Jackson Mico Milas - Free Time - David Beck - Bill Scorzari

Jackson Mico Milas - White Noise.

Accomplished musician and composer Jackson Mico Milas unveils his debut album this November. ‘Blu Terra’ brings together eleven tender and emotive compositions and finds the British artist hitting his stride. New single ‘White Noise’ follows first album track drop ‘Lost In Seasons’, which has picked up airplay from BBC 6 Music’s Cerys Matthews and came alongside a hypnotic visualizer for its B-side ‘Katia Standing Alone’.

On ‘White Noise’, Jackson’s eclectic sonic vista expands from the hushed acoustic lushness of ‘Lost In Seasons’, inviting the listener further into his intimate world, with subtle electronics and gorgeous airy atmospheres layered over organic drums and double bass. ‘White Noise’ washes over the listener like a cool summer breeze, with Jackson’s soft vocal hooks and melancholic tones penetrating that inner psyche. The accompanying video is the first of three videos which will progressively expand visually to narrate the Album’s journey to a November 2022 release. “White Noise” sees Jackson on a secluded beach, the waves and sea foam crashing behind as the song’s moods progress and expand.

Having cut his teeth at New York’s Nylon Studios, Jackson carved out a career with award-winning film and TV scores including a long standing collaboration with Tim Minchin on the acclaimed Sky Atlantic drama ‘Upright’.

On ‘Blu Terra’, Jackson comes of age, and delivers a mature and elegant suite of compositions encompassing acoustic, alt-folk and jazz elements to set up soaring and heartfelt songs. The LP features a cast of great players, including String arrangement on ‘June’ comes from Elliott Wheeler (Musical Director/Composer on ELVIS), and Tim Lefebvre (David Bowie 'Blackstar'), Troy Simms (Lee Scratch Perry).

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Free Time - That's Rare.

Free Time announce third full-length album 'Jangle Jargon' out September 30, 2022 and share first single 'That's Rare.' Six years on since the release of 2016’s In Search of… album, ex-Panel of Judges frontman and Melbourne-via-NYC luminary Dion Nania returns with Free Time’s third studio album in eight years, Jangle Jargon.

The album was recorded chiefly in two parts, beginning in 2017 in Ridgewood, Queens, with engineer Jarvis Taveniere (Purple Mountains, The Avalanches, Molly Burch) and guests Martin Frawley and Amy Franz (Twerps, Super Wild Horses) from Nania’s home in Melbourne, Australia.

After a period of quiet in which he focussed on his academic work, Nania, now living in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Williamsburg, returned to these original sessions in 2021 with a bag of new material and regular collaborators Jonah Maurer and Mike Mimoun. After a while demo’ing new material with Maurer during the pandemic, Nania discovered that he shared an apartment building with engineer John Epperly (Veldt, Daddy Long Legs, Baby Shakes), and so without further ado they booked in time to track new material and mix the 2017 sessions. After a few roadblocks, including Mimoun’s newborn baby Noam arriving the day the album’s tracking sessions were to begin, the band eventually had themselves a record.


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David Beck - Miner's Song.

When it came time to take his new collection of songs into the studio, noted bassist, songwriter, producer, and recording artist David Beck started the process with a simple, albeit off-the-wall, question that led the entire project into a new, adventurous atmosphere. “I’d discovered this idea with my buddy Ryan Quiet when I was producing his single,” says Beck. “We talked about these hypothetical situations—what if Dwight Yoakam did a record that was produced by The War On Drugs? What if Robert Earl Keen-like stories were seen through a Coldplay soundscape lens?” With those stylistic guidelines, Beck’s imagination and artistic creativity thrived.

Having an affinity for both Texas storytellers by like of Keen, Guy Clark, and Rodney Crowell and the modern indie rock of Coldplay, The War on Drugs, and Big Thief, Beck’s upcoming album Bloom & Fade creates a cinematic world built around endearing storytelling and a soft, airy sonic palette. While Keen and Coldplay may seem like polar opposites of the musical spectrum, finding the connective tissue between those two worlds gave Beck additional perspective for Bloom & Fade’s pensive, visceral reflective nature.

While previous solo efforts, Good Nature and Tascam, Vol. 1 & 2, embraced a lo-fi temper and tone, Bloom & Fade is a cascade of vibrant, crisp, and warm sonic hues and tones that channel central Texas meadows wet with morning dew, bouquets of Hill Country wildflowers, the low hum of city streets, and the ambient splendor of being beneath a cloudless starlit sky. “This record, I had a very clear goal,” says Beck. “There were some discoveries along the way, but I wanted to make the best-recorded album that I could at a high fidelity studio. I’ve always messed around with the format, but I wanted to do one without any restrictions.”

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Bill Scorzari - The Broken Heart Side Of The Road.

Bill Scorzari is excited to release “The Broken Heart Side of the Road” as the 2nd single (and 2nd music video) from his upcoming album, The Crosswinds of Kansas (independently released Aug 19). In “The Broken Heart Side of the Road,” Scorzari recounts a hard tale of the destruction of a relationship, set to traditional roots music, while with upbeat mandolin and banjo lines prominent in the mix, and a Dobro swell tugging at your heart in the distance.

He tells Glide Magazine, “I started writing ‘The Broken Heart Side of the Road’ back in 2015 and then it kind of fell off my radar for a while. When I returned to New York after the end of the Now I’m Free tour in 2019, I found that it fit really well with the other songs I was writing at the time, and so I made a few changes to the lyrics and reworked the song structure until it felt right. The lyrics sprouted right out of the chord progression and, at least on some level, are grounded in time I spent in my childhood, learning from my dad how to plant and care for growing things. I especially loved being able to work a lyric into the first chorus, about the risks of planting corn too early in the season. ‘And then a cold rain in the morning corkscrewed my cold-planted corn, and then half my crop took twice the time to grow.’”

Bill recorded the acoustic guitar and vocal tracks for “The Broken Heart Side of the Road” (and much of the 13-track album) in his studio—First Thunder— in New York in late 2020. In mid 2021, after many people had gotten vaccinated and it appeared to be relatively safe to travel again, Bill drove to Skinny Elephant Recording in Nashville, TN (where he previously recorded Now I’m Free 2019) and met with album Co-Producer Neilson Hubbard (drums, percussion), Michael Rinne (upright bass), Fats Kaplin (fiddle), Matt Menefee (banjo), Brent Burke (Dobro), Will Kimbrough (mandolin), and Engineer Dylan Alldredge to record their parts live there together for the song. Later, in September of 2021, Bill returned to Nashville to work with Dylan on the final mixes and they recorded Marie Lewey and Cindy Richardson Walker, a/k/a The Shoals Sisters, singing the backing vocals to “The Broken Heart Side of the Road.” Lewy and Walker recorded backing vocals for a few of the other tracks. For some of the other songs, Rinne also plays electric bass, in addition to his upright, and Kaplin adds his richly melodic and rhythmic sensibilities on pedal steel guitar, and viola, in addition to his fiddle.

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Scarves - Carleton Stone - Shutups

Photo - Rachel Bennett

Scarves - Delicate Creatures.

Over the past few years, and through a few different iterations, Seattle-based math-rock emo-punks Scarves has established themselves as, “One of the city’s top notch rising acts,” according to KEXP. In that same paragraph, the words “jarring” and “abrasive” also appear so that starts to paint a picture of the dichotomy that has been at play for the band and its frontperson/founder Niko Stathakopoulos.

On “Delicate Creatures,” Scarves ponders human fragility through an ordinary day that changed in an instant. Inspired by a friend who maintained her composure after busting her lip open on a basketball court, “Delicate Creatures” conjures up the character of “Jackie,” a person who comes to embody the attempt to be strong within an unrelenting world.

“A regular moment can explode into blood so quickly.” Stathakopoulos says. “What does that mean for a human? What are we pushing against by existing?” As he paints the portrait of Jackie, a wild thing, Jackie, a switchblade on her shoulder, he fleshes out her out-frame-opponent through her struggles: “It’s hard to stay soft when you feel surrounded by such sharp teeth / It’s hard to stay calm when you feel just like fresh meat.”

Still, Stathakopoulos glimpsed an act of resistance on the basketball court that day, however small, and it is this such act that drives the track’s reluctantly hopeful closing lines: “We are all just tiny comets up against one big rock / And I hope you make an impact.”

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Carleton Stone - House In The Hills.

On his third solo album, the self-produced Papercut—armed with a couple lifetimes of songwriting and touring in his rear view mirror—Carleton Stone gets honest about the toll of devotion to craft while illustrating his mastery of it. Through sax-blasted Americana, power-pop laced with '80s synth, and dreamy, sophisticated pop melodies, the Nova Scotia songwriter blurs genres to explore a tumultuous few years and some of the scariest questions someone can ask: "What the hell have I done? What if I'd gone down some other path?"

His brand new song, "House In The Hills," encapsulates the feeling of accepting that we are enough with what we have in our lives. It feels like the media or internet is always trying to sell us something to help improve our lives or make us feel like we aren’t enough, and Stone is trying to counterbalance that feeling with this song.

With this song, Stone really wanted the lyrics and the message of the song to stand out so he kept the production as simple as possible with just enough to help support the story. When the song was written in early 2020, the pandemic wasn't even a thing that was on most people’s radar at that point. The pandemic only highlighted the feelings in the chorus of this song and reminded us what is truly essential in our lives.

Jones & Co · Carleton Stone - House In The Hills

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Shutups - Endless Heaven.

Bay Area indie-punk band Shutups are proud to share “Endless Heaven”, the lead single from their new album, titled I can’t eat nearly as much as I want to vomit. The full album was mixed and mastered by Grammy nominated engineer / producer Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Jeff Rosenstock, King Woman), and will be released via Kill Rock Stars on October 21st, 2022.

“Endless Heaven” is a four and half minute crash course on the songwriting style of Shutups, who combine catchy indie punk melodies that share similarities with bands like Mannequin Pussy and PUP, filtered through the go-for-broke ambition of a band like Foxing and the experimental genre swirl of Spirit of The Beehive.  Describing his intentions behind the single “Endless Heaven”, the band’s songwriter and vocalist Hadley Davis says “I wanted to write a song that mirrored the feeling of letting out all your air and laying on the bottom of a pool. The crushing comfort of calm water. Every time I worked on this song, I pictured that. It’s a summer song, but for the more mundane moments of summer (sitting in hot cars, power outages, sunburns, days lost to the void). It’s about dissociating and returning mid sentence”. Meanwhile, bassist Bud Armienti said about the song – “I played the gong”.

Beginning as a duo of Hadley Davis on vocals and guitar and Mia Wood on drums, Hadley recruited childhood friends Eric Stafford (Guitar/Synth) and Bud Armienti (bass / synth) from his hometown of Livermore to round out the full band roster. The influence of Weezer on Shutups is immediately apparent – something that Mia and Hadley bonded over early on in their friendship. Songs that contrast distorted guitar tones with disarmingly pleasant pop melodies are not exactly a reinvention of the wheel – in addition to Weezer, they cite bands like The Pixies as inspiration for their own take on the classic quiet-loud-quiet-loud 90s alt rock sound – but the way they assemble these songs is truly unique. “There’s also a good amount of inspiration pulled from mash-ups, as a compositional tool.” Hadley says. “I was and still am obsessed with Girl Talk’s Night Ripper. I worshiped that album in high school as it satisfied my need for non-stop hooks and changes. It also taught me the value of juxtaposition in texture. When I write now I’m thinking about cut and paste techniques more so than typical song structure. This album feels like a mashup of our songs.”

Twain - girlpuppy

Twain - The Priestess.

Twain announces a new album called Noon, out October 21 via Keeled Scales. This week they share the softly rollicking new song, “The Priestess.” Songwriter Matthew Davidson offers, “I thought I was writing this song to a friend and later found out it was directed towards myself. It is about allowing the heart to speak, and being direct.”

Davidson elaborates on the new song, “‘Rugby’ is a street in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn and ‘the Odyssey’ is my old van. The inner landscape of the song, the place it takes me and where it was written, is Las Trampas, New Mexico, and I think about the cold nights and sleeping on the ground under wool blankets, taping up holes in my sleeping bag with duct tape, Folgers coffee in the blue cardboard can, and hearing the elk song for the first time.”

Twain’s fourth release on Keeled Scales, Noon, is a collection attempting to balance soul-fantasy with self-scrutiny, to erode the barrier between those two places, and to find the liminal state between the spirit’s ambition for itself and the often harsh truth of the present. Says Davidson, “Sometimes the facts of life make dreams difficult to protect. Twain is my effort to reconcile those two states… to forget that they could ever exist in opposition.” Noon was recorded by Twain’s longtime collaborator Adrian Olsen at Montrose Recording in Richmond, VA and features bass by Ken Woodward and drums by Austin Vaughn. From Noon, Davidson previously shared “King of Fools,” an offering that compelled Under The Radar to praise “a songwriter of uncommon emotional weight.”

“Noon is where I am, more-or-less, in my natural life span and in my creative life span. I picture noon being at the very bottom of a bowl… the resting point of a pendulum… not the apex of an arc, or the crest of a hill. Arriving at noon for the first time in my life, I sense everything reversing and the possibility to change and cure and heal is real for the first time. This album is a prayer from noon for the rest of the day.”

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girlpuppy - Wish.

Last year, girlpuppy (aka Becca Harvey) released her debut EP Swan. made with producer Marshall Vore who is known for his work with folk dynamo Phoebe Bridgers, the five song collection, found a supportive home with Royal Mountain Records, and drew remarkable acclaim for a debut EP, earning praise from outlets like NPR, FADER, Paste, Under The Radar, Coup De Main, Office Magazine, i-D, Line of Best Fit and NYLON who called her "one of indie folk's most promising newcomers."

This week, girlpuppy is back and announcing her debut LP When I'm Alone, which will be out October 28th on Royal Mountain. To mark the announce she is sharing the album's lead single "Wish".

“On 'Wish' I was thinking about when friends leave your life and you're not entirely sure why," Harvey explains. "It's a pretty universal feeling, I think. And, the thing is—even if you managed to live in the walls of that person's apartment and were able to figure it out, their reasons might not make total sense. This song is me living with that feeling, when loss just doesn't quite add up. This is the first shoegaze rock song I’ve made and I did that intentionally—the emotions in the song go from anger to sadness to nostalgia and all the other emotions that you feel when you go through a “friend breakup." I imagined it being really cathartic to play it live.”

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Tuomo & Markus - Pearl Diver

Tuomo & Markus - Highest Mountain.

After returning in recent months to deliver their highly-praised single ‘Wishful Information’, their first piece of new material since the release of their stunning debut album ‘Dead Circles’ in 2018, Finnish outfit Tuomo & Markus are back to announce the details behind their eagerly-awaited sophomore LP ‘Game Changing’, alongside the vibrant new single ‘Highest Mountain’.

Throughout their tenure, the pair have always looked to bridge the gap between psychedelic and folk-inspired soundscapes, and ‘Game Changing’ aims to continue that broad and adventurous spirit. With the record cut in the studio of Jonathan Wilson, best known for his production work with Father John Misty and Angel Olsen, and after the stellar reception to the record’s lead single ‘Wishful Information’ earlier this year, ‘Highest Mountain’ makes for an airy and more atmospheric listen. Sitting in the same vein as Nick Drake and David Crosby, it revives more of that smooth and tranquil quality they are known for, this new offering makes for the perfect introduction for what to expect from their upcoming full-length.

Speaking about the inspiration behind ‘Highest Mountain’, they said, “Highest Mountain was inspired by the political polarization and dogmatic thinking that our societies have been faced with in the last 5-6 years, starting with the elections that lead to Brexit and Trump presidency, resulting with the US Capitol attacks, the overturn of abortion rights in the US and in parts also the current war in Ukraine. Some of these can be attributed to the tribalism that the age of social media has created - the idea that ”we believe what we need to believe” and our confirmation bias.”

Tuomo & Markus are a new musical project from acclaimed Finnish soul/jazz artist Tuomo Prättälä and singer/songwriter Markus Nordenstreng of The Latebirds. The duo’s music has been described as Nordic Americana and indie-folk with distinct jazz, soul and prog-rock influences. Their haunting harmonies complement each other much like in the cases of Simon & Garfunkel or Crosby Stills Nash.

Tuomo & Markus · 5 Highest Mountain

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Pearl Diver - Heaven Help Me.

Written by Pearl Diver’s Matt Sage following an intense psychedelic experience which saw him feel an epiphanous sense of connection with the natural world, the lead singer reflects of “Heaven Help Me":

“Heaven Help Me came to me in the woods on strong mushrooms.  It’s about the way in which it sometimes feels as if nature is luring us to rejoin it, to remerge, to allow ourselves to be subsumed.  It’s almost like a poetic death wish in slow motion.  It’s the same impulse that sometimes makes you want to serve into oncoming traffic, or leap over the edge, but you don’t: some grace manages to save you at the last minute and you continue to cling to life, at least for now.”

Through a labyrinth of casually trippy guitars and tightly knotted riffs, wormhole backing-vocals and lysergic lyrical couplets; Sage’s sentiments like “came upon a fallen tree, I thought it was a throne so I took my place. No one there to witness me, or record my fall from grace” make “Heaven Help Me” a listen that is as tightly intricate as it is wholly immersive.

The new single is a glittering entry-point to the ‘Look For The Light’ EP (out now on all streaming services); a record which sees the trio of Matt Sage (vox/guitar), Josh Rigal (Bass), and Joel Bassuk (drums) deliver 4 original songs of a finessed calibre far beyonds its debut credentials. Nodding to the classic works of Radiohead, Pink Floyd and The Beatles, the release finds a band spiralling through psychedelic portals (“Look For The Light”) and taut post-rock jams (“Heaven Help Me”), sleepy reflections (“Give It All Away”) to soulful 70s-inflected grooves (“You Can Bring Your Darkness”).

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Franklin Gothic - Chris St. John

Photo - Victoria Escobar

Franklin Gothic - Slow Down Bang Bang.

Franklin Gothic, the solo project of musical artist Jay DiBartolo based out of Portland, OR, announces his debut record titled Into the Light, out August 19th via split release with Very Jazzed and Pleasure Tapes. The record was made in collaboration with producer Erik Blood (who has worked with Shabazz Palaces, Pickwick, Tacocat, and more).

Into the Light draws inspiration from musical influences that stem back to Jay’s early ‘90s childhood. It showcases a variety of styles, from shoegaze to Americana, challenging the expectation that a band, record, or song is bound to any specific genre.

The 12-song LP follows the ups and downs of the singer/songwriter’s experience, as he struggles to leave behind an old cynical view of the world to make room for a more openhearted one.

 
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Chris St. John - Walk Between The White Lines.

Chris St. John has been on a roll these last two years, having written dozens of songs which have appeared on two separate albums. His first album, I’m Dreaming, which was released in 2021, gained critical acclaim and commercial success. The album had four chart-toppers on the World Indie Music Charts and the Euro Indie Music Network, including “I Called You Rose,” which climbed all the way to No. 3.

Recently, Chris was in Nashville, working with legendary producer Stephen Wrench, as well as some of the finest session musicians in Music City, to record his upcoming album Fly Away. During the production of the album, Chris released the song “Hey Siri,” which quickly hit No. 1 on the World Indie Music Charts and the Euro Indie Music Network and remained there for five weeks. “Hey Siri” has a playful, rolling African groove reminiscent of Paul Simon’s Graceland. This clever, lively, and thought-provoking song focuses on the drawbacks of modern technology. Stylistically, it’s an outlier of sorts, scratching only the surface of the deep and impactful artistry Chris showcases over the course of 13 tracks.

The diversity of the songs makes it very hard to fit Chris’ music into any one genre. His voice is velvety and clear on the album’s ballads, and heartfelt and rocking on the up-tempo songs. His tenor voice has remarkable range and clarity, and his different vocal stylings on each track make it hard to believe it’s the same singer throughout the album.

Chris St. John Music · Walk Between The White Lines

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