Tag: Union Pool

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lola Kirke Returns with Sultry and Expressive Visuals for “Sexy Song”

Lola Kirke is a British-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, musician and actress, best know for starring roles in Noah Bambauch’s Mistress America and the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, as well as a supporting role in David Fincher’s Gone Girl; but interestingly enough, she’s also the daughter of drummer Simon Kirke, who’s best known for stints in Bad Company and Free and Lorraine Kirke, the owner of Geminola, a vintage boutique known for supplying outfits for Sex and the City. Now as you may recall, last year I wrote about “Not Used,” off her self-titled EP, a song about learning to live with a lover’s absence and their lingering ghosts. 

Kirk’s full-length debut Heart Head West is slated for an August 10, 2018 release through Downtown Records, and the Wyndham Garnett-produced album, which was tracked live to tape, is a deeply personal album that Kirke says is “about basically everything I thought about in 2017 — time, loss, social injustice, sex, drinking, longing — essentially everything I’d talk about with a close friend for 40 minutes.” Heart Head West’s latest single “Sexy Song” is a slow-burning and meditative bit of honky tonk that’s reminiscent of Chris Issak and Roy Orbison, but with a feminine and self-assured sultriness at its core. 

Directed by Mara McKevitt, the intimate, recently released video for “Sexy Song” features expressive and sultry choreography by Elizabeth Sonenberg, and as Kirke told Harper’s Bazaar, “I think that understanding what the core and the truth of women’s sexual desire is really tricky. Is it something that’s just like a man’s? Is it totally different? is it something that is just a like man’s because men told us exactly how it should be or what they would like it to be?” 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Introducing the Laid-Back and Mischievous Sounds of Country Supergroup Traveller

Traveller is an indie rock/Americana supergroup comprised of some of contemporary Americana’s most accomplished and acclaimed, contemporary, solo artists: Jonny Fritz, a singer/songwriter who, has been considered a logical heir to country music legend Roger Miller; Cory Chisel, a Grammy-nominated, singer/songwriter who has collaborated with Rosanne Cash and Rodney Crowell and runs a recording studio in a former Wisconsin monastery that’s also an arts space; and Robert Ellis, a a critically applauded artist known for being a rather inventive singer/songwriter. Interestingly, the act can trace its origins to when longtime friends Ellis and Fritz had been collaborating together for some time got a ridiculous idea to head to India to write a country album.  The duo set off on their epic journey to India but after an ill-advised, exuberant jump into the Ganges, Ellis got ill and almost died. Fortunately though, Ellis was able to kick his illness and recover — and the idea of their collaboration didn’t die either.

Several months later, Ellis and Fritz recruited Chisel, and within a couple of weeks the new band had written an album’s worth of material, which they followed with their live debut at the Newport Folk Festival and sets at Stagecoach and Austin City Limits. Reportedly, the trio’s aesthetic and songwriting approach  draws from the likes of both The Highwaymen and The Traveling Wilburys, supergroups in which each individual member plays to their well-known and beloved strengths while taking turns showing off their chops as been-there-done-that, played-every-venue-including-that-shitty-one-that-stank-of-stale-beer-and-puke old pros — but they do so with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor throughout.
 
Western Movies, the supergroup’s highly-anticipated, forthcoming full-length debut is slated for a May 4, 2018 release, and the album’s latest single “Hummingbird” is a jangling and twangy bit of old-timey rock/country that to my ears manages to nod to The Beatles and to George Harrison’s “Got My Mind Set On You” but with a mischievous sense of humor, complete with some winklingly ribald double entendres and pop cultural references that give the song a wild anachronistic feel.
 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: The Men Release a Raw Punk Rock-Inspired Bruiser from Forthcoming Seventh Full-Length Album “Drift”

Although they have one of the more difficult to Google names I’ve come across in quite some time, the Brooklyn-based punk rock/post-hardcore/psych rock/post-punk act The Men, currently comprised of founding duo Mark Perro (vocals, guitar, keys) and Nick Chiericozzi (vocals, guitar), along with Rich Samis (drums) and Kevin Faulkner (bass, lap steel) formed back in 2008, and since their formation, they’ve released six, critically applauded albums — 2010’s Immaculada, 2011’s Leave Home,  2012’s Open Your Heart, 2013’s New Moon, 2014’s Tomorrow’s Hits and 2016’s Devil Music. Despite going through a few lineup changes during their ten year history, each successful album has found the band incorporating increasingly diverse elements and influences while expanding upon their sound — 2012’s Open Your Heart, which may be among the band’s more accessible albums found the band incorporating surf rock, country music and pop structures; 2013’s New Moon found the band incorporating classic rock and country rock influences, and was described by one critic as “akin to Dinosaur, Jr. on a serious Tom Petty kick;” Tomorrow’s Hits found the band employing punk rock and classic rock influences; and Devil Music was considered a necessary reset by the members of the band.

The band’s forthcoming, seventh, full-length album Drift marks their tenth year as a band and a proud return to their longtime label home Sacred Bones Records, and interestingly, Drift finds the New York-based quartet exploring the openness that its predecessor helped them find while continuing with an experimental bent — with most of the material not featuring a prominent appearance by an electric guitar; however, the album’s first single “Killed Someone” is a raw, rowdy, bruising mosh-pit worthy song, reminiscent of JOVM mainstays Ex-Cult and Nots.

Drift is slated for a March 2, 2018 release. The band will be e

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Honeyhoney’s Benjamin Jaffe Releases a Tender and Swooning, Indie Rock-Inspired Single

Benjamin Jaffe is a Massachusetts-born and currently New York-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist best known for being one-half of renowned Americana duo honeyhoney however, years before he formed honeyhoney, with Suzanne Santo, Jaffe began his career as a solo artist, who received attention for crafting material that was honest and experimental  — and with his forthcoming full-length, solo debut Oh, Wild Ocean of Love, Jaffe returns to his solo roots while revealing a broader array of influences than with his primary gig, as the material draws from jazz and Motown-era soul among others.  Interestingly, Oh, Wild Ocean of Love’s latest single “Blooming” pairs rolling and propulsive drumming with shimmering and loping guitars with Jaffe’s aching and tender vocals and a soaring hook to evoke the swooning throes of passion, while sonically nodding at JOVM mainstay Nick Hakim but with a wild, sense of experimentalism.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Comprised of founding members Cory Feirman (bass, vocals) and Dan Wise (guitar, vocals) with Will Schmeichen (drums) the Brooklyn-based punk rock trio Honey can trace their origins to when its founding duo met at Academy Records — at the time Feirman worked as a buyer, while Wise was a regular customer. As the story goes, Wise stopped by Academy Records and mentioned that he was looking for The Gun Club‘s Death Party EP, which happened to be the next record in the stack of recent arrivals that Feirman was pricing. The coincidence ultimately led them to realize that they had had more in common than a love of punk rock and punk rock records, and they began playing together not long after that. Interestingly, at the time Wise was a member of JOVM mainstays Psychic Ills and shared an occasional bill with Schmeichen, who was a member of Amen Dunes. Wise and Freirman recruited Schmeichen, who was interested in joining a more straightforward rock-leaning project.
Since their formation, the band has shared stages with the likes of Dead Moon, J. Mascis, Sheer Mag, The Men, Destruction Unit and others, while quickly developing a reputation for being one of the area’s rawest punk bands; in fact, with the release of 2015’s Love Is Hard, the trio received praise for releasing, in the words of Bryon Coley, “a great hard-edged slice of rock noise.” and with the forthcoming release of their sophomore effort, New Moody Judy, the Brooklyn-based trio hope to further cement their burgeoning reputation for blistering noisey rock. And unsurprisingly, New Moody Judy‘s first single “Dream Come Now,” manages to sonically reminds me of JOVM mainstays Ex-Cult and NOTS in the sense that the Brooklyn trio is equally primal, forceful — and perhaps more important, mosh-pit friendly.

The band has a September 12, 2017 show at Union Pool with NOTS, and it may be one of the highlights of the musical year.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Slow-Burning and Ambient Sounds of Vorhees

Dana Wachs is a New Jersey-born, Brooklyn-based, classically trained cellist, bassist composer and audio engineer, who writes, records and performs as Vorhees — and can trace the origins of her solo musical career, to when she joined the Holy Rollers when she was 19 and dove deeply into the world of touring and live sound as a renowned audio engineer, who worked at NYC-based Greene Street Recording and toured with St. Vincent, Grizzly Bear and others over the course of the next 20 years.

In 2009, Wachs debuted her solo compositions at Death By Audio and from that performance, she continued to work on her own improvised music, influenced by her surroundings and moods and then released her debut 7 inch “The Orchard,” and composing for modern dance, film and commissioned performances and recordings for fashion designer Rachel Comey. And adding to a growing profile, the New Jersey-born, Brooklyn-based audio engineer and composer has opened for Cat Power, Matmos and Dum Dum Girls and had played sets at Basilica Soundscape and Iceland Airwaves.

Her long-awaited Vorhees debut EP Black Horse Pike was released yesterday through Styles Upon Styles Records and the EP’s latest single is the delicate and patient “SPL” which features Wachs’ gorgeous and ethereal, Bjork-like vocals over ambient synths and electronics in a song that gently ebbs and flows in a subtly psychedelic fashion. And because of its slow-burning nature, the track manages to possess a quietly challenging nature that requires the listener’s full attention; but once there, the song reveals itself through repeated listens based on the artist’s on experiences as the material explores Wachs’ memories of teenage meanderings in New Jersey suburbs, the scars and ghosts of relationships, and the weird and impossible waking unreality of her insomniac tendencies through the world in ever changing hotel rooms and tour bus bunks.

The recently released video consists of fittingly slow-burning and psychedelic-leaning visuals based around the EP’s artwork, created by Wachs’ mother.