Juniper Bush brand new album is entitled 'Healing Through A Sonic Figure'. We featured the video for 'Turn' just a few days ago and it really is a pleasure to share the full album today from this highly talented psych-rock and shoegaze band. === TheCoo have shared a video for 'If Only', a live track recorded in April last year in Amsterdam and it's a gorgeous dual vocal acoustic piece. === It's been eighteen months since we first featured Bijou Noir and they are back with a cover version of The Beatles 'Tomorrow Never Knows', a song that they creatively and sensitively put their own mark on.
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Juniper Bush - Healing Through A Sonic Figure (Album).
Healing Through A Sonic Figure, the debut full-length record from Winnipeg psych-rock/shoegaze troupe Juniper Bush is out now via Transistor 66. The album deals, in part, with finding one’s way through the other side of painful experiences towards a better sense of truth.
Of the eight songs contained on the record, five of them revolve around different phases in a troubled relationship and the challenges of returning to a partner in the throes of drug addiction. Atop chaotic, wall-of-noise chords, “Hindsight” is a dance with intuition and knowing, and “Foresight” is the loss of self that ensues. On “Turn,” vocalist/guitarist Lizzy Burt sings about the inner turmoil of a complicated love, and how patterns repeat despite life’s lessons. With the loud-quiet-loud dynamics of “Slowly,” there is a sense of resignation; and on the final tune of the suite, “And You,” the band offers the sort of swooning melancholy that will make you want to revel in gloom just a little bit longer. The lifeblood of each song is Burt’s celestial voice, capturing the agony of the experience with each fragile breath.
“Initially we wanted to release those five songs about letting go and coming back as an EP, but we continued to write,” says Burt, the group’s lead songwriter. “Music is a huge part of how I process very personal things in my life. Making this record felt like a turning point in my healing process after some pretty difficult times.”
The Coo’s journey started with a serendipitous meeting at an Amsterdam open mic, and has since evolved into a deep musical and personal relationship that bridges the North Sea. Matt Arthur (The Arthur Brothers) and Jara Holdert (Lewin) write and sing songs together in two-part harmony, reminiscent of the warm late 60s and early 70s sound of artists such as Carole King & James Taylor; Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and contemporary artists such as Angus & Julia Stone and Big Thief.
Where The Coo’s first single told the story of their meeting, ‘If Only’, the second track from their upcoming debut EP, is the first song they ever wrote together and represents the genesis of their musical collaboration. After their first serendipitous meeting in Amsterdam, contact faded for a year, as Matt went back to the UK. But a year later, when Jara decided to visit him spontaneously in London, they reconnected and wrote a song on their first afternoon. They performed ‘If Only’ that same evening at an open mic in Camden Town, marking their first ever concert together.
‘If Only’ is a warm and harmonic story of the artistic journey through isolation and guilt and the yearning for release. With subtle musical shifts, The Coo’s second single is reminiscent of early Joni Mitchell with hints of Revolver era Beatles and Big Thief.
The ever-evolving Prague-based Bijou Noir have surprise-released a commanding rendition of The Beatles' 1966 "Tomorrow Never Knows" as a "name your price" download via Bandcamp.
What happens when you break up with your entire state of being? Bijou Noir's vivid debut LP We Are Alone Together is a savvy collection of pop songs that probe tectonic fractures in identity, spirituality, fidelity and loss in the 21st century.
Bijou Noir was formed in 2013 by Augustus Watkins, a creatively restless and ambitious multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer and lyricist.
Bijou Noir's distinctive songs and videos have been called: textured, intoxicating, nifty, fuzzy, cinematic, innovative, soulful, incredibly catchy, complex, sinister, offbeat, moody, stunning, shadowy, gloomy, dark and enigmatic. Watkins and Bijou Noir, are currently based in Prague.
Sisyphes just shared 'Samsāra' and the Margate (England) band are impressive with this expansive, melodic and dreamy mixture of Shoegaze and pop sensibilities. === Another song released yesterday comes from Josh Kumra and it's entitled 'Pull Me Back In'. The singer songwriter has fabulously distinct vocals on what is a beautiful modern folk song. === We've already had the pleasure of featuring three tracks form her forthcoming album 'La Yarará' and now Malena Zavala has released another 'Memories Gone' and it's as gorgeous as the others, the album is out on April 17th, personally I can't wait.
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Sisyphes - Samsāra.
Based in Margate, Avantpop shoegazers Sisyphes are made up of former La Houle guitarist and songwriter Geoffrey Papin, Clémentine Blue (Tiger Lion), John Davies (Michael A Grammar, Traams) and Jimi Tormey (Gang).
Taking their cues from the likes of Stereolab, Broadcast and Julien Gasc, they deliver dreamlike pop songs with a touch of French synthwave. Lyrically their literary and philosophical influences shine through – gone are the days when shoegaze lyrics were just a conduit for vocal textures.
The band explain that “Saṃsāra is a Sanskrit word that means "wandering" or "world", with the connotation of cyclic, circuitous change. In short, it is the cycle of death and rebirth.”
Sisyphes’ name is taken from Greek mythology – the deceitful character who has been doomed to push a boulder to the top of a hill for eternity. While perhaps music and art could be categorized as similarly futile, these are the things that get us up in the morning to push our own personal rock once again.
New single ‘Samsara’ is available everywhere on April 3rd 2020 via A Certain Kind Records.
Singer - Songwriter Josh Kumra returns with a new EP, ‘Pull Me Back In’, out now via ferryhouse. Following up on the recently released singles; the soaring ‘Don’t Know Why’, the confessional ‘I Dare You’ and last year’s intimate ‘Stubborn Love’, the EP is an insight into Josh’s newly found creative freedom. Mostly recorded and produced by Josh in his own studio, the new body of work is an introspective journey through the emotions and mind of a young artist who found himself “falling short of the grand expectations everyone had of me and had almost lost my love for making music completely”, as he candidly concedes.
Whilst the title track ‘Pull Me Back’ is in the artist’s own words; “all about going there to come back, getting lost to be found. For me it's the song that takes the core of the other songs on the EP and brings them together in a simple but an unavoidable way.” Having topped the UK charts and performed on ‘Later… With Jools Holland’ before having released his debut album, the talented artist suddenly found himself with a major record deal and under pressure to capitalise on the sudden exposure brought by his collaboration with Wretch 32 on ‘Don’t Go’, the chart-topping single which reached #1 in the UK upon its release.
After the release of his debut album ‘Good Things Come To Those Who Don’t Wait’ and his international headline tour, Josh struggled with the idea of being the pop star people saw in him. The unexpected publicity meant losing the original idea of “writing music from my heart,” he confesses while talking about the vulnerability and sense of loss he felt. He left London for Tetbury, set up his own recording studio and started writing and recording new music in a safe space, one in which he could develop himself first before trying to please everyone else. A completely different creative process compared to “being sent around to hit makers on a daily basis, baring everything and anything personal to strangers in the hopes of writing a hit song,” recalls Josh on the dark side of the hit making machine.
‘Pull Me Back In’, is a remarkable collection of heart-wrench songs, one that is destined to set Josh as the bonafide singer-songwriter he is.
Malena Zavala has today shared blissful new track 'Memories Gone', taken from her forthcoming second album La Yarará, to be released April 17 on Yucatan Records.
Mazzy Star-style gothic chamber pop with a South American influence, ‘Memories Gone’ is about “mourning the loss of a memory that has faded away,” comments Zavala, who was born in Argentina but grew up in Hertfordshire. “I wrote it when making my first album, but I wanted to tie it all in with the Latino feel of La Yarará so I stripped it back to vocals and guitar added a ronroco arrangement. The ronroco is an Andean ten stringed guitar-like instrument that has a slight echo and somehow creates its own reverb, and I love the way it sounds on the track.”
The follow-up to her critically acclaimed 2018 debut album ‘Aliso’, ‘La Yarará’ cements Zavala as a songwriter with a unique perspective on where she’s from, where she’s headed and where her music can take us. The album draws from the various aspects, colours and shades of Latin music and culture: cumbia, Afro-Cuban, Afro-funk, Andean folk, Argentine folk, bolero-son, and reggaeton, all sung in a mixture of English and Spanish in Zavala’s passport-to-paradise voice.
Zavala recently unveiled a stylish and colourful video for the album’s sinuous title track, current single ‘La Yarará’, premiered by Notion Magazine. ‘La Yarará’ is the third single to be taken from the album following 'En La Noche' and 'I'm Leaving Home'.
After the release of ‘Aliso’ – described as “gently warped and beguilingly melancholy guitar pop” by The Guardian in their 4 star review - Zavala toured all over Europe and the UK supporting Lord Huron, Blanco White, and Men I Trust, before hitting the festival circuit. She then spent three months writing her second album in Tarifa, the southernmost point of Spain.
Zavala and her close circle of collaborators recorded ‘La Yarará’ in two weeks last September at Urchin Studios in London Fields, with Zavala producing and Dani Bennett Spragg (Baxter Dury, The Amazons) engineering.
“It’s a really beautiful, all-wooden studio, which was really important for the sound of this album,” says Zavala. “I wanted it to feel like Buena Vista Social Club. I wanted to play the room, to feel the walls and wooden floors.”
At the heart of the album is ‘Identity’, a song of rootlessness and yearning “that embodies the whole record. It’s about how I feel like I don’t belong to Argentina or England. I’ve just been travelling my whole life,” says Zavala. “So the whole concept is about how, wherever you go and whatever the experiences you have in the cultures you live in, they make up who you are and your character. So I had this idea of a person being about where they’ve been, not where they were born.”
Anna Burch new album 'If Your Dreaming' is released today. It comprises of twelve beautiful songs and is streaming in full below, her songwriting skills are notable and the musical construction of each track is imaginative on what is a really pleasing album. === Junk Drawer have just shared 'What I've Learned / What I'm Learning' a slow burning rocker that is both atmospheric and gripping. === Another new song release today this time from The Reverse with 'Kill Us All' where the lyrics intrigue to say the least, on this refreshing indie rock track. === The Sun Harmonic latest song offering is 'Sign On The Road' and it's a vibrant folk rock song that put simply, is rather catchy.
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Anna Burch - If Your Dreaming (Album).
When Anna Burch introduced herself on her 2018 debut Quit The Curse, it was with a concentrated wash of energetic, serotonin-boosting pop. Jangly guitars, blithe vocal harmonies and an occasional undercurrent of grungy fuzz all converged in seemingly straightforward songs that hid their complexities under sunny hooks. The impact of the songs was immediate and exciting, presenting narratives of confusion and upheaval with melodies so bright it was hard to do anything but smile. Two years later, Burch’s follow up If You’re Dreaming takes us down a different path than its predecessor, shedding some nervous energy in favor of a deeper exploration of an internal world.
After months on the road in support of Quit The Curse, Burch disappeared for a while. The long stretches of touring had been broken up by only a few weeks off here and there, and a month spent writing in Berlin between European dates. The time she did get to spend at home in Detroit was disrupted by several unexpected housing changes, adding to the transient feelings brought on by constant touring. When things finally stabilized, Burch encamped into a slow, thoughtful and intentional writing process for what would become the second album. Days were spent playing guitar, exploring unconventional chord changes, ruminating on song structures and allowing her subconscious to wander until lyrics materialized. Though about half of the songs were already written, this time was dedicated to taking a closer look at the loose ends of three years of ideas and seeing if there were common threads that held them together.
If You’re Dreaming was tracked with producer Sam Evian in his home studio in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York. Where the first album had been a rush of inspired songwriting followed by a drawn-out process of arrangement and mixing, Burch and Evian worked with self-imposed time limitations to establish a sharper focus and get to the core of the new songs. The work was swift but somehow more relaxed, locking into a groove of tracking the basic elements and then expanding on the arrangements with overdubs and auxiliary instrumentation. The end goal was to present not just an assortment of new songs, but craft an album that moved dynamically through an interconnected emotional arc.
With recurring themes of isolation, weariness and longing, these songs deliver that emotional arc with a delicate but uncompromising execution. Burch’s intrinsically catchy songwriting dials down the urgency of her debut a notch, taking a turn towards airy, jazz-voiced chords, floating reverb and an expansion of the sonic palate with unexpected instrumentation. The soft-rock bass grooves and understated saxophone lines of “Not So Bad” push an impressive pop structure into exciting new territory, and the sweetly melancholic “Tell Me What’s True” centers around muted electric piano, its languid but metered vibe recalling the gentler side of Carole King.
Junk Drawer - What I've Learned / What I'm Learning.
Having announced their debut album ‘Ready For The House’, out via Irish indie label Art For Blind for April 24th, Belfast quartet Junk Drawer are set to release the sprawling, opening tone-setter ‘What I’ve Learned / What I’m Learning’. Channelling the likes of Pavement, Thee Oh Sees and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and more the four-piece veer between slacker-rock, post-punk, krautrock and swirling psych across their at time chaotic, at times sanguine sound.
‘What I’ve Learned / What I’m Learning’ is the one track on the album where both main lyricists, brothers Stevie and Jake Lennox, sing lead vocals - a primer for what's to come on the rest of the record, as Jake's lucid psychedelia combines with Stevie channelling a hysterical, sardonic 'state of the nation' internal address that comes in moments of emotional volatility.
Stevie elaborates a little on the origin of the track: “The title comes from the Dunning-Kruger Effect - basically the less you know, the more you think you know, while the more you know, the less you think you know.’
The song also served as an important opportunity to open up on suppressed feelings with hitherto unexpressed candour: “It was the first time I wrote with a real purity of intent, allowing myself to let go of the irony, obfuscation and self-awareness that I felt obscured some of my previous writing, because of my complete loathing of heart-on-sleeve earnestness & sincerity. I was suffering from a lot of communication problems ,epilepsy and brain fog, and I didn't realise it until afterwards but it was an expulsion - as much of the album is”.
The Reverse are a North London band making a literate strand of indie-rock that encompasses 90’s alt, post-punk, alt-folk and a touch of the gothic, laced with quintessentially British style of delivering brutally caustic lyrics with a big slice of dark humour.
New single ‘Kill Us All’ is garage-blues guitar pop that recalls early 90’s purveyors of irreverent humour such as David Devant & His Spirit Wife and The Auteurs. In contrast to The Reverse’s last single ‘Crush My Chest With Your Hate’ which was an urgent post-punk assault on the UK’s growing anti immigration narrative, ‘Kill Us All’ takes a more minute look at human existence day-to-day. As frontman and observational lyricist Nathan Loughran explains: “‘Kill Us All’ contrasts the everyday and mundane in the lyrics "My head now hurts, I'm losing hope, breakfast's a pack of Wotsits and a can of Coke," with the stark recognition of our own mortality in the line "...and time will catch an kill us all." The song’s bass rolls, drums skip and the guitars sing to create a musical dissonance adding a juxtaposition to the darkly humorous lyrics.
‘Kill Us All’ is taken from The Reverse’s forthcoming album Which Way Out (24 April, Blang! Records). An album of both shade and light, the record moves from the occasionally vulnerable though to the outright visceral. Written about “both the personal and the political,” it includes songs that explore the vulnerability of falling in love and the fragility of the human existence through to the disturbing rise of the far-right with aim taken at The Sun, xenophobes, the Tories, Jeremy Kyle and everything in-between. All delivered with a sometimes snarling, often acerbic, and always unapologetically tongue-in-cheek style.
The Reverse have built up a live following by performing at festivals such as The Great Escape and supporting the likes of The Wave Pictures and Billy Bragg. In 2019 they performed at Standon Calling, signed a deal with Blang! Records and began sharing tracks from Which Way Out including ‘Nobody Likes You, Everybody Hates You’, ‘Nothing on Telly’ and ‘Abstract Heart.’ The latter single was one of Gary Crowley’s top songs of the year, leading to The Reverse recording a session for BBC Radio London, followed by a session for Dexter Bentley on Resonance FM. ‘Kill Us All’ is out as a digital single on 3 April, with The Reverse’s long player Which Way Out following on 24 April on Blang! Records (available on vinyl, cd and digital).
Songwriter Kaleb Hikele of the band shares: "Sign On The Road was written in one night, sitting on the piano bench as I watched a US election roll in. It's optimistic, uplifting and hopeful, with open ended lyrics that let you define your own meaning. Who knew we would need this song so badly in this isolated world we unexpectedly live in, the song is coming out just as my own city shuts down to quarantine and the irony of singing "I see this sign on the road" is heavy. I'm proud to give this song to those who need it the most today."Sign" is one of my favourite songs that I've carried with me on the road for many years now.
I've toured the song as a solo artist across the country and even recorded it as a demo with another band entirely called The Other Birds a while ago. It's taken so many years and experiences to finally sink in, to find the right place in time to be performed (with my current rock trio) and be recorded properly (live off the floor at a favourite studio of mine called The Chalet in Ontario). I'd been to The Chalet once ten years ago for my debut album and five years ago to record songs for "Winter", and I brought the same engineer from the Winter sessions to pay tribute to this past. Josh Bowman brought the perfect touch to this one studio day where we recorded all five songs live in a room together."
The Sun Harmonic is a solo folk act that grew into a rock and roll band and the main creative outlet for Canadian composer Kaleb Hikele since 2009. An eclectic songwriter and adventurous recording artist from Toronto's east end, raised in the small town of St.Thomas, Ontario. After a decade using his stage name, the artist was gratefully showcased by Canada's Walk of Fame in downtown Toronto and Festival Du Voyageur in Winnipeg 2020. Now a folk-rock trio, the group is ready to Rock and Roll more than ever.
HMS Morris return with 'Poetry' a couple of months after their very fine song 'Babanod'. The new piece builds in intensity, the vocals increasingly immersed in lush electro music are nonetheless wonderful. === oh!no?ok. return for a third time in a matter of months with 'Wheel Of Fortune' where the Salt Lake City band are in cracking form with this high octane rocker.
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HMS Morris - Poetry.
Hot on the heels of the well-received Babanod, released in early February, HMS Morris are now pleased to present Poetry. It’s the second in a series of singles due for release in 2020, and will be available from April 1st on Bubblewrap Records.
The song reflects the sliding scale of madness that results from unreciprocated obsessive love. Beginning with some light-hearted hypothetical quasi-stalking, singer Heledd Watkins then moves through self-criticism, recrimination, and finally a full-on banshee-wail of desperation.
Structurally the music is indebted to Ravel’s Bolero, a repeating ostinato rising steadily from very quiet to very loud – although in Poetry, HMS cover twice the volume in half the time, in acknowledgement of the limited attention span of the snapchat generation. Poetry will be available digitally from all the usual platforms.
Salt Lake City, Utah might be best known as the world headquarters for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That may change as a fertile counter-cultural underground music scene is slowly seeping into nationwide consciousness with artists such Neon Trees, Imagine Dragons, The Moth & the Flame, Sego, and Desert Noises. Up next, something weird and tuneful is poised to be Salt Lake City’s nice prime musical export. Self-described slacker rockers oh!no?ok. stake their claim to the mantle with the fearlessly catchy debut, randy warhole (or somethin).
oh!no?ok. is comprised of high school friends Ryan Osborn, Cole Miller, Jackson Ludlow, and local guitarist Nick Storey. The band is a year old, and has been working closely with locally-renowned producer Nate Pyfer (The Moth & the Flame, Kaskade, Sego). Lead vocalist Ryan and Nate laid the groundwork for the band’s music, though each member brings his unique flair, making the process a cohesive collaboration.
They play the kind of music you’d hear blasting forth from a suburban garage in the height of the alt-rock boom of the 1990s but they update this scruffy aesthetic with sleek but-not-too-polished production and a dose of raw skate punk. Their songs feature cleverly abstract lyrics, bold musical dynamics, experimental textures, adventurous arrangements, and sharp pop-rock hooks. This melding of tuneful and arty conjures an array of classic and current alt-rock innovators such as Weezer, Pavement, The Presidents of the United States, Butthole Surfers, and Spoon, FIDLAR, Car Seat Headrest, and PUP.
