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| Photo - Katherine Emery |
“Swiftly” is kind of a cinematic lullaby for the end of an era — it’s last call at the bar of our youth. It's the final single ahead of the album 'Helpless Love' which is due September 25.
Perkins' first solo record, Being Younger, was primarily an album about friendships and getting older; with Helpless Love, Perkins says she was trying to take a step back and look at humans with a wider lens, "because so much of what we do is so baffling to me."
There are elements of the Americana worlds of Lucinda Williams and Bonnie Raitt, flashes of bizarro humor in the galaxy of Aldous Harding, and something higher-octane that’s hard to put a finger on. For this, her second full-length album, Perkins wrote the songs on piano and recorded them on Wurlitzer. Her band brought a host of musical upbringings and influences to the table, from indie-pop to folk to soul to jazz, and the result is an unplaceable hybrid that is both fresh and deeply familiar.
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| Photo - Sasha Pedro |
Indie singer/songwriter Brooke Annibale has released her new album Bolder Font. Her first collection of brand new music in four years, Bolder Font finds the Rhode Island-based, Pittsburgh-native at the precipice of a creative rejuvenation as she rediscovers her self-worth after a series of disheartening and unexpected setbacks. Bolder Font also marks the first time she dove into full creative control of an entire album, including writing, recording, producing, editing, and mixing entirely on her own.
"I learned so much making this record,” stated Brooke. “Not just about recording, producing and mixing, but I learned something quite extraordinary about life in general. The process is the fulfillment. The fulfillment is not the likes, the streams, or any of the visible successes. It’s the quiet moments of making the thing, and making it with my hands, my mind and my whole heart. The release is the celebration of that process."
Capturing the album’s emotional centerpiece is the recently released “Try Again,” which finds Brooke turning the lens on her own complicated relationship with music: the thing that has always healed her is also the thing that has wounded her. The title track “Bolder Font” wrestles with the album’s underlying theme of self-worth and the gap between who we are and the identities that have been placed on us. Additional highlights include the wry and nostalgic “Birthday,” an ode to friendships lost to fading time “wrapping Annibale’s raw, unflinching songwriting in sweet warmth” (Atwood); the electrifying, irresistible “Make You Mine,” as well as “Daily Dose,” a spirited reflection on unfiltered enthusiasm, and “My Favorite Part,” the heartbreakingly vulnerable opening track.
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| Photo - Shannon Marks |
Today Chicago songwriter and multi-instrumentalist V.V. Lightbody is sharing "Two Swans." It's the final advance single from her new LP Period Piece and it comes with a video directed by Robert Salazar.
Quote from V.V.: Anywhere I saw two swans, it felt like a comforting sign from the universe that I was doing something right. I eventually began to question their cosmic potency when I started seeing them too often and remembered that swans are usually portrayed in pairs. “Two Swans” critiques our society’s tendency towards “magical thinking” while also confessing my curiosity and delight in divinatory practices. I feel like this song feels deeply Chicago and combines many of my musical influences - angular guitars, mixed meter chorus, and raging farfisa. Cate Le Bon, but in a cornfield.
Vivian has long been an in demand collaborator whatever instrument she's on (flute, guitar, vocals, etc), and the fact that she's sought out by folks as diverse as art-rock group FINOM, International Anthem-signed Panamanian drummer Daniel Villarreal, and Harry Styles indicates how highly regarded and diverse her musicianship is. Her collaborators are largely a who's who of the thriving Chicago indie and new jazz scenes, and her own project has always been a place for her to explore songs that cache intense feelings under self-effacing midwestern humor, breezy Brazilian-influenced guitar picking, and gauzy arrangements with sneakily complex moments. "Cate Le Bon in a cornfield or Gal Costa mowing the lawn" as her bio puts it.
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| Photo - Rich Tarbell |
Night Teacher has shared a new single produced by and featuring Allen Tate of San Fermin. Brooding and sultry, “St. Augustine” is an introspective ode to the complexity of love, as songwriter Lilly Bechtel’s vocals delicately braid into Tate’s moody baritone.
Songwriter Lilly Bechtel shares: St. Augustine is about love in its many forms and the tough work of caring deeply for something without holding on so tightly that it doesn’t have room to change. It is about letting go of preconceived ideas of what love looks like, and the painful paradox that any ‘great’ or ‘lasting’ love is ultimately about having the courage to watch that person leave. It’s about the strength it takes to soften and allow that process to occur; to let love wash over us the way it is meant to, which is rarely—if ever—what we had in mind.
Night Teacher released her sophomore album ‘Year of the Snake’ last fall on First City Artists. Produced by Matt Wyatt (Lowland Hum, David Wax Museum), its gritty, propulsive, and off-kilter sound gathered editorial attention from NPR, Stereogum, WNYU, Atwood Magazine, MAGNET Magazine, Northern Transmissions, and many more.
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