Partner open up their “Big Gay Hands” with new single.

Photo by Lesley Marshall

Partner have shared the video for one of their most anticipated songs and a natural queer anthem “Big Gay Hands.” A live favourite from the past 3 years, Big Gay Hands is the third single, from Partner’s Never Give Up (November 20th on You’ve Changed Records) the follow up to their break-out debut album, In Search of Lost Time
 

BIG GAY HANDS

“This song is about a wild night on the town filled with queer desire. It is an important song to us because it expresses a feeling we know is shared by many. There are a lot of songs out there about women’s bodies but this is the only song we know about big gay hands. This song is dedicated to the hotties and to those who love them.”
– 
Partner

Never Give Up is Partner’s second full-length album, following 2017’s In Search of Lost Time. In the years since their first release, the band has developed their “post classic rock” sound, leaving behind 90s rock comparisons. The new album retains elements that will be familiar to Partner fans, such as guitar solos and humorous subject matter, but with more structurally adventurous songs and abstract lyrics. They have spent the last several years on tour with drummer Simone TB, and this is evident in the looser and more confident performances captured on the album. Never Give Up was recorded by Steve Chaley at Palace Sound in the summer of 2019. 

The band described the process of making the album. “In October of 2018 we found ourselves in a dark and quiet rehearsal space. We were practicing for a two person show, the first one we had played in many years. We were at a crossroads as a band, and we had no idea what the future held. All we knew was that we were going to be making music together. We weren’t sure what this music would sound like or who would be playing it with us. And then the songs started to arrive. Some of them fully formed, like the first songs we wrote. It was as much a surprise to us as anyone else when we realized we had the beginnings of our second album.”

Not all the songs came so easily. Some took over a year to complete. Some taunted the band with their elusivity. Some forced Partner to rip them apart and build them back together more than once. Never Give Up was written in rehearsal spaces, in the band’s bedrooms, in a condo, in friends’ and strangers’ houses, Air BnBs, in a cafe and on Josee’s couch and in the studio, and in the booth. “We talked. We were honest with each other and honest with ourselves. Sometimes it was a lot. And when it got to be almost too much we would repeat to each other, first as a joke and then not as a joke at all, ‘never give up’.”
 

Partner Links
Big Gay Hands – https://smarturl.it/p8u9de
Website: http://www.partnerband.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/partner.music.band/
Bandcamp: https://partnerband.bandcamp.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/partner_band/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/partner_band
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/partnerband

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[Thanks to Mar at Mar on Music.]

Adulkt Life releases two more fiery singles from upcoming record.

Photo by Steve Gullick

Adulkt Life, made of Huggy Bear’s Chris RowleyMale Bonding’s John Arthur Webb and Kevin Hendrick, and drummer Sonny Barrett, announce their debut album, Book Of Curses, out November 6th on What’s Your Rupture? Today, they offer two new singles, “Stevie K” and “Taking Hits,” which follows the previously-released song “County Pride.”

Huggy Bear led the UK’s answer to riot grrrl, inspired by the “seismic shock” of witnessing a Nation of Ulysses performance together and galvanized by Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail’s germinal riot grrrl zine “Jigsaw.”  In the 25 years since Chris Rowley played with iconic Huggy Bear, starting a new band hasn’t felt right. But after John Arthur Webb (Male Bonding), who Rowley met while picking up records at a Rough Trade shop,  asked if he wanted to play music together it “suddenly it felt super exciting.”  Within a year, Webb and Rowley befriended drummer Sonny Barrett, who worked at a different Rough Trade location and later offered to drum in Adulkt life. The Adulkt Life lineup was finalized when Webb enlisted his best friend and longtime collaborator, Kevin Hendrick (Middex) on bass.

For Rowley, Adulkt Life “felt like it could carry the weight of all the things I would want to culturally load into a band without having to compromise any of it.” That meant these songs—ecstatic buzzsaw guitars, blown-out poetry, the improvisatory energy of torrential art-punk drumming that reveals Sonny’s free-jazz interest—should reflect the conditions of his life as an older person. In 2020, Rowley is a 55-year-old father and longtime employee of a children’s charity. “You have to create a question and interrogate yourself,” he says, and so he poses inexhaustible ones: What is it to parent in a crumbling world? What does it mean to stay political as Earth burns, to keep loving music? How best to communicate the excitement and charge of possibility from “a whole different set of paradigms?” Adulkt Life inquires but offers no easy answers, instead instigating punk’s eternal invitation to see: “Wow, I should do something—make something, start a political party, just do something rather than not do something.”

The cut-and-paste word collages Rowley once shouted in Huggy Bear are as cool and thrilling as ever on Book Of Curses—with chiseled noise hooks expertly mixed by Webb and mastered by Total Control’s Mikey Young, fitting the “cold war bubblegum” aesthetic called out in the lyrics—but charged by the high-stakes of adulthood. “Taking Hits” is a rallying cry for those unable to cry. The explosive “Stevie K” is a “mythic hero/ine song” inspired by Nation of Ulysses guitarist Steve Kroner. In the 1990s, after Rowley and the other members of Huggy Bear saw Nation of Ulysses, “You couldn’t be a band and want to be anything less than the impact that had on us […] We wanted to shake everybody up.” Adulkt Life honors these impulses. Rowley expands on “Taking Hits” and “Stevie K”: 

“‘Taking Hits’…I wanted to forge a battle hymn that would corral our beat down and
punch drunk living situations into something transcendent, stronger of knees and
able to stare out the haters.

It’s a synesthesia yarn synthesizing smelling salts, rubbing oils, cheerleading disgust, sugar and vitriol, like if the grifters got up early and went track training in the rain/confused east coast hard-core with all the floodlights on/jaws clamped like Dan Fante.

‘Stevie K’ was recorded in starvation conditions / prison yard style under the working title ‘Nation of Ulysses ruined my life’ as in ‘where do you take that logic to a limit?’ It’s a mod / art ballad for a catcher in the rye / no friends shake up steve k mythically emerging from field recordings, in love with the ruts staring at the rude boys a scream for hope / deliverance.” 

LISTEN TO “STEVIE K” AND “TAKING HITS”
 Other songs, ablaze, explore lawlessness, authenticity, love, redemption, like fables of radicals across time and space: us versus them, defeat and resurrection, sax squall, noise blasts, visceral empathy for the vulnerable and disenfranchised. Rowley’s apocalyptic visions just happen to appear alongside bedtime stories. On Book Of Curses, punk means never surrendering your creativity or your curiosity. 
LISTEN TO “COUNTY PRIDE”

PRE-ORDER BOOK OF CURSES

BOOK OF CURSES TRACKLIST
1.County Pride
2. JNR Showtime
3. Whistle Country
4. Taking Hits
5. Flipper
6. Stevie K
7. Room Context
8. Move
9. Clean (But Itchy)
10. New Curfew

Keep your mind open.

[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Rewind Review: Screaming Females – Castle Talk (2010)

Screaming Females’ (Mike Abbatte – bass, Jarrett Dougherty – drums, Marissa Paternoster – guitar and vocals) fourth album, Castle Talk, features a drawing (by Paternoster) of a horse on its cover. The horse’s tail seems to be made of fire. It’s a fitting image for an album that often charges straight at you like those horses from Krull that move so fast they leave behind trails of fire.

Opening track “Laura + Marty” opens with doom metal chords before it abruptly switches into almost power-pop riffs and post-punk bass grooves. “I Don’t Mind It” could and should be a big radio hit as Paternoster sings a peppy song about heartbreak. Dougherty’s “not as easy as they sound” beats are a highlight of “Boss.” His switches between hard rock beats and jazz timing are sharp.

The raucous energy of “Normal” gets your whole body shaking. “A New Kid” has this cool warped sound to it that I love (especially in Abbatte’s drunken circus clown bass), and, good heavens, Paternoster’s riffs on it blow you out of your boots. Her vocals on “Fall Asleep” are layered with fuzz, almost taking a back seat to her shredding – which is somehow smooth and buzzsaw-like at the same time.

“Wild” has soaring solos that contrast with Paternoster’s soft vocals about missing a lover. “I wanna be your late night crisis line. I wanna give you all a piece of my mind,” Paternoster sings on the snappy and snarky “Nothing at All.” “Sheep,” (a solid rocker about infidelity – “You’ll count sheep with anyone, and anyone will do.”) is a great example of what makes Screaming Females so good – their ability to make effortless turns from soft tones to face-melting riffs. “Deluxe” starts out with a left-in blooper before it drifts into a slightly psychedelic, echoed, acoustic track that lets you catch your breath for a moment. Castle Talk ends with “Ghost Solo” – a song that builds behind Dougherty’s rumbling floor toms and Abbatte’s almost-disco bass to Paternoster’s defiant vocals (“This is it, it’s the last time you set me up.”) and guitar riffs that sound like a delighted bird of prey.

It’s a good send-off to the record and a good addition to any fan’s collection of the band’s material. Few bands can make love songs that are both heart-tugging and head-exploding at the same time. Castle Talk is full of such tracks.

Keep your mind open.

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Review: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Viscerals

Any album by the Newcastle quintet Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs should come with a roll of duct tape to secure your face to your head due to the constant threat of band’s booming, fuzzed-out riffs blasting it to smithereens. Their newest record, Viscerals, is no exception.

Beginning with mosh-pit inducing drums by Christopher Morley, “Reducer” takes off like an experimental rocket car across desolate salt flats. It shifts momentarily into bass-heavy sludge from John-Michael Hedley and echoing vocals by Matt Baty telling us that “Ego kills everything.” He’s right, of course, and that statement is woefully apparent in the 2020 political climate. The swirling guitars of Ian Sykes and Sam Grant on “Rubbernecker” produce a pulsing effect that creeps up your spine and settles somewhere in your amygdala.

“I’m dancing with the devil with his two left feet,” Baty sings on the creepy, jarring “New Body,” which is over seven minutes of controlled chaos as Baty yells, “I don’t feel a thing!” to a red-tinged harvest moon while standing in a thaumaturgic circle. Or at least the ceiling in the recording studio while standing in comfy sneakers. I’m not sure. The short “Blood and Butter” is a haunting spoken word track that melts into the thrash metal-like “World Crust,” which sounds heavy enough to crack its namesake.

“Death is in bloom!” Baty shouts on the doom-psych killer cut “Crazy in Blood.” It’s a standout track on a standout record and the type of song that makes everyone stop and listen. “Halloween Bolson” is bubbles like a witch’s cauldron and then builds to a rapid boil of space rock guitars and enough fuzzy bass to awaken a hibernating grizzly. The song crunches for nine straight minutes and, just when it lets you catch your breath, it cracks you in the head again with another massive riff. The closer “Hell’s Teeth” is a great shout-and-response track (“Let’s rock! In peace!”) that is both radio friendly and potentially speaker-damaging.

Viscerals is true to its name, as every song is either savage or seething, often both. It’s a powerful record for bizarre times that brings things into focus through fuzz.

Keep your mind open.

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Rewind Review: Screaming Females – Baby Teeth (2006)

Baby Teeth, the first album by power trio Screaming Females (Mike Abbate – bass, Jarrett Dougherty – drums, Marissa Paternoster – guitar and vocals), is like a hard slap across the face to awaken you from a stupor induced by bland rock, bro-rock, nu-metal, and other genres that tend to dominate FM airwaves and beer commercials.

Opener “Foul Mouth” bursts forth with bold drumming from Dougherty and Abbate and Paternoster’s chugging riffs. Hearing Paternoster’s voice for the first time in 2006 must’ve made a lot of heads turn. Her singing voice is a mix of (sometimes) controlled anger, heartfelt balladry, and punk snark that was sorely absent from the airwaves fourteen years ago. Paternoster’s guitars swirl and spin like a dust devil on “Electric Pilgrim.” “Jonah” gets off to a funky start with Abbate’s bass walk and continues that groove with hand-claps and strut-down-the-street beats and guitar riffs.

“Angelo’s Song” sets you up with simple guitar notes before Paternoster unleashes with her trademark guitar fury to stagger you back a few steps before it turns into almost a power-pop track. “The Bearded Lady” has some of Paternoster’s wickedest playing and Abbate and Dougherty’s snappiest rhythms on the record. The opening of “Henry’s Embryo” seems to display the band’s love of The Cars.

Abbate’s bass on “Dinosaurs” has a cool, dark feel to it that you can’t shake. The track gets so rowdy that it made my boss once tell me to turn down the volume at my desk. “Sports” is just as wild. Dougherty’s calm high-hat taps at the beginning of “Bus Driver Man” are a deceitful whisper before the whole band unloads with heavy hits that a lot of stoner metal bands would love to steal. The closing track, “Baby Jesus,” ends the album on a powerful, wild note with furious playing by the entire band.

If Screaming Females were cutting their baby teeth on this self-produced debut, they replaced them with big cat fangs. Baby Teeth is a slap with a steel gauntlet in challenge to anyone who dared scoff at them.

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Shame release first new single in two years – “Alphabet.”

Photo by Sam Gregg

Shame have announced their much-anticipated return, via the frenetic, storming new single “Alphabet.” It marks their first new music since the release of their critically acclaimed debut album Songs of Praise in 2018 via Dead Oceans

Alongside, the band have shared a Tegen Williams-directed video for the single, capturing the unnerving nature of hypnagogic hallucinations and the distressing way the mind can play tricks on us while dreaming.

On the track, produced by James Ford, frontman Charlie Steen explains:

“Alphabet is a direct question, to the audience and the performer, on whether any of this will ever be enough to reach satisfaction. At the time of writing it, I was experiencing a series of surreal dreams where a manic subconscious was bleeding out of me and seeping into the lyrics. All the unsettling and distressing imagery I faced in my sleep have taken on their own form in the video.”

Shame’s return, at under three minutes long, is a burst of energy that blazes bright and fast. It’s a restless and relentless track that feels familiar yet bigger and bolder than anything the band have done before, signalling the arrival of a new era of Shame.
WATCH “ALPHABET” VIDEO

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[Why not subscribe? It’s as easy as A-B-C.]

[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Teenager offer “Romance for Rent” on new single.

Photo by Jake Sherman

WATCH: Teenanger’s “Romance For Rent” video on YouTube

Toronto’s DIY scene purveyors, Teenanger have today shared their blistering new single, “Trillium Song“, the second to be lifted from the new record, Good Time – out October 2 via Telephone Explosion Records – which has so far earned praise from outlets like PasteThe Line of Best FitExclaimBBC 6 MusicSo Young and more. The new record, which comes mixed by renowned Toronto musician, Sandro Perri, follows previous releases that have found the band share stages across North America and Europe with the likes of METZTy SegallDeath From AboveDilly DallyDish Pit and more.

“Romance For Rent” presents another snappy highlight from the forthcoming record with the quartet pulling on incisive hooks and buoyant melodies that further mine this fresh, pop-punk angle to the group’s sound. There’s a sharpness here, not just in the sonic arrangement but also in the lyrics that give a satiric examination of the world of online dating and the perplexing moves that we sometimes make as individuals when caught in the throes of romance. The video, which was shot at the height of lockdown, looks at this further, examining the role of isolation and how this can manipulate people to do peculiar things with the hope of a quick fix.

“The lyrics were inspired by a friend of mine who had come out of a long-term relationship and was exploring the world of online dating,” says singer, Chris Swimmings. “I’ve been a serial monogamist for the last 12 years so it was a vicarious exploration into his life at the time.”

Blair elaborates on Swimmings’ sentiment to say: “The ‘Romance for Rent’ video takes the idea of loneliness and buying love and puts it in a blender with internet culture. It follows a lonely man who, rather than learning how to connect with others, connects with a meme pillow, and finds some short-lived solace with it; he is trying to solve his loneliness with an internet search, and kinda clings to the first thing he finds – a celebrity pillow. When that fails to get him the attention or connection that he was looking for, he goes back online. Rather than changing anything about himself or what he’s looking for, he just repeats the same cycle.”

Good Time is out on October 2nd on Telephone Explosion. It is available for pre-order here.

Keep your mind open.

[It would be a good time if you subscribed.]

[Thanks to Tom at Hive Mind PR.]

Fenne Lily gets lost in the supermarket in her new single and video.

“Solipsism” video still

Dead Oceans’ newest signing, Bristol, UK-based Fenne Lily, presents a new single/video, “Solipsism,” from her forthcoming album, BREACH, out September 18th on Dead Oceans. It follows a string of previously released songs and videos – BREACH’s “Berlin” and “Alapathy” and standalone singles “To Be a Woman Pt. 2” and “Hypochondriac.” “Solipsism” is a hazy lo-fi rock number, written in an attempt to create “something that sounded cheerful, about something really not cheerful.” The song deals with the anxieties of a social media driven generation, “because everyone is sharing everything, and everyone’s comparing their lives to other people’s.” Fenne sighs her age of 21 (“one and twentyyyyy… ohhh”) over the strident surge of guitar fuzz, as she sings about the pressure to have more fun in her 20s, and the solipsism that keeps her awake. The accompanying video, directed by Tom Clover in partnership with the nonprofit organization Film Co, playfully points out some of these anxieties.

A lot of situations make me uncomfortable — some parties, most dates, every time I’m stoned in the supermarket,” says Fenne. “‘Solipsism’ is a song about being comfortable with being uncomfortable and the freedom that comes with that. If you feel weird for long enough it becomes normal, and feeling anything is better than feeling nothing. I wanted this video to be a reflection of the scary thought that I’ll have to live with myself forever. It’s surreal to realise you’ll never live apart from someone you sometimes hate. Dad, if you’re reading this you killed it as shopper number 2.

Clover comments, ““I asked Fenne what products she wanted to be and then worked backwards from there with the illustrators. Most of the references came from Asian Supermarket packaging – they are way more interesting. The most important thing was making sure that it reflected upon Fenne’s personality – there’s a bunch of details you might miss on the first watch!”
Watch Fenne Lily’s Video for “Solipsism”

BREACH is a diaristic, frequently sardonic record that deals with the mess and the catharsis of entering your 20s and finding peace while being alone. Although its subject matter is solitude, it sounds bigger and more intricate than Fenne’s debut, On Hold, and presents a newly upbeat and urgent streak to her songwriting. Throughout, Fenne “pitches her honeyed voice low amid martial drums, pellucid guitar, driving melody. Like Laura Marling covering The War On Drugs” (MOJO).

Fenne kicked off her Wednesday evening IG Live interview series, “The Bathtime Show,” last month. Guests thus far have included Phoebe BridgersLucy Dacus, Christian Lee HutsonMatthew Maltese and SOAK. Keep an eye here for future guests joining Fenne in the tub (from afar).
Watch/Listen/Share:
“Alapathy” Video
“Berlin” Video
“Hypochondriac” Stream
“To Be A Woman Pt. 2” Stream

Pre-order BREACH

Fenne Lily Tour Dates:
Fri. April 30 – Brussels, BE @ Grand Salon
Sat. May 1 – Amsterdam, NL @ Bitterzoet
Mon. May 3 – Hamburg, DE @ Nochtspeicher
Tue. May 4 – Copenhagen, DK @ Ideal Bar
Thu. May 6 – Berlin, DE @ Frannz
Fri. May 7 – Munich, DE @ Mila
Sat. May 8 – Zurich, SE @ Exil
Sun. May 9 – Milan, IT @ Magnolia
Tue. May 11 – Frankfurt, DE @ Das Bett
Wed. May 12 – Paris, FR @ Le Pop Up
Mon. May 17 – Leicester, UK @ The Cookie
Tue. May 18 – Liverpool, UK @ Phase One
Wed. May 19 – Dublin, IE @ The Workman’s Club
Fri. May 21 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
Sat. May 22 – Glasgow, UK @ King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut
Sun. May 23 – Birmingham, UK @ Dead Wax
Tue. May 25 – Manchester, UK @ Deaf Institute
Wed. May 26 – London, UK @ Omeara
Thu. May 27 – Cambridge, UK @ The Portland Arms
Fri. May 28 – Bristol, UK @ Thekla

Keep your mind open.

[Why not wander over to the subscription box while you’re here?]

[Thanks to Jessica and Brid at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Partner “Never Give Up” with new album due this November.

Photo by Lesley Marshall

The follow up to their break out debut album, In Search of Lost Time, is out November 20th on You’ve Changed Records and the band has released a DOUBLE single “Hello and Welcome // Rock Is My Rock”, with  two incredible videos:

HELLO AND WELCOME // ROCK IS MY ROCK 

Never Give Up is Partner’s second full-length album, following 2017’s In Search of Lost Time. In the years since their first release, the band has developed their “post classic rock” sound, leaving behind 90s rock comparisons. The new album retains elements that will be familiar to Partner fans, such as guitar solos and humorous subject matter, but with more structurally adventurous songs and abstract lyrics. They have spent the last several years on tour with drummer Simone TB, and this is evident in the looser and more confident performances captured on the album. Never Give Up was recorded by Steve Chaley at Palace Sound in the summer of 2019. 

The band described the process of making the album. “In October of 2018 we found ourselves in a dark and quiet rehearsal space. We were practicing for a two person show, the first one we had played in many years. We were at a crossroads as a band, and we had no idea what the future held. All we knew was that we were going to be making music together. We weren’t sure what this music would sound like or who would be playing it with us. And then the songs started to arrive. Some of them fully formed, like the first songs we wrote. It was as much a surprise to us as anyone else when we realized we had the beginnings of our second album.”

Not all the songs came so easily. Some took over a year to complete. Some taunted the band with their elusivity. Some forced Partner to rip them apart and build them back together more than once. Never Give Up was written in rehearsal spaces, in the band’s bedrooms, in a condo, in friends’ and strangers’ houses, Air BnBs, in a cafe and on Josee’s couch and in the studio, and in the booth. “We talked. We were honest with each other and honest with ourselves. Sometimes it was a lot. And when it got to be almost too much we would repeat to each other, first as a joke and then not as a joke at all, ‘never give up’.”
 

Partner Links
Partner Album – https://youvechangedrecords.com/product/partner-never-give-up/
Website: http://www.partnerband.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/partner.music.band/
Bandcamp: https://partnerband.bandcamp.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/partner_band/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/partner_band
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/partnerband

Keep your mind open.

[I never give up on the idea of you subscribing.]

[Thanks to Mar at Mar On Music.]

Angel Olsen releases title track from upcoming album – “Whole New Mess.”

Photo by Kylie Coutts

I had gone through this breakup, but it was so much bigger than that—I’d lost friendships, too. When you get out of a relationship, you have to examine who you are or were in all the relationships. I wanted to record when I was still processing these feelings. These are the personal takes, encapsulated in a moment.” — Angel Olsen

Angel Olsen will release Whole New Mess, her first solo album since her 2012 debut, on August 28th via Jagjaguwar. A super intimate and vulnerable emotional portrait that shows her grappling with a period of personal tumult, Whole New Mess presents Olsen working through her open wounds and raw nerves with just a few guitars and some microphones, isolated in a century-old church in the Pacific Northwest. In conjunction, Olsen presents the lead single, “Whole New Mess,” with a video directed by longtime collaborator Ashley Connor. Additionally, she announces Cosmic Stream 3, the third in her livestream series, which will air on the album’s release date and stream from the Hazel Robinson Amphitheater in Asheville, NC.

Whole New Mess follows All Mirrors, Olsen’s grand 2019 masterpiece (and a top 10 critically acclaimed record). At least nine of the eleven songs on Whole New Mess should sound familiar to anyone who has heard All Mirrors. “Lark,” “Summer,” “Chance”—they are all here, at least in some skeletal form and with slightly different titles. But these are not the demos for All Mirrors. Instead, Whole New Mess is its own record with its own immovable mood. If the lavish orchestral arrangements and cinematic scope of All Mirrors are the sound of Olsen preparing her scars for the wider world to see, Whole New Mess is the sound of her first figuring out their shape, making sense for herself of these injuries.

To record Whole New Mess, Olsen asked for a studio recommendation from Electro-Vox head engineer and a deep kindred spirit Michael Harris. She wanted to find a space where, as she puts it, “vulnerability exists.” They settled on The Unknown, the Catholic church that Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum and producer Nicholas Wilbur converted into a recording studio in the small town of Anacortes, Washington. Anacortes would act as a kind of harbor for Olsen, limiting distractions as she tried to burrow inside of these songs. “I hadn’t been to The Unknown, but I knew about its energy. I wanted to go sit with the material and be with it in a way that felt like a residency,” Olsen says. “I didn’t need a lot, since it was just me and a guitar. But I wanted someone else there to hold me accountable for trying different things.” In late October 2018 prior to recording All Mirrors, Olsen and Harris lived for 10 days in a rental and built a daily ritual of getting coffee each morning in a nearby bookstore. They hiked Mount Erie, visited state parks, and strolled the empty streets of Anacortes beneath a full moon. But mostly, the sessions were casual, relaxed, and quiet, allowing Olsen the space to fully explore these feelings.

The results are staggering, somehow disarmingly candid and dauntingly personal at once. The opener and title track—one of two songs here that did not appear on All Mirrors—is a blunt appraisal of how low Olsen got and how hard the process of pulling herself back upright was, especially when being an artist can mean turning your emotions into someone else’s entertainment. “Oh, I’ll really do the change,” she repeats at the start and finish, her voice wavering as she tries to buy the mantra she’s selling. “The reality is that artists are often never home so health, clear mindedness and grounding is hard to come by,” says Olsen. “The song is a mental note to try and stay sane, keep healthy, remember to breathe wherever I happen to be, because there is no saving it for back home.

Considered alongside All Mirrors, Whole New Mess is a poignant and pointed reminder that songs are more than mere collections of words, chords, and even melodies. They are webs of moods and moments and ideas, qualities that can change from one month to the next and can say just as much as the perfect progression or an exquisite chord. In that sense, these 11 songs—solitary, frank, and unflinching examinations of what it’s like to love, lose, and survive—are entirely new. This is the sound of Angel Olsen, sorting through the kind of trouble we’ve all known, as if just for herself and whoever else needs it. 
Watch Angel Olsen’s “Whole New Mess” Video

Pre-order Whole New Mess

Purchase Cosmic Stream 3 Tickets

Whole New Mess Tracklist
1. Whole New Mess
2. Too Easy (Bigger Than Us)
3. (New Love) Cassette
4. (We Are All Mirrors)
5. (Summer Song)
6. Waving, Smiling
7. Tonight (Without You)
8. Lark Song
9. Impasse (Workin’ For The Name)
10. Chance (Forever Love)
11. What It Is (What It Is)

Keep your mind open.

[Thanks to Jessica at Pitch Perfect PR.]