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Showing posts from January 16, 2022

Clever Hopes - Dropper - The Inevitables - Crystal Eyes

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Clever Hopes - The Other Side. A few years ago, Andrew Shaver directed the musical, Once, in Montréal. Eva Foote walked in to audition for “Girl,” the female lead, and blew him away. Every night after the show, the whole team would drink whiskey and play songs in the dressing rooms until the wee hours – including Andrew and Eva.  This was the beginning of a beautiful friendship and musical collaboration. A few months later, Andrew’s girlfriend flew home from Paris to tell him to pack his bags. Tired of the fighting, he did. He hit the highway out of Montréal and called his buddy Matthew Barber (who produced the album). The two of them spoke for hours as Andrew drove to Toronto.  This was the beginning of a new chapter for Andrew, that would see him bounce around a few winter sublets before heading to Australia to – as a buddy so wisely suggested – flip his chi. Artefact chronicles the journey of that flip. Clever Hopes was born when he got back to Canada and played those songs for Eva

Amelie Tobien - Ben Sures - Flamango Bay - Pillow Queens - Mear

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Amelie Tobien - Ocean Girl  Untie the knot, set sail, run away - that's her plan. If it weren't for that hand that keeps pulling the rope back ... In her indie pop anthem ‘Ocean Girl’, gently kissed by melancholy, the modern Trobairitz Amelie Tobien sings about life jackets that are too tight and lifts anchors to the surface, entangled in seaweed. Ropes get cut like umbilical cords and the compass needle is poled to freedom, the longing for emancipation breaks through Amelie's lines like cold rays of sunshine between clouds.  ‘You can't come with me,’ she says, and yet she pulls us into a sensitive river full of interpersonal flotsam. A gentle ‘... this time’ adorns the horizon as a ray of hope without sinking into false promises. With ‘Ocean Girl’ Amelie Tobien presents a gentle ballad about letting go.  The singer-songwriter Amelie Tobien, born and raised in the mountains of Salzburg, developed her artistic work in the wine regions of Bordeaux and perfected her inimi

Dahlia Sleeps - Renata Zeiguer - Kindsight - Josienne Clarke

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Dahlia Sleeps - The Calm You Keep. London based duo Dahlia Sleeps release new track "The Calm You Keep", the latest cut to be heard from the band's debut album Overflow, out 8th April. A pensive, indie-rock track "The Calm You Keep" is the album's closing song and completes the record in cathartic fashion. A stunning examination into motherhood; vocalist Lucy Hill captures the poise of a mother supporting her child through mental ill-health, with the lines "I climbed into your bed, just like a child I laid and wept / You did not show your fear, you knew the sun was somewhere near". Filled with nostalgic electric guitar and live drums it paints images of a dreamlike world - "It's a portrait of a parent providing the calm within the storm; half a Dalí-esque soundscape from within an unwell mind, half a paradise of safety”, Lucy says of the track. Two years in the making and almost 6 years since their debut single, producer/writer Luke Heste

Owen FitzGerald - The McKenzie FIX - Landon Lloyd Miller - Partner

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Owen FitzGerald - Don't Give Me A Pet. Themes of dissociation are some of the major conduits running through Owen FitzGerald’s work. Somewhere in the narratives and world-building vignettes the characters that inhabit the universe of A deep clean you can count on! start with or wander deliriously into a state of bewilderment with the relationship to their own bodies, the utterly de-centering experience of being head-over-heels in love, the secret language of animals and plants and the atomization that the grist-mill of modern life inflicts. Blundering through existential crisis after crisis, FitzGerald’s gives us a few anchors that tie us back to the physical space: feeding the dog, the biomechanical synchronization of a lover’s breath, the office politics of forest animals and core memories of singing out loud with friends. Musically, FitzGerald invites us to follow the breadcrumbs in the labyrinth of his knotty, surrealistic and, often, very funny and very dismal brand of Countr

The Delines - Colatura - Onsloow - North Mississippi Allstars (featuring William Bell)

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Photo Credit: Jason Quigley The Delines - Kid Codeine. Portland, Oregon based country-soul group The Delines share the third single and music video from their upcoming album, The Sea Drift, which will be released on February 11, 2022 via their new American label home Jealous Butcher Records. The new song, titled “Kid Codeine”,  has a 60’s pop feel and is more upbeat than previous singles; but the song captures the same weary world and deep, wistful emotions that musician and author Willy Vlautin has become known for.  The song is accompanied by a music video starring The Delines lead singer Amy Boone, walking around the streets of the band’s hometown of Portland with her hair done up just like the song’s titular character “Kid Codeine”, who has a boyfriend who is a boxer and is described as always wearing a perfect bouffant hairdo “just to walk down the street”. Speaking to the real life inspiration to the character of “Kid Codeine”, Willy wrote: “Years ago in Los Angeles, Richmond Fo