Showing posts with label The Goods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Goods. Show all posts

Wednesday, 16 September 2026

Margo Mann - Song People - Scaled Alps - Eliza Hull - Detalji - The Goods

Photo - James Morris
Margo Mann - The Worth Of It.

Released today Margo Mann's "The Worth Of It" is a tender, devotional, piano-driven love song. Bare-boned, raw, and timeless, it captures a kind of love that says: whatever comes, I’ll still choose you. Taken from her debut album, Love Is A Dog, arriving October 16 via [PIAS] Recordings.

Margo Mann brings her forthcoming debut album Love Is A Dog to life live, backed by her 5-piece band. The record was written and recorded in France with producer Burke Reid (Julia Jacklin, Olympia, Jack Ladder). It’s cinematic chamber pop with a theatrical edge, bringing hints of the 90’s LA Largo scene to Naarm.

Margo Mann's work lives at the intersection of intimacy and other-worldliness. Drawing on the theatricality of Bowie and Aldous Harding, the layered seriousness of Paul Thomas Anderson films, and the warmth of Fiona Apple's sonic palette, her project creates a world that feels both elevated and cinematic, yet deeply vulnerable.


============================================================================

Photo -  Ian Maley
Song People - The Cone.

"The Cone," the latest single from Song People's upcoming album Tho I Seem Tame, which drops via Strange Mono on October 9th and is sure to set the indie rock world on fire. "The Cone" is existential croonery at its finest, Shaina Kapeluck's elegant, statuesque vocals brimming with romantic abandon and floating effortlessly over a liquidy, Johnny Marr-esque guitar line. If you can imagine Sandy Denny fronting The Smiths or Yo La Tengo you're halfway to understanding the vibe of "The Cone."

Lyrically, the song was inspired by a trip Shaina took to Brattleboro, Vermont, during what's called "Blackberry winter" - when there's a last sudden cold snap before the weather gets warmer. "It felt as if time were moving in reverse," she says, and therein lies the key to the song: all the rhododendrons, azaleas, and floral images symbolize the passage of time and the often disorienting ways in which we experience it.  

Tho I Seem Tame as a whole is how it doesn't feel quite like any other post-punk album around today. It's music that calls to you from some distant place outside the bounds of modern folk, where dream pop and 80s jangle are overlaid with references to Old English poetry, rabbinical legends, and folk tales all but lost to history.


============================================================================

Scaled Alps - Let the Alpine Play (Album).

It's an absolute pleasure to feature 'Let The Alpine Play' on Beehive Candy. We are always on the lookout for artists who test musical boundaries without coming across as self indulgent. Scaled Alps recently released album achieves that. It keeps the listener in expectation as each track unfolds, whilst there are enough hooks, moments of audio pleasure and plain simple original "what's not to like" music.  

The band tell us: Scaled Alps is a Los Angeles band built around singer and lyricist James Quentin Devine and instrumentalist Anthony Percoco. On Let The Alpine Play, Sean McCarthy plays drums and Steve Fishman plays upright and electric bass. Stewart Tuttle recorded the album at The Altar Studios in North Hollywood, and we released it through our own BLUHELL imprint.

The record began with two concentrated days of writing and demos, followed by two days in the studio. We arrived with the material fresh enough to surprise us and recorded much of it without a click. The resulting performances retain their natural movement, including the occasional rough edge or unrehearsed turn. The sixteen songs move through heavy rock, electronics, piano, dub space and stranger forms of pop without settling into one fixed arrangement. The voice remains the point of continuity while the machinery changes around it.

Los Angeles enters the album through specific places, objects and encounters rather than as scenery. North Hollywood strip clubs, empty roads, expensive surfaces, temporary lives and overheard language all found their way in. We wanted the record to feel less like a portrait of the city than something the city had done to us.


============================================================================

Photo - Michelle Grace Hunder
Eliza Hull – Better.

Dja Dja Wurrung Country/Castlemaine-based multi-award-winning songwriter, musician, advocate and writer Eliza Hull just announced her forthcoming album You'd Think We'd Be Used To Change By Now (out 4 Dec independently). The album announcement comes alongside tender alt-pop/indie single plus intimate shot-on-film video 'Better.' 

At its core exploring change and nostalgia, "looking back at who we’ve been while growing into who we’re becoming" - the album moves through relationships, womanhood, desire and the ways we continue to shift and evolve throughout our lives, ultimately a testament to resilience and listening to your instincts steeped in evocative textural production via Hull in her first album co-producer credit alongside ARIA Award-winner Pip Norman (Missy Higgins, Baker Boy, Mia Wray). 

The announcement follows Hull's return to music in June this year, also receiving an O.A.M. in May for her contribution to music and disability advocacy, further cementing her reputation as one of the country's most important voices across both culture and accessibility.


============================================================================

Photo - Federico Cabrera
Detalji - Dancing (With What's Left).

Today, Finnish alternative electronic artist Detalji has shared 'Dancing (With What's Left)', the latest single to be taken from their new album Imagine Life. The album, a genre-fluid electronic record that moves between dreamlike synths, alternative pop melodies, club influences and 80s nostalgia, is set for release next month on October 16th. 

New single ‘Dancing (With What’s Left)’ captures a period of anxiety and the need to escape. "I was suffering from heavy anxiety when making this song, and I was in a place where I had trouble being alone and wanted to be intoxicated all the time," explains Detalji.  "The lyrics are pretty literal in this case. I enjoyed singing with my more gothic voice and creating the arrangement which is refreshingly straightforward when you compare it to many of my other tracks."

Imagine Life is a record about navigating contradiction, the desire to escape and the need to connect, the pull between nostalgia and moving forward, and the search for identity within the chaos of everyday life. Throughout the album, themes of longing, desire, heartbreak, anxiety, liberation and connection emerge repeatedly.

Written across Helsinki, Los Angeles and Berlin, the album captures a year of transition, exploring love, loss and reinvention. Across nine tracks, Detalji weaves together elements of electronica, trip-hop, house, drum & bass and synth soundscapes into a cohesive journey. “Imagine Life is a glimpse into a year of my life,” explains Detalji. “I was moving between different cities, ending a relationship and figuring out what kind of life I wanted next. The album feels like a mixture of LA sunsets, Nordic melancholy and gritty Berlin basement beats.”


============================================================================

The Goods - Goodbye Summertime (Album).

Oakland, California power pop outfit The Goods return today September 16 with Goodbye Summertime, the sophomore LP on Dandy Boy Records. Less than a year after Don't Spoil the Fun, songwriter Rob Good delivers the rare follow-up that doesn't simply build on a debut, it blows the walls out around it. Drawing from Beatles-inflected psychedelia, Brian Wilson-esque balladry, sunshine pop, jangling folk rock, and the timeless pull of classic guitar pop, Goodbye Summertime is a record that refuses to sit still, chasing melody around every corner without ever losing sight of the hook. 

For anyone who's spent time around the Bay Area underground, Good has always been there. Playing clubs too small to remember their names. Loading gear into the back of a car after midnight. Watching rehearsal spaces disappear, venues close, neighborhoods reinvent themselves, and another generation of bands figure it out the same way he did. That perspective runs quietly through Goodbye Summertime. It's a record made by someone who understands that places change, people change, and the trick isn't hanging onto the past. It's deciding what deserves to come with you.

Produced almost entirely by Good in his Oakland studio, the album captures an artist trusting instinct over expectation. Songs were written, recorded, rearranged, and rebuilt as inspiration arrived, pulling from every shelf in Good's record collection without feeling trapped by any of it. One minute the band slips into kaleidoscopic psychedelia, the next into sunshine pop or chiming folk rock, before circling back to the crunchy guitars and towering harmonies that have always been The Goods' calling card. Rather than sounding like a collection of influences, Goodbye Summertime feels like the moment they all stopped competing and finally started working together. 

That freedom is heard across every corner of the album. "Summer's Almost Gone" embraces the urgency of living in the present before it slips away. "Minor Key" quietly mourns what's already been lost. "Driving" looks back on the years when an empty gas tank and nowhere to be felt like endless possibility. "Wing" captures the terrifying optimism of new love, while "Sleepytime" closes the record with stacked harmonies and a slow-building swell that feels less like an ending than the first deep breath after everything has settled. Like the album itself, each song is searching for solid ground without pretending life ever really stands still.

============================================================================

Wednesday, 12 July 2023

Equipment Pointed Ankh - Fake Fever - Erin K - The Goods

Equipment Pointed Ankh - Trucks to Gettysburg.

In terms of the headiest of heady jammers the Louisville, KY weirdo supergroup Equipment Pointed Ankh comes has made a name for themselves in creating uncompromising and unpretentious experimental music that appeals to the freaks and casual listeners alike. The group's magnetic pulse on their newest album Downtown! puts them in league with the Kraut conspirators while bouncing with a nervous, wiry rhythm of bands like This Heat. We think you'd dig it, or we wouldn't be sending this to you. The first single "Trucks to Gettysburg" is out now.

Welcome to the eternal now of Equipment Pointed Ankh, whose instrumental, electronics-squishing avant rock/future jazz will baffle and delight your earholes for years to come. Set your cruise controls in the direction of a fun, beer chugging midwestern American version of the tightly buttoned Euro adventurousness found on that sparkly Recommended Records 2xlp comp.

Equipment Pointed Ankh are from a Louisville, KY lineage that spawned the Endtables and Your Food, grew with Squirrel Bait, extended into Gastr Del Sol, King Kong, and the Web, then casually emerged into the present with Valley of Ashes, Sapat, Road House and Flanger Magazine (the last three consisting of actual EPA members!!) They initially appeared as the brainchild of former Tropical Trashian Jim Marlowe, and while his first release of smoldering Kraut throb (Live on Sophomore Lounge and recognized by cover art featuring a doomed cowboy's naked dong) was a signpost to the future, the true EPA really began on Without Human Permission (Astral Editions/ Sophomore Lounge) with the addition of the now constant lineup of Chris Bush, Dan Davis, Ryan Davis (no relation!), and Shutaro Noguchi. They created spontaneous constructions of drums, synths, guitar, and sundry other instruments that were then edited into structural cohesion within the glorious freedom and sonic possibilities of a legitimate recording studio with an utterly simpatico recording engineer (this being RI's Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets). This approach continued with the Changing Legs cd (Newton's Kidney) of all possible permutations of duo improvisations between members and then followed by the giddily melodic grooves of From Inside the House lp (Bruit Direct Disques).

======================================================================

Fake Fever - Graveyard Shift.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug. It can provide a quick escape or a warm blanket of comfort in times of need, but what happens when that temporary sugar rush of the past begins to corrode and fade? The longer that NYC-based singer/songwriter/producer Andrew Barnes spent in the nostalgic space that previously defined his chillwave/bedroom pop project Fake Fever, the more he felt these reflective comforts dissipate over time and found the harsh realities of the present staring back more ferociously than ever. After three years of false starts, new surroundings, bandaid ripping, chaotic experimentation, and refinement, what resulted is Fake Fever's highly-anticipated sophomore full length release - Inside The Well - a bittersweet breakup album with nostalgia.

"When I initially tried to piece together ideas for my 2nd album, I was hitting a wall and slowly realized that I had spent so much time over the last few years trying to recreate this essence of my childhood and my past and existing in this escapist place where I was constantly looking backwards, that I was doing a horrible job of living in the present and trying to progress, both creatively and personally." Barnes says. "This album encompasses that sometimes-painful process of loosening the grip on the past so that you can free yourself to move forward."

While the previous Fake Fever full length "Surrogate" made a splash in various online "-wave" circles during the 2020 height of isolation with its hazy, subdued trip through a lazy river of vaporwave-tinged dreams and memories, "Inside The Well" is a much more awake, emotional, and polished slate of pop-centric material. This 11-song, 42-minute yearning, aquatic pop journey fluidly weaves together new genre flourishes to the Fake Fever sound, ranging from shoegaze ("Autotoxemia", "Pressure Tank") to house ("Palace Intrigue") to footwork ("Sozu") to 2000s indietronica revival ("Graveyard Shift") to drum & bass ("Canvasing"), with the chillwave ethereality ("Coral Ring", "Sunrose") and tape-warped melodies ("Unknowable") that resonated with listeners on "Surrogate."

"After spending most of my musical life playing guitar and drums in heavy bands, this whole avenue of creating electronic and pop music is still so new to me, even after a handful of years of doing it now. Part of the reason this album took so long to make is because I spent an equal amount of time trying to refine what I had figured out and done well kind of by accident as a total novice on the last album, and an equal amount of time trying to get away from my musical crutches that I had developed over the past few years and expand my sound with brand new techniques as a songwriter and producer that took a ton of trial and error to finally bring within reach."

======================================================================

Erin K - Breathe (Live) The Crypt Studio.

Acclaimed American-born London-resident musician Erin K just released her new playful and beautiful “antifolk” style singer-songwriter album ‘Sink To Swim’ (out 30th June).

Erin has recorded a gorgeous live session version of ‘Breathe’ from the album at The Crypt studio in London. Wondered if you might like to feature / share it?

On the song & session, Erin said- “In this song I am speaking to my former childhood self, questioning the decisions she will make to lead up to this present moment. Under seeming pressures to perform and act up to other’s standards, the option to choose a different path is presented alongside the ever present reminder to simply “breathe” in every moment. We had a wonderful time recording this live in The Crypt Studio in London, with my bandmates flying in from 3 different countries. This live arrangement of the song differs a little from recording studio production which is now released on my album Sink To Swim. We arrived at this production after a month long tour in Italy and I wanted to capture it during this session. I’m very excited to share this!”

======================================================================

The Goods - The Goods (E.P).

Oakland California’s The Goods have just announced the release of their debut self-titled EP on Dandy Boy Records with an accompanying video for the song “David Jones Is Dead.” The Goods combine big guitars, huge hooks, and sweet British Invasion-style harmonies into a distinctive power pop tapestry on their debut. Self-produced in the band’s own studio in Oakland, CA, The Goods’ debut EP draws on decades of hooky punk and power pop from the 1960s through the 1990s. 

The three song 7" (with an exclusive fourth digital track) combines classic influences and timeless sounds with a fresh and playful energy. The lead single and video “David Jones Is Dead” calls to mind the band’s songwriting influences both new and old; Redd Kross, Young Guv, Tom Petty, Matthew Sweet, The Jam, Green Day and Cheap Trick. Reflecting on the process of writing “David Jones Is Dead” singer and guitarist Rob Good had to say, “I set out to write the shortest song I possibly could, all killer no filler, every bit of fat around the edges trimmed off. Lyrically, I was thinking about all these rock and roll icons that are now dying, and how their death brings up so many emotions - not only remorse for the loss of the person, but also nostalgia about the good times you had with their music and the friends you enjoyed it with. Ultimately it’s a celebration of that music and those good times.”

Avoiding retro-revivalism, The Goods' music is earnest and unironic, with just enough grit and muscle to balance its sugary sweetness. Dandy Boy label owner Bobby Martinez describes the connection between himself and singer/guitarist Rob Good, “I’m a big power pop fan and he was writing huge power pop songs. Not in a bleached hair/ leather jacket/ Buzzcocks way or a straight college radio/ 90’s alt way- but somewhere in between. There’s an element of Redd Kross camp over Cheap Trick timelessness that adds this level of fun and cheekiness. It never feels too serious or posturing yet avoids going full on cornball cartoon band. It’s completely self aware and doesn’t fall into some retro revival affectation. Rather than trying to duplicate classic power pop from the late 70’s or 90’s “left-of-the-dial” underground, they manage to sound organic. It’s power pop by guys who grew up learning their instruments by listening to Green Day and the Descendents and playing in punk bands. Guys who spent their formative years with Lemonheads and Jam CDs in their cars.”

======================================================================

Ally Row - The Bernadette Maries - Some Days Are Darker - Cello - Katie Cruel - Clare Perrott

Ally Row - Adeline. Gunaikurnai/Gippsland based duo, Ally Row, continue their rise as one of the most talked about & exciting new acts ...