The Dead Tongues
After five months of not picking up an instrument, The Dead Tongues’ Ryan Gustafson wanted to get rid of everything that was tied to his identity as a musician. He even thought about changing his name. He was getting ready to throw out old notebooks packed with years of material but, for some reason, he decided to stop and go through them, just to see if there was anything worth saving. And sure enough, he found some images and lyrics, threads from former selves he didn’t want to lose. Thus was the catalyst for Dust, his fifth and best album as The Dead Tongues.Gustafson recorded Dust in nine days, the fastest he’d ever recorded anything. It was the fastest he’d ever written anything, too – in the past, writing a song would take months, but this time he somehow felt freer, and wanted to have fun. The record was recorded at Sylvan Esso’s studio, Betty’s, in the woods of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He built it out with help from a number of his musician friends – Joe Westerlund (Watchhouse, Megafaun, Califone) on drums, Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse) on mandolin, backing vocals from Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Molly Sarlé of Mountain Man, among others.Dust is meant to be listened to while taking a night drive, farflung and roving and existential. Somewhere between the expansiveness of American jamband and the banjo-centric folk songwriting of Gustafson’s Appalachia home. Gustafson explains the thematic throughline succinctly: “It’s this idea of uprooting and rebirth and cycles, and the past informing the future, and the future informing the past. There is no single story. Everything is connected.”Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
ericdoa
ericdoa is from what he describes as a “small ass farm town” in Connecticut, certainly not known for its artistic output or community. Without many like-minded kids at school, he spent most of his time on the internet growing up and met nearly all of his closest friends and collaborators online via platforms like Discord and Twitter. Eric grew up around a music-oriented family and was exposed to “raw pop artists” like Rick James, Earth Wind & Fire, and Teena Marie at a young age. When he started making music around 14 years old, these influences meshed with the music he heard online, and Eric taught himself to record and produce his own material.As time went on, this bedroom-based operation developed a humble but engaged following on SoundCloud, where Eric released his debut project, Public Target, in 2020. On the heels of the project, and with several of Eric’s friends and collaborators beginning to grow followings of their own, the online community began to circulate. The music they had been making via Discord calls since their younger teenage years was beginning to buzz, and was soon coined “hyperpop,” even receiving its own Spotify editorial playlist to underline the attention.As with any SoundCloud-born trend, there was skepticism about what “hyperpop” was, whether or not the kids making it would last more than a year or two, and why exactly the music sounded like it did when this first happened. But as Eric and his friends continued to release music, the attention grew, finding an exclamation point in Eric’s late 2020 project, COA. Framed as a “coming of age” project released just after Eric’s 18th birthday, COA helped make the buzz tangible, translating this weird new sound into a well-developed project that made an instant impact on DSPs, received a positive review from the notorious music outlet Pitchfork, and most importantly, pushed this Discord-born online community to new heights — all from Eric’s bedroom, and all thanks to a bunch of teenagers he met on the internet.In 2021 Eric continued his upward trajectory of experimental releases and shared a slew of buoyant tracks — his Interscope Records debut, titled “back n forth” which received major support from Rolling Stone and Paper Magazine, followed by “fantasize” which currently has 17 million steams globally and “strangers” which led to Alternative Press naming him one of “The Artists Set To Rule Your Year [2022].” In addition to his solo releases Eric also released his collaborative effort with fellow artist, glaive. The project, which was followed by a sold out US tour, received impressive praise from The New York Times, The FADER, Pitchfork, DORK and more. Today Eric has caught the attention from the likes of Trippie Redd, Yungblud, Addison Rae and many more.As Eric continues to work on forging his own path, up next is his track “sad4whattt” — which was made on a whim with his frequent collaborators Whethan, Glasear, and fortuneswan. “None of us really revisited the track after we made it. I laid a hook idea that I had for 4 days and ended up forgetting about it entirely until we threw it together in this pack of demos to send over to HBO. Not knowing what they would pick, they ended up choosing something that all shocked us, in a good way of course.” Eventually the ecstatic song was featured on the Emmy®-winning HBO drama series Euphoria Season 2.Links: Instagram | Twitter | TikTok | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
The Afghan Whigs
“Divination/Cleromancy/Comes the card that I refused to see”– The Afghan Whigs, “Oriole”“Cleromancy” isn’t a word one normally finds in rock lyrics. Then again, In Spades – the forthcoming album by The Afghan Whigs, from which the new song “Oriole” hails – is defined only by its own mystical inner logic. The term means to divine, in a supernatural manner, a prediction of destiny from the random casting of lots: the throwing of dice, picking a card from a deck. From its evocative cover art to the troubled spirits haunting the words, In Spades casts a spell that challenges the listener to unpack its dark metaphors and spectral imagery. “It’s a spooky record,” notes Greg Dulli, Afghan Whigs’ songwriter and frontman. “I like that it’s veiled. It’s not a concept album per se, but as I began to assemble it, I saw an arc and followed it. To me it’s about memory – in particular, how quickly life and memory can blur together.”On the one hand, In Spades is as quintessentially Afghan Whigs as anything the group has ever done – fulfilling its original mandate to explore the missing link between howling Midwestern punk like Die Kreuzen and Hüsker Dü, The Temptations’ psychedelic soul symphonies, and the expansive hard rock tapestries of Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd. At the same time, this new record continues to push beyond anything in the Whigs’ previous repertoire – another trademark, along with the explosive group dynamic captured on the recording.Indeed, the chemistry of the lineup – Dulli, guitarists Dave Rosser and Jon Skibic, drummer Patrick Keeler, multi-instrumentalist Rick Nelson, and Whigs co-founder/bassist John Curley – set the tone for In Spades’ creation. When it came to follow up the band’s triumphant return to recording – Do To the Beast (Sub Pop 2014), which was the band’s first ever Top 40 album, – the die was cast. “This is the first time since Black Love [the Whigs’ 1996 noir masterpiece] that we’ve done a full-blown band album,” Dulli says. “As the last tour wound down, Greg and I realized we wanted to keep the momentum going and roll that energy into making a record,” Curley explains. “I’m old school in that way. Having a band seasoned in playing together was how we made [classic Whigs albums like] Gentlemen and Congregation and it just felt right.”In fact, In Spades’ crushing closing track “Into The Floor” had actually evolved out of an onstage jam that concluded Whigs fan favorite “Miles Iz Dead” every night. “People would ask all the time why don’t you record that?,” Dulli says. “One day we were like, ‘Well, why don’t we?’ And we nailed it in one take.”Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Cola
Cola is a new project from former Ought members Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy formed with US Girls drummer Evan Cartwright. “Blank Curtain” provides an exciting hint of the way the new project picks up some of the threads of the pair’s earlier work and weaves them into engaging new shapes, constructing a driving tangle of guitars around an arresting performance from Darcy.”What started as stripped-down open D songwriting with a CR-78 soon became a full album and new band. We wanted to see how far we could stretch our compositions with just drums, one guitar, one bass, and one voice.Blank Curtain is a quarter note kick drum pushing 240 bpm, a drone-like chord progression, and declarative vocals cutting through the haze. If you could invert the color of the Blank Curtain, you might have something like a Chicago house track that sounds like a band in a room.”Links: Bandcamp | Instagram | Spotify
Angel Du$t
Justice Tripp, vocalist / guitarist for Baltimore, Maryland’s Angel Du$t, has never been one for making rock albums, at least not in the traditional sense. For Tripp, an album is not a singular, rigidly defined work, but rather an ever-evolving experience, a grab bag of creative tricks and treats that’s enjoyable whether its contents are savored individually or all at once. “People get really married to the idea of making a record that sounds like the same band,” Tripp explains. “If one song to the next doesn’t sound like it’s coming from the same band, I’m ok with that.” This spirit of creative restlessness, reinforced through a staunch work ethic and a revered live show, has fueled Angel Du$t’s steady ascent over the past eight years. The way Tripp sees it, Angel Du$t are neither hardcore nor a supergroup: just a revolving lineup of like-minded peers and ride- or-die friends, making guitar music, rocking the fuck on forever. YAK: A Collection of Truck Songs, Angel Du$t’s latest full-length and the follow-up to 2019’s Pretty Buff, sees the group channeling an anything-goes philosophy into their tightest, most forward- thinking material yet. Produced by Rob Schnapf and recorded over a two-month period in Los Angeles in 2020, it’s a rotating smorgasbord of percussion, guitar tones, effects, genres, and influences, fashioned in the spirit of a playlist as opposed to a capital-R “Record.” Like every great playlist—and Tripp makes a lot of playlists—it’s a carefully- engineered project that still manages to sound effortless, with brisk pacing and constant switch-ups that keep the spirit of discovery at the forefront.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers Album Release Show
North Carolina’s Sarah Shook sings with a conviction and hard honesty sorely lacking in much of today’s Americana landscape. Always passionate, at times profane, Sarah stalks/walks the line between vulnerable and menacing, her voice strong and uneasy, country classic but with contemporary, earthy tension. You can hear in her voice what’s she’s seen; world weary, lessons learned—or not—but always defiant. She level-steady means what she says. Writing with a blunt urgency—so refreshing these days it’s almost startling—Sarah’s lyrics are in turn smart, funny, mean, and above all, uncompromising. The Disarmers hit all the sweet spots from Nashville’s Lower Broad to Bakersfield and take Sarah’s unflinching tales out for some late-night kicks. At times, it’s as simple and muscular as Luther Perkins’ boom-chicka-boom, or as downtown as Johnny Thunders. The Disarmers keep in the pocket, tight and tough.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
EELS
Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify
SALES
Longtime friends and collaborators, Lauren Morgan and Jordan Shih, have been known as SALES since 2013 when they released their first single, “Renee.” Following the self-release of SALES EP, SALES LP, and Forever & Ever, three of the duo’s songs (“Renee”, “Chinese New Year”, and “Pope is a Rockstar”) have gained virality on TikTok. Songs from their catalog have been streamed over half a billion times on Spotify. They have headlined tours in the US, Canada, Asia, Australia, and Europe. They’ve performed at major festivals like Coachella, Firefly, Osheaga, and Corona Capital Mexico City. The independent duo continues to self-release their work, which is recorded, mixed, and mastered in their Orlando, FL bedroom studio. Links: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | Soundcloud
Flock of Dimes
On her second full-length record, Head of Roses, Jenn Wasner follows a winding thread of intuition into the unknown and into healing, led by gut feelings and the near-spiritual experience of visceral songwriting.The result is a combination of Wasner’s ability to embrace new levels of vulnerability, honesty and openness, with the self-assuredness that comes with a decade-plus career as a songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and prolific collaborator.Simply put, Head of Roses is a record about heartbreak, but from a dualistic perspective. It’s about the experience of having one’s heart broken and breaking someone else’s heart at the same time. But beyond that, it’s about having to reconcile the experience of one’s own pain with the understanding that it’s impossible to go through life without being the source of great pain for someone else.”Part of the journey for me has been learning to take responsibility for the parts of things that are mine, even when I’m in a lot of pain through some behavior or action of someone else. If I’m expecting to be forgiven for the things I’ve done and the choices I’ve made and the mistakes that I’ve made, it would be incredibly cowardly and hypocritical to not also do the work that’s required to forgive others the pain they caused me.”Showcasing the depth of Wasner’s songwriting capabilities and the complexity of her vision, Head of Roses calls upon her singular ability to create a fully-formed sonic universe via genre-bending amalgamation of songs and her poetic and gut punch lyrics. It’s the soundtrack of Wasner letting go — of control, of heartbreak, and of hiding who she is: “I think I’ve finally reached a point in my career where I feel comfortable enough with myself and what I do, that I’m able to relax into a certain simplicity or straight forwardness that I wasn’t comfortable with before.” Head of Roses puts Wasner’s seismically powerful voice front and center. Those vocals help thread it all together — it’s a textured musicality, quilted together by intentionality and intuition.Wasner’s sophomore LP as Flock of Dimes was mostly written during the isolation of early Covid-19 quarantine and fresh heartbreak. Some songs, like the title track, came to Wasner wholly-formed, like fever dreams. Aside from album opener “2 Heads,” which Wasner had been saving for this purpose since she wrote it in 2015, Head of Roses was born from just a few months at her North Carolina home, during a feverish period of productivity spanning from last March through June.On her 2016 debut album If You See Me, Say Yes, Wasner controlled every element of the production, meticulously crafting her solo debut to be a definitive statement of ability and artistry. Despite having succeeded in assuring herself of her own capabilities as a musician and producer, she felt drained by the demands of working in creative isolation. Instead, for Head of Roses, she felt drawn to a looser, more collaborative process — and reached out to friend and co-producer Nick Sanborn (Sylvan Esso) to help her understand what this new process could look like. Recorded with a small group of collaborators in quarantine at Betty’s in North Carolina, Head of Roses captures Wasner’s vision and expands upon it, with input from Meg Duffy (Hand Habits), Matt McCaughan (Bon Iver/Lambchop), and Adam Schatz (Landlady).Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | Spotify | Soundcloud
Samantha Fish
“That was my mission on this album: To really set these songs up so that they have a life of their own,” says Samantha Fish about Kill or Be Kind, her sixth solo album and her debut on Rounder Records. “Strong messages from the heart – that’s what I really set out for.” Indeed, what comes across immediately on hearing the album is the extraordinary level of songcraft on its eleven tracks, the way these songs are so smartly put together to deliver a potent emotional impact.Anyone who has ever heard Fish’s previous albums knows that she has earned a place in the top rank of contemporary blues guitarists and that her voice can wring the soul out of a ballad and belt out a rocker with roof-shaking force. And, rest reassured, those virtues are fully in evidence on Kill or Be Kind. But each of the songs on the album does far more than simply provide a setting for Fish’s pyrotechnics. They tell captivating stories, set up by verses that deftly set the scene, choruses that lift with real feeling, and hooks that later rise up in your thoughts, even when you’re not aware that you’re thinking of music at all. It’s the kind of songwriting that emerges when raw talent is leavened by experience and aspiration, and when a committed artist genuinely has something to say. Those qualities make Kill or Be Kind a genuine artistic breakthrough for Fish.“I think I’ve grown as a performer and as a player,” she explains. “I’ve become more respectful of the melody. You can go up and down the fret board and up and down your vocal register, but that’s not going to be as powerful as conveying a simple melody that people can really connect to and sing themselves.” To help bring those elements to her music, Fish sought out high-quality songwriting collaborators – the likes of Jim McCormick (who has worked with Fish before and also written for Luke Bryan and Keith Urban); Kate Pearlman (who has worked with Kelly Clarkson); Patrick Sweeney; Parker Millsap; and Eric McFadden. The result is an album on which each song is distinct, but the complete work hangs together as a coherent, entirely satisfying statement. “When you get to this point in your life as an artist,” Fish says, “it’s good to work with others, because it makes you stretch. I think you hear a lot of that nuance on the record, songs that have a pop sensibility to them, hooks that really pull you in.”You get a good sense of the range the album covers from the first two songs released. Fish propels “Watch It Die” with an insistent guitar riff, but near the song’s end two female background singers lend the song a haunting soulful feel. Meanwhile, “Love Letters” moves on an insinuating, stop-time riff in its verses until it bursts in passion on its chorus. Both songs use horn sections for finesse and texture. “Love Letters” also introduces one of the album’s central themes: the allure of losing yourself in love – and the dangers of it. “Keep waking up in the bed I made,” Fish sings. “Forget the pain when you wanna play/I’m back to broken when you go away.”Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
