Caroline Rose
“Love / Lover / Friend is about the experience of commitment and the confusing dance that takes place finding your roles within it,” says writer/producer Caroline Rose. The track is a sonic departure from 2020’s Superstar, a critically-lauded satire on the price of fame and ambition. “I feel like I’ve really grown up in the last few years. I’ve learned, and am learning still, so much about life and love and all its many forms. When I first wrote this song it felt like the perfect jumping off place to tell a story about love…Not just love for another person but also for myself.”The marked sonic departure is a return to a much more nascent instinct for Rose. “When I was younger, I remember having so many feelings it felt like I would explode if I didn’t express them somehow. This felt similar to that—very pure and direct.” Between classical and avant-garde elements, low and high fidelity textures, constraint and catharsis, Rose produces Love / Lover Friend as a series of magnetic dipoles that entice and dismay. “I was listening pretty exclusively to vocalists for a while. I definitely tip my cap to Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares but there are also some less obvious references. Sussan Deyhim, Yma Sumac, Sheila Chandra, Huun-Huur-Tu, Hamlet Gonashvili…artists who used their voices in very different ways to great effect. I would listen to them sing and it felt like we were directly connected.”At home in her studio, Rose experimented with DIY tape effects, recording techniques and modular synthesis, discovering a palette of new sonic textures. “There is a feeling that comes with recording in a certain way. When you’re dealing with tape, you’re printing to something that decays. There is a life-like element to it. When you work in digital formats, there’s a kind of detachment from that humanness. I wanted it to feel like both.” Love / Lover / Friend will be released on all digital platforms October 26.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Night Moves
Minneapolis-based quartet Night Moves return with the psychedelic new song “Fallacy Actually.” The first track in a series of new singles to be released incrementally over the next year, “Fallacy Actually” is a head-spinning swirl of layered synths, harmonica, and guitar and a fitting introduction to the band’s next chapter.Singer John Pelant describes the track as, “A dense cosmic romp that deals with personal fears and letting go. The inevitable end of things, hatred versus acceptance, flawed thoughts, and what could have been. I wanted it to have a NOVA, UFO abduction, backroom Estonian roller rink discotheque kind of vibe. The song went through a lot of changes, styles, and moods. I think we ended up in a nice place. I love the soft flute – makes me think of Canned Heat meets Motown meets The Spinners on acid.”“Fallacy Actually” and the batch of new songs that will follow were recorded at Pachyderm Studios outside of the band’s hometown with producer John Agnello (Kurt Vile, Alvvays, Dinosaur Jr.).“Fallacy Actually” showcases Night Moves further evolution as a band and as songwriters, still trading in massive pop hooks that somehow manage to convey a sense of yearning melancholy but with a sense of maturity and perspective in the arrangements that comes with time. Synthesizers sweep, the pedal steel swoons, the high lonesome harmonica calls across a distance.These aren’t pandemic songs… more a bit of unfinished business that the pandemic allowed to be fulfilled. The band and Agnello had worked together previously on the band’s second album, 2016’s Pennied Days. That album was set to be made at Pachyderm Studios but had to be relocated when studio owner John Kuker sadly passed away on the eve of the recording dates.With the band restless after the campaign for their third album, Can You Really Find Me (2019), which was prematurely cut short by COVID, they did their best to keep busy: writing songs, building greenhouses in South Dakota for a friend, rehearsing the aforementioned songs. Out of that came a brace of new tunes that simply called out to be documented.The funny thing is that, for anyone that’s ever spent an inordinate amount of time in a recording studio, the process of making an album is its own social distancing of sorts. So the notion of getting a cohort together in the moment actually made strangely perfect sense under the circumstances.New songs honed and selected, the band re-approached Agnello to get feedback on the material and working together again. The idea was met with enthusiasm, and everyone converged on the idyllic, secluded Pachyderm Studios for a hectic, bustling week of creation and homage.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Lightning Bolt
Over the course of its two-decade existence, Lightning Bolt has revolutionized underground rock in immeasurable ways. The duo broke the barrier between stage and audience by setting themselves up on the floor in the midst of the crowd. Their momentous live performances and the mania they inspired paved the way for similar tactics used by Dan Deacon and literally hundreds of others. Similarly, the band’s recordings have always been chaotic, roaring, blown out documents that sound like they could destroy even the toughest set of speakers. Fantasy Empire, Lightning Bolt’s sixth album and first in five years, is a fresh take from a band intent on pushing themselves musically and sonically while maintaining the aesthetic that has defined not only them, but an entire generation of noisemakers. It marks many firsts, most notably their first recordings made using hi-fi recording equipment at the famed Machines With Magnets, and their first album for Thrill Jockey. More than any previous album, Fantasy Empire sounds like drummer Brian Chippendale and bassist Brian Gibson are playing just a few feet away, using the clarity afforded by the studio to amplify the intensity they project. Every frantic drum hit, every fuzzed-out riff, sounds more present and tangible than ever before.Fantasy Empire is ferocious, consuming, and is a more accurate translation of their live experience. It also shows Lightning Bolt embracing new ways to make their music even stranger. More than any previous record, Chippendale and Gibson make use of live loops and complete separation of the instruments during recording to maximize the sonic pandemonium and power. Gibson worked with Machines very carefully to get a clear yet still distorted and intense bass sound, allowing listeners to truly absorb the detail and dynamic range he displays, from the heaviest thud to the subtle melodic embellishments. Some of these songs have been in the band’s live repertoire since as early as 2010, and have been refined in front of audiences for maximum impact. This is heavy, turbulent music, but it is executed with the precision of musicians that have spent years learning how to create impactful noise through the use of dynamics, melody, and rhythm.Fantasy Empire has been in gestation for four years, with some songs having been recorded on lo-fi equipment before ultimately being scrapped. Since Early Delights was released, the band has collaborated with the Flaming Lips multiple times, and continued to tour relentlessly. 2013 saw the release of All My Relations by Black Pus, Chippendale’s solo outlet, which was followed by a split LP with Oozing Wound. Chippendale, an accomplished comic artist and illustrator, created the Fantasy Empire’s subtly ominous album art, and will release an upcoming book of his comics through respected imprint Drawn and Quarterly. Brian Gibson has been developing the new video game Thumper, with his own company, Drool, which will be released next year. And, of course, Lightning Bolt will be touring the US in 2015.Website | Spotify
Southern Culture on the Skids
Southern Culture On The Skids has been consistently recording and touring around the world since 1983. The band (Rick Miller – guitar and vocals, Mary Huff – bass and vocals, Dave Hartman – drums) has been playing together for over 30 years. Their musical journey has taken them from all-night North Carolina house parties to late night TV talk shows (Conan O’Brien, The Tonight Show), from performing at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan to rockin’ out for the inmates at North Carolina correctional facilities. They’ve shared a stage with many musical luminaries including Link Wray, Loretta Lynn, Hasil Adkins and Patti Smith. Their music has been featured in movies and TV, parodied by Weird Al, and used to sell everything from diamonds to pork sausage. In 2014 the band was honored by the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with an exhibition featuring their music and cultural contributions. Their legendary live shows are a testament to the therapeutic powers of foot-stomping, butt-shaking rock and roll and what Rolling Stone dubbed “a hell raising rock and roll party.”At Home with Southern Culture on the Skids is the latest full length album from the band and is due to drop into stores on March 12th. The album consists of 11 tracks recorded and mixed in Rick Miller’s living room with some additional tracks recorded at his studio, The Kudzu Ranch.The first radio single off the album is “Run Baby Run”—a rocking number with deep garage roots. SCOTS bassist Mary Huff provides an urgent vocal while the band pulls back the throttle on a full race fuzz fest—cause she’s gotta to go fast! Run Baby Run!The other songs on the album are a combination of the band’s unique mix of musical genres: rock and roll, surf, folk and country—all a bit off-center, what Rick proudly calls “our wobbly Americana”. Rick goes on, “We put a few more acoustic guitars on this one, as you would expect if you recorded in your living room, but it still rocks like SCOTS. So put your headphones on, get in your favorite chair/sofa/recliner, put on “At Home With” and let’s hang out for a while.”Links: Website | Facebook | Instagram
Chuck Prophet Trio
Since his neo-psychedelic Green On Red days, Chuck Prophet has been turning out country, folk, blues, and Brill Building classicism. After a false start recording in his hometown of San Francisco, Prophet decided to get out of Dodge and found himself re-energized in Upstate New York just a few miles from the Vermont border to make 2020’s The Land That Time Forgot, a record that is much a 21st century exorcism as it is America.Written mostly with Prophet longtime collaborator and co-conspirator klipschutz, the songs that inhabit The Land That Time Forgot come at you from an array of locations both real and imagined including San Francisco’s Tenderloin, an English roundabout, and Nixonland while hanging out with the ghosts of Johnny Thunders, Willie Wonka, and John the Baptist, and contemplating the train that carried Abraham Lincoln home for the final time.To compliment the critically acclaimed album, in early 2022, Prophet released The Land That Time Forgot Revisited, a four-song digital live EP recorded at the Make Out Room in San Francisco featuring “Meet Me at the Roundabout,” “Womankind,” “Fast Kid,” and “Kiss Me Deadly,” with his band, the Mission Express, and a string quartet (the Makeout Room Quartet).“I know a little bit about how to craft a studio LP,” says Prophet. “But recording live with a string quartet on a linoleum floor on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in an empty barroom in San Francisco’s Mission District is something different. For one thing there is an actual “arranger.” Like Nelson Riddle. Or what Randy Newman does, adding his own secret sauce to the compositional gene pool that has scored half the soundtracks in Hollywood history. They’re a new way into the songs—and an adventure finding our way out. There’s still an acoustic Mission Express in the mix, along with the strings. Three songs from The Land That Time Forgot reimagined, plus a Lita Ford cover that has to be heard to be believed.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
JAWNY
Too much thinking can get in the way of good art. That’s the philosophy that indie singer/songwriter JAWNY has embraced. JAWNY has built his career by intuition, letting his music evolve naturally as he grows personally. Instead of chasing the high of past successes — including his 2019 Gold-certified hit, “Honeypie” — he’s following his gut and tapping into a new vision that reflects his growth over the years. Even as he embraces a “first thought, best thought” approach to making music, his songs have grown in scope and scale — elevating him from songwriter to indie-pop auteur with a kaleidoscopic vision and rich sense of narrative that informs everything he does.With the release of the blistering “take it back,” JAWNY’s barreling full steam ahead with a dream collaborator by his side. The iconic alt-trickster Beck contributes guitar and vocals to the track, which resulted in a scrappy and thrashing sing-along that can bring a whole crowd into a frenzy. JAWNY joined Beck on a recent tour of the U.K. this summer. “I know that I’m in love with you,” JAWNY announces on the perky, piano-punching intro, which bleeds into “strawberry chainsaw,” a cheeky metaphor on love’s sweet-sinister dichotomy that’s delivered with a loose, lively swagger. With his recent release “adios,” he unleashes his falsetto as he realizes his relationship’s fate: “Now I feel like a blackout, New York City grid max out, when she said adios.”Born Jacob Sullenger and raised in the Bay Area, JAWNY first picked up a guitar at age 6 after watching his dad jam to the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin. At 13, he began making beats with his brother, eventually landing placements with several rappers on SoundCloud. “Since birth, I’ve never wanted to do anything else,” he says.For a while, though, JAWNY got sidetracked. He first convinced himself he was going to be a nurse but dropped out of school almost immediately. Getting back on the music path, he signed up for audio engineering classes but again dropped out in two weeks. “I hated being told that there was a black-and-white way to do things,” he recalls.That rebellious spirit has kept a fire in him that’s only intensified. At age 20, while paying his bills as a chicken shop cook in Philadelphia, he began recording songs with his own vocals, something he’d been hesitant to do previously but which came rather naturally. People started to notice.By 2018, he earned buzz with a self-titled debut EP under the name Johnny Utah and landed on taste-making Spotify playlists like Ultimate Indie and Bedroom Pop. The next year, he dropped “Honeypie,” a track he wrote and recorded in little over an hour. The feel-good, funk-inflected song and its music video garnered instant acclaim. It’s since amassed more than 37 million views on YouTube and more than 738 million streams globally. The attention is well-deserved — across these early releases, he demonstrated a unique spark that shone through no matter what genre he was working with on a given day. Every song is punctuated with a strange magic — an unexpected turn of phrase or an unpredictable production flourish — that makes every song feel wonderfully untamed. Now, with an impressive 950 million career streams overall, he’s honed that energy while also developing a focused and brilliant perspective that resembles few other writers working.TikTok | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
Less Than Jake
The story of ska-rocking’ 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 were 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’sSee 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—front man/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 is more 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. “Don’t worry. The phrase “woe is we” isn’t in the LTJ lexicon.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify
Rubblebucket
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Our Last Night – The Welcome Back Tour
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Ella Jane
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