Treasure Island is the name of a beloved beach town on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The TI beachfront is home to a number of pretty iconic 1950s roadside architectural landmarks, like the Thunderbird Resort’s oversize neon sign, which we reference in the opening line of the song. It’s not a hidden-getaway type of spot but to us that beach always radiated a kind of magical healing energy. This song whose basic rhythm track was composed and recorded in a 10-minute span at Rockaway studio in December 2018 was our humble attempt at bottling Treasure Island’s atmosphere, in musical form. Featuring “the funkiest drum machine ever,” according to Shags.
Flowerland is the third album from French-American duo Pearl & The Oysters, available September 3rd, 2021 via Chicago’s Feeltrip Records.
With the band having recently relocated to LA, the album was intended as the final installment of Pearl & The Oysters’ ‘Florida trilogy,’ begun on their self-titled debut (2017) and continued on Canned Music (2018), a space age odyssey equal parts fawning over the Floweredland’s natural spectacles and mourning the peril that climate change has wrought on it all.
In comparison with previous releases, Flowerland reveals more of the inner workings of Davis and Polack’s minds, with the pair trading fantastical stories about zany characters for more personal narratives detailing worries of the everyday and universal variety. While the music remains primarily indebted to the escapist optimism of late-1960s soft pop, cloudier themes such as eco-anxiety, depression, and the stresses of finishing graduate school are all explored (somewhat cryptically) in the lyrics, although never in an overwhelming way. For Davis and Polack, Flowerland was meant as an attempt to channel crippling emotions into an uplifting listen, rather than a deliberately heavy experience.
Ed released his first full-length English-language album, Be Here Now, a few days ago.
’Edouard Landry's songs are a mix of pop, rock, folk and catchy melodies. The Sudbury, Ontario artist was nominated for the ‘Best Male Performer’ category at the Gala des prix Trille Or (2017), ‘Francophone Artist of the Year’ at the Country Music Association of Ontario Awards (2020).
His albums Pomme plastique II and L’escalade were nominated ‘Best Album by a Francophone Artist’ at the Northern Ontario Music and Film Awards (2017 and 2019).
Ed has released his first full-length English album, Be Here Now, about finding mindfulness and inner peace to live in the ‘now’ no matter where you are. The theme of the album is learning to live in the moment.
Jennifer Lyn & the Groove Revival - Nothing Holding Me Down.
On the plains of North Dakota, USA nestled between the tall grass and the open prairie sky sits a recording studio. The sound of over driven guitars with dueling lead harmonies and classic rock undertones rips through the air followed by vocals that reach you with a deep resonation in your soul.
This type of music, uncharacteristic of the area, is akin to a sound of decades past and Jennifer Lyn and her band, Jennifer Lyn & The Groove Revival, are determined to share their spin on this style of music with the world.
Her band's latest project, titled “Nothing Holding Me Down”, features music from a woman who clearly has a soul set a blaze like a person baptized in the river of Rock n Roll. Lyn was a child heavily influenced by the sounds heard while spinning her parents’ vinyl, and that influence led her to capture various genres on this release such as Rock, Blues, R&B, and a dash of roots music.
This album is reminiscent 60s and 70s vibe Music melted into a pot of contemporary Blues-Rock.
For the first time since her early beginnings, Josienne Clarke is flying solo. No label, no musical partner, no producer. Clarke is in complete control of her songwriting, arranging, producing, release schedule and musical direction. A Small Unknowable Thing, Clarke's second solo album will be released on August 13th via her own label, Corduroy Punk Records. Today she has shared the first taste of her new album and new sound in the form of defiant new single. 'Sit out' is frustration and defiance in sonic form. “All you stand for / Makes me want to sit out” she sings over thick, driving guitars and an almost Beastie Boys-esque drum beat. The heaviest moment on the album, ‘Sit Out’ sees Clarke fully let rip.
Despite writing a plethora of critically acclaimed songs, winning a BBC Folk Award, opening for Robert Plant on his European tour, playing prominent slots on some of the UK’s biggest festivals and even taking a leading role in The National Theatre’s revival of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good (after being personally chosen by Cerys Matthews no less), Clarke felt daily self-doubt as a result of an industry that variously gas-lit, put-down, questioned and othered. It’s an experience the vast majority of women making music today can identify with. A Small Unknowable Thing is, at least in part, about recognising there are still existing structures to keep women in their place – but it’s also about having the courage to break those structures down too.
“I realised that I had to be so explicit in explaining how much I’d done in order to get credit for it,” Clarke explains. “I started saying ‘No, actually, I did all of this, can we put my name on this thing?’ It’s really resisted – it’s as if I’m being an arrogant megalomaniac for wanting the credit for stuff that I did. Now, I just do it all by myself. If there isn’t another name on it, then there can’t be a misappropriation.”
After leaving her label, musical partnership and home (Clarke moved to a small village on the outskirts of Glasgow with her husband), she started afresh. Gradually, as she slowly began to write and record once more, the album’s narrative arc emerged and Clarke found herself again. “It’s an empowered narrative, not a weak and vulnerable one,” Clarke says of the album. “It was a conscious decision to walk away from my career as it was and there’s a positive message on this record: there’s a lot of reclaiming the narrative.”
From Niloo talks about Funny Face - I wrote it in 2018 and was originally hoping to release it with a band I had been playing with at the time, LOOELLE. But the song felt so personal to me and didn’t fit that project’s dreamfolk repertoire. I finally recorded it in February of 2020 at the beautiful Risque Disque studio, in collaboration with my friends Shilo Preshyon of Cartoon Lizard, Jen Yakamovich of Troll Dolly and Billy Young of Isness.
The sound of Funny Face is on the surface upbeat and vibrant with its driving beat, warm synth and catchy melody. Yet, the warping tape echo sounds and distortions throughout the track maintain an underlying sense of dreamlike darkness. In a similar vein, the lyrics of the song are about stumbling through your own path in life without taking yourself too seriously. It is about honouring your mistakes and shortcomings and striving for happiness rather than perfection in a world that’s far from perfect.
In keeping with this theme, the imperfect but inevitable timing of the pandemic forced us to get creative in making the music video. I teamed up with filmmaker Ali Calladine, who shot the video as a single person director and crew. The majority of the video was shot in the neighborhood of Fernwood, Victoria and features friends and community members in their respective ‘bubbles’. The visuals of the video capture the vibrancy and drive of the music, while the action follows the main character, who searches the neighborhood in hopes of finding the source of this strange music.
Recorded just prior to lockdown, multi instrumentalist 17 year old (then 16) Rhys Evan with fellow guitarist Josh Craig recorded in our Mid Wales studio.
Hailstones is an introduction to Rhys Evan, a beautify crafted song on the struggles of young life. A long song for a single we know, but we felt it best to leave it as it is. We have a trimmed version for radio plays only, that just bring the track in on the vocal missing the lengthy intro. We felt it best not to edit the main body of the song...although we tried!
Rhys is still studying at school in Aberystwyth and he is still developing as an artist. Currently he is finding musicians to perform live, but as everyone know, schools are in chaos with constant assessments due to Covid, so these are difficult times.
We hope you find time to listen to this great track and hope a space might open up for Rhys to get onto the airwaves with his very first recording. This release will closely be followed up by his second single , “Arcade Running” with his debut EP “Tiny House EP 1” for June 2021
First on board is The Guardian and NME writer Fergal Kinney, who has written an introduction to Rhys Evan on this his first release. We hope you find him just as interesting and hope we can all help Rhys go from a bedroom artist in rural Mid Wales to hopefully someone more widely known on the national stage.
The band’s new stand alone single that follows up last year's acclaimed album Play & Rewind, “When We Were Young” takes the band in more upbeat and pop direction. Written by singer Claire Cuny while visiting her partner Monte Weber’s family, it captures the vitality and nostalgia of reflecting on the past in the presence of family. The instrumentation features a thumbing energetic synth bass and an afro-rock drum beat that the band had been jamming to that summer.
In Claire's words, "The song started out as a sad, slow guitar ballad I wrote while visiting Monte’s family one summer. When we brought the idea back to Brooklyn, Monte transformed the song into the more uptempo, energetic tune it is now. We changed nearly everything about the tune apart from the key and the lyrics.
The song was sped up, with a thumping energetic synth bass, and a beat which was a loose transcription of the opening measures of a Lafayette Afro Rock tune from the 1970’s that we had been jamming out to that summer. Monte’s new direction inspired me to sing more rhythmically than my original version and even inspired a simple but heart-felt guitar riff that opens the song and is looped throughout. It’s been a rough year, we hope this song makes you smile... even if you hadn’t felt good for a while."
UK alternative band James have released their new album All The Colours Of You. James will perform tracks from the new record and many more from their rich catalogue live this summer, across festival dates in the UK and Europe.
James’ sixteenth studio album, All The Colours Of You was recorded in part before the Covid pandemic struck and is produced by the Grammy award-winning Jacknife Lee (U2, REM, Snow Patrol, The Killers). Matching the energy of the lyrics, Lee brought a fresh approach to James’ sound, working remotely from his studio with Booth (Lee’s Topanga Canyon neighbor) and liaising in a daisy chain with fellow band member Jim Glennie, reimagining their demos, and capturing the band in all their virtual glory.
The result is a record with the most fresh and festival ready tracks of their 39-year career, the sound of one of Britain’s best bands, deconstructed and reassembled by one of the world’s most renowned producers.
Since their breakthrough single in 1991, “Sit Down”, James have released fifteen studio albums, selling over 25 million copies in the process, and performed countless headline shows and festivals across the world. Many in the US will know James from their 1993 hit “Laid” which charted on the Billboard Hot 100, was featured as the theme song to the American Pie movies and has appeared numerous times in film and tv over the years. They continue to be a huge live draw, having sold 60,000 tickets for a UK arena tour scheduled for this November and December; a tour which has sold faster than any previous James tour. Their last US tour dates were a 2019 sold out, national run of shows with the Psychedelic Furs.
NY-based group Spud Cannon are sharing "Lovely," the final single off of their forthcoming new album, Good Kids Make Bad Apples. I was hoping you might get a chance to check it out and consider featuring it in some way.
Ari Bowe (keys, vox) shares, "When I wrote this song, I thought of it as the song I would write if my (then) boyfriend broke up with me. Funnily enough, I completely foreshadowed the end of that relationship -- my ex broke up with me barely a month after I wrote “Lovely.”
The verses are all about wanting to go back in time, not understanding how to move forward, and the what if’s that inevitably run through your head. The chorus came together pretty easily. During the writing process, Meg used the word “Lovely” as a stand-in before we had lyrics, and I ran with it.
That word inspired the song, and the bittersweet vibe of the instrumentals pushed me in the direction of a breakup song. But it’s also uplifting in a way: You’re going through a painful process following a breakup, and you feel consumed by the loss you’re feeling, but you know it hurts so badly because of how lovely the good times were."
Howard Mordoh, 69, is a retired clinical laboratory scientist, a southern California native, and possibly the world’s biggest concert enthusiast. He has been a notorious fixture of the Los Angeles music scene for decades, attending five to eight concerts per week since the 1970s and always dancing to his fullest. Easily recognizable thanks to his long white hair and spirited dance style, Mordoh’s love of live concerts spans genres and venues just as long as he can keep dancing. "Howard Mordoh is a one-man dance party, always ending up in the ‘Front Row,’” Fodor explains. “This song captures the joy he exudes when dancing to live music.” With the cancellation of live concerts in 2020 due to COVID-19, Mordoh has had to get more creative to keep dancing.
The process for the song started in Henry Ingraham’s home studio because safety protocols were still in order due to COVID-19, but as the city of Los Angeles slowly reopens, they were finally able to get together with Mordoh to shoot a video for “Front Row.” The music video was directed by Jen Fodor, who also produced and directed the documentary alongside Scott Sheppard. For the music video, Nadia Vaeh, who co-wrote the song with Fodor and Ingraham, compliments the song's retro beat with her glittery gold tracksuit while she belts out catchy pop lyrics. The rest of the band is also decked out in 80’s flair, including Howard Mordoh, who dances his way to the front of the stage. As the song peaks, the band is joined on stage by Fodor and Mordoh, resulting in a full-blown dance party.
The “Front Row” music video is a reminder not to take life for granted. This is indicated by seeing how happy Howard Mordoh is throughout the video to finally be dancing to live music again. Nadia Vaeh and Jen Fodor want listeners to continue to remain hopeful and optimistic about the future of live music.
Americana-folk-rock force Seafoam Green continue to impress with the third single from the LP, ‘For Something To Say’.
‘For Something To Say’, is the opening track of ‘Martin’s Garden’ and instantly pleases with fuzzy jam-band grit and sunshine harmonies, oozing with guitar solo twang and expansive organ vistas. It’s a rollicking journey through the band’s retro influences, flecked with their own unique twist that encompasses Americana influences and the band’s roots in Liverpool and Ireland with a nod to modern folk-rock bands like My Morning Jacket, Band Of Horses and Deadstring Brothers.
On the new single Dave O’Grady says, “For Something to Say is a glimpse of things we have seen/thought and experienced on the road; be it USA or Europe, a new story unfolds in front of us everyday and it's quite the adventure!”
“We are an old school “road band”, we love to travel and spread our music”, he explains “…plus it’s the only way we make a living…“Ive see the sun set twice today” is how it can feel when you’re on a 1,000 mile drive between shows but you've gotta to make it!”.
“I burn my feet for something to say”, - touring and travelling (especially squashed into a hatchback with gear for months) can be very hard on the mind and the body but we do it to gain and share our experiences through our music.”, O’Grady expands.
Singer/songwriter Megan Wyler has announced her first new album in eight years Upside Now, to be released July 9, 2021. Wyler has also shared the album’s ethereal title track “Upside Now” along with a video featuring dancer Indiana Woodward and directed by Goldmond Fong (Katy Perry, Maggie Rogers).
“This collection of songs is a cycle of seeking and finding - often with an unexpected outcome, but catharsis nonetheless,” says Wyler. “I am expanding/digging, coming to terms with untimely death, experiencing deepest love, emerging from heartbreak, lighting the fire of resistance, celebrating female solidarity, passion, fury, the cosmos. Lighthearted stuff like that."
A California native, Wyler released her 2013 debut Through The Noise while living in London. The album was praised by the likes of Nowness, Songwriting Magazine, Indie Shuffle who described her sound as “incredibly moving and luscious,” and Clash Magazine who called her music “subtle, delicate and very beautiful.” Closely following that album’s release, Wyler had a young son with a number of demanding medical needs. “It was my honour and privilege to make him my priority,” says Wyler. “Being a mother is and always will be my first job ahead of anything else.” During this time, Wyler found herself in a bit of a creative “freeze-over” as she calls it. “It was like I could see songs, ready to be born, but I couldn’t access them somehow.” As things calmed down at home, however, her creative freeze began to thaw.
Now Wyler is returning in full force. Earlier this year Wyler shared Upside Now’s first single “The Calling”. The song was featured on a number of top Apple Music playlists including New Music Daily, New In Alternative, and Wax Eclectic, and was used as the opening title music of the new Amazon Original Series Tell Me Your Secrets.
The Speed Of Sound - Replicant / The Melancholy Rose.
Now in their 4th decade, Manchester UK’s underground music veterans The Speed Of Sound return to the Big Stir Records Digital Singles, again displaying two vastly contrasting sides of their own distinctive, distilled and deeply recognisable tones:
Replicant: Driven by acoustic guitar and exuding a joyous hip-swaying bouncing beat. Replicant playfully asks questions about the very nature of human existence. Offering a foretaste of the themes of the upcoming full length album. Here too, The Speed Of Sound draw heavily from their Science-Fiction influences. While Replicant seems to inhabit the same universe as Blade Runner it also carries another message from the corporate world. Where modern job interviews appear to have evolved into some kind of reverse Voight-Kampff Test; instead of designed to detect replicants, the purpose is to determine if the applicant has unfortunately retained any human characteristics, or will - as hoped - mechanically follow scripts and instructions. Do Androids dance to analogue music? We don’t know, but point your arm and shout along with the chorus.
The Melancholy Rose: Shimmering summer pop for shaded people; languid open and drifting, a gothically tinged piece of romanticism lies atop a sparkling guitar riff and a tale of the first rose of the year to bloom. Ahead of its time and alone, but merely the trailblazer showing the way and heralding the coming change. A celebration of the sudden bursting open of summer itself and an invitation to tune out from the background white-noise of civilisation and relax. To exist in the moment and enjoy the things around us. The Speed Of Sound are known for their power, yet this displays their soaring delicate side. Guest vocals are provided by one of pair a blackbirds that nested (and successfully fledged four chicks) among the dense honeysuckle and ivy of John A’s back garden during lockdown.
Mazey Haze is the moniker of 21 year old Amsterdam-based artist Nadine Appeldoorn. Today she releases her debut single "Sad Lonely Groove". Dreamy guitar-driven indie-pop reminiscent of Beach Fossils, Alvvays, Jay Som and Men I Trust, debut single "Sad Lonely Groove" is an honest reflection on a moment in Appeldoorn's life where time felt like it was standing still.
"If I was further from you I’d get it all / your face looks the same / as if I was floating around in dead air for months or days" Appeldoorn sings atop a wave of atmospheric synths, funk-filled bass lines and skittering percussion - as she reminisces in the aftermath of a tough break-up.
Speaking on the track, Mazey Haze said: "The song is about me feeling the lowest and loneliest I’ve ever felt in my life. I hadn’t built lots of friend relationships yet and I forced myself to be alone with myself. It’s about missing the guy I thought I was in love with. It’s a stream of thoughts that were circling around in my head all the time. It was the first time that I realized I wasn’t able to be happy by myself and was very dependent in the past relationship. Suddenly I had to meet and get to know myself, something I had never done before. When I wrote this song I was still running away from it all."
A neatly delivered juxtaposition; sonically "Sad Lonely Groove" feels free and overwhelmingly positive, a cathartic reaction to the experiences that led to the initial idea for the song. Reflective, insightful, often wistful and always unashamedly honest - Mazey Haze's songs emerge from deep within, channelling an authentic expression that naturally surfaces with only the humble hope that the listener might feel less alone and more connected.
Growing up surrounded by music from ABBA, Tears for Fears, Talk Talk, Fleetwood Mac and The Bee Gees, Mazey Haze started writing songs at age 13 before recording full demos on her laptop by the age of 16 - experimenting with different genres, sounds, decades and production elements. Combining these influences with her ability to write songs that digest and express her deepest and darkest feelings, Mazey Haze is now ready to share her first creative offerings with the world.
Dakota Roundhouse - Don’t You Say That You Love Me.
Background from Jon Fields: I'm a lyricist and producer originally from Kansas City, USA. I’ve been involved in music most of my life and have produced several CDs on my own over the years.
Dakota Roundhouse is my latest studio project. I'm working with other artists and studios remotely on an album. This single is one of the songs that will be on it. I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I enjoyed writing the lyrics for and producing it.
What inspires my lyrics? Every good song starts with a good story and not all good stories are necessarily happy stories. I have a lot of stories to draw upon in my life.
Nashville-based indie-folk artist Bridget Caldwell has shared her debut single, “Pharmaceuticals”. The track comes from her EP, Kingmaker due out on August 6th.
While “Pharmaceuticals” takes an uptempo instrumental approach, lyrically it’s a sensitive examination of a fractured relationship. Caldwell penned the track with songwriter Luke Preston, who was in the midst of a similar situation. What started as a conversation shared over a hardly palatable bottle of Barefoot turned into a song that speaks to the heartache of loving someone you can’t save. Caldwell explains, “We shared the feeling of despair watching these people in our lives that we loved so much just disintegrating, and thinking, ‘What can I do here?’ And coming to the conclusion of, ‘Well, not a lot.’” Caldwell continues, “I think that's something that many people experience - but we wanted to write it in a way that didn't sound judgmental.” For the songwriter it’s the real life-observations from a relationship which taught her one of life's hardest lessons: no amount of love can will a person to change.
Bridget learned about life’s unpredictable highs and lows growing up in Salem, Oregon. With a laugh, she describes herself as a “hammy, emotional, chaotic, child.” Cast as the lead in a school play, she got the musical theater bug early and went on to train extensively. But towards the end of high school, a severe bout of mono resulted in a surgery that significantly altered her singing voice.
Devastated but determined, Caldwell moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University and ultimately realized that her “new” voice was actually better suited for the new sound that she wanted to achieve. At the same time, watching her classmates encouraged her to expand her own skills beyond performing. “I got swept up with this group of ragtag kids, and everyone was writing songs,” she says.
Leeds art-rock outfit Mush share their new single “Peak Bleak” - the first glimpse from their new limited edition green 7” single that will be released as part of Record Store Day 2021, alongside the track “Clarion Call”.
Never ones to rest on their laurels, the new single "Peak Bleak" immediately follows up their hugely acclaimed second album “Lines Redacted" and sees the band further exploring the outer reaches of art-rock in truly bleak circumstances, as lead-singer Daniel Hyndman explains: “I had to buy an ebow to record this song, which left me skint for the month. The song was previously called 'peak good' but the title was changed to reflect the feeling engendered by having to spend £100.”
Mush’s new album “Lines Redacted”, which includes the BBC 6 Music playlisted single “Blunt Instruments”, received a wave of critical acclaim upon its release in February. Glowing reviews from UNCUT "One of the finest British guitar records of recent years", Pitchfork "Rallying against aggravating, absurd political realities with passion and humor", Dork "'Lines Redacted' feel as though it belongs precisely in the here and now" and more.
Having released one of the most acclaimed debut albums of 2020, New York City trio Nation of Language have announced their sophomore follow up, A Way Forward, and share the album’s first single, “Across That Fine Line.” Additionally, the electro-synth explorers will head out on their first U.S. headlining tour this September-October in support, along with previously announced appearances at Reading-Leeds Festival in the UK and Governors Ball in New York.
Discussing “Across That Fine Line” songwriter/vocalist Ian Devaney stated, “‘Across That Fine Line’ is a reflection on that moment when a non-romantic relationship flips into something different. When the air in the room suddenly feels like it changes in an undefinable way. It’s a kind of celebration of that certain joyous panic, and the uncertainty that surfaces right after it.
Sonically, it’s meant to feel like running down a hill, just out of control. I had been listening to a lot of Thee Oh Sees at the time of writing it and admiring the way they supercharge krautrock rhythms and imbue them with a kind of mania, which felt like an appropriate vibe to work with and make our own.” A Way Forward is the follow up to Nation of Language’s debut album, Introduction, Presence, released in 2020 during the early stages of COVID’s merciless mayhem, naively pushed from early April to late May, with the hope that things would improve by the summer.
While that turned out to not be the case, a flurry of raves for the album from journalists and radio stations around the world, as well as landing on year-end ‘Best of' lists from Rough Trade, Stereogum, Paste, Under The Radar, the NME, and glowing reviews from Pitchfork and the Associated Press, caused the album to reach more people than the band ever thought possible, even as they were unable to tour in support of it. “We’ve always been real believers in our live show as the best way to reach new people,” Devaney said. “When it became clear there wouldn’t be any touring, we were sure it was a death knell for the album.”
