Anna Leone - Blue Water Highway - Everything by Electricity - John Paul Keith - Elise Davis
Anna Leone has released a new single ‘Once’, produced by Paul Butler (Michael Kiwanuka, Hurray For The Riff Raff) and released via AllPoints/Half Awake. Released alongside a stunning video shot on The Azores, the new single follows 2020’s ‘Wondering’ - also produced by Butler - which arrived close on the tail of Stockholm native Anna’s win at the 2020 Music Moves Talent Awards (alongside Flohio, girl in red and Pongo). Leone emerged in 2018 with her widely applauded debut EP ‘Wandered Away’, drawing fans at 6Music including Lauren Laverne & Guy Garvey, alongside Ones To Watch tips from Spotify and Youtube, and over 18 million streams online. ‘Once’ is streaming across all platforms , alongside the new video, from here.
Rueful but unmistakably hopeful, ‘Once’ considers naivety, regret and efforts to break certain patterns of behaviour with Leone’s disarming candor and the bell-like clarity of her voice. The track’s quietly insistent urging to move past impulses to close off from the world is brought to life in Savannah Setten’s startlingly surreal video, created with Anna on The Azores.
With the changeable weather systems of the Portuguese archipelago mirroring the tender, dream-like sequence, Anna notes; The narrative loop comes from the idea of being stuck in your ways, going through the same patterns, but then choosing to break out of that and do things differently. Towards the end I reconcile with the past, symbolised by the little girl. I choose to embrace what once was in order to move forward. It was incredible getting to shoot the video in that beautiful environment. The weather was really unpredictable - we went through almost all four seasons in one day.
Now 26 - still shy, but determined to connect, Anna grew up the quietest of five sisters in a suburb of Stockholm. An introverted video game and sci-fi obsessive, Anna fast developed her own rich inner life, absorbed in the storytelling DC and Marvel. It’s an escape she seeks comfort from now; I love losing myself in other universes, they give me a sense of belonging. Similarly, Leone bought a guitar with no other intention beyond privately perfecting treasured releases by the likes of Bon Iver, Lana Del Rey and Laura Marling.
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Blue Water Highway shared their new single "Sign Language,” from their upcoming album Paper Airplanes, due March 12. The video is currently streaming via Sounds Like Nashville who writes, “the dreamy track feels like a mix of ’80s electro-pop and rootsy Americana, with synthesized keyboards and percussion joining an old-school male/female harmony.”
Singer and guitarist Zack Kibodeaux describes the themes behind “Sign Language,” writing “It’s about how two people can get into silly fights because they’re not seeing eye to eye, so they develop their own language to communicate. I think that’s an important message, how we can bond together when the world is falling apart.”
Paper Airplanes has received early acclaim from outlets such as American Songwriter, Parade, and American Blues Scene.
‘The sonic theme of the album was what we kept calling “building a space ship in a barn,” writes singer and guitarist Zack Kibodeaux. “It was essentially mixing organic sounds of the country with sounds of the urbanized, modern world. We achieved that with acoustic instruments and natural vocal harmonies, mixed with analog synthesizers and electric guitars. Lyrically, we were going for something similar, holding fast to elemental and timeless values of love and communication, while the world outside is rapidly changing and sometimes feeling more isolating and disconnected.’
Blue Water Highway was started by Zack Kibodeaux (lead vocals/guitar) and Greg Essington (vocals/guitar) who have been best friends since high school. Zack then turned to Catherine Clarke (vocals/keyboard), to complete the three-part harmonies that the band would soon be known for, and they were joined by Kyle Smith (bass). They take their name from the roadway that links their hometown of Lake Jackson, Texas to Galveston. They have released two full length studio albums to date in 2015’s Things We Carry and 2018’s Heartbreak City which includes their hit “Evangeline”.
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Everything by Electricity is a musical project led by Siberian-born songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Yulia Bizyukova. Yulia grew up in the unremarkable city of Barnaul located in the south of Western Siberia where it snows for a third of the year and freezing cold winters last for up to five months. She began making music at age 10, when she started learning guitar and almost immediately started writing songs and formed a school band. On moving to London, Yulia quietly crafted a collection of demo material in her bedroom studio and expanded the live line-up with the addition of James (bass guitar) and Manoela (drums).
Everything by Electricity’s sound is littered with the strains of alienation and longing for escape one would expect from childhoods spent gazing across cold barren landscapes deep behind the iron curtain. The trio aptly derive their moniker from an extract of Jules Verne’s 2000 Leagues Under The Sea – “There is a powerful agent, obedient, rapid, easy, which conforms to every use, and reigns supreme on board my ship. Everything is done by means of it. It lights it, warms it, and is the soul of my mechanical vessel. This agent is electricity. Everything by Electricity”.
Here’s what Yulia had to say about the track: “While this song is fairly upbeat and even uplifting, lyrically, it’s a melancholic anthem of letting go, shutting down the memories and moving on. I wrote this song a few years ago when I locked myself for a week in my room working on the first batch of EbE demos without getting much sleep, it was exciting yet absolutely exhausting too and one early morning when I’ve finished a couple of first tracks, I went to bed thinking that I’m finally getting out of my room as soon as I wake up and as I’ve been falling asleep, this whole new song just came into my head out of nowhere and started with the line: “hey, ride away into the wild, you colored my days with your smile” and so on, with the finished melody, guitar riffs, everything. So I got up, grabbed my guitar and recorded it in “voice memos” on my phone so I could remember it the next day, that’s how I wrote “Violet Haze”. Couldn’t get out of that room for another week sadly but demoed “Violet Haze” instead”
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Memphis-based artist John Paul Keith will release his new record 'The Rhythm of the City' on February 19th via Wild Honey Records.
Following album opener 'How Can You Walk Away', he has now shared new single 'I Don't Wanna Know'. Of the new track, he says: "We had already recorded the ten songs I'd planned for the record, but there was one song I just wasn't happy with, so I decided to shelve it. That meant I needed one more song. I told the band to give me a couple of days and I went home and wrote "I Don't Wanna Know". I knew right away the album was going to be better for it. And I was happy the other song didn't work out, because I probably would never have written this one. We went back in and recorded it, and Tirienii and Tikyra Jackson wrote the perfect background vocal arrangement for it. It just all came together."
Keith’s fifth solo album – and his first self-produced effort – 'The Rhythm of the City' finds him expanding his approach on a horn-heavy 10-song collection that’s in thrall to the classic sounds of Bluff City soul and rock and roll.
“I was at my home in Memphis one evening and heard a car pass by blasting Al Green's ‘Love and Happiness,’ which was recorded just a couple miles away,” says singer-songwriter John Paul Keith. “I was struck by how Howard Grimes' drumming just seems to embody something about the feel and the pace of life for me here. I thought to myself, ‘Howard Grimes is the rhythm of the city.’ My next thought was, ‘That sounds like a title track.’”
Conjuring up his own unique musical mélange –a sweet spot where the sound of Sun blues, Stax soul, and Hi R&B all meet – it’s a record steeped in the geography and culture of Memphis, which Keith has called home for the last 15 years. “The vibe came about organically from playing Beale Street and Graceland and working with horn sections more frequently the last few years,” says Keith.
The Rhythm of the City was recorded to tape at Electraphonic Studios, and engineered by Keith’s frequent collaborator, Scott Bomar (bandleader of the Bo-Keys, Don Bryant producer, and film composer for Dolemite Is My Name).
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Nashville-based singer/songwriter Elise Davis has announced her third studio album Anxious. Happy. Chill. will be released on April 16 via Tone Tree. Davis released “Yellow Bed,” following the release of three singles in 2020 (“Ladybug,” “The Grid,” and “Flame Color”) that will appear on the forthcoming album.
"I lived alone for a very long time. My bed was temporary for others and I very much liked having my own space. That was until I met my now-husband Jason,” explains Davis. “After we moved in together there were these moments of absolute bliss I would feel getting into our bed together at night, simply experiencing my bed also being someone else's bed. It is a place we meet and fall into our own little world every night. The great amount of joy that has given me was the inspiration for this song."
Anxious. Happy. Chill. was recorded just days after wrapping her honeymoon in Arizona, where she finished writing the album in the Sonoran Desert outside Tucson. Davis recorded the album with producer Teddy Morgan (Carl Broemel) at his studio in Nashville, TN. With the Covid-19 pandemic already in full swing, Davis and Morgan worked together for a month while maintaining their physical distance, communicating through the glass windows of the studio's isolation booths and playing the majority of the instruments themselves. Drummer Fred Eltringham (Sheryl Crow, The Wallflowers) joined them for a single day to lend the album its unique, percussive pulse.
The album was written during the rush of a new relationship and recorded weeks after Davis’ wedding. It's the happiest record she's ever made, stocked with 10 songs that serve as foils to the independent, no-boys-allowed anthems that filled her critically-acclaimed 2018 sophomore album, Cactus. Davis remains every bit as resilient and empowered as Cactus proved her to be, but she has also traded her old muses — heartache, sadness, and a lone-wolf mentality — for something bolder and brighter.
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