Tag: women who kick ass

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Watch The Big Moon Drive Around and Kick Ass in a Van for Their Anthemic New Single

Comprised of Juliette Jackson (guitar, vocals), Soph Nathan (guitar, vocals), Celia Archer (bass, vocals) and Fern Ford (drums), the London-based indie rock quartet The Big Moon specialize in an urgently swooning and anthemic rock sound — although their latest single “Formidable” off the British quartet’s forthcoming debut effort, Love In The 4th Dimension nods at 90s alt rock, thanks in part to a lengthy and bluesy introduction, followed by an anthemic, power-chord filled hook paired with thundering drumming and Jackson’s forceful yet earnest vocals. But pay close attention because despite the sneering attitude, the song manages to an earnest plea of devotion to another in need, and of one’s resilience in the face of some of life’s toughest obstacles.

The recently released music video continues the band’s continuing collaboration with director Louis Bhose and was filmed in the British Peak District. The video employs a fairly simple concept — beginning with following the band’s Juliette Jackson as she drives around day and night in the band’s van before pulling over to the side the road, exiting the front of the van and joining the rest of the band to perform the anthemic and stomping hook of the song in the back of the van. As the band explained in an interview to the folks at NOISEY: “‘Formidable’ is a song that’s important to us all and it felt like for once, it wasn’t appropriate to make a mega fun, LOLZ video. That said, we didn’t want to make a super earnest band video either. We had a day off in between cities on our autumn tour so we drove to the beautiful Peak District and smashed out the song in the back of the van. It’s a van that we’ve spent more time in than our own beds over the last year.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year, you may have come across a post or two featuring the Los Angeles-based indie rock trio Psychic Love. Fronted by multimedia artist and vocalist Laura Peters, along with Max Harrison (guitar) and Liam McCormick (bass), the trio have described their sound in press notes as “dream grunge” and “as if Nancy Sinatra had a love child with Frank Black.” Earlier this year, I wrote about “Ultralight,” the first single off the recently released full-length debut The Hive Mind, a propulsive and jangling guitar pop ballad that nodded at Phil Spector‘s Wall of Sound and  La Sera‘s Music For Listening To Music To — with an anthemic hook. The album’s latest single “Dye Pack” continues along a similar vein as  jangling guitar chords played through reverb and delay pedal and propulsive drumming are paired with Peters’ sultry vocals and an anthemic hook in a swaggering, mid-tempo song that is as Peters explains in press notes is about “how even the smallest relationships leave a mark on you, and how the bigger ones can be a huge, confusing, mess.”

As a result, the song’s narrator expresses the complex array of emotions that relationships can inspire in us:  frustration, dismay, confusion, desire, suspicion, the sensation that you’re being played but aren’t completely sure, and so on. And every relationship you ever have reverberates through every succeeding relationship — and frequently in often unforeseen and unpredictable ways.

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Nots Captures Our Current Dread and Unease

Cosmetic’s third and latest single “Inherently Low” is presciently and strangely fitting for our increasingly surreal times while continuing with the album’s overall theme. Sonically, the band pairs angular guitar and bass chords, propulsive drumming and shouted lyrics — and the end result is a song that evokes creeping dread and unease and while boldly and furiously calling out hypocritical bullshit. Simply put it’s a song with a narrator that simply has stopped giving a fuck.

The recently released video was created and edited by the band’s Natalie Hoffman and was influenced by the results of last week’s Presidential Election. And as Hoffman explains in press notes “the tension and fear that came with the results certainly played a part in the visual outcome of the video. America has elected someone who has openly campaigned to keep us low. To keep us completely divided. To keep us at war. I don’t think that I (or anyone) can fully process the weight of what is to come, but this video is an attempt to translate both what the song is about, and how I’ve felt since the election results – a new awareness, anger, and fear about being kept inherently low.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Sophie, Annabel, Cecil and Georgia, Body Type are a Sydney, Australia-based — by way of Perth, Australia and Kiama, Australia — indie quartet that formed a little over six months ago and began receiving attention for material that thematically focuses on navigating heartbreak to the banality of life in in a moldy Redfern terraced house — and for opening for the likes of Gabriella Cohen, Cate Le Bon and The Coathangers. Adding to a growing national profile, the Sydney-based quartet recently signed to Our Golden Friend Records, who will be releasing the “Ludlow”/”264” 7 inch single, featuring their debut single “Ludlow” and their latest single, the moody and slow-burning “264.” While sounding as though it were indebted to jangling guitar pop and Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound-era production, the song manages to feature lyrics that describe the day-to-day life of in and around a shitty little house with a novelist’s attention to detail, a soaring bridge and a sinuous bass line holding it all together. It’s a gently swooning and moody take on a familiar and beloved sound — and it reveals a young band playing and writing gorgeous material with a cool, self-assuredness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Led by frontwoman Daiana Feuer and comprised of a constantly rotating cast of collaborators, musicians, and friends in a configuration that can vary between three and 12 different members, the Los Angeles, CA-based band Bloody Death Skull not only will likely win an award for best Halloween-themed band name in recent memory, the members of the band consider the band a wild fusion between performance art project and actual band. Sonically and aesthetically, the band has received attention for employing the chord progressions and song structures of early rock, R&B and soul, unusual instrumentation including ukulele, toys and other instrumentation, a punk rock sensibility and taboo-breaking lyrics focusing on love, daydreams, the cosmos, television, dead things, cute things (sometimes dead, cute things), existential crises and being a perpetual teenager forever.

Clocking in at 139 seconds, “Betsy’s Back” off the band’s recently released The Haunting of Bloody Death Skull EP sounds as though it could have been released in 1962 as the single features hand clap-led percussion, jangling guitar chords, a propulsive and rollicking rhythm section, bratty yet incredibly infectious melodies, a blistering early rock, guitar solo with Feuer’s sultry and ominous vocals that give a mischievous song an underlying sense of swaggering menace as Betsy has come back to get bloody revenge on those who have wronged her.

 

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

 

With the release “Help Yourself” and several other singles, Western Wales-born, London-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Sarah Howells’ solo recording project Bryde has received praise from Nylon, The Line of Best Fit and Earmilk and airplay from BBC Radio 6, BBC Radio Wales, Radio X and Huw Stephens’ BBC Radio 1 show for a sound that’s been compared to the likes of Jeff Buckley, Sharon Van Etten, Ben Howard and London Grammar, as her early work so far has thematically focused on complex and ambivalent relationships that can simultaneously entangle. Her latest single “Wouldn’t That Make You Feel Good” is a boozy and woozy dirge in which Howells’ aching vocals are paired with bluesy yet shoegazer rock-like guitar chords in a song that builds up to a cathartic and explosive bridge before gently fading out. Interestingly, Howells’ latest single sounds to me as though it could be indebted to the likes of PJ Harvey as it possesses a similar earnest yet stormy and dramatic quality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of her debut effort under the moniker of Amber Arcades, Dutch musician and singer/songwriter Annelotte de Graaf quickly rose to international attention as the blogosphere and several media outlets praised de Graaf for material that thematically focused on a number of things — including both time and the relativistic experience of it, continuity, magic, jet lag and how being led by her own dreams has inspired the Dutch singer/songwriter’s personal, professional and creative lives. In fact, as the story goes, de Graaf has worked as a legal aide on UN war crime tribunals and while currently working human rights law, assisting Syrian refuges, she spent her savings on a flight to NYC, specifically to record her debut effort with Ben Greenberg, who has worked with The Men, Beach Fossils and Destruction Unit, and a studio backing band that includes Quilt‘s Shane Butler (guitar) and Keven Lareau (bass) and Real Esate’s Jackson Pollis.

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Turning Light,” a single that thematically explores being the protagonist in your own life story while you’re simultaneously a supporting player in the lives of everyone around you — and how those very different roles and various lives intertwine in ways that can be confusing.  While sonically speaking,  de Graaf and her backing band paired rapid fire, four-on-the-floor drumming, swirling and shimmering strings, twinkling electronics, a driving bass line and de Graaf’s ethereal vocals singing lyrics that reflect the relativistic nature of time to craft a woozy single that draws equally from shoegaze and Brit pop.

Building upon the buzz of her debut album and her Fall Stateside tour with Nada Surf, de Graff and her backing band went into the studio during a brief break on tour to record her latest single, a shimmering dream pop/bubblegum pop version of Nick Drake’s “Which Will” that manages to add a rather ironic take to the song while retaining the song’s earnest yearning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of founding members Erin Jenkins and Mathieu Blanchard and recent recruits Chris Dadge (bass), who has had stints in Lab Coast, Alvvays and Chad VanGaalen‘s backing band; and renowned singer/songwriter and guitarist Samantha Savage Smith joining a guitarist, Canadian band Crystal Eyes can trace their origins to the melancholic dream pop the duo wrote while nomadically bouncing back and forth between Tofino, British Columbia and Halifax, Nova Scotia — dream pop that the band’s founding duo has claimed has drawn from Francoise Hardy, Guided by Voices.  As a relatively constituted quartet, the band has continued to tour across their native Canada, including consecutive appearances at Pop Montreal.

The band’s latest effort The Female Imagination was written while the band spent time on a lake island in rural Ontario and was recorded on a Tascam 388. And according to the band, the album thematically focuses on and explores the other side of ourselves that we can never quite seem tor reach. The album’s latest single “Already Gone” consists dreamy and ethereal harmonies with layers of shimmering guitars played through copious amounts of reverb and delay pedal and a persistent, driving rhythm and in some way, the song sounds as though it were equally influenced by 60s garage psych — i.e., much like contemporary acts like Raccoon Fighter, The Black Angels, early Dum Dum Girls, Death Valley Girls and countless others but with a moody and sensual feel.

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Jangling and Anthemic Guitar Rock of French Singer/Songwriter Pamela Hute

Pamela Hute is a Paris-based singer/songwriter, who began her music career in earnest at a very young age — as a teen she formed The Mashed Potatoes before going solo in 2006. And as a solo artist, she’s released two albums, 2010’s Tales From Overseas and 2013’s Bandit, with Bandit being mixed by John Agnello, who has worked with the likes of The Kills, Sonic Youth and Cyndi Lauper. Interestingly both albums revealed that Hute specialized in jangling guitar pop and synth pop with rousingly anthemic hooks paired earnest lyrics as you’ll hear on The Breeders and 90s alt rock channeling “Banshees,” the second and latest single off her self-produced effort Today. But at its core, Today manages to reveal what may arguably be Hute’s most personal songwriting, influenced by a trip she took to California.

The recently released music video is shot in a gorgeous and cinematic black and white, and captures Hute with her backing band performing “Banshees” live at La Fourmi in Limoges, France.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Surreal Visuals for Teeth and Tongue’s “Turn Turn Turn”

Give Up On Your Health’s second and latest single “Turn Turn Turn” much like its predecessor is inspired by a painful breakup — and lyrically, the song is full of the bitter regret, uncertainty, self-deception and gradual acceptance that occurs in the aftermath of a breakup, while sonically speaking, the song draws from 80s New Wave, synth pop and the DFA Records roster. Or in other words, undulating and propulsive synths are paired with cowbell-led percussion, angular guitar chords in a sensual and slinky arrangement, along with an infectious, dance-floor friendly hook. And somehow, every time I’ve heard it I’m reminded of Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back” and Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll.”

The recently released video for the song turns the simple act of eating into something surreal, disgusting and detached and mechanical — and perhaps in some way, the video’s actors are deluding themselves into this being normal.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past two or three months or so, you’ve likely come across a couple of posts about Chasms, a San Francisco, CA-based duo comprised of Jess Labrador and Shannon Madden that specializes in crafting sparse, minimalist (and moody) dirges that feature Labrador’s hauntingly ethereal vocals accompanied by her shimmering guitar work paired with propulsive and pummeling drum programming, swirling electronics and bursts of feedback and industrial clang and clatter — and in some way their sound and songwriting approach draws from shoegaze, drone, dream pop, doom metal and ambient electronica simultaneously.

Now, over the course of the past couple of months, the duo have released two singles off their soon-to-be-released full-length debut On The Legs of Love Purified — the slow-burning and smoky “We’ll Go,” which under the seemingly placid surface reveals a sense of unease and discomfort and the shimmering and gauzy “Black Ice.” The album’s third and latest single “Beyond Flesh” much like the album’s first single “Black Ice” sounds as though it could have been released during 4AD Records heyday as the duo pairs Labrador’s ethereal wails with shimmering power chords, layers of stormy feedback and thundering drum programming — all feed through a bit of reverb. And while stunningly beautiful, the song possesses an aching yearning.

The duo will be embarking on a tour through October and November, which will include a November 16, 2016 stop at Brooklyn’s Shea Stadium. Check out tour dates below.

Tour Dates

10.07 Portland, OR @ Lovecraft %  
10.08 Seattle, WA @ Blue Moon
10.09 Eugene, WA @ Wandering Goat 
10.10 Sacramento @ Press Club # 
10.11 San Francisco, CA @ The Knockout ^ 
10.13 La Puente, CA @ Bridgetown DIY ~ 
10.14 San Diego, CA @ The Whistle Stop *
10.15 Long Beach, CA @ 4th St. Vine 
10.16 Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo (Part Time Punks) + 
10.29 Berkeley, CA @ KALX (Live Session + Interview)
11.08 Indianapolis, IN @ State St. Pub
11.15 Providence, RI @ Machines with Magnets
11.16 Brooklyn, NY @ Shea Stadium =
11.19 Chicago, IL @ TBA


% w/ Sean Pierce, Patricia Hall 
# w/ Odonis Odonis 
^ w/ Silver Shadows, Sirena Victima, DJ Nako & Cash Askew
~ w/ Second Still 
* w/ Black Marble 
+ w/ Black Marble, Ritual Howls 
 = w/ Holy Wave 
> w/ Merchandise, Gun Outfit

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Slick and Sensual Sounds and Visuals for The New Up’s “Black Swan”

The album’s latest single “Black Swan” is a slinky and slickly produced track in which shimmering and atmospheric electronics, slashing and angular guitar chords and a sinuous bass line are paired with ES Pitcher’s sensual vocals — singing lyrics that reveal the narrator’s urgent, carnal need, the need (and desire) to lose one’s self, if even for a little bit, her increasing frustration with people and human relationships and empty, soulless hookups. And at the core of the song is the growing loneliness that being in a large city can inspire in all of us.

Directed by Hassan Said, the recently released, sensual video for the song was shot in one continuous take and is inspired by a true (and very fucked up) story — and it features a couple of incredibly cinematic sequences including the video’s incredibly drunk protagonist stumbling around a bar and club while on the verge of vomiting and being followed by an (presumably) obsessed and deranged woman, who fakes being attacked to bring the object of her obsession closer to her.