Breaking News
Girl Band share new single ‘Going Norway’ with video
Girl Band are excited to share Going Norway the second single from their new album The Talkies, out on Rough Trade Records on September 27th, 2019.
The Talkies is the follow up to the Dublin, Ireland band’s critically acclaimed debut LP Holding Hands with Jamie, of which Pitchfork wrote, “it’s hard to think of another guitar-based band conjuring fear this exhilarating and volume this rapturous.”
Following on the heels of lead single Shoulderblades, “Going Norway” debuts today with a Bob Gallagher directed music video for the track. A 7” vinyl version of the single is out tomorrow, Friday, August 16th.
The Talkies was produced by the band’s own Daniel Fox, and recorded in November 2018 at Ballintubbert House, a stately manor on the outskirts of Dublin.
“In many ways,” says band member Alan Duggan, “the idea behind the album was to make an audio representation of the manor home.” The space became Girl Band’s sonic playground as the members worked to adjust to the house’s corners and textures to create the soundscape of the record.
Vocalist Dara Kiely comments on the track saying ‘Going Norway was one of the first tracks we finished but the melody actually comes from a track that I wrote about 8 years ago. I saved that melody and brought it up when I didn’t have any ideas left, I was also doing a lot of mindfulness meditation around the time of it, so lyrically I decided not to use any pronouns within the track and the whole album – that came about when I came across this quote from the Buddha which was ’Nothing is to be clung to as I, me or mine’ – and I removed all that in a way to kind of find an abstract world to live in’
In Going Norway, we hear the mimicry of Dara’s vocal to Alan’s guitar coming close to a moan, both simultaneously reaching outside of the confines of Adam’s steady, flitting snare sound: ‘And Why/ Is the Death/ So Alive?’ The track pushes and pulls against itself, and the emotion is felt within this combative movement and the elongation of vowels – the intensive repetition to the point of abstraction results in a violent discrepancy between language and meaning, as Dara draws attention instead to the way the mouth moves and how sound is formed.
Big Thief Announce New Album, Two Hands, Due 11 October, Present Lead Single ‘Not’
Big Thief are pleased to announce their new album, Two Hands, due on 11th October, and present its lead single, ‘Not’.
The quartet has also confirmed worldwide tour dates that will extend to the Spring of 2020 including details of a special intimate London show.
Big Thief had only just finished work on their 3rd album, U.F.O.F. – “the celestial twin” – days before in a cabin studio in the woods of Washington State. Now it was time to birth U.F.O.F.’s sister album – “the earth twin” – Two Hands.
30 miles west of El Paso, surrounded by 3,000 acres of pecan orchards and only a stone’s throw from the Mexican border, Big Thief (a.k.a. Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek, Max Oleartchik, and James Krivchenia) set up their instruments as close together as possible to capture their most important collection of songs yet. Where U.F.O.F. layered mysterious sounds and effects for levitation, Two Hands grounds itself on dried-out, cracked desert dirt.
In sharp contrast to the wet environment of the U.F.O.F. session, the southwestern Sonic Ranch studio was chosen for its vast desert location. The 105-degree weather boiled away any clinging memories of the green trees and wet air of the previous session.
Two Hands had to be completely different— an album about the Earth and the bones beneath it. The songs were recorded live with almost no overdubs. All but two songs feature entirely live vocal takes, leaving Adrianne’s voice suspended above the mix in dry air, raw and vulnerable as ever.
“Two Hands has the songs that I’m the most proud of; I can imagine myself singing them when I’m old,” says Adrianne. “Musically and lyrically, you can’t break it down much further than this. It’s already bare-bones.” Lyrically this can be felt in the poetic blur of the internal and external. These are political songs without political language. They explore the collective wounds of our Earth. Abstractions of the personal hint at war, environmental destruction, and the traumas that fuel it. Across the album, there are genuine attempts to point the listener towards the very real dangers that face our planet. When Adrianne sings “Please wake up,” she’s talking directly to the audience.
Engineer Dom Monks and producer Andrew Sarlo, who were both behind U.F.O.F., capture the live energy as instinctually and honestly as possible. Sarlo teamed up with James Krivchenia to mix the album, where they sought to emphasise raw power and direct energy inherent in the takes.
The journey of a song from the stage to the record is often a difficult one. Big Thief’s advantage is their bond and loving centre as a chosen family. They spend almost 100% of their lives together working towards a sound that they all agree upon. A band with this level of togetherness is increasingly uncommon. If you ask drummer James Krivchenia, bassist Max Oleartchik or guitarist Buck Meek how they write their parts, they will describe—passionately—the experience of hearing Adrianne present a new song, listening intently for hints of parts that already exist in the ether and the undertones to draw out with their respective instruments.
With raw power and intimacy, Two Hands folds itself gracefully into Big Thief’s impressive discography. This body of work grows deeper and more inspiring with each new album.
Velvet Negroni shares Kurt Kobain, latest single/video from debut album Neon Brown
Minneapolis-born R&B experimentalist Velvet Negroni today shares his new single KURT KOBAIN.
On ‘KURT KOBAIN’, Velvet Negroni – the alter-ego of creative polymath Jeremy Nutzman – finds himself in new territory. Where CONFETTI and WINE GREEN both float through a blues-y slow jam space, ‘KURT KOBAIN’ shifts gear with bass-heavy uptempo funk, eighties synth pops and flashes of Nutzman’s hometown hero Prince.
Twists like this are found throughout his forthcoming debut NEON BROWN, (out on August 30th via 4AD) described in a recent Fader profile as an album that “sounds like nothing else released this year”.
To compliment ‘KURT KOBAIN’, the track is paired with visuals that resemble an extraterrestrial encounter. The creative director and executive producer behind the video is frequent collaborator and co-producer of NEON BROWN Elliott Kozel. The video was directed by Ryan Kron Thompson (Bon Iver, Lizzo).
Raised in an outer suburb of the Twin Cities, Jeremy Nutzman – a black kid adopted into a white evangelical Christian family – split his formative years between classical piano lessons and late night jam sessions. A duality that permeates every corner of his music, with forthcoming album NEON BROWN thriving in the borderlands between indie rock and R&B.
Having already notched writing credits for Kanye West and Kid Cudi, plus a forthcoming feature on Bon Iver’s next album, Velvet Negroni spent the summer touring with Tame Impala, including two nights at Madison Square Garden as well as a stop at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage.
Starcrawler ANNOUNCE SOPHOMORE LP DEVOUR YOU OUT OCTOBER 11TH ON ROUGH TRADE
Los Angeles’ Starcrawler formed in 2015, and since that time have gone from bashing out songs in the garage to earning legendary fans such as Shirley Manson and Elton John, and to supporting the likes of Beck, Foo Fighters, Spoon, The Distillers, MC5 and more.
Today they announce their remarkable sophomore album Devour You, a record that dynamically captures the essence and aggression of their gloriously unhinged live shows.
Produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, L7) at Sunset Studios, Devour You takes the feral intensity of their 2018 self-titled debut and twists it into something grander and more gracefully composed. With its more elaborate and nuanced yet harder-hitting sonic palette, the result is a selection of songs radiating both raw sensitivity and untamable power, and a record that the band’s Arrow de Wilde says, “encapsulates all the blood, sweat, bruised knees, and broken fingers of a Starcrawler show.”
To kick off the album announcement, Starcrawler share the heavy, swinging and brutally catchy “Bet My Brains” alongside its manic and murderous music video. “That song came from thinking about the tunnel people in New York and Vegas and the Catacombs in France, and the underground village of people who live in the sewers of the L.A. River,” says de Wilde. “I was fascinated with the fact that there is a whole other world happening right under our feet.” Guitarist and vocalist Henri Cash adds: “Arrow and I hadn’t even talked about it yet, but I’d already written something about the same thing—about how these people’s eyes adapt to pitch-blackness, and they end up going crazy from never seeing the sunlight.”
Starcrawler will bring their quintessentially crazed and chaotic live show—an impressive spectacle that’s simultaneously lurid and sublime—on the road this fall for a headline tour of North America with more dates to come in the UK, Europe and Japan. The dates include Canadian stops in Vancouver (October 8th), Toronto (October 19th) and Montreal (October 22nd)
The run includes two special shows at Third Man Records – Hell Night in Detroit and Halloween in Nashville, TN. Prone to spitting fake blood and slapping phones from the hands of crowd members, de Wilde has proven to be a captivating, once-in-a-lifetime performer. “We want to put on a real show and give people some kind of escape from all the shit going on in the world,” she says.
THOM YORKE Not The News Rmx EP Digital and Limited Edition 12” Vinyl Release August 2
On August 2, Thom Yorke will be releasing an EP of remixes for the track Not The News from his new album, ANIMA.
The EP will be available to stream and download, and as a white label 12” limited to 3000 copies in stores soon.
The full track list of both the digital and physical editions of the Not The News EP is:
A1. Not The News (Extendo Mix by Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich)
A2. Not The News (Mark Pritchard Remix)
B1. Not The News (Equiknoxx Remix feat. Time Cow & Gavsborg)
B2. Not The News (Clark Remix)
Accompanied by a one-reeler also entitled ANIMA, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and available exclusively via Netflix, ANIMA was released across digital platforms on Thursday, June 27. The album’s physical release followed July 19 with formats including CD, black double vinyl, and a deluxe 180g heavyweight orange double vinyl including a 40-page book of lyrics, and pencil drawings by Stanley Donwood and Dr Tchock.
Featuring several songs debuted live over the course of Thom Yorke, Nigel Godrich and Tarik Barri’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes performances, ANIMA was written by Yorke, produced by Godrich and features the London Contemporary Orchestra on all tracks.
Thom Yorke, Nigel Godrich and Tarik Barri recently completed a series of live dates throughout Europe, Japan, and Korea. They will return to North America in September, Andrea Belfi, who supported on the European shows, will also be joining the tour as Special Guest.
Canadian shows include:
September 26th – Place Bell, Laval
September 27th – Scotiabank Arena Toronto
October 21st – Orpheum Vancouver
