Tom Jenkins - NUTANA

Tom Jenkins - Products of the Western World.

Welsh singer-songwriter Tom Jenkins has unveiled a new video for “Products of the Western World”, ahead of a string of UK live dates this Spring/Summer. A hazy, languid track that swings from discordant to dreamy in a beat, “Products of the Western World” also features legendary guitarist Marc Ford of The Black Crowes on slide guitar.

Of the new track, Tom explains: “”Products of the Western World” is like my theme tune to the end of the world or the closing credits. It’s a song of depressing, serious subject matter played out in a joyous, almost bluesy, Gospel, Ben-Folds inspired manner, that it throws you from the idea of how messed up our world really is.”

“Products of the Western World” is taken from Tom Jenkins’ expansive and exploratory recent studio album, out now, via Xtra Mile Recordings. ‘‘It Comes In The Morning, It Hangs In The Evening Sky’ is the singer-songwriter’s follow-up to 2019 solo debut ‘Misery In Comfort’.

Recorded in the depths of lockdown, Tom started tracking the album in a disused barn on an old laptop with just one microphone and a 2010 version of GarageBand. Realising he was completely out of his depth, he turned to lifelong friend and producer Todd Campbell and the pair began to turn the collection of songs into a full-length album at his studio in South Wales.

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

NUTANA - Nutana (Album).

Sam Corbett tells us the following about his superb new album released under the monika NUTANA. "You may know me as the drummer from The Sheepdogs, and you may or may not know that I was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2018. My treatment left me too tired to drum, so I had to bow out of a couple tours with The Sheepdogs. At home and unsure of what to do, I started playing the piano and writing the songs that became my debut album, released last Friday April 7th under the name NUTANA."

Sam continues "My songwriting was an attempt to cheer myself up and maintain a connection to music during a time when I felt untethered. "Ave H Blue" is about that period of time in my life. Given the subject matter, I went for a calm and reflective vibe, and musically it lands somewhere between Fleetwood Mac and Gordon Lightfoot.

When I was first diagnosed, I understood that testicular cancer had a high survival rate, but I didn't know yet if it had spread throughout my body. So it was still weighing heavily on my mind, and that's why my diagnosis and treatment play such a large role in the songs on this album.

At the same time, I wanted the lyrics on NUTANA to be a little more subtle, and to speak to more than just other cancer survivors. A lot of the songwriting I like is open to interpretation and I wanted to allow my songs to have that space. Sometimes the most personal stuff can also be the most universal. This album has also allowed me to grow a lot as an overall musician, which is something I’ve been able to take back to my role in The Sheepdogs."

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

Girl Ray - Drive-By Truckers - Poi Dog Pondering

Girl Ray - Hold Tight.

London's Girl Ray are no strangers to re-invention. The three-piece comprising Poppy Hankin, Iris McConnell and Sophie Moss, made an immediate impact with the release of their 2017 debut Earl Grey on the influential indie Moshi Moshi (Anna Meredith, Florence & The Machine, Kate Nash), which channeled the baroque 70s soft pop of Todd Rundgren through the scrappy aesthetics of 80s UK indie and earned high praise from outlets like Pitchfork, The Guardian, Stereogum and FADER among many others. Their second LP, 2019’s Girl, saw the band change direction dramatically, taking on a kind of indie-fied R&B that The Guardian described as "the great sound of a band getting pop wrong," and in 2021 the band returned in yet another new guise, releasing the one off, house-adjacent single "Give Me Your Love" that was produced with Hot Chip's Joe Goddard and Al Doyle.

Today, Girl Ray have returned to announce their third LP Prestige, an album they made with the revered producer Ben H Allen (Gnarls Barkley, Animal Collective, MIA, Belle & Sebastian), that will be released on August 4th on Moshi Moshi. To mark the announce the band have shared the lead single "Hold Tight", alongside an extremely endearing video directed by long time collaborator Alex Catouris.

The band hinted at their new direction with the one off single "Everybody's Saying That", which was released in February and received best of the month honors from FADER, who described it as "the kind of song Dua Lipa would make if she was more used to playing pubs than arenas." "Hold Tight" sees the band continue in that direction, maintaining the bookish introspection, and open-hearted songwriting that have long been the core of the band's sound with a bright new sonic pallet.

“Lyrically this songs is about how appreciative I am to have found my partner, and how my mental load feels so much lighter and easier to bear now that I'm with her," Hankin explains. "The production on this takes some inspiration from Haim's incredible record ‘Women in Music Pt. III’, and features a subby drum loop inspired by Atlanta’s hip hop scene.”

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

Drive-By Truckers - Puttin’ People on the Moon (Vocal Recut, Remixed, Remastered).

The Drive-By Truckers will release The Complete Dirty South on June 16, 2023, via New West Records. Originally released in 2004 to wide acclaim, The Dirty South explores the mean highways and dark hollers of what the band called the “Mythological South,” a tornado-ravaged landscape populated by bootleggers and small-time criminals, everyday folks just scraping to get by and looming icons like Sam Phillips, John Henry, and Sheriff Buford Pusser. The album is a reckoning with the place they call home.

The ground-breaking album has been re-sequenced and expanded to the band’s initially proposed 17-song track listing. It includes 3 bonus tracks that were left off the original album, 4 remixed songs, and 2 featuring newly updated vocals. Also included is a 32-page book featuring original and new liner notes written by the Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood, track-by-track descriptions written by Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell, never-before-seen photos, and updated artwork by the late Wes Freed. The Complete Dirty South was remastered by the legendary Greg Calbi. This definitive version of the album will finally be available as the band intended.

Today, the Drive-By Truckers shared the remixed & remastered “Puttin’ People on the Moon,” which features new vocals. Patterson Hood says, “I wrote ‘Puttin’ People on the Moon’ in the passenger seat of our van driving through western Tennessee and northern Georgia in late 2003. At the time I was angry about the recently started war in Iraq and the polarization President Bush and his cronies were unleashing on our country, but also drawing a parallel to the policies of President Reagan, who at the time many still viewed as a grandfatherly presence despite his enacting so many policies that had major negative ramifications on our future, a future we’re still living through now. The song was probably the best political song I had ever written at that time and unfortunately is more timely today than it was in 2003.” Hood adds, “We recorded it in Muscle Shoals (in one take) in January 2004, but by the time the record came out, I had already begun to regret the vocal take, which attempted some things I hadn’t yet really learned how to do at that time.

As the years have passed, it is one of two on that album that has always really bothered me when I hear it played, while live it has morphed into a truly powerful song for me to sing. When we were given the opportunity to do a ‘Directors Cut’ version of what many consider to be our masterpiece, I wanted to take another stab at that vocal and nailed what I believe to be a definitive version of it in one take. One that truly captures the inherent anger and despair of the song as written and played by the band. The scream at the end might be the most primal recording of my voice anywhere in our catalog and I’m very proud to have this version out there after all these years. The Complete Dirty South might indeed be DBT’s masterpiece.”

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

Poi Dog Pondering - Keep On Loving Each Other (Album).

Poi Dog Pondering's newest album (released in January) Keep On Loving Each Other, a song cycle that reverberates with the determination to follow one's heart while living within an extended arm's embrace of empathy, is the band's 10th full-length album.

The Poi line-up for this album is: Frank Orrall, Ted Cho, Susan Voelz, Max Crawford, Paul Von Mertens, John Nelson, Ron Hall, Rick Gehrenbeck, Dag Juhlin, Ryan Murphy, Julio Davis, Bruce Hughes, Matt Davis, Kelly Hogan, Nora O'Connor, Abra Moore, Kornell Hargrove, Sophia De Leon Sanchez, Robert Cornelius, Carla Prather, and Ali Weiss Mann.

Keep On Loving Each Other was produced by Frank Orrall and Ted Cho, recorded in Chicago and Sonoma, and mixed by Ted Cho with additional recording and mix assist by Frank Orrall.

Formed in Hawaii, coming to national attention after moving to Austin, TX in 1987, and headquartered in Chicago since 1992, Poi Dog Pondering was born out of the mid-80s post-punk indie acoustic scene (the Pogues, Mano Negra, Camper Van Beethoven). They have released albums on the labels Texas Hotel, Sony/Columbia, and Platetectonic Music, occasionally licensing music to Tommy Boy, Premonition, and Bar None Records.

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

Oslo Twins - Mazey Haze - Esther Rose - Allie Crow Buckley

Oslo Twins - Breath.

Bristol born outfit Oslo Twins release their new single "Breath" and announce their signing to Fascination Street Records - a new label founded by producer Ali Chant (Yard Act, Perfume Genius, Aldous Harding, Katy J Pearson) in partnership with Bristol's Factory Studios.

With lo-fi, dream-pop and trip-hop influences, Oslo Twins' new single "Breath" is teeming with quiet passion. Produced, mixed and engineered by Ali Chant, the track signals the release of the band's debut EP, due for release on Fascination Street Records later this year.

Held together by a sharp, addictive electronic drum beat, "Breath" hints toward insomnia and dread, but with a sense of acceptance coming from the gentle and complex rhythms of the track and the softness of the wistful call and response vocals. The track features Harry Furniss from Bingo Fury (cornet) and Tom Connolly from rising Bristol group Quade (violin), whose instruments bring the track into its progression from its intimate verses to its shimmering, heady ending.

“For us, Breath is a very nocturnal song about feeling cut off from the world,” says vocalist and songwriter Claudia Vulliamy. Speaking more on the track's lyrical inspiration, guitarist, keys player, vocalist and songwriter Eric Davies said: “Breath is an attempt to embody how unrequited love feels. I wrote it after having a panic attack, so it’s about that as well - an expression of panic in the style of a love song. There’s a sort of dry irony about it.”

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

Mazey Haze - Back to the Start.

Indie-rock rising talent Mazey Haze (aka Amsterdam based musician Nadine Appeldoorn) releases her new EP 'Back to the Start' and shares the video for its title track. The EP's titular, opening track perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the project. Announcing itself like a Californian daydream, awash with synths, heavenly vocal harmonies and jangling guitars, the song's accompanying video was directed by Pasqual Amade.

The EP's title track captures a certain struggle Appeldoorn has untethering herself from the umpteenth setback. “I’m just being very honest and very real, being like, ‘I went through all this shit for a reason, but now I’m clueless again,’” she explains. “But I think that’s basically what life is: you constantly get over these really hard, big things.”

Following a string of European tour dates supporting acts Spacey Jane, Paolo Nutini and Feng Suave alongside widely praised performances at this year's edition of Eurosonic Festival ("a set of swooning dream-pop. Singing over a tapestry of guitar and synth, the songs were encapsulating, swaying in sentiment and washing through the dark room" - The Line Of Best Fit) - Mazey Haze will embark on a brief stint of European tour dates in support of the EP this month, with stops in London, Paris, Amsterdam and more.

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

Esther Rose - Spider.

Esther Rose will release Safe to Run April 21, 2023 via New West Records. The 11-track set was produced by Ross Farbe in New Orleans, LA and Placitas, NM and is the follow up to 2021’s acclaimed How Many Times. Alongside longtime collaborators Farbe and Lyle Werner, Safe to Run also features the New Orleans based band Silver Synthetic, Cameron Snyder of The Deslondes, as well as Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff on the title track.

The video for the album highlight “Spider,” which was directed by Anthony Simpkins has just been shared. Of the song, Rose says, “As I was writing this, I remember thinking ‘This. Is. My. Final. Word!!!’ My drummer Lonnie calls this one an ‘emotional dump truck.’ We tracked vocals live and tried to redo them later, but they didn’t hit as hard as the original take. There’s something kind of deranged happening in the third verse, the situational complexities, you can feel it. It’s our favorite to play live.” Anthony Simpkins said,  "When Esther approached me to make this video, she had an idea to involve a boxing match. I thought, why not film it at a real MMA event? I love the stark contrast in the on-screen action and Esther's song. It is somehow both the polar opposite and perfectly matching the journey each person is going through from the beginning of the night to the end of the fight. Love, anxiety, pain, triumph, anger, defeat... you feel everything at a fight. Esther captures the same emotions in her songs."

Safe to Run is the quiet culmination of years spent fully immersed in a developing artistry, and presents Rose’s always vividly detailed emotional scenes with new levels of clarity and control. Her songwriting transfigures the chaos and uncertainty of a life in progress, but here she introduces a newfound pop element that attaches unshakably catchy hooks to even the darkest stretches of the journey. The album’s production takes a giant step forward. Across all of the tracks, the open-air, live-in-the-room sound she tended towards in the past was exchanged for an exploration of multitracking and overdubs.

Rose previously shared the video for the album’s title track, “Safe to Run,” which features Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff. The song is a gorgeous duet that directly merges the personal with the global, superimposing feelings of spiritual displacement onto the larger, looming dread of climate grief.  She also previously shared the video for the album’s first single, “Chet Baker.” Of the song, she says, “Someone sent me a DM, asking ‘do you remember me.’

I was transported into a decade-old memory; a weird weekend with a crew of dangerous college preps, a car crash. What came out is this short study of my townie life in Ann Arbor. As I was writing this song, it occurred to me how lucky I was to have survived that time of willful recklessness. I wanted to empathize with my younger self, like, ‘it’s alright, you were 23. You were out of control. I got you now. You’re okay.’”

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

Allie Crow Buckley - Cowboy In London.

Los Angeles & London-based indie artist Allie Crow Buckley has shared her final single, “Cowboy In London,” from her forthcoming LP, Utopian Fantasy, out May 19th. To go with the driving and playful track, Allie directed a mesmerizing video that showcases her in one of her trademark ethereal dresses, frolicking around London.

Buckley explains, “The song is a reflection on my years as a teen and being on my own in London for the first time. It was wonderful and terrifying, and I was totally enthralled. I had terrible jet lag, so I would wake up and sort of stalk the streets at five in the morning. So, I tried to set the sonic scene with this in mind.” Adding, “The video was shot traipsing around London - I wanted to capture some of the naivety, and sort of carefree sass that I feel the song evokes.”

Utopian Fantasy is the follow-up to her 2021 debut, Moonlit and Devious, and takes the listener on a psychedelic journey through the mythical world inside Buckley’s head. The album was recorded at the 4AD Studio in London, mastered at Abbey Road, and was written, recorded, and produced by Allie Crow Buckley and Jason Boesel (Rilo Kiley, Bright Eyes) between a lush cottage in the English Countryside, the sunny mountains of Ojai, California, and the hotels in-between. The album will also feature her recent singles “Dreamboat Soulmate,” “Greatest Hits,”  “Naked At The Feast,”  “Utopian Fantasy” and “Angel.”

When asked about the record, Allie explains, “It is the sort of feeling of leaving your body - as one does during times of immense stress or when chaos ensues. Escapism of sorts. These themes occur throughout the record - from references to Dionysus (god of wine and chaos) to the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Resigning yourself to whatever is - a sort of submission to chaos. Like in the myth of Apollo and Dionysus. Being naked at the feast, the idea of that vulnerability of just awaiting your fate. How we all long to be carried by Zephyr, the wind, from our fate into a bed of flowers. Just as in the myth of Cupid and Psyche. But what comes next? Coming to terms with your new reality. Like being lost in the realm of the faery, and reemerging years later. Feeling as if it were all one day or one dream."

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

Sneakpeek - Bethan Lloyd - Gal Musette - Sarah McQuaid

Sneakpeek - Serendipity.

Los Angeles duo Sneakpeek have just returned with new single “Serendipity,” to announce their long-awaited sophomore album, Scene Within A Dream, for a June 2 release..” Discussing, Sneakpeek’s Dora Hiller noted, "Inspired by the teachings of Abraham Hicks and Yogananda, ‘Serendipity' is about the magic of synchronicity and how the universe sends us messages if we are willing to notice the signs.”

Hiller and Aric Bohn reemerged last autumn with the single, “Dreams That You Discarded,” time away focusing their creative energies on other mediums. The duo had released their self-titled debut album in 2013 on Burger Records, with the LA Times hailing it as a, “noisy nine-track album offering up heavy, druggy guitar riffs that’d make Kurt Vile (or Lou Reed) proud.”

While that record combined elements of dream pop with grungy, garage-rock sludge, “Dreams That You Discarded” pointed to a new direction in the duo’s material, with one foot in abstract avant-garde and another foot firmly rooted within the sensibilities of new wave and disco embedded with strands of mutant DNA. Surrounded by walls of synthesizers and vintage drum machines in their Glassell Park home studio, Dora and Aric leaned into their psychedelic abandonments, taking them out on the dance floor.

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

Bethan Lloyd - Metamorphosis (4 tracks).

Bethan Lloyd is a Welsh artist whose trance inducing vocals expand over an ocean of rave inspired production, harmonic layering and otherworldly ecstasy. Her sonic exploration has taken her from training as a classical singer, immersing herself in Berlin’s experimental music scene, to learning with shamans, masters and the ancient teachings of the natural world. In her latest album, Metamorphosis, Bethan, producing alongside Pre-Human bandmate and master of noise Isaac Ray, takes her intense explorations of the spirit and emotional realms and blends them into something playful and danceable, a gritty experimental pop.

 

 

Tracklisting
1.Boss Of Big Dreams
2.No Umbilical
3.Antares
4.Aria
5.Cutting Circuits
6.Parasitic Yes
7.None Of The Above
8.Whatever We Delete

Using expressive vocal layers and hypnotic acid breaks to pull the listener into an ecstatic experience, Bethan Lloyd begins this album by exploring the primal state of emptiness, a place where no thought exists and only being, acting and living remain. It is this state of emptiness and often The landscape itself which becomes the inspiration for Bethan's creativity. She is frequently journeying with her sonic tools to ancient Neolithic sites and places of awe and wonder and allowing her surroundings to inspire a unique vocal soundscape. A soundscape that stirs up a sense of the forgotten past.

The album explores the cosmos and the dark euphoria within it, the themes of mind control and diluted society ask a question about where we are headed as a collective. The music is a spell for transformation. A cry for a return to sovereignty and autonomy of mind and body. This project delves into the philosophy of animism, guiding humanity back from its abusive relationship with nature. Cutting the chords of consumerism. Cutting the circuits of control and returning to our true gifts, to the web and to the void.

Bethan Lloyd · Metamorphosis

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

Gal Musette - Moment.

The new single "Moment" from pop noir singer/songwriter and piano virtuoso Gal Musette is quite stunning.

Gal confides, "Moment was a song I wrote one verse for 7 years ago, but at some point I lost the paper with lyrics on it and over time almost completely forgot the melody. Years later when I experienced a significant personal loss, I was struggling to express my grief and fell into a crippling season of writer's block.

By a stroke of serendipity, the lyric reappeared on a folded piece of paper in my glove compartment which triggered a memory of the melody, and led full circle to my finishing the song and beginning to let go." Gal's cinematic vocals sing bittersweet melodies over intoxicatedly esoteric chamber pop soundscapes.

Gal Musette · Moment

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

Sarah McQuaid - If We DUB Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous.

Ahead of a 21-show April-May UK tour that takes her from the West Country to Aberdeenshire and from Cumbria to Kent, folk singer-songwriter Sarah McQuaid has joined forces with Tim Norman of 1990s acid and ambient dub duo UVX ((Ultraviolet Explorer)) for “If We DUB Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous”, a new remix of the title track from her 2018 album If We Dig Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous.

“It all started with a tongue-in-cheek conversation when we were on tour in the USA to promote the album back in 2018,” explains Sarah’s longtime manager, producer and sound engineer, Martin Stansbury. “Long drives and longer days led, as they often do, to rambling chats that were occasionally intense and often frivolous in nature.”

One such conversation featured the development of a less-than-serious concept in which If We Dig Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous could be reimagined as a dub album, akin to the Easy Star All-Stars’ classic Dub Side of the Moon.

The “dub remix” idea continued to pop up from time to time as a jokey reference over the ensuing years — until one day Tim Norman asked Martin to master a dub remix he’d done for a US-based singer/songwriter. This transformed into a simple labour exchange, and “If We DUB Any Deeper It Could Get Dangerous” became a reality.

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