Saturday, 16 April 2022

Brooke Annibale - emily + shawn - Riches - Nutrients

Photo - Shervin Lainez
Brooke Annibale - What If You.

Indie singer/songwriter Brooke Annibale announced that she has joined the Nettwerk Music Group roster. She also shared the first taste of new music from her upcoming album, details forthcoming. The lush, dreamy and "immediately catchy" (FLOOD) single “What If You” serves as the perfect introduction to the Pittsburgh-born, Rhode Island-based artist's redefined sound as she digs into the mixed emotions and gentle balance of maintaining her music career while acknowledging the complicated nature of a new love.

Brooke says, “I was wondering whether or not I could carry on making music the way I had in the past. I thought, is diving back into my music career gonna knock out any mental-health progress I've made? Can I put out a record, be vulnerable, and do the whole cycle again? And then I realized: It's a double-meaning metaphor. What if everything that I loved loved me back? What if I just did this? And it worked.”

Brooke's expressive and beautifully thoughtful songwriting creates a dreamy and enticing sonic landscape. She has been a favorite among music supervisors and featured in such media as Stereogum, Wall Street Journal, Under The Radar, American Songwriter, NPR/World Café and more. She has also shared the stage with artists like Mt. Joy, Iron & Wine, Lucius, and Rufus Wainwright. She joins Nettwerk’s expanding label roster, which also includes artists like Old Sea Brigade, Bre Kennedy, SYML, Luke Sital-Singh, Aisha Badru, Wild Rivers and more.

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emily + shawn - One Last Kiss.

“This song started out as a slow acoustic ballad, reflecting on our frustrations with the drag of the 9-5 workday. Making music is what we love, but our day jobs are a "necessary evil" in order to put food on the table while we shift our careers from typical corporate and government jobs into the music industry. The lyrics are a daydream of a future in which we are saying "goodbye" to our desk jobs and shifting into a career in music.”

For Brooklyn-based modern folk duo emily + shawn, the stuff in life that makes a difference requires heavy lifting, and careful attention to detail. This includes craft cocktails, artisanal baked goods, and well-written songs. These varied interests and a soulful sense of purpose imbue the pair’s adventurous spin on the folk tradition.

The twosome’s music is an authentic reflection of emily + shawn’s lives. The pair are, in fact, a couple—but don’t expect sappy love songs—Emily Welch is an immigration lawyer, and Shawn Welch works in the renewable energy field. emily + shawn’s songs are informed by their ethics, their myriad of experiences and interests, and their day to day interactions which they characterize sweetly as “healthy clashes.” Today, emily + shawn’s are issuing a series of singles that will eventually be bundled together as an EP produced by David Baron (Lumineers, Meghan Trainor, Shawn Mendes).

“Homegrown and multi-faceted are concepts that are really important to us. We take a deep interest in nuances and exploring,” Shawn shares. “Our songs are often vignettes of our life, or they capture some moment in time or give insights into specific feelings,” Emily says. Shawn adds: “The passing of time and a nostalgic quality are common themes in our music.”



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Riches - The Frequency.

The frequency is the feeling of ascending arrival in the altered state – being in love, in longing and belonging, it is soothing and alive.

Our new single takes inspiration from the desire to step outside the limits of ourselves, of our realities, and into a limitless waveform that instead connects us to everything else.

It is a calling on the ethereal to take on form, on music to bring touch and connection over the frontiers of physical walls and distances.

In chasing the feeling of connectedness for this song, it naturally evolved into a full band sound. Dan Lissvik (Studio, Atelje) added live bass and drums to a formerly electronic track.

The alchemy of more contributors and instruments resulted in the feeling we wanted for the song.

 


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Nutrients - Window Seat.

Nutrients, the Toronto-based group renowned for their gentle melodies and jangly pop songs are today sharing their new single, "Window Seat" which is out via Earth Libraries. The group – who have previously opened for Luna Li and Jaunt as well as performing at Boise's Treefort Festival – has slowly but surely grown into something more elaborate than their humble beginnings and this is evident with this new single.

Nutrients is often compared to various 90's bands for their slacker delivery and sometimes likened to certain contemporary bedroom pop artists for their oddball pop leanings. Periodically, but decreasingly so, they are noted for their occasional dissonant digressions. Taylor Teeple, the primary songwriter in the band, began the band as a modest home recording project deep below Boulevard St-Laurent in Montreal. After relocation to Toronto, the group’s membership eventually grew to include pianist, Iulia Ciobanu, bassist Sean McKee, and guitarist Will Hunter.

The new single finds the band mixing bouncy guitar lines and driving percussion with gorgeous vocal melodies, somewhat reminiscent of contemporaries such as Barrie, TOPS and Andy Shauf while drawing inspiration from the likes of Haircut 100, Steely Dan and China Crisis. The new single arrives with an excellent visual accompaniment further emphasizing the track's breezy notions with panning shots of vast landscapes lifted from the band's time on the road. Speaking about the single, Teeple says: "This is a quick guitar pop song that harkens back to songs Nutrients used to write. The guitar interplay is actually just two guitars playing this one-string riff at the same time with some minor deviations. The riff kinda sounds emo-adjacent almost."

After releasing a series of homemade tapes from 2016 to 2018 and early albums released on beloved Birmingham, Alabama label, Earth Libraries, the band is today returning for the first time in the 20s. Having spent the pandemic mining for fresh and forgotten sounds alongside a new member in multi-instrumentalist Ben Fukuzawa. The fruits of their labor are proudly on display this new single, "Window Seat". Teeple and Hunter’s guitars, once the center of attention, are overshadowed on this release by McKee’s basslines, Ciobanu’s ghostly harmonies, and Fukuzawa’s steady cadence.


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Thursday, 14 April 2022

Jillette Johnson - Black Pines

Jillette Johnson - Normal Kid.

Nashville-based artist Jillette Johnson has just released “Normal Kid,” her first new song of 2022. The song was co-written and produced by Joe Pisapia, who collaborated with Johnson on her critically acclaimed 2021 album It’s A Beautiful Day And I Love You. The new single, which draws upon late '70s new wave, early '80s synth-pop, and '90s R&B, arrives with an official video directed by Grant Claire that was shot on a vintage Sony Betamax 88 camera.

“I wrote Normal Kid with my producer, Joe Pisapia, about my life as a performer,” explains Johnson. “Since before I can remember, all I ever wanted to do was make a life out of making music. My dreams have always been as big as the sky and that fire in my belly has never gone away.”

“Normal Kid” follows the release of 2021’s single “Daddy Dopamine” and her first full length in more than 4 years, It’s A Beautiful Day And I Love You. The album was praised by American Songwriter,  GRAMMY.com, No Depression, NPR Music, Refinery29, Rolling Stone and UNCUT, who called it “a springboard into '60s pop, '70s rock, and Noughties indie...It's an adventurous palette that suits her well.” The Nashville Scene said the album “...offers the kind of songwriting that can make a record feel truly timeless… anchored by floating piano and Johnson’s smooth, flawless vocals.”


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Black Pines - Get What's Coming.

Following their recent release ‘Fire and Stone’, which offered a dose of escapism through its beautifully layered instrumentals and nostalgic undertone, Essex band Black Pines keeps the ball rolling with yet another powerful flame, ‘Get What’s Coming.’

Backing the tremendous response to breakthrough singles ‘Heaven’s Son’, ‘Power’ and ‘Hope’ in 2020,  their stripped-back collection ‘Isolation Tapes’ in early 2021, and their soulful single ‘Chains’ in 2021, the talented five-piece captures listeners with addictive melodies and explosive vocals.

‘Get What’s Coming’ is a chilling soundscape of blues-tinged rock blended into a denser contemporary rock that speaks to anyone with a taste for rhythm. With its bold guitar riffs, soaring vocal powerhouse, and deeply emotive lyricism, the single has a rousing disposition that is rich with authenticity.

When speaking on the new release, Black Pines said “Get What’s Coming is a song about overcoming addiction. It’s a rally cry to pick yourself up and start again.”

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Wednesday, 13 April 2022

Monophonics - Drive-By Truckers

Photo by Geoff Whitman
Monophonics - Love You Better.

Bay Area-based Monophonics have released “Love You Better,” the second single from their upcoming full-length Sage Motel (out May 13th via Colemine Records). The world's premier psychedelic soul band, Monophonics cordially invites you to attend the grand re-opening of the once thriving, once vibrant establishment, the legendary Sage Motel. A place where folks experience the highs and lows of human existence. A place where big dreams and broken hearts live, where people arrive without ever knowing how they got there. It's where individuals find themselves at a crossroads in life.

“The song ‘Love You Better’ is rooted in the spirit of soul music and hip hop,” Monophonics explain. “It’s a braggadocio tune with a clear message to the one you loved that no one will ever be as good to them. It is that feeling of knowing you gave your all to your partner and really tried to love them the right way, only to be hurt and taken for granted. It’s empowering and important to have that self worth and remind somebody that they really missed out on a really good thing.” The Sage Motel album announcement came last month with a video for the first single “Warpaint.”

What started as a quaint motor lodge and a common pitstop for travelers and truckers in the 1940s, Sage Motel morphed into a bohemian’s hang by the 1960s and 1970s. Artists, musicians, and vagabonds of all types would stop there as seedy ownership pumped obnoxious amounts of money into high end renovations, eventually attracting some of the most prominent acts of the era. But when the money ran out, The Sage Motel devolved into a place where you rent by the hour.

Sage Motel, Monophonics' fifth studio album since 2012, tells its story. Once again produced by brilliant bandleader Kelly Finnigan, the album captures a timeless sound that blends heavy soul with psych-rock. With their previous album, It’s Only Us, selling over 10,000 physical units and garnering over 20 million streams, Monophonics have built a reputation over the past decade as one of the most impactful bands in the country. It’s Only Us was praised by Billboard, FLOOD, Cool Hunting, and American Songwriter, who said “Take some Norman Whitfield-era Temptations, add Sly and the Family Stone circa There’s a Riot Goin’ On’s greasy funk, inject early 70s Curtis Mayfield Superfly, Marvin Gaye vocal dynamics and Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul dust, sprinkle in a pinch of Isley Brothers’ silky ballads and you’ve got a reasonable aural idea of the ballpark Monophonics are playing in.”

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Photo - Brantley Guitierrez
Drive-By Truckers - Welcome 2 Club XIII.

Drive-By Truckers will release their 14th studio album 'Welcome 2 Club XIII' on 3rd June via ATO Records. Pre-orders are available now. 'Welcome 2 Club XIII' is heralded by today’s premiere of its swinging title track, available for streaming and download. The track, which pays homage to the Muscle Shoals honky-tonk where founding members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley got their start, is joined by an official music video streaming now via YouTube.

“There were no cool bars in town and Club XIII was the best we had,” says Hood, referring to the two vocalist/guitarists’ former band, Adam’s House Cat, “but it wasn’t all that good, and our band wasn’t particularly liked there. From time to time the owner would throw us a Wednesday night or let us open for a hair-metal band we were a terrible fit for, and everyone would hang out outside until we were done playing. It wasn’t very funny at the time, but it’s funny to us now.”

Arriving as Drive-By Truckers enters its 26th year, 'Welcome 2 Club XIII' marks a sharp departure from the trenchant commentary of 'The Unraveling' and 'The New OK' (both released in 2020). Produced by longtime Drive-By Truckers collaborator David Barbe and mainly recorded at his studio in Athens, GA, 'Welcome 2 Club XIII' took shape over the course of three frenetic days in summer 2021 – a doubly extraordinary feat considering that the band had no prior intentions of making a new album. 

Featuring background vocals from the likes of Margo Price, R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, and Mississippi-bred singer/songwriter Schaefer Llana, 'Welcome 2 Club XIII' was recorded live with most songs cut in one or two takes, fully harnessing Drive-By Truckers’ freewheeling energy. Songs like epic, darkly thrilling 'The Driver' and the spirited, horn-blasted 'Every Single Storied Flameout' see the band – whose lineup also includes keyboardist/guitarist Jay Gonzalez, bassist Matt Patton, and drummer Brad Morgan – looking back on their formative years with both deadpan pragmatism and profound tenderness, instilling each song with the kind of lived-in detail that invites bittersweet reminiscence of your own misspent youth.

“Cooley and I have been playing together for 37 years now,” Hood says. “That first band might have failed miserably on a commercial level, but I’m really proud of what we did back then. It had a lot to do with who we ended up becoming.”

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Tuesday, 12 April 2022

Tuvaband - Natalie D Napoleon - Ellevator

Photo - Maria Louceiro
Tuvaband - Rejuvenate.

Oslo, Norway-based indie-rock artist Tuvaband is a critically-acclaimed artist with an impressive international profile that, to date, has earned 40 million cumulative streams on Spotify. Tuvaband is the wildly eclectic brainchild of fearless songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Tuva Hellum Marschhäuser. Tuva previously earned a Norwegian Grammy nomination. Her song “Irreversible” was remixed by beloved dub icon Lee "Scratch" Perry.

Tuva’s intrepid artistry has garnered favorable comparisons to Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, David Lynch, and CocoRosie. Her songwriting exudes an indie-pop mystique, easing through delicate, piano-led folk, softly-soaring post-rock, and carefully-crafted sound design. Floating over these carefully-composed songs and densely textured soundscapes are Tuva’s fluttery vocals which manage to be both visceral and vulnerable. Tuvaband’s latest album, New Orders, out October 21, 2022 —her fourth overall—is a bold exploration of the many facets of her creativity. It marks the first time she did everything on an album, including playing all the instruments (except trombone and drums, though she programmed these beforehand and additionally kept parts of it), recording, producing, and mixing. It’s a pure transmission of Tuva’s full-bloom artistry.

New Orders’ first single is the album’s opening track, “Rejuvenate,'' a song that is both haunting and hypnotic. Wrapped in shoegaze style textures and propelled by trip-hop drums, it pulls the listener into a warm pulsating womb. “During the height of COVID, I listened to music to feel comforted. I wanted to write something that felt soothing, and as this is a song about a friendship, I decided to write from a more empathic angle.” Tuva shares. The song overflows with grounding affirmations, and one choice lyrical passage reads: Nothing’s in vain - step back and contemplate/I know you’re in pain - take your time - rejuvenate/I think you’ll be fine - breathe in and accumulate/Let’s intertwine - be nothing but compassionate.


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Natalie D Napoleon - You Wanted To Be The Shore But Instead You Were The Sea (Album). 

Sometimes in life and music you just have to say 'What-the-hell!’. Having spent 25 years playing music and a decade living and performing in California, Natalie D Napoleon decided to return to her native Western Australia. She had just been awarded a prestigious national poetry prize and was subsequently offered a scholarship to undertake a PhD in poetry. What long-suffering musician could say no to that? After two decades of performing everywhere from grimy Australian pubs to commanding the stage of international music festivals, Natalie had all but given up on music. It didn't seem to love her quite as much as she loved it. But before she said goodbye to her American band, she decided to record her latest collection of songs. 

A lot had changed since Natalie recorded her 2012 release - Leaving Me Dry - in a lavish Santa Barbara studio with an all-star cast. Her long-time sidekick Kenny Edwards, who for decades was Linda Ronstadt’s leading man, had passed away while David Piltch was back on the road with k.d. lang. Eight years on and Natalie had an album's worth of songs, most of which were written on the front porch of her 100-year-old Santa Barbara cottage and honed live with her rustically orchestrated fourpiece. So Natalie threw caution the wind, said 'What the hell!' and went into an old wooden chapel nestled in the hills behind Santa Barbara with a single microphone to see what the band could capture. The intent was to record the songs for posterity. With that one mic they recorded 12 songs that Natalie considered worthy of everybody's time. 

The aim - to capture the beauty and spontaneity of each song’s performance when it was fresh and new, the joy of four people playing music in a room together and the sonic beauty of the century-old wooden chapel, “I went into the room with Dan Phillips, Jim Connolly, and Doug Pettibone, with faith and trust in each other and, damn, the music gods delivered.” 

The result is the 12-song album, You Wanted To Be The Shore But Instead You Were The Sea - captured live with a single microphone. When Natalie played the recording to friends, they told her she needed to release it. So she did - via Bandcamp. Radio in Australia started playing the first single, "Thunder Rumor" and enthusiastically added it to playlists Australia-wide. When the second single, "Wildflowers" was released the album climbed to the very top of Australia's AIR Independent Albums Chart. With rave reviews from critics and word to mouth support it seemed that the universe was responding in kind. Now, in 2022, with some much-needed help by a grant from the Western Australian government, the album is being released internationally for the first time, on her own imprint - First Blood Recordings.

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Ellevator - Party Trick.

The Hamilton, Ontario-based trio, Ellevator are today sharing their new single, "Party Trick" which arrives as the final advance track to be lifted from their forthcoming Chris Walla-produced debut album, The Words You Spoke Still Move Me  – out May 6 via Arts & Crafts. The new single arrives following earlier tips from NPR, Consequence, The Needle Drop, Exclaim, FLOOD, The Line of Best Fit, Under the Radar, CBC and more. The band, who have just wrapped up a run of US dates including a stint at SXSW will support the release of the new record with Canadian dates this May with support coming from Pleasure Craft (Toronto) and Deanna Petcoff (London, Hamilton).

The band, which is comprised of Nabi Sue Bersche, guitarist, Tyler Bersche and bassist/synth player, Elliott Gwynne, will deliver on the promise of their self-titled 2018 EP with their long-awaited debut album. The record was pieced together across numerous locations but primarily while living together at The Bathouse (a Kingston-area facility owned by Canadian alt-rock legends The Tragically Hip) and comes off the back of earlier dates with Amber Run, BANNERS, Cold War Kids, Arkells and Dear Rouge. Across 12 tracks, it inhabits an emotional landscape that is both breathtakingly intimate and impossibly vast, documenting various experiences to turn universal (existential longing, romantic power struggles, the neverending work of true self-discovery) and highly specific (e.g., one band member’s journey in extracting herself from a cult) storytelling into a truly hypnotic body of work, giving rise to the kind of radiant open-heartedness that radically transforms our own perspective.

Ellevator poses a fantastic ability to sculpt these mammoth, melodramatic post-rock and indie-rock soundscapes, somewhat inspired by the late-aughts sounds of Spoon, Metric, Interpol and Arcade Fire, as well as the stadium-ready sounds of U2, Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel. "Party Trick", the album closer, arrives as one of the album's twinkling, emotive ballads utilising delicate piano and brooding guitar textures.

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Alice Phoebe Lou - Adult Leisure - Dan Ashley - Kramon feat. Hunter Hawkins

Photo - Mira Matthew Alice Phoebe Lou - Pretender. Alice Phoebe Lou, announces that her sixth album Oblivion will be released on 24th Octob...