New Found Glory

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Come 2021, Chatham County Line will have been a staple of the North Carolina music scene for over two decades. Embracing the heart-worn songwriting and rough-hewn voice of leader Dave Wilson the band has graced stages all across the U.S. as well as Europe, Scandinavia, Ireland and the United Kingdom. With eight studio albums of original material to pull from, CCL has a sound all their own and a stage show to match. Songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Dave Wilson pulls tunes out of an ether that is inspired by a shelf bending collection of vinyl records from the 1920’s to the 2020’s. One listen to their all covers release “Sharing the Covers” from 2019 will give you an idea of those inspirations, with songs from the likes of Wilco and Beck shared with those of John Lennon, Tom Petty and John Hartford.With the recording of 2020s Yep Roc Records release Strange Fascination the band decided to push their sound a little bit more into the modern world and embrace the use of drums both in studio and onstage. “We’ve had drums on several albums, most notably Wildwood, and our audience always responded well to those tunes” says Dave Wilson. John Teer who rotates from Mandolin to Fiddle all while singing soaring harmony adds “We’ve done an Electric Holiday Tour for the past 12 years that features an expanded group of musicians on the stage so we’re no stranger to a backbeat.”With 20 years behind and clear skies ahead, look for Dave Wilson (acoustic & electric guitars, harmonica), John Teer (mandolin, fiddle), and Greg Readling (Standup Bass, Pedal Steel) as well as North Carolina staple Dan Hall on drums to keep traveling the highways, byways and airways to share their special canon of songs with the world.Website | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

The Church – The Hypnogogue Album Tour

Few bands enter their fifth decade of making music with all the fierce creative energy of their early years. Few bands are like The Church.The Australian psych-guitar masters are deep into recording the band’s 25th studio album over 40 years after their formation.The 2021 epic line-up is bassist, vocalist and founder Steve Kilbey; with longtime collaborator timEbandit Powles drummer and producer across 17 albums since ’94; guitarist Ian Haug who joined the band in 2013 and Jeffrey Cain, touring multi-instrumentalist who is now a full-time member of The Church since the departure of Peter Koppes in early 2020. The band have also recently recruited one of Australia’s finest and most respected guitarists Ashley Naylor (Even, The Grapes). Ashley and Steve have collaborated on many different projects over the years and now was the perfect time to bring Ashley into the band. Kilbey says: “A band is like a family and over 40 years it is only natural that families will change. It’s too big a body of work not to keep exploring it.”That body of work stretches back in a continuous line to classic early albums ‘Of Skins and Heart’ and ‘The Blurred Crusade’, which revealed a distinctive soundscape of sharp pop hooks and towering guitars complementing Kilbey’s lyrics and vocal tones. The more intricate arrangements of ‘Heyday’ gave way to the wide-open atmosphere of ‘Starfish’ the 1988 album which broke into the mainstream and gave them the international hit ‘Under the Milky Way’. The hit single has been regarded as one of the most influential and recognisable Australian rock anthems of all time. Starfish also gave us ‘Reptile’, a song that never seems to date, and is a live favourite around the world.In 2010 The Church were inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame and reaffirmed their status as one of the world’s great live bands with the ‘Future Past Perfect’ tour, performing their Untitled #23, Priest=Aura and Starfish albums to rapturous audiences in the US and Australia.The five-year gap after the release of Untitled #23 became the most extended break between new albums in the band’s career. Haug, formerly of Australian rock icons Powderfinger, joined after the departure of Marty Willson-Piper, sparking a renaissance with Further/Deeper (2014) and Man Woman Life Death Infinity (2017) and introducing new anthems like Miami to the set.In 2018 the band played the Meltdown Festival in London at the invitation of curator Robert Smith of The Cure. The Church went on to play sold-out shows in the UK, US, Canada and Australia celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of Starfish.VIP Meet & Greet add-on tickets available here.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

Fruit Bats

Eric D. Johnson, the creative force behind Fruit Bats, doesn’t spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror. “Maybe it speaks to some Midwest thing,” he says. “Don’t be overly reflective or navel-gazing. And as a songwriter, you always want to be looking forward, not backward.” But with the 20th anniversary of his first Fruit Bats release (2001’s Echolocation) on his mind, it seemed as good a time as any to take stock of his work—and he’s doing so in the form of Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001–2021), a two-disc collection that tracks the history of Fruit Bats from its earliest days to right now.Thoughtfully compiled by Johnson himself, this set is split in two distinct halves. Set in reverse chronological order, the first disc cherry-picks from Fruit Bats’ official releases, including fan favorites—“Humbug Mountain Song” from 2016’s Absolute Loser and “The Bottom of It” from his 2019 Merge debut Gold Past Life—alongside some of Johnson’s more personal choices like “Glass in Your Feet” from Echolocation. “I was 25 when I made that record,” Johnson remembers. “I was even younger than that when I wrote that song. I think I hadn’t yet learned to write from the heart. I was trying to create a sound. It wasn’t even so much about the song at that point.”To emphasize both his reticence at dwelling on the past and to showcase how far he has grown as a songwriter, the first disc kicks off with a brand-new track, “Rips Me Up.” Recorded with Josh Kaufman, who helped produce Fruit Bats’ 2021 full-length The Pet Parade, the song is a soulful strutter about, as Johnson says in the liner notes for this set, how love “paralyzes and wounds us.”If the first disc of this set is “the collection that you buy for your friend that’s Fruit Bats-curious,” according to Johnson, the second disc is for longtime fans that want a deeper dive into Fruit Bats lore. To put this half of Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud together, Johnson dug into several hard drives’ worth of material. “Much of it is horribly unlistenable,” he says with a laugh. “I wouldn’t necessarily say there was a treasure trove. At least to my ears because I might be my own worst critic.”Considering the wonders that Johnson did uncover for this set, there may be a call for a further mining of the archives. Included here are lovely early versions of “Rainbow Sign” and “The Old Black Hole,” recorded to a Tascam 4-track just as Fruit Bats was becoming a reality. There’s also a rambling take on the Steve Miller Band’s classic rock mainstay “The Joker,” and some wonderful never-before-heard original tunes.For Johnson, two of the most exciting tracks are “WACS” and “When the Stars Are Out,” both recorded during the sessions for 2011’s Tripper. The former is a standout for an appearance by Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis who applies a perfect psych-soul solo to the mix. The latter features another special guest, the late, great Richard Swift on piano. “I didn’t even know Richard was on that song until I was approving the masters,” Johnson says. “This was before his production career had really taken off. You could just bring him in for a session and he would just vibe out.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

STRFKR

Being No One, Going Nowhere. The title of STRFKR’s fourth album may seem bleak at first. But hold it in your head a minute, feel its weight, and you may recognize the phrase for what it is: a goal. In the era of the personal brand — amid the FOMO Age — it’s increasingly hard to shed a stifling sense of self, or to just be in the moment that you’re in. Well, consider this an invitation to get blissfully insignificant. That’s what STRFKR founder Joshua Hodges aimed to do when he exiled himself to the desert to create this record, but he returned with his most significant work yet: a set of darkly glistening dance songs rife with sticky beats, earworming hooks, philosophical heft, and bittersweet beauty.The album opens on “Tape Machine,” and the difference is readily apparent. On 2013’s Miracle Mile, STRFKR refined a full-band sound, but this doubles down on and completely reimagines the project’s electronic and pop roots. The initial synths could fuel a rave, and the ensuing groove could score a Drive sequel, but the song is richer still, with cosmic effects flying overhead and a psych-folk earthiness below. It isn’t that the band sat this LP out — drummer (etc.) Keil Corcoran penned the thick astral disco of “In the End,” and he and bassist (etc.) Shawn Glassford both pitch in throughout. But Being No One, Going Nowhere was born in Joshua Tree after Hodges packed up his Los Angeles apartment and moved to that tiny Mojave outpost under the great big sky. “It came together for me in the desert,” he says. “Out there, it’s easy to feel small and slow.”When Hodges started STRFKR in 2007, it was designed to be success-proof. The name was both unfit for radio and a jab at fame-chasers. But the project was also meant to be bright, playful and brimming with energy. He stumbled upon a winning juxtaposition that’s a STRFKR staple to this day: dark (or heavy) lyrics set to happy music. Hodges credits that to Elliott Smith’s influence, although Being No One, Going Nowhere has closer sonic kin in Italo-disco, kosmische musik and Tony Hoffer’s work with Phoenix, Beck and M83. English thinker/writer Alan Watts, a scholar of Eastern philosophy, was another muse for Hodges — his voice appears on nearly every STRFKR release, including this one. That’s him on “interspace,” talking about sloughing off preconceived identity to find one’s place in the universe, which is the story of Hodges’ eventual career: stop trying — no, start not trying — and succeed.This album’s name actually paraphrases the title of a book by Ayya Khema, a Buddhist nun, but the concept came to Hodges in a less chaste setting. “I had an experience at a BDSM club that was really freeing,” he says. “I realized that the appeal is letting go of your mind and stress. You can be super present with the pain, and then the pain isn’t even pain. It’s a gateway to freedom.” In a way, each song on Being No One, Going Nowhere seeks that end. There’s the reality-refracting fantasy of “Never Ever,” the hard truths about addiction’s ravages on “Tape Machine,” a death-defying coming of age tale on “Open Your Eyes,” and references to Hermann Hesse’s 1919 novel of self-realization, Demian, on “When I’m With You.”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud

Transviolet: Body The Tour

After a successful catfishing on a musician networking website, Sarah McTaggart began to collaborate with producer and bassist Mike Panek across the world, and over the internet writing the beginnings of what would eventually become Transviolet. She made the move from the Cayman Islands, to Toronto, landing eventually in San Diego where they met for the first time and sparks flew, or at the very least no one was serial killed. Jon Garcia was brought in on drums, and later Judah McCarthy on guitar and keys after moving to LA and signing their first publishing deal.For two years the band locked themselves in studios across the purgatory that is the San Fernando Valley (which would later be the title of their 2018 release), writing song after song, until piquing the interest of LA Reid and their first major label partner EPIC records. From the very beginning, Transviolet has made a point to approach music differently. Like when they released their first single Girls Your Age, the band sent out 2,000 plain manilla envelopes to kids across the country containing a cassette tape that only said “play me”, not realizing that was pretty near to the exact plot of the horror movie SAW. Blogs and press outlets took notice, but no one cared nearly as much as the mothers across the country when they took to facebook to demand answers, and threaten the band with legal action. It was hilarious.24 hours later and ‪Katy Perry‬ Tweeted out the song, a week later ‪Harry Styles‬. A flood of attention came to the band and they were thrown into the deep end that is the music industry. Writing with collaborators DreamLab (‪Selena Gomez‬, ‪Miley Cyrus‬, ‪Nicki Minaj‬…) Sam Hollander ( ‪Panic At the disco‬, ‪Fitz and the tantrums‬) ‪Andrew Dawson‬ (‪Kanye West‬, ‪Tyler the Creator‬) and Nate Motte of 3OH!3, among many others, Transviolet put out two more EPs, seeing critical acclaim from countless press outlets.Now in 2019 with multiple support (Twenty one pilots, LANY, ‪Dua Lipa‬, ‪Joywave‬) and headling tours (US, UK) under their collective belt, and tens of millions of streams – Transviolet is gearing up to release their first Independent full album. Feeling as they’re writing the best material of their career thus far, the band couldn’t be more ready to show the world, just who it is, they are. Self written, self mixed, self released, the band is taking the reins and show no signs of slowing down.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube

MJ Lenderman

Jake Lenderman lives in Asheville, North Carolina. He plays guitar in the indie band Wednesday, sometimes fishes on the Pigeon River, and creates his own music as MJ Lenderman. His latest solo release with Dear Life Records is titled Boat Songs. Lenderman describes the album as his most “polished” sound to date, built around songs that “chase fulfillment and happiness”—whether that means buying a boat, drinking too much, or watching seeds fall from the bird feeder.Boat Songs is the followup to Lenderman’s 2021 label debut, Ghost of Your Guitar Solo, and subsequent release, Knockin’, with Dear Life Records, both of which were critically acclaimed for their off-the-cuff alternative country sound. But with Boat Songs, Lenderman emerges confident as ever, an innovative yet unassuming artist, straightforward and true.Recorded at Asheville’s Drop of Sun with Alex Farrar and Colin Miller, Boat Songs is the first album Lenderman made in a professional studio. WWE matches and basketball games were silently projected on the studio walls during recording sessions. And you can hear their power in these ten unapologetically lo-fi tracks, each brimming with pent-up energy and the element of surprise.A clavichord honks throughout ‘You Have Bought Yourself A Boat’ with the playfulness of a live Dylan/Band set. ‘SUV’ screams with My Bloody Valentine distortion. When Xandy Chelmis beautifully bends his steel guitar on ‘TLC Cage Match’ you can’t help but think of Gram Parsons. And ‘Tastes Just Like It Costs’ howls with the intensity of Crazy Horse era Neil Young. Boat Songs is fearless and it’s exciting. It challenges the perception of what modern day country music is supposed to be and where it can go.But no matter where Boat Songs goes sonically, the album is deeply rooted in Lenderman’s natural gifts as a storyteller. Someone once asked Hank Williams what made country music successful and he said, “One word: sincerity.” Filled with everyday observations ripped straight from his journal, Lenderman’s lyrics are sincere in their absurdities, with the vulnerability and honesty of Jason Molina and Daniel Johnston. There are moments of humor (‘Jackass is funny like the Earth is round’), admission (‘I know why we get so fucked up’), and recognition of beauty others might not stop to see (‘Your laundry looks so pretty…relaxing in the wind’). Read alone on the page, ‘Hangover Game,’ ‘You Have Bought Yourself A Boat,’ and ‘Dan Marino,’ stand out as perfect little poems, unpretentious and real. Simply said, these songs are unforgettable.Or you could also say it like this: listening to Boat Songs by MJ Lenderman is like joining your best friends out on the porch. The neighbors might be yelling and the bugs might be biting. But y’all are shooting the shit and letting loose, telling the same old stories again and again. But it don’t matter how many times you’ve heard them, because they’re from the heart—and in the end they always make you feel alive again.-Ashleigh Bryant PhillipsBandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Spotify | YouTube

Eliza McLamb

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Andy Shauf

Few artists are storytellers as deft and disarmingly observational as Andy Shauf. The Toronto-based, Saskatchewan-raised musician’s songs unfold like short fiction: they’re densely layered with colorful characters and a rich emotional depth. On his new album The Neon Skyline (out January 24 via ANTI-), he sets a familiar scene of inviting a friend for beers on the opening title track: “I said, ‘Come to the Skyline, I’ll be washing my sins away.’ He just laughed, said ‘I’ll be late, you know how I can be.'” The LP’s 11 interconnected tracks follow a simple plot: the narrator goes to his neighborhood dive, finds out his ex is back in town, and she eventually shows up. While its overarching narrative is riveting, the real thrill of the album comes from how Shauf finds the humanity and humor in a typical night out and the ashes of a past relationship.His last full-length 2016’s The Party was an impressive collection of ornate and affecting songs that followed different attendees of a house party. Shauf’s attention-to-detail in his writing evoked Randy Newman and his unorthodox, flowing lyrical phrasing recalled Joni Mitchell. Though that album was his breakthrough, his undeniable songwriting talent has been long evident. Raised in Bienfait, Saskatchewan, he cut his teeth in the nearby Regina music community. His 2012 LP The Bearer of Bad News documented his already-formed musical ambition and showcased Shauf’s burgeoning voice as a narrative songwriter with songs like “Hometown Hero,” “Wendell Walker,” and “My Dear Helen” feeling like standalone, self-contained worlds. In 2018, his band Foxwarren, formed over 10 years ago with childhood friends, released a self-titled album where Pitchfork recognized how “Shauf has diligently refined his storytelling during the last decade.”The Party earned a spot on the Polaris Music Prize 2016 shortlist and launched Shauf to an appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden as well as glowing accolades fromNPR, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and more. “That LP was a concept record and it really made me want to do a better album. I wanted to have a more cohesive story,” says Shauf. Where the concept of The Party revealed itself midway through the writing process, he knew the story he wanted to tell on The Neon Skyline from the start. “I kept coming back to the same situation of one guy going to a bar, which was basically exactly what I was doing at the time. These songs are fictional but it’s not too far off from where my life was,” Shauf explains.For The Neon Skyline, Shauf chose to start each composition on guitar instead of his usual piano. He says, “I wanted to be able to sit down and play each song with just a guitar without having to rely on some sort of a clever arrangement to make it whole.” The resulting album finds its immediacy in simplicity. While the arrangements on folksy “The Moon” are unfussy and song-centered like the best Gordon Lightfoot offerings, his drive to experiment is still obvious. This is especially so on the unmoored relationship autopsy “Thirteen Hours,” which boasts an arrangement that’s both jazzy and adventurous.Like he’s done throughout his career, Shauf wrote, performed, arranged, and produced every song on The Neon Skyline, this time at his new studio space in the west end of Toronto. Happy accidents like Shauf testing out a new spring reverb pedal led to album cuts like the woozy closer “Changer” and experimenting with tape machines forced him to simplify how he’d arrange the tracks.Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Lynn Blakey Christmas Show feat. Dave Hartman, FJ Ventre, Ecki Heins, Danny Gotham

It was probably inevitable that Lynn Blakey would eventually make a Christmas album. Such records are a challenge, as everyone has heard most holiday songs their entire lives; it takes something special to make them worth hearing again, anew. Blakey has that something special — a crystal-clear voice that rings out like yuletide silver bells, sparkles like moonglow on freshly fallen snow, and warms the heart on a silent, holy night.You might not have heard Blakey’s voice before. Or perhaps you have — in the Yep Roc Records trio Tres Chicas with Caitlin Cary and Tonya Lamm, or with her previous band Glory Fountain. Blakey has been making indie-pop music in the South since the 1980s, dating back to stints with Georgia group Oh-OK and North Carolina band Let’s Active; more recently, her backing vocals have turned up on records by the likes of Alejandro Escovedo and Chris Stamey.Along the way, she stole a German. Christmas is is credited to “Lynn Blakey and the Stolen German” thanks to Ecki Heins, a musician Blakey met on tour in 2005; he eventually joined her in North Carolina, where they’ve lived and made music together for more than a decade now. Heins is a secret weapon here, adding whimsical fiddle licks on “Let It Snow” and stepping out with a glorious violin melody on the disc’s classical-oriented hidden track. He and Blakey serve up tag-team vocals on “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” bouncing conversation back and forth with harmony and humor. Joining the duo in the studio were bassist FJ Ventre and engineer Jerry Kee, who added percussion and pedal steel.Most of Christmas consists of songs you’ll know, from traditional carols such as “Do You Hear What I Hear” to the World War II-inspired “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” to the chestnuts-roasting-on-an-open-fire sweetness of “The Christmas Song.” But there’s also a Blakey original here: “Love Finds (Allumette)” is more romantic ballad than holiday jingle, but its setting amid candles, garland and “the bones of winter waiting for the light” help it fit right into the seasonal theme.I first heard Blakey sing upon relocating to North Carolina almost two decades ago and being knocked out by her high notes on a spectacular tune she wrote called “The Beauty of 23.” It became a love-song of sorts for my wife and me, and when we moved away many years later one December, Lynn was kind enough to sing my wife’s favorite Christmas song, “O Holy Night,” on an early winter’s eve in a remote roadside tavern. To have her singing it on record now is something we’ll treasure forevermore.Peter BlackstockAustin, Texas, late 2018Links: Twitter | Facebook

Genre: Miscellaneous