Used Kids Records is an institution in Columbus, Ohio, and their new location at 2500 Summit Street is a definite upgrade from their prior location across the street from the Ohio State University campus.
The space is much bigger, giving them a lot of room to stretch out their collection of seemingly every genre of music under the sun.
That vinyl copy of The New Pornographers’ “Brill Bruisers” is well worth your money.
You know you’re in for something when you walk into the store, immediately see a rack of newly arrived CDs and find one of them is this.
As Matthew Baty from Pigsx7 once said, “If your Uber driver asks if your band is like G.G. Allin, get out of the car because he’s a fucking nutter.”
Their vinyl collection is impressive. You could spend hours and thousands of dollars here if you’re not careful.
Sade and Butthole Surfers on the same rack.Also for the girls and the gays. Trust me on this.
This was my favorite section in the store. It’s stuffed with lounge, exotica, and other weird stuff.
I’d spend most of my cash here if I were a vinyl collector.
Another fun section was an entire wall of Christmas music that showcased how many different genres of Christmas music are out there.
Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings next to Dee Snider and Lizzy Hale.
It’s amazing that I walked out of there with just a CD box set of The Who (at a crazy low price at that). Don’t skip this place if you’re in town and looking for a vinyl fix, or just want to browse and find stuff you didn’t know existed.
I don’t know what’s in the water in Belgium and France as of late, but both countries are churning out good doom and stoner metal bands seemingly every month. Belgium’s trio of Mind Wolf is a good example, and their new EP, Chalet, is a great way to be introduced to them.
The opening riff of “Love without a Home” crushes you right away, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they named the EP Chalet, start off the record with this track, and featured a pixelated image of a burning house on the cover. The song burns everything around it to the ground, bringing to mind some early Alice in Chains tracks.
The bass on “Like a Song” reminds me of some Royal Blood tunes as Mind Wolf speeds down the road and sings about how music can change the feel of anything around you. The short guitar solo on it is pretty slick, and the breakdown after is is pretty sick.
No, your ears aren’t deceiving you, the only lyrics of “Hanne Desmet” are, “She can do it. She can really, really, really ice skate.” That’s because it’s about Hanne Desmet – the Belgian short track skater who won a Bronze medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in the Women’s 1000-meter event. She was the first Belgian woman to win a medal in any Winter Olympics event. Mind Wolf are apparently big fans of her and I hope she cranks this on her earbuds during practice.
“Just Don’t” is a brutal takedown of perhaps an ex-lover or some jerk the band met who tried to show them up at something, but they quickly figured out it was all “just a show.” The EP ends with “Seduction,” which has some of the wickedest beats on the record and grungy guitars from end to end.
Go visit this Chalet, but be careful it doesn’t scorch you.
Before Electroclash and the wave of 00’s Dance-rock there was The Faint, emerging in the late 1990s in Omaha, Nebraska—a place known more for stoic practicality than synth-punk. In that unlikely setting of beige restraint, they pioneered a sound that combined the melodic essence of new wave, the raw edge of post-punk, and the robotic futurism of Detroit electro. Breaking free from indie rock’s humble comfort, they arrived armed with synths, dark eyeliner, and a raw, frenetic energy that dared audiences to actually feel something real, somethingprimal. The late ’90s and early 2000s indie scene was overdue for a shock, and The Faint delivered—not just as a band, but as an invitation to cast off coolness, to sweat, to move, and to live fully in the moment.
Onstage, the band turned every show into a raucous dance party. In a time of understated guitar rock, flannel shirts and torn blue jeans, their DIY foot-controlled lighting rig and all-black wardrobe was eyebrow raising. Behind unironic smoke machine clouds, keyboardist Jacob Thiele’s priest collar lent an eerie vibe while frontman Todd Fink delivered a fractured vision of a hyper-sexed cyber dystopia. The electro-punk beats of his brother Clark Baechle supplied the pulse and energy, and later, death metal guitarist Dapose infused a raw tension with his howling atonal guitar work. It was clear that this was more than a nostalgic nod to the 80’s. It was a spark from theunderground, foreshadowing an era of dance-oriented indie music that is still reverberating in the work of some of today’s most vital emerging artists.
The distinctive, synth-driven sound that brought The Faint to wide acclaim first surfaced on 1999’s Blank-Wave Arcade. The album was raw and daring, striking its own chord between early synth-pop pioneers (The Human League, New Order) and more recent heroes like Fugazi and Sonic Youth. The band’s blend of new wave, and DIY post-punk was trailblazing, and when the new millennium dawned that sound took hold of the zeitgeist, launching the band to new critical commercial peaks. 2001’s now classic Danse Macabre found itself scratching an itch that many indie rockers didn’t know they had. Wet From Birth followed in 2004 with its unusual electro-orchestral arrangements, cementing The Faint’s reputation as pioneers of the indie synth scene.
Today, 25 years removed from its release, The Faint are returning to announce a reissue of Blank-Wave Arcade, and Wet From Birth, which just celebrated its own 20th anniversary. Both reissues will arrive on the band’s longtime label home Saddle Creek on March 14th. This will be the first time that The Faint’s full catalog has been available on vinyl. To mark the announcement the band are sharing an unreleased Wet From Birth-era track entitled “Zealots,” and and accompanying remaster of Wet From Birth track “I Disappear.”
Fink says of “Zealots”:
“This song came from a dream Jacob had (our late keyboard player). In the dream, people were chanting, “You will know we are zealots by our guns,” . The lyrics are about the paradox between Christianity’s core message of love and the obsession with guns among some of its followers.”
In celebration of these reissues, The Faint will be embarking on extensive touring throughout 2025. Full details of those dates can be found below.
Tour Dates
Mar-21 – Santa Barbara, CA @ SoHo
Mar-22 – Las Vegas, NV @ Backstage Bar & Billiards
Mar-24 – Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole
Mar-25 – Santa Fe, NM @ Meow Wolf
Mar-27 – Tulsa, OK @ The Vanguard
Mar-28 – Kansas City, MO @ Warehouse on Broadway
Mar-29 – St. Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall
Mar-31 – Cincinnati, OH @ The Ballroom at The Taft
Joan Arnau Pàmies is a composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who was born in Catalonia. His career spans fifteen years of highly diverse work, encompassing live electronics, acoustic instruments, unusual forms of music notation, electroacoustic pieces, and free improvisation. An artist who unhesitatingly walks uncharted aesthetic paths, Pàmies has never been comfortable working within the boundaries of specific musical genres and traditions. For him, music is a liberating space where elements of classical and electronic music, free jazz, modernism, noise rock, and experimental music coexist and can be combined to generate unique results.
Today he announces his new album Guidelines/Fonaments, set for release on April 4th via Protomaterial Records, a label he founded in 2022. On the new album, he weaves together influences that have shaped his artistic voice over the years, from classical and modern music to jazz, from glitch to avant-garde pop. It balances structure with freedom, precision with spontaneity, and reflects a commitment to creating music that engages both intellectually and emotionally.
The first single “Esperança” is out today, which features the vocals of Martina Perpinyà, a former student of Pàmies, over heart-beating electronics that provide a comforting backdrop. In Catalan, “esperança” means hope, and “this song is precisely about that,” Pàmies says. Spoken from the perspective of humanity, the words suggest that humanity will prevail.
Listen to the new track on YouTube, and pre-save the album here.
Guidelines/Fonaments represents a significant moment in his artistic journey as a composer and performer, blurring lines of solo piano music, ambient, contemporary classical music, and free improvisation. “It is an intensely personal exploration, inviting listeners into a meditative state to reflect on the synthesis of diverse sound worlds and experience yet-to-be-known aesthetic perspectives,” he says.
Pàmies was introduced to music at a very early age. At home, his father, a professor of Catalan literature, would often play records by Miles Davis, Lester Young, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and Glenn Gould. At age three, his mother, a public school teacher, gave him a toy saxophone as a birthday gift. A few years later, Pàmies started learning the piano at a local music school.
His artistic journey has thus far unfolded in three distinct periods: his youth in Boston, where he was shaped by the Second Viennese School and early modernism; his graduate studies in Chicago, where free jazz, improvisation, and extremely demanding music for acoustic instruments informed his approach; and now, a return to his homeland of Catalonia. This current period represents a creative maturity, where he performs his own music and integrates improvisation and electronics into his practice.
He adds some additional background on the new album: “The album’s title, Guidelines/Fonaments, reflects the principles I’ve developed since returning to Catalonia—foundations for what I see as a groundbreaking evolution of my aesthetic. The bilingual title—in English and Catalan—is deeply personal, a reflection of my own life (my wife is American and my kids are dual citizens), and a metaphor meant to express how I see music: a historical product in constant struggle between past traditions and present aesthetic concerns. The pieces that form this record are my “guidelines” as well as my “foundations”: they present ideas that have been important to me for many years but also show new principles upon which to create future music.”
Pàmies performed, recorded, produced, mixed, and mastered Guidelines /Fonaments himself, ensuring that every detail reflected his vision. It was created in the span of four years, during downtimes between parenting, composing, performing, and producing for other artists. The album was recorded in a wide variety of places, from apartments where he had lived to professional recording studios.
Kinlaw is an artist. She’s an opera singer, she’s a choreograhper. She’s a performance artist, she’s a student of psychoacoustics and neuropsychology. She’s not a dancerwho happens to make music. She’s not a composer who happens to have a movement practice. All of her work is connected, completely symbiotic, ruthlessly in conversation with itself, focused on community. She’s been living and working in New York City for over ten years, popping up as a member of several notable musical projects, while earning commissions from institutions like the MoMa Ps1, Pioneer Works, and the New Museum, and working on performance pieces scored by SOPHIE, Caroline Polachek and Dev Hynes among others.
In 2021 she released her first album under the Kinlaw name, an album called The Tipping Scale, which earned comparisons to Jenny Hval, FKA twigs, and Cate le Bon from Pitchfork, and 4 years later she is returning to announce her sophomore LP gut ccheck, which will be released on 3/21 on Bayonet Records. To announce the record she is sharing its first single “Hard Cut” along with its accompanying video.
Kinlaw says of the track:
“The song is about conditions and extremes. It’s about being fed up. Ultimately, it’s a song that’s about aggressively choosing yourself and offering that permission to the listener.”
Matteo Liberatore, an artist and composer who has become a fixture in New York City’s experimental and intermedia art scenes over the last decade, today announces the debut album from his audio-visual electronic music alias Molto Ohm. After introducing the project with live performances at DIY spaces, art venues, and music clubs—often collaborating in duos with artists like Taja Cheek (L’Rain), More Eaze, and Ka Baird—Liberatore is set to release FEED on March 21 via New Focus Recordings.
On the work, Molto Ohm presents his thesis: “FEED aims to capture the fragmentation and alienation of modern life, an exploration of ambition, consumerism, purpose, intimacy, and self-awareness, juxtaposed with a longing for calm, joy, and human connection.”
Alongside the album announcement, Liberatore is sharing the project’s first-ever released track, “Sponsored #1,”which serves as a captivating entry point into Molto Ohm’s idiosyncratic and concept-driven world. The lead single delves into the commodification of self-care, where the quest for mental well-being is shaped by algorithms and consumer-driven promises of a better you. Beginning as a blissful electronic track overlaid with a voice that sounds dialed in from a meditation or self-help app, the track shifts into uncanny territory, magnified by Liberatore’s video, which splices together footage of faux advertisements for a dentist along with shots of smiling individuals and an unsettling last 20 seconds.
In FEED, Molto Ohm urges us to confront how capitalism’s relentless drive to commodify everything has left many subjugated by the promises of an unattainable life. Advertising, consumer technology, and the culture of self-optimization dangle visions of happiness, peace, and prosperity. Deep down, we know that these promises are often hollow, designed to sustain an economy where alienation and dissatisfaction drive consumption. Yet, the pull remains powerful, leaving many feeling estranged from themselves and their world.
FEED examines the battles between material comfort and bodily alienation; ecstasy and ennui; engagement and weariness by recontextualizing familiar signifiers: heavy dance beats, glitchy effects, connection static, motivational speeches, sales pitches, podcast-like confessions, and (faux) ads. The sonics span EDM and abstraction; snippets of yearning songs flash by, and dissonance interrupts lulls. Commanding synths shimmer and stab, while wavy melodies offset the tension. Wistfulness is ever-present, Liberatore conveying that something is being lost. The music looking to a new paradigm.
As an immigrant that moved to New York from a small village in central Italy, Liberatore experienced the cultural shift of transitioning from a stereotypically quiet and idyllic place to the world capital of art and capitalism. After more than a decade in New York and the absorption in the experimental music world (with albums and countless collaborations with Mark Kelley, Elliott Sharp, Taja Cheek, Gold Dime, Amirtha Kidambi, Ava Mendoza, Brian Chase and many more), Liberatore felt the urge to come to terms with his hybrid existence, reconnect to his lost teenage years overseas, the love of Italian pop music, 90s Eurodance nostalgia, small manual cars, the waveless Adriatic sea, and to make sense of this constant feeling of unrest and race towards an elusive, imagined destination.
Liberatore anchors FEED’s production in a loud, contemporary style that marries hyperpop energy and festival friendliness, complicating it with atonal timbres, environmental sounds, and human voices. The music morphs and shifts. The quiet moments are brief and artificial; soulful warmth flickers; noise bursts through, disrupting the transmission. Maybe we can still push back against the corporate machine and retain a hint of autonomy, imperfection, and organic beauty. The inclusion of a Mark Fisher quote in track nine, “After All (Mark)” is fitting. “After all, what could be more shattering, unassimilable, and incomprehensible, in our hyper stressed, constantly disappointing and overstimulated lives, than the sensation of calm joy.” Like the critic-turned-theorist, Liberatore confronts shattering and incomprehensible dread in our overstimulated lives, where even “calm joy” has been heavily commodified and sold to the willing bidder, leaving no escape for the soul.
Keep your mind open.
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Iconic post-punk band Pink Turns Blue present their new single ‘Stay For The Night’, a celebration of the post-punk / goth rock / darkwave community and the second single from their new ‘Black Swan’ album, to be released on limited edition vinyl, CD and digitally via Orden Records.
Today made up of Mic Jogwer (vocals, guitar), Paul Richter (drums) and Luca Sammuri (bass), Pink Turns Blue – named after a Hüsker Dü song – emerged in 1985 in the first generation of gothic rock.
This new single follows the lead track ‘Black Swan (But I Know There Is More to Life)’, the album’s only ballad, offering ample fruit for thought. Delving into profound questions about existence, it reflects on life’s purpose and the beauty of the world.
‘Stay for the Night’ is meant for the dance floor. While we are an alternative rock band, founded in the post-punk era of the 80s, many of our fans wear black or dress as goths. And we often play in clubs that play darkwave music or goth rock at the after show party. The key message of the song is about unequal love, with one person wanting to leave the relationship or the group or going home instead of staying in the club with their (black-clad) friends and the other person asking to stay to sort things out, to give the relationship or the evening another chance,” explains Mic Jogwer.
“This is also a love song to the post-punk / goth rock community for being with all these years. Very often, we stay for the after-show party and immerse ourselves in the very open-minded and diverse dancing crowd. This is home. After the show, we can just close our eyes and float with the music and our friends… All we need is love. All we need is friends. Thank you so much for being with us. See you on the dance floor.”
After 2021’s widely acclaimed ‘Tainted’ album, the companion ‘Tainted Tour 2022’ EP and successful American and European tours with often-sold-out concerts, the Berliners’ new studio album will be followed by their ‘Black Swan’ tour, which sees them visit clubs through Germany in April.
This new collection is aptly named ‘Black Swan’, a term used for an unexpected event that, in retrospect, is rationalized as if one could have prepared for it.
Pink Turn Blue’s debut album‘If Two Worlds Kiss’ advanced the darkwave sub-genre while becoming a seminal post-punk album. Emerging from the fear and uncertainty of a divided Cold War Germany and inspired by Joy Division, The Sound and The Chameleons, they have since released a dozen full-length LPs and have become known for their trademark blend of post-punk, alternative rock and new wave.
Pink Turns Blue has achieved pretty much everything an indie band could wish for – Album of the Year (Byte FM), Best Album of 2021 (Post-Punk.com), singles reaching number 1 in the German Alternative Charts and Indie Disco Top 40, excellent reviews in worldwide music press, well attended and sold-out club concerts spanning from Los Angeles to Yerevan.
As of January 10, ‘Stay For The Night’ is available everywhere, including Apple Music, Spotify, and Bandcamp. February 28 brings the release of the full ‘Black Swan’ album – digitally on all streaming platforms with limited-edition vinyl and CD editions now available for pre-order. Tickets for 2025 concerts can already be ordered at https://pinkturnsblue.com/live-dates.
Gus Baldwin is one of the hardest working dudes in the Austin, Texas music scene. When he’s not cranking out solo material, he’s often working with The Black Angels, or Christian Bland and The Revelators, or collaborating with Danny Blackwell of Night Beats, or he’s teaming up with his pals in The Sketch to create The Sketch album, and, since he’s so busy, he and his pals recorded it in one day.
Opening with “Part I,” “Part II,” and “Part III,” the album is raucous right out of the gate with guitars that sound like a battleship groaning as it collides with an iceberg. The album moves back and forth between garage punk and trash rock. The fourth track, “Itch,” is a wild punk barn-burner. “Steady on It” lands somewhere between Frankie and The Witch Fingers and Ty Segall, but with extra-funky bass for good measure.
“Luxury Television” teems with Osees-like intensity and mania as Baldwin sings “I got a strange addiction. Your hate is my prescription.” You don’t get much more punk than that. “Slacker’s Prom” and “(She’s Gone) Arigato” continue the punk fun, and the latter even brings in a bit of 50s-ish doo-wop on the backing vocals.
“What the Freaks Say” could fit right in on any college radio playlist, and by the end, “Sympathy for Sunday,” they go all-in on heavy psych-rock.
It’s a wild ride, and over before you know it. It’s also a good launch for Baldwin and The Sketch. They’ll be ones to watch in 2025.
Lord Huron returns with “Who Laughs Last?,” a new single featuring Academy Award nominated actress Kristen Stewart and an accompanying music video directed by Tony Wilson and starring Stewart. The band also announces a 2025 world tour, taking place after the upcoming Strange Trails 10th Anniversary run “Who Laughs Last?” marks the multiplatinum Los Angeles band’s first original release in two years, and also serves as the debut recording by Kristen Stewart [Spencer, Love Lies Bleeding]. “Who Laughs Last?” represents just the first piece of a sonic, aesthetic, and sensory puzzle meant to be assembled with care.
“Who Laughs Last?” finds Lord Huron evolving at lightspeed. With Stewart in the driver’s seat, they traverse a lonely and lost highway soundtracked by a rumbling palm-muted bass riff and a high octane beat. The groove picks up as samples of garbled news broadcasts echo in waves over strings. While she grips the wheel, Stewart’s poetic spoken word chills. At one point, she confesses that staring at an oncoming storm “made me feel something I never felt before…something between awestruck and horrified…I kept my eyes on the long white lines.” Turning on a dime, the momentum picks up and frontman Ben Schneider’s vocals take hold around a hard-hitting hook, “You don’t remember what I said, but you’ll remember what I did.” Starring Stewart,the accompanying visual evokes a Lynchian film noir on screen.
About the single, Schneider commented “I didn’t know Kristen previously but I’d been a big fan since seeing her work with Olivier Assayas, which my wife introduced me to. I kept hearing her voice when I was writing this song and just thought “what the hell, I’ll reach out and see,” thinking it was a long shot. But she said she was interested so we met up and hit it off talking about books, movies and music. She immediately got what I was going for and had great ideas to boot. She’s just a great person and so creative and open. She added a lot to the video concept as well. It was the kind of collaboration you dream of, honestly.”
“I’ve always loved the band and immediately sparked to the manic drift of the song and to the mood,” says Stewart. “I love when a song is something you can kind of seep into and imagine. Ben is the nicest, I was so into reading his words… there’s nothing like making new friends through projects like these that just crop up. Lucky stuff.”
Lord Huron’s 2025 world tour is the band’s biggest North American headline tour to date. The trek commences on July 18th and visits legendary venues, including Madison Square Garden in New York City, Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, and the Moody Center in Austin before concluding at Kia Forum in Los Angeles. Select dates will feature support from artists including Waxahatchee, Feist, Kevin Morby and more.
Prior, Lord Huron embarks on the previously announced Strange Trails 10thAnniversary Tour, beginning this May in Reno, NV, and includes their annual Red Rocks Amphitheatre dates. This very special run commemorates the 10th anniversary of the release of their album, Strange Trails, which featured the multi-platinum single “The Night We Met.” Artist presale tickets for newly announced dates begin Tuesday, January 28th at 1PM local time. General on-sale launches on Friday, January 31st at 10am local time. A full list of dates can be found below.
There will be more news from Lord Huron in the coming months.
Lord Huron Tour Dates (new dates in bold) Sat. April 26 – Charleston, NC @ Highwater Festival Thu. May 22 – Reno, NV @ The Grand Theatre at Grand Sierra Resort – SOLD OUT * Fri. May 23 – Boise, ID @ Outlaw Field at the Idaho Botanical Garden – SOLD OUT * Sun. May 25 – Missoula, MT @ KettleHouse Amphitheater – SOLD OUT * Mon. May 26 – Missoula, MT @ KettleHouse Amphitheater – SOLD OUT * Wed. May 28 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre – SOLD OUT * Thu. May 29 – Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre – SOLD OUT * Sat. May 31 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Sandy Amphitheater – SOLD OUT * Sun. June 1 – Denver, CO @ Outside Festival Fri. July 18 – Indianapolis, IN @ Everwise Amphitheater at White River State Park ^ Sat. July 19 – Chicago, IL @ Fairgrounds at Salt Shed ^ Sun. July 20 – Chicago, IL @ Fairgrounds at Salt Shed ^ Tue. July 22 – Minneapolis, MN @ Armory % Wed. July 23 @ Milwaukee, WI Miller High Life Theatre % Fri. July 25 – Nashville, TN @ The Pinnacle % Sat. July 26 – Nashville, TN @ The Pinnacle % Sun. July 27 – Atlanta, GA @ Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park % Tue. July 29 – Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion # Wed. July 30 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden # Fri. Aug. 1- Philadelphia, PA @ TD Pavillion at The Mann % Sun. Aug. 3 – Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway % Tue. Aug. 5 – Raleigh, NC @ Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek % Thu. Aug. 7 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Stage AE Outdoors) @ Fri. Aug. 8 – Columbus, OH @ KEMBA Live! Outdoor @ Sat. Aug. 9 – Rochester Hills, MI @ Meadow Brook Amphitheatre @ Thu. Sept. 4 – Oslo, NO @ Sentrum Scene Fri. Sept. 5 – Stockholm, SE @ Annexet Sat. Sept. 6 – Copenhagen, DK @ Poolen Mon. Sept. 8 – Berlin, DE @ Tempodrom Tue. Sept. 9 – Warsaw, PL @ Stodola Wed. Sept. 10 – Vienna, AT @ Gasometer Thu. Sept. 11 – Zurich, CH @ Halle 622 Sat. Sept. 13 – Paris, FR @ L’Olympia Sun. Sept. 14 – Utrecht, NL @ TivoliVredenburg – Ronda Mon. Sept. 15 – Cologne, DE @ E-Werk Tue. Sept. 16 – Brussels, BE @ Ancienne Belgique Thu. Sept. 18 – Bristol, UK @ Bristol Beacon Fri. Sept. 19 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo Sat. Sept. 20 – Glasgow, UK @ O2 Academy Glasgow Sun. Sept. 21 – Manchester, UK @ O2 Apollo Manchester Wed. Oct. 15 – Berkeley, CA @ Greek Theatre at UC Berkeley ! Fri. Oct. 17 – Portland, OR @ Moda Center ! Sat. Oct. 18 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena ! Sun. Oct. 19 – Spokane, WA @ Spokane Pavilion ! Tue. Oct. 21 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Union Event Center ! Thu. Oct. 23 – Omaha, NE @ Steelhouse Omaha ! Fri. Oct. 24 – St. Louis, MO @ Chaifetz Arena ! Sat. Oct. 15 – Independence, MO @ Cable Dahmer Arena ! Mon. Oct. 27 – Irving, TX @ The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory ! Wed. Oct. 29 – Houston, TX @ 713 Music Hall ! Thu. Oct. 30 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center $ Sat. Nov. 1 – Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theatre $ Sun. Nov. 2 – Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum $
* with Molly Lewis ^ with Indigo De Souza % with Lee Fields # with Waxahatchee @ with S.G. Goodman ! with Kevin Morby $ with Feist
Today Guelph, Ontario hell-raisers Bonnie Trash share a new single and video, taken from their forthcoming new album, Mourning You, which is set for release on February 28th on Hand Drawn Dracula.
Mourning You finds Bonnie Trash, twins Emmalia & Sarafina Bortolon-Vettor, embracing a newfound sense of urgency. The album is, put bluntly, an album about death. Not death in the macabre, violent, or outrageous sense, but death as you or I might know it. A spectre lurking around the corner. Capricious, indiscriminate, and unexpected. Ordinary and all the more terrifying for it. Real. Fear in the eyes of a loved one about to die, and the fear in your eyes – staring back. This is sorrow not as a lingering bruise, but a gushing wound.
Following previous single, “Veil of Greed”, today they share the howling, urgent new track “Hellmouth“ – a song that evokes the gnarled claw of remorse gripping you in twilight’s terror. “I see you in my dreams every night,” Sarafina intones. Were it not for Emmalia’s blown-out Stratocaster, you might mistake those words for the chorus of an old doo-wop standard. The track launches off as a woozy siren song, before pummeling you with anthemic power chords for Sarafina’s self lacerating chorus: “Drag me to hell and back I go.”
“Every reminder of what once was, feels like a sharp sword” the band comment. “But, even in the darkest moments, there’s always a path towards love. Remembering the warmth of their smile, as you scrape your nails towards the surface…”
A lifelong project christened in 2017 with the release of Ezzelini’s Dead, the band’s debut EP which found the pair mining the Trevisan dialect and archaic Italian folklore of their heritage to grisly effect. Where their first full length, Malocchio (2022), shrouded Bonnie Trash’s nightmares in dusky dreamlike reverb, ‘Mourning You’ is vivid and immediate. Emboldened by the addition of Emma Howarth-Withers on bass and Dana Bellamy on drums – whose thunderous rhythms sharpened 2024’s My Love Remains the Same EP into a fine-edged blade – Mourning You is less a post-mortem fantasia than a sudden, swift dagger to the heart.
Sarafina, the band’s singer and lyricist, has described the album as being about “losing someone you love. It’s about the horrors of grief, haunting you every day.” Inspired, largely, by the passing of Nonna Maria – who provided interstitial narration across the band’s early work – it’s these intimate details which render the songs on Mourning You so devastating. The record explores love and grief as kindred spirits. Grief as love with nowhere to go. Love determined by the fear of its loss. A blood pact. A life for a life. The gnarled claw of remorse gripping you in twilight’s terror.
Though inspired by the shocking iconography of horror shows, slasher flicks, and psychological thrillers, Bonnie Trash turns cinematic tropes on their head. Rather than fashioning nightmares into reality, the band paints reality as a nightmare, rife with pain, suffering, and gothic theatre. Bonnie Trash understands that everyday atrocities haunt the periphery of our lives. A black cloud looming on the edge of our vision. Curses abound. You can’t ward them off. You’d best make an unholy racket.
Mourning You is out February 28, 2025 on Hand Drawn Dracula. In mourning, all is lost.
Bonnie Trash live dates: Feb 27 – Toronto, ON – Wavelength Winter Fest w/ The OBGMs, pHoenix Pagliacci, Cadence Weapon Mar 01 – Guelph, ON – ArtBar Mar 08 – Kitchener, ON – The Union
