Friday, 19 May 2023

Charlotte Carpenter - Louie & The Wolf Gang - Sara Lew - Fake A Smile - Zito - MOONRiiVR

Charlotte Carpenter - Spinning Plates.

Spinning Plates is the first track taken from East Midland’s singer-songwriter Charlotte Carpenter’s debut album due late 2023. “There’s a lot to unpack in this song” explains Charlotte, “from societal pressures on the roles you are meant to fulfill as a woman, alongside the struggle of keeping up a relentless positivity to being a musician – and how impossible it is to ever get the balance between the two.”

Born out of being overwhelmed, anxious, and it fight or flight mode, this inner turmoil acted like lighter fluid on the song which Charlotte describes as “Erupting out of nowhere and finished in one day,” with its thundering bluesy edges and burning refrain “I can’t find a way out, a way out, a way out.” Spinning Plates is a defiant return with a background story offering a stark reminder of the prevailing sexism and exploitative power structures with the music industry.

Following a successful run of early EPs, championed by BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 2 and Virgin Radio, with tastemakers like The Line of Best Fit through to rock bible Classic Rock praising Charlotte’s raw, soulful songwriting with comparisons to the likes of Cream, Cat Power, Bonnie Riatt and PJ Harvey, Charlotte set out to make her debut album. The following years saw a period of stagnation, frustration and crippling self-doubt caused by a domineering, autocratic producer.

The experience is told in Charlotte’s new album, one she re-wrote and re-recorded after parting ways with the producer, regaining confidence and excelling in the expansive creative freedom previously denied to her. The result as we see on first single Spinning Plates is not only a warning tale but a powerful cry of defiance and strength.

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Louie & The Wolf Gang - Betty.

Worldwide airplay, a rapidly growing fan base, and performances at renowned festivals and relevant clubs: Louie & The Wolf Gang from Baden/Switzerland have gained attention in the rockabilly-scene and beyond.

After gaining wordwide airplay the trio now release «Betty» as their new single on Friday, May 19. The band will celebrate this new track with two concerts on the weekend, as start of several upcoming live-shows in Switzerland and Germany:

'Betty' tells the story of a romantic ride in a Cadillac that abruptly ends somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It has become a favorite among the live audience. Once again, Louie & The Wolf Gang demonstrate in this song their ability to combine danceable rockabilly in the style of Stray Cats, rockin' country reminiscent of Buck Owens and Johnny Cash, with modern neo-rockabilly in the style of Restless.

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Sara Lew - Out of Nowhere.

From her long-awaited forthcoming new album “LOUD”, “Out of Nowhere” is about deep love for the people you are close to and connected with. It is about deep cohesion and the relationships we can have together and with each other and it is about losing them. It is about sadness and powerlessness and it's about having to stand on your own two feet and to learn to feel again and carry the beauty we have from each other with us further, even when life doesn't last forever.

In a similar way, Sara Lew's upcoming album “LOUD” is all based around the development of life. It’s about when young people become adults and experience personal confrontations with the past, in which family stories of shame and taboo culture arise from the subconscious. It explores how to rein in anger and grief, to keep your head above water and be a role model for your own children when life all falls apart and how to protect love and togetherness when everyday life rolls on. Essentially, it’s an album about living in the present moment with love for life's stories, memories, moments of happiness but also life’s unforeseen, manifold trip wires.

On the album Sara Lew's musical embrace is intimate, present and raw, with guitar sequences that scratch the enamel of the heart and hit the diaphragm. Sara writes heartbreaking, melodic songs about the trembling complexities of human life and unfolds her own Nordic brand of melancholic, melodic rock. Her style is a hybrid of singer-songwriter, alternative rock, jazzy improv and indie lo-fi which can hook the listener in from many different angles.

On “Out of Nowhere” the music is played and arranged by Sara Lew (vocals and guitars), Anders Filipsen (keyboards/synth) and Jeppe Gram (drums). The track was recorded by, and in collaboration with, sound and studio engineers Troels Bech Jessen and Casper Nyvang Rask. It was produced by Sara Lew, and mixed-produced by Nis Bysted (Iceage & Choir of Young Believers), with mastering by Emil Thomsen.

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Fake A Smile - Don't Stop.

Having gained acclaim from areas such as The Line Of Best Fit, 10 Magazine, Fashionably Early and more on sunbleached debut single Prom Dress, rising Bouremouth based trio Fake A Smile once again stand out from the pack with attention grabbing second single, Don’t Stop. Taken from their upcoming debut EP Shoot Me To The Moon, the track sees them connect again with Mercury Award winning producer Gianluca Buccellati ( Arlo Parks,Biig Piig) on a grit-pop offering showcasing a more sombre tone than their summer ready debut. Speaking on the track, the band state:

"Don’t Stop" delves into the less breezy and more dark, grittier sound of our record collection. Topically current, the single channels new fangled cross-atlantic inspirations from the likes of early Verve and BRMC to the early aughts scenes of 'meet me in the bathroom'.

While working at a hotel in central London, members Jamie and Luca met producer and songwriter Gianluca Buccellati (Arlo Parks, Lana Del Rey, Biig Piig) by chance while he stayed at the hotel to attend and ultimately win the Mercury Prize in 2021. The band introduced themselves, igniting a kinship that resulted in the trio quitting their jobs and flying themselves out to Los Angeles to create their debut EP.

“Straight off the plane from LA, wearing a baggy Hawaiian shirt and cork hat, Gianluca walked through the doors off a bustling Tower Bridge Road into the hotel lobby, where behind the desk, Luca and I saw him walk in, sticking out like a sore thumb against the London commuters,” as frontman Jamie Kravos puts it.

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Zito - Please Don't Leave Me.

Emerging singer-songwriter Zito returns with her supplicating new single and video, “Please Don’t Leave Me” via FAMA Collective. Inspired by real life, “Please Don’t Leave Me” is a bluesy rock-fueled heartbreak ballad that mirrors the agony of the title’s plea. The story offers a glimpse into the critical moment of a relationship’s demise, sprinkled with lingering memories, thoughts of what could have been, pain, and the uncertainty of unspoken words which have been haunting Zito ever since. Diving deep into Zito’s roots, written in isolation in the Pennsylvania countryside, and recorded with close friends, the self-produced track draws from every authentic resource possible to say what wasn’t said then.

Speaking on the single, Zito shares: “The chorus to ‘PDL’ was one of those melodies that honestly comes to you in the moment, as the dust settles and you process what’s going on. The chorus was the plea repeating in my head. I worked on this song for ages, wrote multiple bridges and outros, and actually have a few different versions in storage. But I sang it to myself on long drives or sitting in airports until it was settled enough in my mind to record, produce, and be able to capture its message. She adds, “By that point, producing it was easy because I’d played it in my head thousands of times over. And when I had to record vocals, I revisited those old wounds, sang it out, and got it out of my system. It was incredibly rewarding.”

The accompanying visual brings to life the track’s emotion as a revolving reel of her travels across the US depicts a reminiscent memory, becoming the foreground to the lyrics all while eliciting a nostalgic feel. “I want the visual to feel like those glimpses of memory you flip through in your mind when you’re really haunted by something in the past that you can’t return to. It’s pretty fascinating how many memories we accumulate in our lives and how some of them are so sweet in the moment but end up being so sad to look back on.”

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MOONRiiVR - Blonde Hair Now.

MOONRiiVR is a brand new band from Toronto, by familiar musicians Gavin Gardiner (frontperson of JUNO-nominated indie-folk band The Wooden Sky) and “Champagne'' James Robertson (guitarist for Lindi Ortega and Dwayne Gretzky).

Listening to their debut album, aptly titled Vol. 1, is like entering an unfamiliar room down a long hallway, closing the door quietly behind you, and finding oneself lost in a different world, one where you’re not sure whether you’re looking forward, backward, or perhaps even into a mirror.

Their first single, “Blonde Hair Now” is a celebration of the small moments in our days that make up our lives – a beautiful homage to the gravity of the simple everyday decisions that shape our world. It invites listeners to imagine a world where you’re dancing in the RCA studios with the ghost of a young Elvis Presley or fast asleep between Richie Valens and Buddy Holly in the backseat of that ill-fated flight.

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Wednesday, 17 May 2023

Lead Pony - Lala Salama - The Drive-By Truckers - The Broken Islands

Lead Pony - Vultures.

San Diego psych/blues rock group Lead Pony release their new single, “Vultures” this week, the title-track to their upcoming debut full-length, which they have announced for a July 14 release.

Discussing the single, guitarist Jesse Hofstee noted, "’Vultures’ is a story about someone leaving their hometown to go to the city and 'make it big'. It’s about change, taking risks and finding yourself, but also a cautionary tale about the vultures that will take advantage of people that are finding themselves, and send them in the wrong direction. It was one of the first songs we wrote for the record that started to lay the groundwork for the sound and idea of this being a record about the city.”

Lead Pony emerged in 2017, releasing their debut EP, Eclipse, and quickly followed with the appropriately titled, double-single, Two Love Songs in 2018. The band toured relentlessly, and had successes getting music placements, including on the TV show “Shameless”. In 2019 the they decided to take a break to pursue other projects and creative endeavors.

In the summer of 2022, the addition of bassist Seancarlo Ohlin sparked desire to make a full-length record. Writing shifted into overdrive with a goal of creating an environment where these songs could really live. In this case, it’s Lead Pony’s imagined version of ‘70s New York City. Various stories weave through Vultures with a diverse range of sounds and styles all glued together with the voices and production that they were able to achieve with producer Trevor Spencer (Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty, Beach House).

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Lala Salama - Summer Love.

Lala Salama, the newest signing to the All That Plazz record label, is joining the summer hit parade with the release of the irresistibly cheerful single Summer Love. The new single, which is being released today May 17, doesn’t pale sonically alongside the world’s biggest contemporary indie bands at all thanks to mastering by American Grammy nominee Ryan Schwabe.

Lala Salama comprises singer and guitarist Rosa Jules together with drummer Aliisa Keränen and bassist Santeri Hytönen, who also play with the band Bad Sauna. Having gained a following in Helsinki’s punk and indie circles, Lala Salama has previously self-published one EP and a single. With their new single, the band is readier than ever.

Summer Love is a wistful but also empowering and rollicking love song that yearns for a summer love in the style of a modern and urban hit. Musical points of comparison can be found in dreampop and Scandinavian nostalgia pop, but also strongly in shoegaze, indie rock and even punk. Bands like Regina, Beach House, DIIV and Wet Leg come to mind. However, perhaps no one has previously been able to combine Finnish melancholy and jagged romanticism with indie rock quite like Lala Salama does.

The strongly feminist DIY band formed during the pandemic, when Hytönen and Keränen fell in love with the demo tapes of singer and songwriter Rosa Jules. The trio bonded immediately, and Lala Salama became a real band. Summer Love will no doubt grab the attention of not only the local punk gang in Kallio but also wider indie circles, both in Finland and around the world.


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The Drive-By Truckers - Goode’s Field Road (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. Pitchfork sang its praises: “The Drive-By Truckers’ Southern rock always sounds homemade, and like liquor from a still, it’s extremely potent… [They] find the connections between these larger-than-life figures and the life-size experiences that shaped them. For them, the South is a stretch of highway where many have died, an ordinary place made extraordinary by human tragedies. The Dirty South is their homemade roadside memorial.”

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, and 4 remixed songs 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.

This week, the Drive-By Truckers shared the remixed “Goode’s Field Road” featuring new vocals from Patterson Hood. He says, “I wrote the song as part of the album as we originally envisioned it as a kind of connective tissue between the state line gang narrative and the more personal songs on the album. We recorded it in Athens during the fall of 2003. When it ended up being dropped from the sequence, it was later released on The Fine Print collection of outtakes and oddities. This version features a new vocal and mix (and is quite a different version from the one on Brighter Than Creation’s Dark). It has always been one of my favorite songs that I have ever written.”

 

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The Broken Islands - Tempest.

Following on from the release of their highly-acclaimed sophomore LP 'Masquerade’ in 2020, Canadian outfit The Broken Islands are now ready to break their three-year silence with the release of their euphoric new single ‘Tempest’. Lifted from their eagerly-awaited third studio album, which is set to arrive later this year, ‘Tempest’ sees them bring back more of that raw and driven post-punk-meets-shoegaze aesthetic they have developed for themselves over the years. Brimming with broad and immersive textures from start to finish, they are returning with one of their most impactful efforts to date here.

To celebrate the release of their new single, The Broken Islands will also be performing a string of shows across the UK throughout May, including a slot at this year’s Great Escape Festival. The Broken Islands are a Vancouver-based quintet who meld elements of ambient pop, shoegaze, post-rock, post-punk, trip-hop and dark wave to create their own distinct sound. With crashing guitars and delicate sounding keyboards weaving around swooning, siren-like vocals, the band’s songs can sound at times like an otherworldly sonic experience while still being packed with emotion and moments of tenderness.

Their well-received debut album ‘Wars’ was released in the autumn of 2017, with the follow-up LP ‘Masquerade’ released in February 2020. The Broken Islands third album is slated for release in late 2023, with full details emerging soon. Like its predecessors, the new untitled third album has been produced and mixed by Dave ‘Rave’ Ogilvie, who is best known for his work with industrial music titans such as Nine Inch Nails, Ministry and Skinny Puppy and was the perfect choice to harness the many influences that constitute the sound of The Broken Islands.

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Monday, 15 May 2023

The Pairs - Liam Fender - Doug Levitt

The Pairs - Sunday To Tuesday (Live version at EMAC).

Family is what ties The Pairs together. With soaring harmonies, they share stories of life's hope, hilarity, and hardship. An honest, quirky stage presence and their unbottled chemistry quickly connects them with their audience. The line between the stage and the crowd becomes blurred as if we've all pulled up a seat around their lively kitchen table.

As musicians, our work takes us away from home and many people that we care deeply for. It’s a challenge to find a balance between a life of roaming on the road while still nurturing the kind of loving relationships that we each long for – Lead vocalist Renée Coughlin.

The Pairs' new track, "Sunday to Tuesday," was written in a time when Renée was attempting to carve space in her life to be able to hold on to all of the things that she loved. While close relationships at home didn't see the benefits of a Friday to Sunday weekend, and free weekday evenings, Renée imagined all the love that could fill the days between Sunday and Tuesday, when The Pairs weren't on stage.

 

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Liam Fender - Time Comes Around.

Musician and Newcastle native Liam Fender releases brand new single 'Time Comes Around' alongside his most ambitious music video yet. Following ballet dancers Hayley Walker and Owen Kennedy as they dance through the centre of his hometown in North Shields, Newcastle the video features a host of North East cameos from a mixture of local artists and personalities.

Incorporating beautiful guitar-led melodies, softly lilting drumbeats, strings, and poignantly genuine yet feel-good lyrics, Liam notes that 'Time Comes Around' is 'in essence a song about things coming good after a period of prolonged sadness.'

His latest release from his highly anticipated debut EP, lifelong musician Liam Fender has affirmed himself as someone who has music simply coursing through his veins. Having grown up among the people, voices and stories of different musicians, creatives and free spirits of the North East, Liam has an intuitive ability to combine highly articulate and genuine lyrics that are deeply rooted in his own life experiences with stunningly emotive instrumentals - making him a songwriting force to be reckoned with.

The accompanying music video for ‘Time Comes Around’, directed by Sam Gannie, is in keeping with Liam’s authentic songwriting philosophy and is his most ambitious yet. Filmed in his local high street, with many characters in attendance, the video is a very natural and authentic snapshot of life in the town where Liam grew up. Alongside a host of 'blink and you'll miss it' moments, the music video stars ballet dancers Owen Kennedy and Hayley Walker as they swoop through the town centre. Owen choreographed the video’s moving routine and has previously worked with seminal choreographers such as Christopher Bruce, Thick and Tight, and James Wilton, and Hayley has toured the UK with works by Sharon Watson and Joss Arnot as well as having worked with artists including Nina Nesbitt and brands such as Reebok.

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Doug Levitt - Edge of Everywhere (Album).

Singer-songwriter Doug Levitt has released his debut album Edge of Everywhere. Across 12 powerful tracks, Levitt invites listeners on his ongoing Greyhound bus journey over the last decade, sharing the inspiring stories of folks he’s met along the way with more than 120,000 miles logged on the road.

To date, Edge of Everywhere has already garnered praise from the BBC, American Songwriter, Glide Magazine, Music Connection Magazine, Americana Highways, and Americana UK who gave the album a perfect 10/10 while hailing it as “one of the most important albums of the 21st century.” Produced by GRAMMY Award-winner Trina Shoemaker (Brandi Carlile, Josh Ritter, Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris), Edge of Everywhere at its core is about empathy and connection, colored by touching vignettes of the human condition as shown on highlights like the poignant “Cold Comfort” and the cathartic “Highway Signs." The album’s stirring narratives range from a parent who faced the law after running from it to a father who blames himself for his son being shot in a drive-by, and more.

In March, Levitt brought the impactful stories from Edge of Everywhere to life at New York City’s Lincoln Center, where he launched his new partnership with Guitars for Vets. Proceeds from that show along with future tour dates and sales from the album will benefit the organization, which provides guitars for veterans and teaches them how to play. Levitt also recently performed at the men’s and women’s prisons in Attica, NY, which was filmed for an upcoming BBC TV and radio documentary (the second in a series).

With a bourbon-rich baritone and a range that reaches the heights of a falsetto at times recalling Cat Stevens, Levitt brings listeners along on a transcendental trip in which we are all travelers on a bus writ large. Perhaps it was suffering tragedy as a young person which made Levitt so receptive to other people’s stories. When he was 16, he tragically found his father dead by suicide. For years, he says, he couldn't cry and turned to music as an outlet. But before using that music to reflect the journeys of others, he set out on his own, first at Cornell, where he studied Critical Thinking with Carl Sagan, and then as a London-based foreign correspondent for CNN and ABC filing dispatches from such places as Iran, Rwanda, Bosnia and Gaza.

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Sunday, 14 May 2023

Margo Cilker - Dubmatix - Annie Bartholomew - Madeline Kenney

Margo Cilker - Lowland Trail.

"Lowland Trail" is the first song to be taken from the eagerly anticipated follow-up to her acclaimed debut Pohorylle which Uncut described as "one of the most auspicious debuts of recent times" back in 2021.

The new album "Valley Of Heart’s Delight” is released on September 15th and sees Cilker working with the same team of Sera Cahoone on production duties with John Morgan Askew recording the album at his Bocce Studio just outside Portland, Oregon.

Cilker says of "Lowland Trail": I wrote this song living in a place where a rise in elevation paid off spectacularly.  And I would climb. Yet, I began to crave just placing one foot in front of the other; a more meditative wandering. Less risk, less reward.

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Dubmatix - The Ska Sessions (Volume 1). 

For the past few years I’ve had an idea bubbling around my head - could I create a song a day, and for how long? In December 2022, I decided to test this concept out and see what would happen starting January 2, 2023. As it turns out, a lot of things can happen and this is just one of them - a full-length Ska album. Over the past 20 years, I had never thought about creating a ska album, but sometimes when you dive into fresh waters, your perspective can be altered and new opportunities appear. That is how this all began.

Starting on January 2, I set out to produce an 8-bar song idea each day, which gradually evolved into sharing 30-second videos and eventually creating full-length songs and videos over the first four months. To date, over 125 song ideas have been created so far, choice ones that resonated with me became full-length songs in the ska style. This adventure has garnered a positive response from an enthusiastic audience, particularly in the ska genre, which I love but have not previously produced much music in.

Delving into it headfirst, I built tracks that pay tribute to the originators of the genre and the 2nd wave movement of Two Tone. What began as a bucket list idea has turned into something wonderful that Dubmatix has thoroughly enjoyed sharing with people and connecting with in a new way.

The vocals used in the album are from loop packs since I work fast daily on new music to achieve this goal. Although there needed to be more time to work with singers, I felt it was important to share their names and give them credit as they are unique and well-known and help to bring these songs to life: The Ragga Twins and Dennis Alcapone plus Double Tiger - Jesse.

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Annie Bartholomew - All For The Klondike's Gold.

After nearly a decade of performing in Alaska’s rowdy bar scene, Juneau folksinger Annie Bartholomew became haunted by the stories of sex workers during the 19th century after touring the brothel museum at Skagway’s Red Onion Saloon. This week, Bartholomew shared the new single and music video for “All For the Klondike’s Gold” from her debut album Sisters of White Chapel.

After conversations with her friend, Arkansas songwriter Willi Carlisle, the scope of the project came to include a play and stage show. The result is her debut album Sisters of White Chapel, out June 16. The music accompanies a play that she wrote Sisters of White Chapel: A Short But True Story, which premiered to acclaim in Bartholomew’s hometown of Juneau. The first single will be “Sisters of White Chapel,” referring to the red light district in Dawson City.

“All For the Klondike’s Gold” is accompanied by driving guitar and fiddle, and is sung by women, abandoned by their male companions but now joining together to survive the gold rush. Annie says, “’All For the Klondike’s Gold’ is adapted from a 1901 miner’s poem anonymously published in the Klondike Nugget, that empathizes with women left behind in the Northland due to the deaths of their male companions. These were the tragedies and very real economic realities that made women turn to sex work.”

In contrast to the art created for tourists, Annie envisioned a musical work that would share these omissions of Alaska’s mining past, and embody the stories of women in Victorian-era Alaska. Through archival materials, personal history, and Alaska’s stringband traditions, Bartholomew brings these women to life, extracting the emotional truth of who they were, why they risked everything to follow a gold rush, and their subsequent journeys and misadventures along the way.

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Madeline Kenney - Superficial Conversation.

In the quiet surrounding the pandemic, Madeline Kenney made sonic sketches in the basement studio she shared with her then-partner. She arranged phrases that called her—the sharp knife of a synth cutting a path along a blooming arpeggio, drums stuttering firm and tight. Working this way, she amassed a collection of songs she had no particular aims for. Some formed her 2021 EP Summer Quarter, others languished.

But in 2022, Kenney’s partner left suddenly and without warning, plunging her into the solitary act of untangling what happened. In the wake of her ensuing depression, she revisited these songs and found in them something prescient. She’d already laid the foundation for A New Reality Mind, her fourth LP (due out July 28th via Carpark Records) which she is announcing today with the album's first single "Superficial Conversation," alongside the track's self-directed video.

That her relationship’s end came without warning is only half true, though. The warnings were in the feelings and fears that inspired Kenney’s critically-acclaimed third album, Sucker’s Lunch (2020), which was co-produced by Jenn Wasner (Flock of Dimes) and centered around the idea of flinging oneself freely into the seemingly-assured destruction of new love, come what may. If sonically Sucker’s Lunch was letting yourself be pulled into the warm bath of a good story, A New Reality Mind reflects the harsh light of truth coming to break the spell. But as sobering as morning light can be, there’s brilliance to it, too. To see in the clarity of day is a gift. A revolution.

This is Kenney’s most expansive work, while also her most solitary. Produced and recorded alone in her basement, these songs are manifestations of what it feels like to be transformed by pain. Textures collide and collude; sonic ornaments emerge and dissipate capriciously; saxophones soar untamed. There's a propulsive power in the album, and there’s also acceptance, self-forgiveness, and a willingness to move forward into life, with all its ways of making a sucker of you. “That way of living, I’m over it,” Kenney declares of the habits that hold her back on "Superficial Conversation." “I do not need to be reminded of what I did,” she assures, the song opening wide and beaming, like a smile expanding to taste a new breath of air.

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Emily Popli - Natalie Holmes - The Indie Pea

Photo - Tyler Core Emily Popli - Alight. Singer-songwriter Emily Popli releases her new single Alight, the track is a powerful duet featuri...