Quadeca / quickly, quickly

Ben Lasky adopted the moniker Quadeca during preschool recess, in the necessity to name a superhuman persona. At ten years old, Quadeca took on the heroic task that’d become the central focus of his multi-hyphenate creative career–writing and producing his own expressive style of music. He would go on to attract a cult-like following, where fans are prone to analyze his work and discuss it communally. Quadeca’s first forays into concept albums, Voice Memos and From Me To You, both made impressive debuts across streaming platforms for an independent musician. Lasky responded by shifting the focus of Quadeca towards achieving greatness in his LP’s craftsmanship, and away from the virality of his premier platform, YouTube, where his subscribership was nearing two million. The release of the spectral and impressionistic “I Didn’t Mean To Haunt You” album signified a watershed moment for Lasky. The credits tout contributions from Danny Brown and others, mastering at Abbey Road, but simultaneously stands as the biggest statement-piece of his creative independence: A fully self-produced opus with an accompanying film that has landed him newfound levels of acclaim from music fans and critics alike.. The reception stirred widespread internet discourse about the validity of multi-media creators evolving in the internet age, which culminated towards a short series of analytical videos from critic Anthony Fantano who named the album’s lead single “Born Yesterday” as the 7th best song of 2022. Now, Quadeca’s vision is focused straight ahead, onto the next opus that stands tall outside of its zeitgeist context.Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | SoundcloudThe new quickly, quickly EP finds Portland, Oregon’s Graham Jonson back in his home studio, engrossed in ‘60s psychedelic soul music, imagining some bygone era where it was all about the drum sounds and tape decay. He calls it Easy Listening; the songs are short and inviting, modest yet loaded with ideas. Each started with the drum part, a loose grid for Jonson to paint his idiosyncratic psych-pop across, again playing nearly every instrument. The set follows his 2021 LP, The Long And The Short of It, the 22-year-old musician’s debut on Ghostly International, a coming-of-age jump from the chill beats-oriented corners of the internet to a full-fledged songwriting project with hi-fi sophistication. The moment culminated with Pitchfork’s Rising profile, “quickly, quickly’s Technicolor Pop Bursts Beyond the Algorithm,” and kickstarted the formation of his 6-piece live band for a run of exploratory shows along the west coast. But as the tangible demands for his music pulled him outward and some growing pains in his personal life ensued, Jonson focused his energy back inside; to the comforts of home recording, filling his space with more gear and sessions with friends. Maybe a bit of a droll title for a hard time, Easy Listening briefly pauses for air, offering five of his breeziest basement jams for public enjoyment.Bandcamp | Instagram | Soundcloud

Julia Jacklin

Since releasing her debut album Don’t Let the Kids Win in 2016, Melbourne’s Julia Jacklin has carved out a fearsome reputation as a direct lyricist, willing to excavate the parameters of intimacy and agency in songs both stark and raw, loose, and playful. If her debut announced those intentions, and the startling 2019 follow-up Crushing drew in listeners uncomfortably close, PRE PLEASURE is the sound of Jacklin gently loosening her grip.Stirring piano-led opener ‘Lydia Wears A Cross’ channels the underage confusion of being told religion is profound, despite only feeling it during the spectacle of its pageantry. The gentle pulse of ‘Love, Try Not To Let Go’ and dreamy strings of ‘Ignore Tenderness’ betray an interrogation of consent and emotional injury. The stark ‘Less Of A Stranger’ picks at the generational thread of a mother/daughter relationship, while the hymnal ‘Too In Love To Die’ and loose jam of ‘Be Careful With Yourself’ equate true love with the fear of losing it.Recorded in Montreal with co-producer Marcus Paquin (The Weather Station, The National), PRE PLEASURE finds Jacklin teamed with her Canada-based touring band, bassist Ben Whiteley, guitarist Will Kidman, and drummer Laurie Torres.PRE PLEASURE presents Jacklin as her most authentic self; an uncompromising and masterful lyricist, always willing to mine the depths of her own life experience, and singular in translating it into deeply personal, timeless songs.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify

The Baseball Project featuring: Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey, Mike Mills, Linda Pitmon, and Steve Wynn

In 2008 they busted out of the box and easily reached first with their Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails. The Baseball Project was on base and immediately posed a threat to go further. In 2011, they moved on to second with some wildness aptly called High and Inside. They were halfway home. Three years later in 2014, the quintet of Big Stars moved on down the line to the aptly titled 3rd, an epic double dip delight of craftsmanship and savvy. And there they stayed. For 9 long years at the hot corner, but we’re happy to say that The Baseball Project is finally coming home, scoring big and touching ‘em all with their fourth album Grand Salami Time. The scoreboard is lighting up and the fireworks are illuminating the sky Speaking of reaching home, this album is a homecoming of sorts, as the band recorded and produced the album with none other than the legendary Mitch Easter. BBP members Peter Buck and Mike Mills’ made their first albums with Mitch back in the early 80s with a swingin’ little combo called R.E.M. Scott McCaughey and Steve Wynn kept busy themselves, busting out new tunes with the Minus 5/Young Fresh Fellows (Scott) and The Dream Syndicate (Steve), while stockpiling a passel of penned poetics about the national pastime, many co-written with Peter. Mike adds a new classic of his own about doctored baseballs called “Stuff.” Linda Pitmon, who along with Peter and Scott has been part of a steady rhythmic nucleus, bashing out epic rock platters with Filthy Friends, Alejandro Escovedo, Luke Haines & Peter Buck, is back driving the ship from behind her mighty drum machine. All in all, a fancy pedigree but, as Wynn points out, “this is our only band that plays stadiums” — true story as The Baseball Project has performed full sets along with the National Anthem and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at major league parks in Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and more minor league and spring training fields, as well as having thrown out some exceptional first pitches (nothing but strikes!) as well. It’s all part of an unusual arc and fun story of a band whose first gig was an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman followed by a festival in a medieval Spanish city. For a quintet that has seemingly done everything over the years with their other bands, The Baseball Project always offers new and uncharted experiences. The album was recorded at Mitch Easter’s fabled Fidelitorium Studios in Kernersville, North Carolina, with the entire band performing live together in the same room, a joyous experience that seemed impossible to imagine only one year before. Mitch adds guitar on a few tracks and the record also features appearances by Stephen McCarthy (Long Ryders) and Steve Berlin (Los Lobos). Read below for the stories behind the songs. In the meantime, the band will be out on the road throughout—when else? —the upcoming baseball season. And we all know they’ll find their way home. Get out the rye bread and mustard, Grandma, it’s Grand Salami Time!Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

Angel Olsen

Last year’s Big Time brought Angel Olsen to a deeper, truer sense of self than ever before. Borne from the twin stars of grief and love, the album delivered a beautiful sense of certainty, the sure-footed sound of an artist fully, finally at home with herself. But within that wisdom comes the realization that there is no finish line, no destination or static end point to life while you’re living it, and Forever Means collects songs from the Big Time sessions that hold this common theme. They are, in Olsen’s words, “in search of something else.”“I was somewhere traveling,” says Olsen, “stopped for a few days and wandering the city, and I was thinking ‘what does ‘forever’ really mean? What are the things I’m seeking in friendship or love, and how can ‘forever’ be attainable if we’re always changing?’” Sitting with the reality of that entropy, Olsen realized “maybe the secret to ongoing love is to embrace change as part of love itself, that forever must have something to do with playing, looking, constantly searching things out for yourself, never letting yourself think you’re finished learning or exploring.”“‘Forever’”, says Olsen, “remains curious while trying also to be kind and honest.” And so it is with opener “Nothing’s Free”, a song that is, according to Olsen, “about that point when self-denial breaks, and you notice how long you’ve been restraining who you are.” It is as hypnotic and haunting as anything Olsen has ever written, backed by a sax and organ pairing that feel wholly new to her canon. “Holding On” stretches that endless curiosity even further, as Olsen leans into a song that is “rare in my music, not meant for singing, more for getting lost in.”All this packs into the four precious songs that comprise Forever Means, songs from Olsen’s roads traveled and the ones ahead. “Nothing’s free / like breaking free” Olsen sings, comfortable with the costs of her clarity, her heart and voice fixed on the present, the future, the not-yet-known and the beautifully unknowable.Website | Facebook | Twitter | Bandcamp | Instagram | YouTube | Spotify

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Bonny Doon

Bonny Doon emerged in 2014, its four members pivoting away from their punk origins to create something restrained and steeped in contemplation. Songwriters Bill Lennox and Bobby Colombo expanded their ongoing collaboration to include drummer Jake Kmiecik and bassist Joshua Brooks. From there Bonny Doon took form, developing a sound indebted as much to musical touchstones like Neil Young and the Silver Jews as it was to the emotional landscapes of their always changing hometown of Detroit.The group recorded what became a self-titled 7” in the summer of 2014, tracked by Fred Thomas in his living room. A tape of 4-track demos, “Classical Days and Jazzy Nights,” followed in 2015, before reenlisting Thomas to record their texturally dense debut LP, which melded their penchant for time-honored songcraft with production heavy on tape-delay and glowing, roomy sonics. The album was released on Salinas in early 2017, as the band was already deep into work on material for a follow-up. Working in a studio for the first time, they captured a more spare and vulnerable sound and signed on with Woodsist to release the resultant album, Longwave.Website | Bandcamp | Facebook

Cosmic Charlie – High Energy Grateful Dead from Athens, GA

“Cosmic Charlie really is a great band – these guys do this music the way it should be done: having the conversation in their own voices.” -David Gans, Grateful Dead archivistCosmic Charlie was born in the musical Mecca of Athens, Georgia. From its summer 1999 inception, the band swiftly cemented its reputation as a band that puts a unique and personal twist on the Grateful Dead catalogue, a Dead cover band for folks that are ambivalent about Dead cover bands. Rather than mimicking the Dead exactly, Cosmic Charlie chooses to tap into the Dead’s energy and style as a foundation on which to build. The result is healthy balance of creativity and tradition, and both the band and its audience are taken to that familiar edge with the sense that, music is actually being MADE here tonight. Moving and shaking even the most skeptical of Deadheads, Cosmic Charlie storms into a town and plays with an energy that eludes other bands, an energy that sometimes eluded the Dead themselves. Those precious moments during Dead jams when the synchronicity is there and all is right with the world, these are moments that Cosmic Charlie relishes and feverishly welcomes with open arms. Clearly, Cosmic Charlie’s audiences are also eager to arrive at those moments, and together with the band, they have indulged in many memorable evenings. Website | Facebook | YouTube

La Luz

On their self-titled fourth album, La Luz launch themselves into a new realm of emotional intimacy for a collection of songs steeped in the mysteries of the natural world and the magic of human chemistry that has found manifestation in the musical ESP between guitarist and songwriter Shana Cleveland, bassist Lena Simon, and keyboardist Alice Sandahl.  To help shape La Luz, the band found a kindred spirit in producer Adrian Younge. Though primarily known for his work with hip-hop, soul, and jazz acts, Younge saw in La Luz a shared vision that transcended genre. “We both create music with the same attitude, and that’s what I love about them,” he says. “They are never afraid to be risky and their style is captivating. It was an honor to work with them.”  The result is an album that is both the most naturalistic and psychedelic of the band’s career. All the elements of classic La Luz are still present—the lush harmonies, the impeccable musicianship, the gorgeous melodies—but it’s a richer, earthier iteration, replete with inorganic sounds that mimic the surreality of nature—the humming of invisible bugs, the atmospheric sizzle of a hot day. La Luz is an album that celebrates love—of music, of friendship, of life in all its forms.Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube

Free Throw

With Piecing It Together, their fourth full-length album, Free Throw grapple with hard truths. After three albums and a decade of hard work, including countless performances worldwide, the members — Cory Castro, Lawrence Warner, Justin Castro, Jake Hughes, and Kevin Garcia — have a fresh perspective on life. The band is through obsessing over what comes next and romanticizing the moments that have already passed. Instead, Free Throw is making music about the present and how seeking balance in our lives is far more meaningful work than the endless pursuit of whatever you deem to be ‘enough.'”It’s very hard when for a band like us to take time off,” drummer Kevin Garcia explains. “We go home to write and record, then we go on tour. Rinse and repeat, you know? When we got into this writing process, we stopped feeling like we existed in a mold or on a path that Free Throw is supposed to keep going on with our contemporaries. We stopped worrying about what tour we may be fighting for next or what someone else does. We were just writing songs that we really like writing. “Throughout the album’s twelve tracks, Piecing It Together finds the men of Free Throw abandoning childhood notions of success and happiness through a thorough exploration of personal fulfillment. It’s about reaching the heights that once felt impossible and everything that comes after. How no matter what we do or where we go, we must continue to wake up and find the strength to keep on keeping on despite everything we tell ourselves about ourselves.Piecing It Together is an exploration of self-acceptance, and Free Throw invites everyone to join.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify

Kiltro

Years ago, Chilean-American singer/songwriter Chris Bowers Castillo moved to the port city of Valparaíso and became a walking tour guide.“I would dress up as Wally and give tours to families and kids,” he remembers with a laugh. “It was great, because I got to know the city incredibly well. I’d walk for hours, then spend the rest of the day partying and drinking, probably way too much. But I also wrote lots of new songs.”Back in Denver, Chris looked for a moniker that reflected the evocative and subtly rebellious musical concepts percolating in his head, and settled on kiltro – a word used in Chile for stray dogs or mutts. He then teamed up with bassist Will Parkhill and drummer Michael Devincenzi, later inviting Fez García to join the band as an additional percussionist on Kiltro’s live gigs.“I wanted to do a project mixing different styles and aesthetics,” he says. “Valparaíso is my favorite city in the world and will always influence my music. There were street dogs everywhere, and I’m a mutt myself.”Titled Underbelly, Kiltro’s sophomore album crystallizes those dreams and experiences into a post-rock manifesto of dazzling beauty. Its songs combine touches of shoegaze, ambient and neo-psychedelia with the soulful transcendence of South American folk – the purity of stringed instruments, supple syncopated percussion and elusive melodies that define the works of Latin American legends such as Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara and Atahualpa Yupanqui.From the propulsive, chant-like groove of “Guanaco” to the art-pop panache of “All the Time in the World,” Underbelly is the kind of record that invites you to quiet down and listen, savoring every single detail. The album reaches an emotional pinnacle during its second half, when the majestic lament of “Softy” – seeped in exquisite cushions of reverb – segues into the hypnotic reverie of “Kerosene.”It also signals a new chapter in the fusion of Latin roots with mainstream rock, anchoring its sonic quest on a rare commodity: inspired songwriting.“So much of this album is defined by the conditions that made it,” says Chris. “Our debut – 2019’s Creatures of Habit – has a social, almost communal feel to it, because we played it live time after time before recording. In a way, the songs were troubleshooted in the presence of an audience, then honed in the studio. Underbelly, on the other hand, was made in quarantine. It was just us obsessing in the studio, and we ended up following whatever thread seemed most interesting at the time, which made for an album that is more experimental and creative.”“We’re trying to make sense of the process as we experience it,” adds Will, who returned to Denver and became part of Kiltro after a few years living abroad. “The way we make music, we’re definitely not interested in dropping singles. Something that Chris and I have in common is our interest in capturing ambient textures that evoke a sense of place. When we first played music together – years before Kiltro – we got microphones and tried to record the sound of water running down a bathtub. It didn’t work out then, but we revisited the same concept on this album.”Quarantine isolation allowed Kiltro to obsess over every single loop and melodic turn. Now that the band is ready to tour again, presenting the songs in a live setting poses a beautiful challenge.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

Genre: Concerts