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.

 

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Ålesund - My Name is Ian - William The Conqueror - Sneakpeek - Krooked Kings

Ålesund - Rode Off Into The Sun.

Bristol-based alt-pop outfit Ålesund release their single 'Rode Off Into The Sun', today May 12th 2023. The second single to come from their upcoming EP, Rode Off Into The Sun is a triumphant, up tempo, galloping tune that is made for summer months.

Fronted by the ethereal vocals of British-Norwegian singer-songwriter Alba Torriset, Ålesund's sound is a fusion of dreamy pop hooks, atmospheric soundscapes and alternative rock riffs, which have drawn comparisons to the likes of Kate Bush, Florence and the Machine and London Grammar.

Lyrically, Rode Off Into The Sun reflects on the admiration held for a character who knows her worth, who picks herself despite any adversity and makes the best out of any situation.

“I was so impressed by a friend who had been dealt a rough hand and instead of wallowing and seeing the glass as half empty, she just dusted herself off and charged on with making the best out of her life. It was inspiring to witness and became the main theme of the song”, says vocalist and lyricist Alba Torriset.

 

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

My Name is Ian - Thank You.

‘Thank You’ is the latest release from the Cardiff-based band, My Name is Ian. The track is released today May 12th and is a tribute to the people who have supported them over the years, drug smuggling, Stephen Mulhern and falling in love.

‘Thank You’, is the first track from the band’s upcoming 8th studio album: ‘GO BANANAS GO BANANAS GO BANANAS GO BANANAS GO BANANAS’. The record will be full of the trademark blend of catchy pop melodies, witty lyrics, and infectious energy. Songs about hating your life, loving your life, Norwegian families, coconut crabs, 90s television shows, feeling like a loser, not trusting the government and Peppa pig. There is something for everyone.

Creatures of Cardiff, My Name Is Ian have already built a back catalogue that would have taken The Stone Roses millennia to mirror. Since 2010 their output of has dealt with break-ups, breakdowns, mysterious lion paintings and characters from the Tom Hanks movie Big. This restless productivity has seen genres including but not restricted to lo-fi, bedroom punk, garage rock, prog and anti-folk, all filtered through the pop-oriented cranium of frontman Reginald Foxwell.

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

William The Conqueror - The Puppet And The Puppeteer (Live at Marshall Studios).

William The Conqueror have just unveiled their new single ‘The Puppet and the Puppeteer’. Taken from their forthcoming album ‘Excuse Me While I Vanish’, out 28th July on Chrysalis Records, the track is the follow-up to last month’s single ‘Somebody Else’. Produced by the band in a playground of vintage gear and mixed by Barny Barnicott (Arctic Monkeys, Sam Fender, Kasabian), the ten tracks on ‘Excuse Me While I Vanish’ marry earworm tunes with insistent, imperious, soaring rock shapes, punctuated by chorus hooks that are simultaneously nuanced and anthemic.

“’The Puppet and the Puppeteer’ could be a Jekyll and Hyde or Frankenstein's monster story—about wrestling with or losing control of your creation—who controls whom,” explains frontman Ruarri. “I definitely feel like William has the upper hand sometimes.” Harry and Nae add, “It's a favourite for us in our live shows. It deserves to be played loud, on a big sound system. You can bring the hustle, the mosh and the lighter sway to this party.”

‘Excuse Me While I Vanish’, very nearly didn’t happen. Following the imposition of lockdown restrictions, Joseph found himself cocooned at home in Cornwall, ruminating on an uncertain creative future, watching on as his wife Mandy, a valiant mental health social worker, engaged with the all-too-real dilemmas of the pandemic-riven here and now. Her example motivated Joseph to become a temporary care worker, an experience which would provide renewed focus and influence the songwriting on the new album.

“My wife was insomniac for the first six months of lockdown, which made it impossible for me to moan or grieve the fact that everything I’d been working on for the last five years had come to a standstill. It was a much-needed perspective and made me realise what a selfish undertaking William had been – navel-gazing with my head in the clouds when what people needed was boots firmly on the ground, preferably on the feet of someone like Mandy.”

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

Sneakpeek - Strawberry Reality.

Los Angeles duo Sneakpeek share their latest single, “Strawberry Reality,” a psychedelic liquid lullaby inspired by Dora Hiller’s visual artwork, which she creates collages from vintage magazines, and appears in Sneakpeek’s artwork.

“Strawberry Reality” is the third single shared from Hiller and Aric Bohn’s long awaited sophomore album, Scene Within A Dream, due out June 2, following “Serendipity,” in March, which Under the Radar called, "an intoxicating haze of pulsing rhythms and iridescent synth textures.” And “Dreams That You Discarded,” which signaled the duo’s return last November. Buzzbands LA called the single, “exhilarating and vaguely dangerous, with Hiller’s airy vocals casting sublime charms over swirling, rubbery synths.”

Sneakpeak 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, Scene Within A Dream finds the duo heading in new directions.

Surrounded by walls of synthesizers and vintage drum machines in their Glassell Park studio, Dora and Aric leaned into their psychedelic abandonments, pushing their mostly analogue gear to its limits. “We love obscure electronic music from the 70s, 80s + 90s,” notes Hiller, “and wanted to experiment with a new sound that embodied those elements but with our own spin on it.” Throughout Scene Within A Dream, Sneakpeek explores the world of dreams, the mysteries of nature, mortality, magic and manifestation; old Hollywood studios, non linear timelines, synchronicity, and paranormal experiences, leading the listener out onto a surreal, dreamy dancefloor.



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

Krooked Kings - All Out of Good Days (Album).

On the back of a stand out SXSW, rising Salt Lake City based indie rock quintet Krooked Kings have released their brand new album, All Out Of Good Days.Produced by surf-rock darling Day Wave, the album is a body of work built on garage rock roots and decorated with indie-pop choruses.  With 13,000 tickets sold on the west coast of North America before the album release, Krooked Kings are a DIY success story who have built a fan base on the back of a committed touring schedule, driving guitars and vibrant vocals, All Out Of Good Days promises to take Krooked Kings to the next level. Speaking on the project, they state:

 ‘We’re just five guys from Utah making music both for pleasure and to process our experiences of the world. This album is a scrapbook of thoughts and feelings bound to the time we wrote it. It’s about the weird time between college and the rest of your life and everything that surrounds that. About how utterly confusing, depressing, and joyful it can be.’

A grass roots band who were raised in the Mormon faith before taking the decision to walk away from the religion and embrace music, Krooked Kings are a unique band with a unique story. In 2019, a group of five college friends from the University of Utah came together to write music and play shows in backyards and basements. Over the course of the last few years, the band has proven time and again their ability to write heartfelt indie rock gems. After signing with Los Angeles based indie label Nobody Gets It Records in 2020, the band released their breakout single, “‘96 Subaru”, which has amassed over three million streams. By September 23, 2021, Krooked Kings released their debut project, The Comedown. After the release, Krooked Kings hit the road on two support tours with Goth Babe and Rare Americans, as well as three headline dates in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles.

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

Kacey Johansing - Jérémie & The Delicious Hounds - LOW-RES

Kacey Johansing - Daffodils.

Today Kacey Johansing announces the upcoming release of her new album Year Away. The LA-based songwriter has also shared a new video for “Daffodils,” the first single and a stunning centerpiece to the album, built from a pastiche of looping samples, swirling Mellotron and dazzling vibraphone. Year Away will be released on July 28th via Night Bloom records.

An elegiac tribute to someone facing death with grace and curiosity, “Daffodils” finds Johansing confronting own mortality by observing the brief lifespan of a flower. “Keep your heart open wide, you never know your time / Keep your heart wild, true flower child”, Johansing sings as she says goodbye to an elder, while the band reaches a grief-stricken crescendo of woodwinds and chiming bells.

Johansing writes, “Daffodils are one of the first flowers to bloom as the earth begins to thaw, coming even before spring and often emerging from the snow. The vibrant yellow is a sign that a seasonal shift is on the horizon, a gesture of hope and light, even in the darkest of times.”

Throughout Year Away Johansing traverses similarly uncharted emotional landscapes brought upon by the changes occurring all around her. When the world came to an abrupt standstill in 2020, she found herself simultaneously processing this recent personal loss while trying to make sense of a new global reality. She began to fear her Los Angeles musical community was vanishing, as friends and collaborators continually announced they were leaving the city. Across the ensuing months, Johansing found herself increasingly untethered by a world of isolation and political upheaval.

It was in returning to her piano nightly that she found the greatest solace, feverishly writing the songs for a new album. This new sense of time and focus served to help deepen her songwriting. As Johansing recalls, “I felt like a metamorphosis happened during that time. There was a lot of personal growth and healing.” 

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

Jérémie & The Delicious Hounds - 'We Haven't Met Yet.

Jérémie & The Delicious Hounds are new-age fosterers of soul music with a uniquely Canadian twist. Hailing from St. Boniface, the old French quarter of Winnipeg, they have crafted their identity as bilingual artists with their first full-length album, Cruel. Infusing nine fun-loving songs about amour and heartbreak in a mixture of both English and French, the LP serves as an authentic representation of the languages they speak at home. With the support of seasoned producer Murray Pulver, Cruel was recorded "live off the floor" to capture their vintage soul aesthetic and vibrant live performance energy.

The record's focus track, "We Haven't Met Yet," came about when lead singer/guitarist Jérémie came up with some lyrics for a chorus and shared them with lead guitarist Ryan Toupin, who found them inspiring and wrote several verses. The lyrics reminded Ryan of his single days when he would feel too shy to approach any of the beautiful girls he encountered, whether on the bus, at a bar, or in this case, at the library. He had always fantasized about meeting an intelligent girl who shared his love of books.

The Delicious Hounds name is a play on words about their "delicious sound" of smooth melodies, juicy guitar riffs and tasty horn licks. Jérémie's smooth yet smoky voice is accented with a brilliant brass section to deliver round after round of phenomenal hits on golden platters. His staple friendliness, positive vibes and charismatic nature culminate into a profound presence that leaves listeners swooning for another bite of the eight-piece band's modern twist on old-school rhythm and beats.

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

LOW-RES - Därför (Album).

Following on from the release of their highly praised four-track EP ‘Du å ja’ last year, Swedish duo LOW-RES now return for 2023 to deliver their explosive new album.

Right off the release of their most recent single ‘Stigma’, teaming up with seminal artist Johan Hinders of Audionom for the release, LOW-RES anticipates their album, ‘Däför’. The pair return with all the same power and captivating post-punk textures they are known for. Brimming with a raw and driven aesthetic that flows elegantly between their electronic and organic elements, their newest release cements them as one of the more riveting names on the scene today.

Stockholm based duo LOW-RES writes pulsating pop tunes influenced by 90s ambient guitars and analog synthesizers. They made their debut in 2021 with the full-length album ”Varför” featuring guest appearances by Jukka Rintamäki (Silverbullit) and Per Nordmark (Fireside) among others. A four-track EP "Du å ja" followed in 2022 with a refined sound of analog drum machines and Swedish lyrics.

The eleven songs on ‘Därför’ drag you in, one by one, to a parallel universe where music from bygone eras, like krautrock, early electronic pop/rock and psychedelia, are alive and well and sounding as fresh as ever in modern-day Sweden.

“Varför and Därför belong together,”says LOW-RES. “Both records were written in the same vein and with the same approach: fast, creative and with many collaborations that colour the expression. We have a lot of fun making music and it works as an antidepressant. We just heard the term Art Therapy and that pretty much sums up why we do this.”

Adrian Recordings · LOW-RES - Därför

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