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BELLE AND SEBASTIAN RELEASE VIDEO FOR ‘WE WERE BEAUTIFUL’
Today, Belle and Sebastian have revealed the video for their recently released single, ‘We Were Beautiful’.
Directed by Blair Young from The Forest of Black and filmed throughout the band’s native Glasgow (where they also recorded and produced the track), the video presents a cinematic slice of life — and all of the pain, joy, confusion, and love that comes with it — as the city wakes up over a Saturday morning.
Always attuned to human pathos and their community, Belle and Sebastian’s artful meditation on quotidian moments is a perfect visual companion to the new song, which The Sunday Times described as “a Pet Shop Boys-like curveball that explodes into a quintessential B&S chorus”, and The Guardian called “an appealing curio” with “a pretty kick ass chorus”.
Keep an eye out for more Belle and Sebastian news regarding forthcoming new music soon!
T O R R E S REVEALS VIDEO FOR NEW SINGLE ‘HELEN IN THE WOODS’
“An artist growing bolder with her every passing era” (Pitchfork), TORRES, the creative alias of Mackenzie Scott, will release Three Futures via 4AD on 29 September.
With less than two weeks to go until the album’s release, TORRES has revealed the Ashley Connor-directed video for new single, ‘Helen In The Woods’.
This follows the “chilling, guitar-grinding study in lust and betrayal” (Rolling Stone) of lead single Skim and the album’s “brooding slow-burner” (The Sunday Times) title track.
As described by Connor, “The first time I heard ‘Helen In The Woods’ I thought the guitar riff had such an incredible energy – so I told Mackenzie to come down south and we’d shoot something that felt like your face melting off in the woods. We shot on 16mm film and used only in camera effects – we were a couple feral cats gyrating in a barn.”
Three Futures, TORRES third full-length album and debut with 4AD, is permeated by vivacious sonic and spiritual decadence. It’s a record about “using the body that each of us has been given as a mechanism of joy.” It embraces ecstasy and indulgence rather than self-denial and exudes this idea via immersive music: mechanised grooves are placed at the forefront, providing a framework for perforated electro-pop static, gothic textures, and insistent Krautrock motifs. Through it all, Scott remains a fluid and expressive vocalist: she employs a more animated, frantic delivery to convey the dark obsessive desires described in ‘Helen in the Woods’ while elsewhere she exhibits a throaty, hollow timbre or takes a solemn, reverential approach.
Torres will perform three Canadian shows in support of Three Futures:
OCTOBER 1ST – MONTREAL PETIT CAMPUS
OCTOBER 3RD – TORONTO HORSESHOE TAVERN
OCTOBER 9TH – VANCOUVER FOX CABARET
Snail Mail Signs To Matador, Watch Tiny Desk Session
Brooklyn-via-Baltimore singer /songwriter/guitar prodigy Lindsey Jordan aka Snail Mail is the latest addition to the Matador Records roster.
Snail Mail will release a full-length album in 2018, following Sister Polygon’s 2017 12″ reissue of the of the introductory cassette, ‘Habit’.
Snail Mail’s NPR Tiny Desk concert premiered this morning, and might provide a hint or several why press, musical peers (including but not limited to Waxahatchee, Priests and Girlpool), and yeah, record labels have taken so much interest in a short spell.
In other Snail Mail news, NPR released a Tiny Desk session featuring two songs you might recognize from Habit (“Slug” and “Thinning”) as well as a new song…
Snail Mail will perform in Montreal and Toronto next month.
JULIEN BAKER RELEASES VIDEO FOR NEW SINGLE “APPOINTMENTS”
Julien Baker has debuted the moving new video for her song “Appointments.”
“Making the ‘Appointments’ video was an incredibly special experience because I got the pleasure of collaborating with artists I admire and to see them apply their creativity and talent to something I made,” says Baker. “I’ve known Christina McKinney (choreographer), as well as a few of the dancers, since I was a kid. I’ve always been fascinated with how that art form works in tandem with music; it was amazing to see the vision that Christina had for the song, how she interpreted the sounds as movement, and then to see how Sophia chose to portray and capture it all.
“It felt very full circle to return to Memphis to work on this, I’m so proud of Memphis and wanted to show off the immense artistry that I see there. Not only were Christina and many of the characters in the video friends, but the crew also included many people I have known and worked with for years. All the scenes and locations are also central to Memphis, I think Sophia did such a good job of preserving the intimate feel of the video by shooting it with people/in locations that had significance to me, and I’m so thankful. The most gratifying part of making music is its ability to be shared and belong to more people than myself, and it was very meaningful to make something with and for other people, to take something as personal as this song and invite others in, allow them to contribute their ‘thing,’ whatever it may be.”
“Appointments” is the first single released from Baker’s forthcoming new album Turn Out The Lights, which will arrive in stores on October 27, 2017 via Matador Records.
The song has been earning glowing critical praise over the past month since its release, from outlets including The New York Times, NPR Music (‘Songs We Love’), Pitchfork (‘Best New Track’), NY Magazine’s Vulture (‘7 Best New Songs of the Week’), Entertainment Weekly (‘New Music Friday: 19 Releases To Hear Now’), and Stereogum (‘The Five Best Songs of the Week’), among many others. The follow-up to Baker’s acclaimed 2015 debut album Sprained Ankle (6131 Records), Turn Out The Lights is being counted among the fall’s most anticipated releases by The New York Times, Billboard, The Atlantic, Harper’s Bazaar, Brooklyn Vegan, and Consequence Of Sound
Baker’s fall North American headlining tour will begin on October 12th in Atlanta, GA, and the young songwriter recently announced a handful of additional dates in Minneapolis, Chicago, Toronto, Boulder, and Missoula.
Recorded at the legendary Ardent Studios in Baker’s hometown of Memphis, TN, Turn Out The Lights expands upon the sound and vision of Sprained Ankle while retaining the haunting, confessional songwriting style for which she has become known. Throughout the album, she reflects on experiences of her own and those closest to her, exploring the internal conflicts that wrestle inside us all: how we deal and cope with our struggles, and how it all impacts both ourselves and our relationships of all kinds. The result is a deeply empathetic album that embraces the grays and complex truths of humanity and mental health. Turn Out The Lights was written and produced by Baker, and mixed by Craig Silvey (The National, Arcade Fire, Florence & the Machine).
LANKUM Between the Earth and Sky
27 October 2017 sees the release of the bands second album, and their first on the Rough Trade label.
Lankum are one of the most talked about bands to come out of Ireland in decades. They are a Dublin four-piece who combine distinctive four-part vocal harmonies with arrangements of uilleann pipes, concertina, accordion, fiddle and guitar. Their repertoire spans humorous Dublin music-hall ditties and street-songs, classic ballads from the Traveller tradition, traditional Irish and American dance tunes, and their own original material. The band comprises of brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch along with Cormac MacDiarmada and Radie Peat. When not on tour Ian lectures in Irish Folklore and musical traditions in University College Dublin, while Cormac and Radie grew up as champion traditional players, on the fiddle and concertina, respectively. Yet Lankum are not purely trad themselves, in the same way The Pogues were more urban music. Rough-hewn and raw, they’re the edgiest thing in Dublin right now.
Having spent the last number of years performing as ‘Lynched’ a play on Ian and Daragh’s family name Lynch, the band decided that they would no longer continue with the name due to the unavoidable implications that it has in regards to acts of racist violence. Their new name comes from the ballad ‘False Lankum’, as sung by the Irish Traveller John Reilly Jr.
The band was originally formed by brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch in the early 2000’s, and has since progressed through a number of incarnations, culminating in the four-piece group playing today. The release of their album ‘Cold Old Fire’ and a subsequent appearance on the BBC television programme, ‘Later… with Jools Holland’ cemented their reputation as a band that successfully crosses genres. Lankum are busy breathing new life into old music.
Although an acoustic group whose repertoire is fundamentally based on traditional song, influenced by legends such as Frank Harte, Planxty, The Dubliners and the Watersons, subtle traces of the group’s collective influences can be detected, ranging from American old-timey music to krautrock and drone.
