Less Than Jake Welcome to Rockview Tour 2023
The story of ska-rockin’ maestros Less Than Jake isn’t told in their sizable discography. It can’t be calculated by the amount of road miles they’ve logged. (But if we’re forced to calculate, we think they might be a block or two short of the Van Allen belts.) Nah! Less Than Jake’s cumulative worth is all about what they bring to your party. From sweaty club shows to uproarious festival dates to opening up for America’s most beloved rock acts, these five lifers’ deeds are best measured in the smiles they’ve slapped on the faces of true believers and new listeners, alike.Silver Linings is the name of the new Less Than Jake album, their first full- length for the Pure Noise label and the follow-up to 2013’s See The Light. It also doubles as a bunch of sonic diary pages and a mission statement that cements their conviction after two decades in this rock ‘n’ roll circus. Indeed, LTJ—frontman/guitarist Chris DeMakes, bassist/vocalist Roger Lima, trombonist Buddy Schaub, saxophonist Peter “JR” Wasilewski and new drummer Matt Yonker—have escaped most (but not all) forms of ennui, depression and violence against screen-based objects to create an endorsement of humanity.Silver Linings also does a good amount of myth-exploding in its pursuit of joy. The songwriting core of DeMakes, Lima and Wasilewski wrote all the lyrics. New drummer Matt Yonker, whose former positions included LTJ tour manager and hammering along with such punk outfits as the Teen Idols and the Queers, helps bring a new sense of urgency. And that album title? Yeah, that was decided upon long before bands began to offer face masks in their online merch stores. Pro tip: Dial back your preconceived notions. The only things the Jakes have to prove are to themselves. Their laurels aren’t so comfortable that they’d willingly choose to be painted into a retro- colored corner.While Silver Linings doesn’t skimp on the joy, fun or grooves, careful listeners will sense a bit more reality seeping into LTJ’s escapism. The calisthenic bounce of “Lie To Me” is slightly undercut by Lima’s tales of how “the flames we hold the closest burn the worse.” On the urgent track “The Test,” DeMakes dares to seek some self-examination through someone else’s prism. “Dear Me” might be the first rock song that doesn’t couch its disdain for technology with poetic metaphors. That track addresses the loss of friends via distance and tragedy. The word “love” also appears in the album’s lyrics at three junctures. That detail should not be lost on anyone.“We allowed ourselves to be vulnerable,” offers Wasilewski. “In the past, previous records’ lyrics were about leaving a specific place or time. This ismore about the departures in our personal lives: family, friends, relationships. We’ve never really explored that side. With this record, we tried to pull back that curtain. We’re showing some fragility in a time when people seem so hardened.“We’re not looking for silver linings,” he clarifies. “The record is about appreciating them. Nobody appreciates them until maybe it’s too late or maybe it’s after the fact.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify
Chapel Heelz Presents Riot Night
Chapel Heelz PresentsRiot Night – a drag show to crash the cis-tem.
Elora Dash
Blending elements of contemporary R&B, classic soul, and jazz fusion, Elora Dash is an up-and-coming artist from Chapel Hill, NC. Elora is a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who is breaking into the regional neo-soul scene. Her music is characterized by eclectic instrumentals and soulful vocals. Elora has had the opportunity to play venues such as Lincoln Theatre, HIgh Rock Outfitters, Camp North End, and the Flat Iron. She is joined by an all-star band, with the core members being Brady Kennedy as her co-producer and drummer, Daniel Combs as her keyboardist, and Nick Williams as her bassist.Her newest single was released in November 2022: an acoustic track titled “Disappointed”. Elora Dash and Brady Kennedy wrote, produced, and arranged this song. It features lush vocal stacks and a moving string arrangement from Matt Laird.In 2020, she released “Self-Actualization”, a 9-track instrumental collaborative lofi mixtape featuring many artists from around NC and the country. This project was her introduction as a solo artist, and after her newest single in 2022, she plans to go back to the studio to record several more singles in anticipation of an EP in 2023. Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | TikTok
Slow Teeth
Hailing from the NC Triangle, Slow Teeth Is Robert Chamberlain, Justin Ellis, and Jeremy Haire making original cinematic music inspired by Radiohead/The Smile, Pink Floyd, Sigur Ros, and many more. The band first started playing live in March 2022 and has since extensively toured all over the East Coast. Slow Teeth has shared the stage with such acts as Xiu Xiu, Holy Fawn, Camp St. Helene, and Merci. Notable venues and events played include Berlin (NYC), Pie Shop (Washington DC), The Cat’s Cradle (Carrboro NC), The Pinhook (Durham NC), Asbury Park Yacht Club (Asbury Park NJ), the North Carolina State Fair and the Carrboro Music Festival. 2023 will see Slow Teeth release music recorded with Sumner James Phillips (Bombadil, David Wax Museum) and more touring.LinkTree | Instagram | Facebook | New Song Formed in Athens, GA, Easter Island is an ambient dream-pop act, whose sound has been compared to Explosions in The Sky, Death Cab for Cutie, DIIV, and more. Over the years they’ve shared the stage with David Bazan, Cindy Wilson (of The B5s), The Low Anthem, Bully, Wild Nothing, White Rabbits, Valley Maker, to name just a few. The band’s debut record Frightened led to a number of television syncs, including ABC’s “Off The Map”, MTV’s “Awkward”, and a recent live appearance on CW’s Dynasty which aired in 2019. In early 2020, the band launched a Kickstarter campaign to independently release the new album on vinyl. Despite the rapid rise of the Covid-19 pandemic, they successfully raised the funds they needed to finally put this record out on their own terms. Since 2020, each band member now lives in a different city spread out over the U.S. Never to be put off by setbacks, the band chose to lean into the weirdness and produced a music video featuring each band member in their respective city, as well as recording the album in its entirety at Tweed Recording in Athens, Ga, for five cameras. The journey has been a labor of love and full of small gifts and miracles (they still like the songs after all these years!), and they’re overjoyed to finally be able to share it with the world with their first tour since 2019.Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube Analog Mountains is the songwriting duo of Jack Gudhart and Chris Fulton. With a disregard for genre constrictions they operate in whatever mode grabs their attention; exploring the sonic corridors of electro pop, atmospheric dirges, garage tinged indie rock, and folksy fingerpicked meditations with equal measure. Bandcamp | Instagram
Erie Choir, Lud
Born of navel-gazing self-indulgence and vague ambition, Erie Choir began at the dawn of the new millennium as the solo acoustic folk singing sort-of-thing of Sorry About Dresden’s Eric Roehrig. After a pair of self-released EP’s and a few lineup changes, Sit-n-Spin Records released “Slighter Awake” in 2006.11 years later the follow up “Old Rigs” is here.Website | Bandcamp | Twitter | FacebookLud is a band in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. We started around 1993 and have played shows and recorded records ever since.Still working. Still playing. Still raining. Still dreaming.Bandcamp | Facebook
Tim Barry
“This big old heart ain’t running right // ‘Bout time to check the tires.” And so begins “Ain’t Much For Talking,” the opening salvo on Tim Barry’s latest album, Spring Hill. In a fashion that can only be called “perfectly Tim Barry,” the line carries with it some rather immense weight and rather eloquently and succinctly sets the table for what’s in store, both on the remainder of the song and on the album as a whole. If you’re expecting a baker’s dozen tales of introspection and honest reflection and occasional pointed-tongued humor and a handful of lines that’ll punch you right square in the solar plexus, you’ve come to the right place.It’s been just about three years since Barry’s last studio album, The Roads To Richmond, a span that pretty nearly matches the longest break between albums in a solo career that’s now closer to the end of its second decade than it is to its start. And while it’s fair to say that the years since The Roads To Richmond have seen the world-at-large continue to unravel in ways that are as varied as they are tumultuous, much of that turmoil is absent from Spring Hill. Instead, what follows, both on the remainder of “Ain’t Much For Talking” and on Spring Hill as a whole, as a real and thorough examination of where Tim’s been, a little of where he’s headed, and perhaps most importantly, where all of the many hard-earned miles on the above-mentioned tires have brought him to right now.Which is to say, Richmond. Since the early Avail days three decades ago, it’s been no secret that Barry is well-known for being a proud native son of the River City. References to the city and its neighborhoods and its history and its cast of characters have abounded for years, and that’s no different on Spring Hill. During the course of the last year, with most options for touring and live music mostly off the table, Barry returned to the familiar Richmond confines of Minimum Wage Recording, alongside his trusted producer-in-arms Lance Koehler. While that’s been the modus operandi since the days of Barry’s genre-defining debut full length, Rivanna Junction, in 2006, that’s not to say that he’s returned to the same well time and time again.Through the process of recording the songs that would become Spring Hill, Barry surrounded himself with a cast of Richmond characters to help fill out a sonic palette that ranges from sparse to haunting to dynamic, sometimes all in the same song. Tim’s sister Caitlin Barry once aga lends her violin playing talents, joined by the virtuosic harmonica stylings of Andrew Alli. Josh Bearman chimes in on mandolin and banjo. The multitalented Charles Arthur adds pedal steel and lap steel and resonator. Barry himself has added newfound banjo strumming chops to his signature vocal and guitar styles. The result is a Tim Barry record that’s comfortable in its own skin and also willing to explore some new and different levels. Recurring themes of freedom and of moving on abound. Barry long-ago perfected the craft of the “tell off” song, steadfast in his vision and eschewing the trappings and vanities of things like wealth and celebrity in favor of a truer, more real and fulfilled life. That is very much on display in “Free As The Wind” which extols the virtue of enjoying the real, human experiences of a “sunset with no filter, no trophy fish, no fake ass fucking smile.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Tom The Mail Man Presents: The 710S Tour
Tom the Mail Man is from Monroe, Georgia – a country town about an hour outside Atlanta. He’s a multi-genre artist who emphatically avoids putting a label to his music, instead focusing on creating a world for his fans to come together as one community. Recently, he’s been featured in PAPER magazine and Pigeons & Planes, performed at Life is Beautiful, partnered with Trojan Magnum and UPROXX for a documentary feature, and racked up more than 65 million streams across DSPs.TikTok | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
Benefit For The People of Turkiye and Syria
Benefit For The People of Turkiye and Syria Chris Stamey & Peter Holsapple Johnny Folsom 4 Too Much Fun John Howie, Jr the Rosewood Bluff The VeldtAll proceeds go to Turkey / Syria Earthquake Relief Fund
Declan McKenna – The Big Return
“Unstoppable Gen Z Icon” – The Big Issue“The wonder boy of British Music” – Attitude“A brilliant second album from indie’s boy wonder” – ★★★★★ DORK“Spaced-out storytelling from an indie wunderkind…a delight” – ★★★★ Q Magazine“Star-spangled and confident AF… ‘Zeros’ is a lot of fun” – ★★★★ DIY Magazine“McKenna’s future looks intriguing…the work of an artist broadening his scope” – ★★★★ The Guardian“electric, entertaining and thought-provoking” – ★★★★ NME“McKenna is to Bowie what Sam Fender is to Bruce Springsteen” – ★★★★ Evening Standard“Declan is proving a rare talent to watch” – ★★★★ Daily Star“Zeros is the sound of an artist pushing his creative development, and enjoying himself as he does so. Exciting stuff” – ★★★★ The IndependentIn late 2019, Declan Mckenna headed out to Nashville to record his second album, Zeros, with producer Jay Joyce. By September 2020, he was battling out for a number 1 record with The Rolling Stones. “Nashville is a great place to record because it’s filled with a lot of creative people and music heads trying to escape LA.” This idea of a refuge is fitting for Declan, who wanted to be away from the pressures of London or the drab consistency of home, allowing for an intimacy and a desire to explore on this super galactic album that can only really be pursued in a place that is unfamiliar. Zeros is playful, wonderfully strange and intensely musical, but there’s a dark shadow looming throughout. It’s Coors Light and cowboy boots escaping a Silicon Valley dystopia.Whilst Declan might have lost that particular battle by a whisker to Jagger and his cohorts on the very last day of sales, it showed just how far Declan had come since his arrival as a slight in stature, big ball of fizzing teenage energy only a few years earlier. The boy most likely to had very quickly become the young man to beat.But for all the chart noise and colourful media presence, it’s the music that does the lionshare of the talking. Zeros is a curious, unique and bold record that is teeming with fresh ideas and nods back to eras that have no right to head up the charts in the year 2020. It’s a very British trait to focus on age, but it simply has no right to be conceived by a twenty one year-old who was younger still in its writing. Opening track, You Better Believe!!! comes in hot, aggressive and excitable. It’s a mean song, its accusational. You’ve changed. You’re gonna die. The world’s gonna end and everyone is going to forget you. It combines a retro, 70s space-race inspired energy with a modern tale of anxiety. Musically and lyrically, it provides a perfect blueprint to the album: ‘So you know how it feels to wait at Heaven’s gate for God,/ Watching your requiem on a screen… I’m sorry my dear,/ The Asteroids here.’Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | TikTok
Nation of Language
Brooklyn-based synth auteurs Nation of Language first arrived to most in 2020 as one of the most heralded new acts of recent memory, having only released a handful of singles but already earning high-praise from the likes of NME, FADER, Stereogum, Pitchfork, etc.. Inspired by the early new-wave and punk movements, the band quickly earned a reputation for delivering frenzied nights of unconventional bliss to rapt audiences, and established themselves as bright young stars emerging from a crowded NYC landscape prior to their release of one of the most critically acclaimed debut albums of the year — Introduction, Presence. The band’s ability to blend the upbeat with a healthy dose of sardonic melancholy made it a staple on year-end ‘Best of’ lists, led PASTE magazine to dub the album ‘The most exciting synth-pop debut in years’ , and landed the band major radio play from the BBC, KCRW, KEXP, SiriusXM and countless others.Their 2021 follow up, A Way Forward then saw the band pushing even further into analog electronic landscapes while channeling a ferocious energy on singles like ‘Across that Fine Line’ & ‘This Fractured Mind.’ With NME now dubbing their sophomore album ‘A true modern-day classic’ and Rough Trade tabbing it as one of its Top Albums of the year, the band has gone on to headline a string of packed shows both domestically and Internationally in ’22 and well into 2023.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
