Showing posts with label Sandy Bailey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sandy Bailey. Show all posts

Friday, 4 August 2023

Born Days - Sandy Bailey - Ribs - Lindsay Lou

Photo - Erica Contreras
Born Days - My Little Dark.

Born Days is the conceptual darkwave synth-pop project from Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist singer, songwriter, and producer Melissa Harris. Her first full-length album My Little Dark is set to release on October 6, 2023, through AudioSport Records.

Candidly vulnerable and emotionally complex, My Little Dark is a concept album that draws inspiration from the confessional poetry of Sylvia Plath and the childlike innocence of Dr. Seuss to narrate a mystical, sci-fi, coming-of-age, adventure of a young woman trying to survive the psychological limitations she has placed on her own reality. Mystical and melancholic, Harris’s ethereal voice escapes into dark symphonic soundscapes driven by dreamy, synth-heavy polyrhythms that paint a cinematic electronic pop soundtrack soaked in moody, hazy textures.

Drawing influences from alternative, darkwave, dreampop, and goth culture, Harris plays with a sonic palette of soft, dark, and dusty tones that mix elements of grunge, post-punk, neo-psychedelia, shoegaze, and modern pop. Deeply nostalgic and profoundly personal, My Little Dark explores Harris’s struggles with mental illness, trauma, and destructive cycling. Her distinctively soft and sweet voice is saturated with otherworldly essence that explodes into apocalyptic crescendos and escapes into ghostly innocence. Harris’s songs are brilliantly enchanting and sonically dripping with haunted textures, little spirits from the ether, and dystopian landscapes that leave you longing for a more innocent and beautiful time.

My Little Dark is a project that has been several years and several thousand miles in the making. Harris began making experimental music under the name Born Days in 2017 as a way to express herself, process her memories, and heal from the complexities of trauma to reconnect with the purity and innocence that is part of the innate order of nature. After receiving critical acclaim on her first two self-released EPs from Bandcamp, Chicago Tribune, Destroy//Exist, and Audiotree, she went on to perform live sets and music festivals with globally recognized talent like Neggy Gemmy, George Clanton, Kedr Livanskiy, and Caroline Polachek.

 

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Sandy Bailey - I Ain't Your Honey.

Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter Sandy Bailey has unveiled “I Ain’t Your Honey,” a sassy new track from her forthcoming LP, Daughter Of Abraham, out August 18th viaRed Parlor Records.

“The impact of the digital age on our social interactions is a topic that’s often circling around in my brain,” explains Bailey. “It really is bizarre to me the way we connect through our online personas. It gets especially weird when it involves internet dating. I’m fascinated by the packaging and wrapping paper we put on ourselves when we are seeking true intimacy. I wrote an earlier version of this song that had the lyric ‘I’m never crying in my pictures.’ My friends and I have gone on our share of Tinder dates and at best we would be able to laugh about how they went afterward,” she continues. “I often wonder how different things would be if our dating profiles had a list of our personality flaws and photos of our morning hair rather than our prettiest scenes and best angles.”

“I Ain’t Your Honey” follows title track “Daughter Of Abraham,” in which Bailey channels her ancestors for a tale about a former slave walking to freedom along the Underground Railroad, and “Get The Message Through,” about the irony of the current environment that we live in, where we are more connected than ever through the internet but also lonelier than ever.

”The depth of Bailey’s songwriting stems from her life and identity as a biracial woman and single mother who abandoned a Pentecostal upbringing in favor of a life of art-making and rock n’ roll. Her sound has often been compared to acts like Norah Jones, Patsy Cline, and Susan Tedeschi, though the upcoming 10-song collection, expertly produced by Bailey, showcases her bolder, more idiosyncratic attention to detail.

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Ribs - Claws.

Ribs, the Boorloo-based (Perth, AUS) indie-pop band known for creating honest and expressive music, Have released their latest single, 'Claws', today Friday, August 4. With a passion for connecting with others on topics that are often challenging to discuss, such as mental health, social power constructs, and healing from trauma, Ribs delivers a clashing and cathartic anthem that explores the journey of healing from intimate partner violence.

Originally conceived as a solo, stripped-back lyrical piano project by Georgina Cramond, Ribs received critical acclaim and emotional responses from audiences in her one-woman music and storytelling show, 'Interrupting a Crisis'.

Driven by a desire for collaboration and connection with other artists, Cramond found like-minded creatives to join the project, resulting in the dynamic four-piece band that exists today, with each member contributing to Ribs' authentic songwriting, supported by vibrant, immersive sounds.

Now, 'Claws' is Ribs' heaviest release to date, both in terms of content and sound. The song serves as a powerful anthem for those who have endured abuse and have embarked on a journey of healing from intimate partner violence. Drawing from her own lived experience, Georgina Cramond's poignant songwriting delves into the pain, anger, and growth that are intertwined with this transformative process.

Cramond shares, "Growing claws is about learning what you will no longer accept, how anger can be a protective and productive force, and regaining control over the jagged parts of your history." Her guarded vocals in the verses are contrasted by a commanding, hardened chorus, where she screams out, "I grew claws", to reclaim her own power and control in her life.

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Lindsay Lou - Shame.

Lindsay Lou shares the dreamy new single “Shame” from her forthcoming album Queen of Time, out September 29 on Kill Rock Stars Nashville. Featuring an anthemic solo from Grammy-winning guitar virtuoso Billy Strings, the song and its accompanying music video highlight the album’s continued theme of duality. “Shame” challenges the notion that we should hide any part of ourselves and celebrates the multitudes women contain.

"I don’t think shame does us any favors,” says Lindsay Lou. “There’s this lie that’s been passed down and around that we need shame, that it keeps us safe or something. I'm calling bullshit on that. We contain multitudes, and each aspect is as deserving of love as the next.” She continues, “May we all embrace the balance of feminine and masculine aspects in our nature. May we reclaim our own self-expression and uncouple ourselves from systems that aim to oppress or cast shadows of shame on the beauty of our bodies."

After the loss of her grandmother, the end of her marriage, and the overwhelming turmoil of COVID lockdowns, Lou sought out a hallucinogenic ritual that would not only inform the way she processed the waves of grief ahead of her, but led to a profound realization about her own feminine power. With a new vision of womanhood in mind, she began to see a throughline from her grandmother, to herself, to the art she was creating. Queen of Time is the result of that deeply personal spiritual journey, unfolding across eleven tracks of tender, heartbreakingly beautiful music. Lou has previously shared two singles from the album, including the title track “Queen of Time” and the folk-pop ballad “Nothing Else Matters” featuring Grammy Award-winner Jerry Douglas.

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Friday, 14 July 2023

alice does computer music - Sandy Bailey - Grandaddy - Royal Castles - Denise La Grassa

alice does computer music - Coiled.

This week alice does computer music shared her new single "Coiled." The song is the second single from the cellist, songwriter, and producer's upcoming debut album, Shoegaze 5G, due out August 4th, 2023, via Jolt Music. The record was mixed by Mari Maurice (More Eaze) and mastered by Andrew Weathers.

In “Coiled,” alice does computer music entwines the fragments of her musical influences and memories in beautifully unmoored ways. Acoustic cello riffs are juxtaposed with bit-crushed drums that swirl into distorted, cavernous sound collage.

About the single, Gerlach says: "I keep accidentally pocket-dialing the SOS button on my iPhone’s lock screen. the pattern feels significant, like my subconscious is alerting me to an internal emergency. There’s a theory that there is no such thing as memory, only experience and its decay. With each occurrence I remember and forget the previous instances, lost in the uneasy stillness of being unmoored in time. coiled is a summoning of ghosts, a moment of panic as experience fragments into unawareness."

alice does computer music is an electronic project by cellist, songwriter, and producer Alice Gerlach. Conjuring a hazy space between pop and experimentalism, Gerlach’s work takes inspiration from an eclectic range of music such as ambient, avant-garde pop, breakcore, and noise. Her debut full-length, Shoegaze 5G, collects and exhibits the fragments of her wide-ranging influences, resulting in vivid, poetic electronic music.

 

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Sandy Bailey - Daughter Of Abraham.

Today Massachusetts-based artist Sandy Bailey releases the gorgeous title track to her scorcher of an album, Daughter Of Abraham (out on August 18th via Red Parlor Records).

The house Sandy lives in in Massachusetts was built in 1765 and she was told the house was a sheltering stop on the Underground Railroad. Inspired, Sandy wanted to connect with and honor her ancestors, and imagined a story where they may have traveled that route to freedom, and sought refuge in her house. She imagined her ancestors seeing their descendants living in the house that once hid them. It's a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, that it can prevail under the cruelest, most impossible conditions. Wrap your ears around it here:

The haunting track tells the story of Abraham, who set off on foot in 1859 from "Carolina to Massachusetts" with holes in his shoes and hunger in his belly, to find his way to freedom. "I am a daughter of Abraham...whenever I'm lost / Don't know where I'm goin' / I walk and I start singin'...Light of the day, my inner flame / I am weary, guide my way," she sings.

Sandy is a biracial single mom who left her Pentecostal upbringing to play rock n' roll. With elements of soul, blues, gospel, and classic Americana, Daughter Of Abraham tells Sandy's story - one of a working-class American woman, and explores themes of loneliness, survival, getting lost, and finding your way again.

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Grandaddy - The Town where I'm Livin Now.

Modesto, CA’s influential indie-rock group Grandaddy have announced a special digital release of the Sumday: Excess Baggage, a thirteen-track collection of rarities and b-sides from the Sumday-era that unfolds like a lost Grandaddy album and is set for release on August 25 on Dangerbird Records. The band has also unveiled lead single “The Town where I’m Livin Now” alongside an official video, a spacy, wistful ode to the dissonant American landscape of California’s hardscrabble Central Valley.

Grandaddy leader Jason Lytle said, “I like making songs like this. Lots of bleak but sweet visuals. Everyday stuff available for everyone to see...but some of us just end up with the twisted work of documenting it.”

In May, Grandaddy announced Sumday Twunny, a limited edition 4-LP boxed set to be released on September 1 via Dangerbird Records. The collection includes the remastered original album as well as a complete 4-track demo version titled Sumday: The Cassette Demos, and Sumday: Excess Baggage. “After many years of hammering away at writing and recording as Grandaddy, Sumday seems to be the center of it and where it all peaked. To the journalists we were, ‘On the verge of greatness, underrated, overlooked, unsung.’ It was a tumultuous and exciting time for us for sure. Also very exhausting,” Lytle said.

“Revisiting this material and reflecting on those times has been a double edged sword. Bittersweet is an apt word, I suppose. Twenty years after the fact, I'm just grateful to be alive and kicking… celebrating that moment in time by re-releasing the original album, B sides and extras of that era, and even some raw cassette demos of the album itself a sort of sketchbook/rough draft of the LP in cassette form. So be it then. ‘On the verge of greatness, underrated, overlooked, unsung.’ This is what all of that sounds like.  I'll take it.”

Grandaddy formed in 1992 and have released five official LPs, most recently 2017’s Last Place. Grandaddy members include Jason Lytle, Aaron Burtch, Jim Fairchild, Tim Dryden, and the late Kevin Garcia, who passed away in 2017.

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Royal Castles - Bad Business Barbie.

Royal Castles describe themselves as a contemporary garage-rock band from Guelph, Ontario. Going by "Bad Business Barbie" they are all of that and pack some style and attitude for good measure on this highly addictive track.

The band tell us "As a band, we've really hit our stride (we've got three albums now!) which is why we wanted to mix it up and keep things fresh. In a first for Royal Castles, our drummer Katrin Sawatzky took the lead on the songwriting direction and vocals.

"Bad Business Barbie" is a bold love letter to the women who are tamed by patriarchy – a rally cry, a confession about vulnerability, power, freedom and the secrets we keep. We celebrate women everyday in our lives, and this is one of the ways we want to show it."

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Denise La Grassa - Dawn of the New Day.

Chicago-based singer-songwriter Denise La Grassa continues her inspiring musical journey with the impending release of The Flame. This powerful collection of 10 songs is a testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit - attributes that also embody her own 'North of 40' journey, itself ignited by the closing of Lincoln College in Central Illinois. “I was heading into my sixth year of transforming the former jazz studies program into one with more practical music production and business degrees," La Grassa says. "The closing was a shock to everyone as the college had been around for 157 years. It was then I decided to follow my own dream by focusing full-time on songwriting and performance.”

The Flame blends raw roots-rock and soulful blues with Americana as the musical bedrock for two profound ideas: the significance of inclusivity in a united nation and the transformative power of immigration, inspired by La Grassa's own family history.

The album encapsulates La Grassa’s advocacy for social change. The album's title pays homage to the inherent strength that lies within a nation when it looks out for all people, particularly those who have been marginalized. La Grassa's poignant lyrics and soulful melodies serve as a rallying cry for compassion, urging listeners to embrace unity and stand up against injustice.  “I feel compelled to write music that reminds us as human beings why we’re here," La Grassa explains. "Jesus really had a simple message: ‘love one another and uplift the poor and marginalized.'"

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Friday, 16 June 2023

MARBL - Kindsight - Allegra Krieger - Sandy Bailey - Silva & Steini - William The Conqueror

MARBL - A Song For Mom.

Tel-Aviv based singer songwriter MARBL is releasing her new single "A Song for Mom", that is part of the artist's unique piano project. "Mom has always let me paint my unique trails to walk along. She knows best how to plant the confidence and passion in me, to do whatever my heart desires the most, and quiet down the voices of fear.

She is an eternal home to me, where I can find endless support, listening, and unconditional love. "A Song for Mom", is the least I can give her as a gift." - Moria Or MARBL's music has its own widely spread range of influences like Sufjan Stevens, Laura Marling, Norah Jones, Big Thief, Iron & Wine and more. 

MARBL has already drawn the attention of dominant radio stations, music bloggers, journalists & publicists in France, the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Israel, the USA, Japan, and more, and hit some big official Spotify playlists around the world, alongside leading TV commercials and campaigns. Nowadays, MARBL is releasing a unique piano project, in which she offers a glance into her very first musical passion - the piano, that draws the likes of Norah Jones, Tori Amos, Kate Bush.


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Kindsight - Tibet.

Danish four-piece Kindsight make music that draws from 80’s and 90’s alternative rock and combines it with the shimmering Scandinavian pop that the region has become so renowned for, resulting in a sound that is both fuzzy and melodic in equal measure.

This week the band share the new single 'Tibet'. The single follows the atmospheric 'Love You Baby All The Time' and experimental slowly building "Madhouse Breakout Multitool" and continues to expand the band's sound without losing their lovable characteristics. The band is playing Roskilde Festival on June 26th, a festival they've attended many times and as so many danes before them, partly grown up at.

About the track, Kindsight says: "Our most political love song to date, Tibet celebrates the wildest forms of conformity and anti-self-realization."

In 2022, the band released their debut LP via Rama Lama Records to praise such as "your new favourite band". Titled "Swedish Punk", it's an album packed with charming and infectiously catchy noise-jangle-pop melodies full of exuberant optimism and coming-of-age tales inspired by acts such as Pixies, Cocteau Twins, Snail Mail and Big Thief. The album was followed by tour dates in Scandinavia, UK and Germany as well as several shows at SXSW.

Atop jangling guitars, Nina Rasmussen’s distinctive voice dances somewhere between that of Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval and Alvvays’ Molly Rankin, leaving the listened renched in the nostalgic optimism of summers gone by. There’s not a single song that would feel out of place in an 00’s independent movie. The band possess an unmistakable talent for crafting disarmingly buoyant yet achingly nostalgic indie-rock songs based on the everyday.

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Allegra Krieger - Lingering.

In May, the New York-based songwriter Allegra Kreiger announced her signing to Double Double Whammy (Florist, Babehoven, Hatchie) for the release of her new LP I Keep My Feet on The Fragile Plane (out July 21st). The first single from the album, "Nothing In This World Ever Stays Still," attracted immediate attention, earning praise from outlets like FADER, Stereogum, BrooklynVegan, Exclaim, NYLON and Paste, who called Krieger "one of the best working songwriters."

This past Sunday Krieger played the release show for Greg Mendez' new LP at Purgatory in Brooklyn, and this week she's sharing a new single entitled "Lingering." "Lingering" neatly captures the chaotic possibility of city living. Rich with little details – black mold on an apartment ceiling, the smell of piss and garbage – the track has a timeless quality, and showcases Krieger's ability to imbue the outlines of everyday experience with a deep emotional resonance.

"Lingering is about new love, entering that fragile plane, shared pleasure, returning to the stasis of a room, of an apartment in a city that is always moving," Krieger explains to NYLON. "Objects sitting and hanging. Wanting something, but not wanting to want anything. Crossing the street. A nice day, a nice moment."


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Sandy Bailey - Get The Message Through.

Massachusetts-based singer-songwriter Sandy Baileyhas unveiled “Get The Message Through,” the lead single from Daughter Of Abraham, her first LP with Red Parlor Records, set for release on August 18th.

“The latest single from Sandy Bailey -a soft-country power ballad about mortality and heartbreak and everyday existentialism -is the kind of song that country music was built on,” says Hollerin their premiere. “Delivered with a faux breeziness, it’s both painfully real and bleakly comical. Her almost throwaway, conversational delivery making the lines land even harder as she ponders her grown up children leaving home, while the song slowly spirals towards a deeper truth about how disconnected and isolated we become from each other as adults....

It’s like if an AI music generator had been tasked to come up with a Carole King song that perfectly tapped into the futility of doom scrolling and the existential dread of the pre-apocalypse.”“A headline caught my eye in The Wall Street Journalthat read ‘Moms in Middle Age: Rarely Alone, Often Online and Increasingly Lonely,’” Bailey told Holler. “I thought about my love/hate relationship with social media and wrote a song about the irony of the current environment that we live in, where we are more connected than ever through the internet but also lonelier than ever.”For the video, Bailey put a team together from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

“We knew we wanted the video to have a throwback 70's feel,” Bailey explained to Holler. “In going through a bunch of vintage stock footage for ideas, the director Sofi Taylor was inspired by a video of a clean, empty kitchen. The contrast of a once vibrant house now unlived in was our inspiration for showing change, loneliness, and the passage of time.” 

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Silva & Steini - If It Was.

Entrepreneur, filmmaker and bestselling author Scott Blum has announced his next venture, FOUND, a US-based independent record label focusing on the contemporary music scene of Iceland. The label’s first signings include jazz vocal duo Silva & Steini, composer Magnús Jóhann, and punk band GRÓA.

FOUND is marking the occasion with the release of the music video for Silva & Steini’s “If It Was” from their debut album More Than You Know. The popular song already has 2 million streams on Spotify and was written by Alan Hampton (Andrew Bird, Fiona Apple, Sufjan Stevens, etc.).

The video is directed by noted Icelandic visual artist Anna Maggý and was shot in gorgeous black & white at the unique "Library of Water" location in Stykkishólmur, Iceland, a fine art installation by Roni Horn featuring large tubes of water from glaciers around Iceland. The dreamlike visuals echo the lyrical themes of memory, loss and rebirth from the evocative song. "Anna Maggý used her unique mind and talent to create and capture something magical," notes singer Silva. "She manages to make her work one of a kind because she is so passionate and knows exactly what she wants in the moment."


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William The Conqueror - The Bruises.

William The Conqueror have just unveiled the video to their new single ‘The Bruises’. Taken from their forthcoming album ‘Excuse Me While I Vanish’, out 28th July on Chrysalis Records, the track is the follow-up to last month’s single ‘The Puppet and the Puppeteer’. Produced by the band in a playground of vintage gear and mixed by Barny Barnicott (Arctic Monkeys, Sam Fender, Kasabian), the ten tracks on ‘Excuse Me While I Vanish’ marry earworm tunes with insistent, imperious, soaring rock shapes, punctuated by chorus hooks that are simultaneously nuanced and anthemic. William The Conqueror, who performed to a packed room at The Great Escape last month, head out on a European tour with Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats next week. The band will embark on a headline tour of the UK in October.

"My favourite kind of songwriting is when you have no control over what's happening” explains frontman Ruarri. “The song just arrives, finding its way through your fingers onto the fret board, as the pen wanders the page and somehow says everything you didn't realise you needed to say. The Bruises was like that. It wasn't and then all of a sudden, it was." Bassist Naomi adds, “'The Bruises' will stay with you all day. And with a verse that catchy, you don’t really need a chorus. Which is lucky.”

‘Excuse Me While I Vanish’, very nearly didn’t happen. Following the imposition of lockdown restrictions, Joseph found himself cocooned at home in Cornwall, ruminating on an uncertain creative future, watching on as his wife Mandy, a valiant mental health social worker, engaged with the all-too-real dilemmas of the pandemic-riven here and now. Her example motivated Joseph to become a temporary care worker, an experience which would provide renewed focus and influence the songwriting on the new album.


Dumpstaphunk - Kacimi & Mécréance - Ellen & Simona - Steven Troch Band - Bandits on the Run

Dumpstaphunk - Let's Do It. New Orleans’ modern torchbearers of funk, Dumpstaphunk returns to the fray with their new single “Let’s Do ...