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

Tank and the Bangas

Tank and The Bangas don’t go anywhere quietly. Sitting around a dimly lit room in London’s neighborhood of Camden Town, vocalist Tank Ball, bassist Norman Spence, drummer Joshua Johnson and saxophonist Albert Allenback can’t go mere minutes without bursting into play fights, or talking over one another, or laughing from their deepest guts. They are a beacon of life. And it’s that life that you hear in their music. That’s what makes this fivepiece one of the most thrilling, unpredictable and sonically diverse bands on the planet; a unit where jazz meets hip-hop, soul meets rock, and funk is the beating heart of everything they do. Their new album Green Balloon is on the horizon, and it’s their first release now they’re signed to major label Verve Forecast – a deal that came after they won NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2017, beating out hundreds of other acts. They admit that it was a moment that has entirely changed their lives. This resulting record is set to prove their pizazz and their staying power. It’s everything they’ve worked so hard for so far.Green Balloon is a multi-faceted title for their first full-length release since Think Tank in 2013. Think Tank was a case of throwing all their creative juices and ideas to at the wall to see what stuck. It was a DIY project. This album process was a world apart from that. “Green Balloon is a sister to Think Tank,” says Tank. “Think Tank was 12, and Green Balloon is 16 and having sex. She’s out there.” Made in New Orleans, Los Angeles, London and Florida, the band’s newfound critical acclaim and global notoriety meant they were able to call upon producers such as Jack Splash, Mark Batson, Zaytoven, Louie Lastic and Robert Glasper. Some of these names were on their bucket wishlist, others were new discoveries. “It was truly a dream to us. We’re so lucky,” says Tank. Green Balloon and many of its lyrical themes may seem to revolve around money and material (“money, look at all my money” starts ‘Spaceships’), but it’s far more complex than that. The color is explored throughout the tracks.It’s not quite a full concept album, but there are interludes and a story arc. Tank explains that in New Orleans a common phrase is “she’s as green as a blade of grass”. “Green is about being naïve,” she explains. “You could be immature, new to life and experiences.” Green is also a reference to marijuana, which is vital to the band. “Feeling high, feeling out of yourself, feeling different,” she continues. Take the track “Too High,” which is almost two minutes of Tank just talking about weed consumption. In terms of wealth, Tank is as interested in what it means to not have money as she is with knowing what you do with money when you’ve never had it. It’s fitting too, that the idea of naivety pertains to the experience of Tank and The Bangas in the past few years while elevating from underground treasures to internationally renowned professionals. “It’s been a learning curve and a journey,” they admit. “We went to a whole different dimension.”Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Spotify

late night drive home

The Drums

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Glove

Glove are at the forefront of cutting-edge new aged nostalgia. Funneling the feeling of a seedy nightclub into a well-polished package. Formed in Tampa, FL and made up of Rod Wendt, Justin Burns and Brie Deux. Glove are a fluid unit wherein there is not a singular front person. This aligns with the band’s creative ethos in opposition to being categorized as one fixed configuration, but rather, amorphous, generating intrigue, suspense, and excitement among fans. Glove’s live performances are something like a mosh pit mixed with Studio 54.Website | Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube

Pageant

Pageant is a blues-influenced, glam rock band, based in High Point, NC. With Dylan Dynasty on drums, Dezzy Foxx on guitar, and Roxxi Dirt on bass and vocals, Pageant strives to shine a new light on the classic sounds of 70’s and 80’s style rock n’ roll. Their music is inspired by legends such as Motley Crue, Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, and Cinderella. Pageant’s unique sound aspires to contribute to the new generation of rock and create a sound that is unique, yet familiar. They want to provide a live listening experience that’s exciting, raw, and exhilarating. From their flashy clothes to their hand-built stage set, banner, and customized equipment, you will not be disappointed when Roxxi, Dezzy, and Dylan hit the stage. Joined by local Raleigh Rock N’ Roll legends, Stone Whiskey and Stray Volts, this is a night that you won’t want to miss!Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | TikTok

Deerhoof

MIRACLES WANTED!(EVERYTHING IS A MIRACLE EXCEPT WAR AND GASOLINE)PHASE-OUT ALL REMAINING NON-MIRACLES BY 2028(LUCKILY THERE AREN’T THAT MANY ANYWAY)WE NEED ONLY *LOVE* SONGS(YES, THIS WORD GETS USED OFTEN)BUT I MEAN HIGH-LEVELI MEAN MIRACLE LEVELLET’S WASH OUR DIRTY HANDS WITH LOVELET’S LIVELET’S WALK CLOSELY TOGETHERI CAN HOLD AN UMBRELLA FOR YOU FOR A LONG TIMEDeerhoof’s new album, Miracle-Level, was produced, recorded, and mixed by Mike Bradavski at No Fun Studios in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It’s the band’s 19th album and the first to be produced, recorded and mixed entirely in a recording studio. All of the songs are in Japanese.Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter

Indigo De Souza

“Everything has to be said.” This is the conviction guiding Indigo De Souza’s sophomore album, Any Shape You Take. This dynamic record successfully creates a container for the full spectrum — pushing through and against every emotion: “I wanted this album to give a feeling of shifting with and embracing change. These songs came from a turbulent time when I was coming to self-love through many existential crises and shifts in perspective.”Faithful to its name, Any Shape You Take changes form to match the tenor of each story it tells. “The album title is a nod to the many shapes I take musically. I don’t feel that I fully embody any particular genre — all of the music just comes from the universe that is my ever-shifting brain/heart/world,” says Indigo. This sonic range is unified by Indigo’s strikingly confessional and effortless approach to songwriting, a signature first introduced in her debut, self-released LP, I Love My Mom. Written in quick succession, Indigo sees these two records as companion pieces, both distinct but in communion with each other: “Many of the songs on these two records came from the same season in my life and a certain version of myself which I feel much further from now.”Throughout Any Shape You Take, Indigo reflects on her relationships as she reckons with a deeper need to redefine how to fully inhabit spaces of love and connection.”It feels so important for me to see people through change. To accept people for the many shapes they take, whether those shapes fit into your life or not. This album is a reflection of that. I have undergone so much change in my life and I am so deeply grateful to the people who have seen me through it without judgment and without attachment to skins I’m shifting out of.”Lead single “Kill Me,” written during the climax of a dysfunctional relationship, opens with the lines “Kill me slowly/ Take me with you.” This powerful plea, that begins within the quiet strum of a single electric guitar, is diffused by Indigo’s ironic apathy — a slacker rock nonchalance that refuses to take itself seriously: “I was really tired and fucked up from this relationship and simultaneously so deeply in love with that person in a special way that felt very vast and more real than anything I’d ever experienced.”Across the table from that irreverence sits the sincerity of the single “Hold U,” a more energized, neo soul-inspired love song that substitutes apathy for a genuine expression of care. “I wrote ‘Hold U’ after I left that heavy season of my life and was learning how to love more simply and functionally. I wanted to write a love song that was painfully simple.”Growing up in a conservative small town in the mountains of North Carolina, Indigo started playing guitar when she was nine years old. “Music was a natural occurrence in my life. My dad is a bossa nova guitarist and singer from Brazil and so I think I just had it in my blood from birth.” It wasn’t until moving to Asheville, NC that Indigo began to move into her current sound, developing a writing practice that feeds from the currents that surround her: “Sometimes it feels like I am soaking up the energies of people around me and making art from a space that is more a collective body than just my own.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | TikTok

Son Volt – 28 Years of Son Volt: Songs of Trace and Doug Sahm

Join us for a special evening celebrating 28 years of Son Volt.In 2020, Son Volt planned to celebrate the 25th anniversary of seminal album, Trace, with a tour that played the album from top to bottom. The pandemic had other plans. Flash forward to 2023 and they are on the road with a setlist that features Trace from beginning to end, an homage to Doug Sahm (Sir Douglas Quintet, Texas Tornados) and a celebration of 28 years of Son Volt.Son Volt’s latest record, Day of the Doug, revisits the music of legendary Texas troubadour Doug Sahm. But it’s much more than fond remembrance and colorful tribute. It is a summoning and a celebration of a songwriter and performer whose work forged country, Tex-Mex, rock, rhythm and blues, folk, and psychedelia into an utterly unique American sound.Day of the Doug steps confidently on the trails Sahm blazed. Like any journey to find a grail, Day of the Doug also seeks out all the things that make young artists fall in love with making music in the first place: adventure, youth novelty, and a chance to snatch a bit of immortality.“It’s like reconnecting with a hero,” says Son Volt founder Jay Farrar. “And getting back to the same kind of perspective I had when I was starting out as a younger musician. I think it’s just important to step back from what you normally do. Take stock. Take inspiration. And see where it leads from there.”Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

The Beths

On The Beths’ new album Expert In A Dying Field, Elizabeth Stokes’ songwriting positions her somewhere between being a novelist and a documentarian. The songs collected here are autobiographical, but they’re also character sketches of relationships and more importantly, their aftermaths. The question that hangs in the air: what do you do with how intimately versed you’ve become in a person, once they’re gone from your life?The third LP from the New Zealand quartet houses 12 jewels of tight, guitar-heavy songs that worm their way into your head, an incandescent collision of power-pop and skuzz. The album’s title track “Expert In A Dying Field” introduces the thesis for the record: “How does it feel to be an expert in a dying field? How do you know it’s over when you can’t let go?” Stokes asks. “Love is learned over time ‘til you’re an expert in a dying field.”‘Expert In A Dying Field’ is out now via Carpark Records and Ivy League Records.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud | TikTok

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