms in Philly, and an August 10, 2023 stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Check out the tour dates below.

 
Good Living Is Coming For You is available now to preorder from Feel It Records & Sub Pop. LP pre-orders from Feel It Records will be on white/black marbled vinyl, and those from megamart.subpop.com will receive copies on red vinyl (while supplies last).

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays METZ Team up with IDLES’ Joe Talbot on a Towering Ripper

Toronto-based JOVM mainstays METZ share two stand-alone tracks on all DSPs “Come On Down,” featuring IDLES‘ Joe Talbot and the previously unreleased “Heaven’s Gate,” which only appeared in the Cyberpunk 2077, the video game released back in 2020.

METZ’s Alex Edkins says, “‘Come On Down’ was originally recorded during the Atlas Vending sessions but never fully finished. During the pandemic I really gravitated towards the idea of collaboration as a way to fill the void left by the loss of live music. I reached out to friends from far and wide in order to get that feeling of community that gigs provide. Joe Talbot (IDLES) is a longtime friend who METZ has shared the stage with many, many times, and this song was a very natural and fun way to catch up with him and do something positive with our time off the road.”
 
“METZ have been a band we’ve looked up to since they came into our lives and made things better,” IDLES’ Joe Talbot adds. “I will never forget the first time I saw them or any of the other times. Allowing me to sing with them is a gift and I hope you like it. I love it and I love them. Long live METZ.”

“Come On Down” is a classic METZ ripper: Towering fuzz and distorted-fueled power chords, thunderous drumming, mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. Prominently featuring Talbot’s snarling delivery and Edkins’ shouting, “Come On Down” has a gritty and crusty-old school punk quality while retaining the Toronto-based outfit’s enormous sound.

Directed and edited by Arturo Baston, the accompanying, animated video for “Come On Down” features a series of different birds — a hawk, geese, ducks, an ostrich and the like — flying and walking through flames.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Beach House Performs “Superstar” on “Late Show with Stephen Colbert”

Baltimore-based JOVM mainstays Beach House — lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Victoria Legrand and multi-instrumentalist Alex Scally — formed back in 2004. And in their nearly two decades together, have released eight albums, including their critically applauded, most commercially successful album to date, the 18-song, double LP Once Twice Melody, which was released through Sub Pop Records earlier this year. (Since I mentioned that the album is their most commercially successful to date, Once Twice Melody recently peaked at #1 on Billboard‘s Album Sales Chart, the duo’s first-ever album to do so. It also debuted at #1 on the Top Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums, Tastemaker Albums and Top Current Album Sales Charts. And the album also spent six weeks at #1 on the NACC 200 College Charts.)

Primarily written between 2018 and last July, Once Twice Melody also features a handful of songs that date back at least a decade earlier. The album was mostly recorded at Baltimore’s Apple Orchard Studio and produced by the band — a first for the band. Much like 7, Once Twice Melody features live drumming by the band’s longtime touring drummer James Barone, recorded at Pachyderm Studio in Minnesota and United Recording in Los Angeles. The album also features a string ensemble, performing arrangements by David Campbell.

Across Once Twice Melody‘s 18 songs, the JOVM mainstays have written material that features several different styles, song structures and spirits: Listeners will hear songs without drums, songs centered around acoustic guitar, electronic songs without guitar, songs with wandering melodies, songs with repetitive melodies and songs built around string arrangements. And while the album sees the band expanding upon and playing with their sound, the duo haven’t completely eschewed the arrangements and sounds that have won them acclaim across their previous seven albums.

Last night, the Baltimore-based JOVM mainstays were on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where they performed the glittering and wistful “Superstar,” a song that looks back at a romantic relationship and compares it to a shooting star that quickly flashes, burns out and reappears somewhere else.

The live footage will give you a great taste of what to expect of the duo’s live show, just before they continue their extensive, headlining international tour to support Once Twice Melody. The tour has been extended through November 2022 with a handful of newly added dates including several stops across the global festival circuit: Omaha, NE’s Maha Festival (July 29th-30th), Portugal’s Paredes De Coura  (Aug. 17th-20th), Salt Lake City, UT’s Ogden Twilight (August 25th), Pasadena, CA’s This Ain’t No Picnic (Aug. 28th), Las Vegas, NV’s Life Is Beautiful (Sep. 16th-18th), Bentonville, AR’s Format Festival (Sep. 23rd-25th), and Primavera Sound Editions in Brazil, (Sao Paulo, Nov. 5th), Chile (Santiago, Nov. 11th), and Argentina (Buenos Aires, Nov. 13th).

For my fellow New Yorkers, the JOVM will be playing two dates at the breathtakingly beautiful Kings Theatre: July 19, 2022 and July 20, 2022.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Weird Nightmare Returns with the Feel Good Power Pop Anthem “Lusitania”

Alex Edkins has developed and honed a reputation for being a master craftsman of sweaty, mosh pit friendly rippers as the frontman of Toronto-based JOVM mainstays METZ.  Interestingly, Edkins’ new side project Weird Nightmare sees the METZ frontman showcasing […]