Picture this: You’re a young band (your drummer alone is just fifteen years old) from the Manchester area of England and you’ve built so much buzz that people are comparing you to the next Stone Roses. You have a strong number of ardent fans and soon labels start calling. You cut an album, but the record deal never materializes and your album ends up going unreleased…
…for thirty-five years. That’s the short story behind Joanna‘s long-lost and now-unearthed Hello Flower album that has finally seen release after being found on a shelf in a Manchester apartment. It’s a crime no one picked this up earlier, because Joanna would’ve been as big as the Stone Roses and Oasis if they had.
The simple yet groovy drum beat by Carl Alty on “If You Don’t Want Me To” gets the album off to a great start, and Terry Lloyd‘s thick, syrupy, and funky bass on “Bandit Country” grabs your attention and won’t let go for the next four minutes. “Hey Presto” has vocalist Neil Holliday singing about either a lover or, more likely, his favorite party drug (“You’re my magic pill, and you’re all I need. I just take you at will to keep me on my feet.”). The sound is, appropriately, a bit trippy.
“Weather Vane” has disco touches (check out Tyrone Holt‘s guitar licks!), which I love. Holt’s psychedelic guitar sounds are bright and buzzy on “Mr. Sunshine.” The title track is pure 1990s Manchester rock with its hooky guitars, sizzling drum beats, and slightly snarled vocals. “It’s Worth a Try” is in the heavier end of that sound, almost striding into shoegaze territory as the guitar distortion gets louder and Holliday’s vocals get a bit more distant. The closer, “Gardeners’ World,” is a hard smackdown of people sneering at and tearing each other down from both sides of the political aisle while ignoring the beams of wood in their eyes. Holliday sings, “…don’t throw your stones…There’s weeds in your garden.” to both the left and right (and himself). This song is more relevant than ever as we see people tearing each other apart, verbally and physically, while ignoring that they’re all truly worried about the same things and forgetting about rich elitists playing both sides against each other. Joanna saw all this coming in the 1990s.
Again, it’s stunning that no one offered a record deal for an album this good. Joanna did a sold out show for its overdue release. We can only hope for a tour or maybe another record. They deserve it.
Ora Cogan announces her new album and Sacred Bones debut, Hard Hearted Woman, out March 13th, and releases the lead single/video, “Honey.” Ora Cogan’s music is alchemical: part instinct, part ritual, and always conjured from the edges where life feels sharpest. With Hard Hearted Woman, she mixes haunted folk, psych rock, and a shadowy strain of country, building a realm where catharsis feels lush, mysterious and vital. Shaken by the tenor of modern life, Cogan pulled in a circle of kindred musicians and made a record shaped by someone who has looked into the abyss and decided, again and again, to choose curiosity.
The album opens with today’s single, “Honey,” a slow-blooming burn built on warm strings and loose, driving percussion. Cogan’s voice is steady, smoky, and consoling, addressing the “hard hearted woman” who anchors the record. “Honey” radiates resilience without ever losing its tenderness as Cogan sings: “Just a hard-hearted woman // Gunmetal smile // Guarding your heart // Guarding your style.” Watch the Paloma Ruiz-Hernandez-directed video featuring Cogan bewitching friends, lovers, and foes, into a whirlwind of dance and chaotic joy. Ruiz-Hernandez comments, “The idea was to enter into an existence of absurdity where everyone is simultaneously isolated in their own loneliness and drowning in collective longing and lust.”
Raised on an island in the Salish Sea, Cogan had a bohemian upbringing in a home steeped in music, art, and philosophical debate — her father a photojournalist, her mother a musician and studio co-owner — shaping her early immersion in traditional folk and outsider music. Cogan left home to apprentice as a silversmith at the age of 15, soon taking on a kaleidoscopic array of jobs while touring through Europe and the US, fully immersing herself in underground music of all varieties.
She was anchored in Vancouver’s noise and experimental scene, and taught herself to play fiddle, toured in a drone-folk duo, and collaborated with a multitude of artists, never settling into one sound or scene. A canoe journey with friends from the Heiltsuk Nation led her to walking away from music for a while, dedicating years to environmental justice followed by human rights focused photojournalism.
After her father’s death, Cogan moved to Twin Peaks-like Nanaimo, B.C., drawn to its remote landscapes and eclectic music community. She started building a studio and collaborating with local musicians including Finn Smith, Nancy Pittet, Kristopher Bowering (Orville Peck), who now form her band. Following 2023’s Formless, she spent a winter crafting new songs that became Hard Hearted Woman.
Hard Hearted Woman grew out of a blur of cold-water plunges, long river swims, late-night ruminations with friends on art and politics, and long drives through the rural Lillooet landscape to visit her godmother. Alongside her band and guests from both the country and experimental worlds, she recorded with David Parry (Loving) at Dream Club in Victoria, B.C., as well as in her studio in Nanaimo, and remotely with Tom Deis. The result is a record that glows like something pulled from smoke and seawater — intimate, shimmering, and carved with wit as much as grief. It’s a swirling, jewel-toned ode to all the angels and the demons.
A work of devotion to mystery, to community, and to the strange power of making art in a fractured world, Hard Hearted Woman is a record about hardness and resilience; it’s the shell we grow so our most human, breakable selves can survive. Hard Hearted Woman is for anyone trying to stay open, even when the world makes that feel impossible.
Ora Cogan Tour Dates: Fri. March 13 – Vancouver, BC @ The Pearl (Album Release Show) Thu. March 19 – Brighton, UK @ The Hope & Ruin Fri. March 20 – Oxford, UK @ The Nest Sat. March 21 – Manchester, UK @ Yes Pink Room Sun. March 22 – Newcastle, UK @ The Lubber Fiend Tue. March 24 – Edinburgh, UK @ Sneaky Pete’s Wed. March 25 – Glasgow, UK @ Room 2 Fri. March 27 – Galway, IE @ Roisin Dubh Sat. March 28 – Dublin, IE @ Whelans Sun. March 29 – Cork, IE @ Wavelength at Cyprus Avenue Wed. April 1 – Sheffield, UK @ Sidney & Matilda Thu. April 2 – Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade Fri. April 3 – London, UK @ Dingwalls
The summer after he graduated from high school, Battle broke ground on his first album as Katzin. He had just spent most of the summer in Europe, and came back to the United States inspired to explore what it means to be an American at this particular moment in history. What stories cling to people born and raised in this infinitely complex, haunted country, and what responsibilities do we have to them? Buckaroo swirls around these heated questions like smoke from a campfire at dusk. Together with collaborator and producer Max Morgen, Battle drove from Los Angeles to Joshua Tree to start recording songs he’d written the previous spring. “It was a really anxious time. We were both heading off to college, getting ready to leave our homes and move to new states,” he says. “We packed up Max’s Subaru Impreza and set up a DIY recording studio in a cabin. It was really hot, and we were stuck inside. By isolating ourselves, we were able to capture this raw creative energy. It feels like we made a love letter to our childhoods.” “Nantucket” captures the continent traversing ambition of the album, as Battle explains: “’Nantucket’ is about a comedown, sobering up, perhaps washing up on a familiar shore. Several coastlines are implied in the lyrics, both east and west. It’s also about Meghan Trainor because she’s obviously the only girl who’s really from Nantucket. It’s all about that bass, no treble.”
In February, Mexican Summer-signee Katzin will release his debut LP Buckaroo. The project of the New York based songwriter Zion Battle, Katzin’s debut draws upon symbols of the mythologized American West – cowboys, horses, vast deserts, rolling plains, ancient rock formations – to trace that leap from adolescence to adulthood in all its unsteady shine.
Surging with rolling drums, filigreed synthesizers, and guitars that flip from a whisper to a thunder roll on a dime, Buckaroo renders the beauty of North America through a deceptively nonchalant electroacoustic collage. “One of our main goals was to make the album sound like the desert,” says Battle. “We talked about that a lot: How do we make the soundscape reflect the landscape?” Throughout the record, Battle blends the surreal wit of Pavement with the expansive gravitas of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, all while drawing from the warm, homespun atmospherics of early Orchid Tapes releases. These songs arc like contrails across the biggest sky you’ve ever seen.
Katzin has so far shared two singles from the record “Anna” and “Wild Horses,” and today he is sharing a third, a track called “Nantucket” that is premiering with FLOOD.
The summer after he graduated from high school, Battle broke ground on his first album as Katzin. He had just spent most of the summer in Europe, and came back to the United States inspired to explore what it means to be an American at this particular moment in history. What stories cling to people born and raised in this infinitely complex, haunted country, and what responsibilities do we have to them? Buckaroo swirls around these heated questions like smoke from a campfire at dusk. Together with collaborator and producer Max Morgen, Battle drove from Los Angeles to Joshua Tree to start recording songs he’d written the previous spring. “It was a really anxious time. We were both heading off to college, getting ready to leave our homes and move to new states,” he says. “We packed up Max’s Subaru Impreza and set up a DIY recording studio in a cabin. It was really hot, and we were stuck inside. By isolating ourselves, we were able to capture this raw creative energy. It feels like we made a love letter to our childhoods.”
“Nantucket” captures the continent traversing ambition of the album, as Battle explains:
“’Nantucket’ is about a comedown, sobering up, perhaps washing up on a familiar shore. Several coastlines are implied in the lyrics, both east and west. It’s also about Meghan Trainor because she’s obviously the only girl who’s really from Nantucket. It’s all about that bass, no treble.”
Modern Woman — the London art-rock band fronted by primary songwriter Sophie Harris — announce their debut album, Johnny’s Dreamworld, out May 1st via their new label One Little Independent Records, and release the lead single/video, “Dashboard Mary.” Johnny’s Dreamworld represents the culmination of Modern Woman’s journey from Harris’ early, intimate songwriting project into a full-bodied band capable of folding post-punk, avant-garde, and folk traditions into a live force of dynamic originality. At its heart, the record explores the strange poetry buried within the ordinary. Harris’ lyrics, steeped in literary detail and filmic atmosphere, draw from a fascination with the dark underbelly of the everyday and the contradictions of womanhood.
Harris explains, “A vital theme I’ve always wanted in Modern Woman is the idea of conflicting things, of the tender/harsh, loud/quiet and scrappy/polished. The style of everybody’s playing, drawing from a melting pot of influences, coming together to form something new.” This interplay defines the album’s sound, delicate one moment, raw and untamed the next. Layers of violin and saxophone stretch across a foundation of propulsive drums and bass, creating something equally methodical and volatile. Harris’ lyrics remain rooted in the female experience; “I find it interesting to explore the rawer side of femininity that is often hidden; girlhood relationships and the complexities of female fixation and obsession.”
Modern Woman’s sound emerged from years of creative refinement. The band coalesced when Harris met violinist and composer David Denyer, who brought a background in experimental composition and textural sound work. Joined by Juan Brint-Gutiérrez on bass and saxophone and Adam Blackhurst on drums, the group forged a style that values the contrasting harsh edges of folk lyricism and noise that collides with melody. Working with producer Joel Burton (Naima Bock, Katy J Pearson, Vanishing Twin), they found a live immediacy that channels the raw intensity of their performances into a sound that is both rich and unpredictable.
Johnny’s Dreamworld is a tender but confrontational collage of shifting tones and perspectives, of dream logic, fantasy, and lived experiences, as on today’s single, “Dashboard Mary.” Guided by Harris’ voice—expressive, incantatory, and shaped by a long-standing admiration for vocalists like Björk, Sinéad O’Connor and Cat Power—the track captures the comedown following a feeling of escape, a gradually unfolding narrative that builds towards a rapturous climax. “This is a song that I wanted to write like a film. I wanted to confront the feeling of the ‘morning after’ and the decisions made during that time of exhilaration the night before,” Harris comments.
Since their formation in London, Modern Woman have built a reputation for performances that blur the boundary between poetry and noise, commanding stages at End of the Road, Latitude, The Great Escape, and Green Man. Harris, a literature graduate, writes with a novelist’s precision and a performer’s urgency, while Denyer, Brint-Gutiérrez and Blackhurst bring the intensity of modern composition, jazz and punk backgrounds to the table. This year they signed to One Little Independent Records, the home of Björk, Crass, Laura Misch, Penelope Trappes, and more.
Johnny’s Dreamworld cements Modern Woman as one of the UK’s most distinctive new voices, a band intelligently and purposefully exploring the relationship between beauty and brutality.
Modern Woman Tour Dates*: Mon. Jan. 19 – Vienna, AT @ Arena Wien Tue. Jan. 20 – Graz, AT @ Dom Im Berg Wed. Jan. 21- Linz, AT @ Posthof Thu. Jan. 22 – Munich, DE @ Technikum Sat. Jan. 24 – Prague, CZ @ Cargo Gallery Sun. Jan. 25 – Berlin, DE @ Columbia Theater Mon. Jan. 26 – Hamburg, Knust, DE @ Molotow Tue. Jan. 27 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso Tollhuisten Wed. Jan. 28 – Antwerp, BE @ Trix Club Thu. Jan. 29 – Paris, FR @ Le Cabaret Sauvage Sun. Feb. 1 – Glasgow, UK @ The Art School Mon. Feb. 2 – Manchester, UK @ New Century Hall Tue. Feb. 3 – Bristol, UK @ Electric Bristol Wed. Feb. 4 – London, UK @ O2 Forum Kentish Town
Portland alt-rock / post-punk outfit Rayon present their latest single‘Running’, a propulsive exploration of the anxiety that comes with watching loved ones struggle with cycles of addiction that they can’t shake – and the sound of a tape echo that’s about to stop working. Intentionally preserving the noise of pausing, rewinding, and fast-forwarding to heighten the song’s frantic pace, its sound can be considered a study in tension and tape, the video conveying a sense of lo-fi capers involving a Citroen Wagon.
Found on the flip side of the single ‘Shopping / Running’ (also available on 7″ vinyl via Little Cloud Records), ‘Running’ is perhaps even more stunning than the whacky A-side ‘Shopping’, a tongue-in-cheek ode to consumerism and travel, written by someone who happens to travel and consume a bit.
Founded by long-time North Portland resident and Detroit-area native Eric Sabatino, Rayon now also involves members of other notable Portland bands – Sun Atoms, Yuvees, Pastilla and Martha Stax – namely Anna Sabatino, Riley McLaughlin, Eric Rubalcava and Derek Longoria-Gomez.
‘Running’ is based on a relentless bass and drum groove that lived in Sabatino’s head for months before finally taking shape in the studio. To capture the song’s unsettled emotional landscape, the band leaned into the mechanical unpredictability of a dying Dynacord tape echo. By funneling guitars and vocals through the aging machine, they achieved a haunting, warped soundscape where the pitch and speed constantly bend and shift. Feeling as though it is physically straining under its own weight, this song mirrors the very themes of instability it describes.
“‘Running’ was built around a bass and drum groove I was kicking around in my head for months. The guitars and vocals are the sound of a tape echo called “dynacord” that’s barely working, bending and moving the speed and pitch of everything we run through it. Those parts wouldn’t have come out like that if I wasn’t trying to write a guitar part while plugged into that machine.” says Eric Sabatino.
The video for‘Running’ offers a gritty, nostalgic look at the band’s world, captured entirely on a vintage Handycam, following the band in their meticulously restored Citroen wagon. Embracing the track’s jerky energy, their journey concludes with a grainy, evocative sequence of freeway signs leading into Seattle—a slow-burn outro that grounds the video’s high-energy antics in a sense of place and movement.
“The video was shot on an old handycam camcorder we found in the back of a closet. The battery miraculously held a charge. It came with a tape of someone’s school play, which we taped over (sorry to whoever’s family that was). It features the Citroen wagon from the ‘Shopping’ video. I worked on that car for months. So glad it didn’t break down during these two long video shoots,” says Eric Sabatino.
“We drove around all day picking everyone up at their home, work, local bar, favorite little shop, and went to band practice. We filmed the antics and capers along the way. Sometimes we let friends and strangers hold the camera and film us. I transferred and edited it over 2 late nights, trying to capture as much pause, rewind, and fast-forward noise as I could, timing the cuts to capture the jerky energy of the song. I love the outro and the slow noisy shots of the freeway signs leading to Seattle.”
In contrast, the video for‘Shopping’ – filmed with their awesomely nostalgic Super 8 video – was born of near-burnout and a revitalizing trip south of the border, showcasing antics in several grocery stores there before eventually being kicked out.
Sabatino broke tradition with this release, deciding to mix the album together with famed recording engineer Larry Crane (Cat Power, Sleater-Kinney, The Decemberists, The Go-Betweens, Elliott Smith, Death Cab for Cutie) at Jackpot Recording and Timothy Stollenwerk (Yo La Tengo, Grouper, Morphine) at Stereophonic Mastering.
Rayon spent last winter honing these and other songs through a series of live shows, including an epic trip to Guadalajara, which served as creative fodder for the band’s latest inspiration and re-invigoration. Recording on rainy weekends in a garage studio packed with old reel-to-reel tape machines, partially-functional tube amps, and leaky British motorcycles, these songs were recorded onto 16 tracks of 1/2” tape, while running the tracks through a slightly-wonky sounding tape echo.
Before forming Rayon, Eric Sabatino spent years playing with bands in Southern Michigan and Portland, sometimes with as many as six projects on the go at the same time. Self-described as “a guy who grew up on 80’s/90’s post punk and grunge trying to reconcile their love of R&B, Soul and 60’s British Pop”, Sabatino is now fully focused on this one project, built on the experience of years of writing, collaborating, studio work and touring with some of the Pacific Northwest’s hardest working bands.
The ‘Shopping / Running’ single is out now, available both digitally and as a limited pressing of 150 blue transparent 7″ record and 150 black 7″ vinyl. It can be ordered in all formats via Bandcamp, with this snazzy vinyl also available via Little Cloud Records. This is the first in an exciting new series of similar records in the works for Rayon.
oday, Winged Wheel share “I See Poseurs Every Day,” the third track released in advance of their forthcoming album, Desert So Green, due January 9 on 12XU. The song’s greasy steel guitar riffing evokes a truck stop showdown between ZZ Top and the Silver Apples, offering another glimpse into the band’s quickly evolving sound as they move toward the release of their third full-length in just four years.
In its premiere at Magnet, Winged Wheel’s Fred Thomas explains: “The working title was ‘Truck Stop’ because of how dirty and gruff the riff was—like something you’d hear in a nearly abandoned, potentially dangerous truck stop in the middle of nowhere. It’s way more choogling and crunchy than the kraut-inspired improv of our previous album, Big Hotel, or the more textural air that makes up the rest of Desert So Green. The official title was also pulled out of the ether, from a breakfast conversation on tour that turned into a running inside joke—though it’s not without a shred of truth. We do see poseurs every day, and we need to let them know we’re watching.”
An “experimental super-band” comprised by Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Circuit des Yeux), Cory Plump (Spray Paint, co-owner of the dream venue Tubby’s), Matthew J. Rolin (solo guitar wizard and half of the Powers/Rolin Duo), Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Lonnie Slack (Water Damage), and Fred Thomas (Idle Ray, Tyvek), Winged Wheel is a creatively and geographically scattered collective, with each player living in a different city and bringing their own unique element to the group’s interpersonal alchemy.
Early long-distance file trading between a few members yielded 2022’s debut album, No Island. As awareness and buzz grew around the band, they expanded their membership and met in person for the sessions that became 2024’s Big Hotel, a surgically assembled murk of high-energy kosmische rock with jammed-out tendencies. Fast forward, and the band that started out as a passing idea has completed multiple tours, become a taper’s dream with sets that drift through structure and improvisation, and ridden the momentum to places unforeseen on their third album, Desert So Green. The nine-track collection takes them into a space of sharpened dynamism and more nuanced expression. Things move a little slower, and the aftershock hits harder than the initial adrenaline rush. The energy that arrived all at once in loud explosions on earlier albums is refracted here, and ultimately all the more transcendent.
In January 2026, Winged Wheel will tour Europe for the first time. The band is also set to perform at Big Ears Festival in March 2026, while additional North American tour dates will be announced shortly.
Winged Wheel 2026 Tour Dates 9 Jan – Amsterdam, NL – OCCII 10 Jan – Groningen, NL – Vera 11 Jan – Hamburg, DE – Hafenklang 12 Jan – Leipzig, DE – Noch Besser Leben 13 Jan – Berlin, DE – Neue Zukunft 14 Jan – Prague, CZ – MeetFactory 15 Jan – Jena, DE – Trafo 16 Jan – Kusel, DE – Kinett 17 Jan – Düdingen, CH – Bad Bonn 18 Jan – Strasbourg, FR – La Grenze 19 Jan – Dijon, FR – Consortium 20 Jan – Paris, FR – La Station – Gare des Mines 21 Jan – Les Roches-l’Évêque, FR – Zero Degre Est 22 Jan – Rennes, FR – L’Antipode 23 Jan – Lorient, FR – Hydrophone 24 Jan – Rouen, FR – Le Kalif 26-29 Mar – Knoxville, TN – Big Ears Festival Winged Wheel Desert So Green is available January 9, 2026 via 12XLU on Vinyl and Digital Formats // Pre-Order Available Here
“Gold Standard Love” is the latest single from Dion Lunadon. It comes out as a limited edition 7″ flexi disc inside the Fall issue of America’s only Rock ‘n’ Roll magazine, CREEM. 100 flexi’s inside 100 copies.
150 copies will be available only at shows while stocks last.
“Gold Standard Love” is a futuristic rocker that crackles and grooves out of a thought crime, foregoing any current trends within the 2025 rock ’n’ roll genre.
“The FBI, The CIA, can’t take my dreams away, will you supply, GOLD STANDARD LOVE”.
Today, Grayson Capps releases “My Body.” It’s the first new song in eight years from the beloved Alabama singer/songwriter. In the interim, Capps has remained active, continuing to play upwards of 150 shows a year and releasing both a retrospective collection, South Front Street, and the album, Heartbreak, Misery & Death, a collection of folk and traditional songs originally performed by Doc Watson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Randy Newman, and others. He stepped back from recording his own material, however, instead devoting his time to raising his two children and caring for his father, who passed away last year after a long decline. With “My Body,” Capps jumps back into the fray via a snarling, electrified protest song rooted deep in the Southern Gothic where his most enduring work takes shape. Its release is accompanied by a lyric video filmed by Trina Shoemaker and created by Gregory Del Deo.
“The seed of this song began from a young lady’s perspective living in the state of Alabama in 2025,” explains Capps. “More broadly, it speaks for the tolerant and empathetic people of the world who are being pushed into a corner against their will and the collective need to stand up to malevolence.”
In the climactic closing verse, Capps simultaneously reflects and declares: “I was traveling around Ocala, Florida, around two in the morning and saw a sign, and it was confusing. It said, ‘God, guns, guts, and glory are what made this country great,’ and I’m thinking to myself, ‘God, guns, guts, and glory are the very words that make men hate.’”
Born in Alexandria, Virginia, growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and coming of age in New York City, Zion Battle makes music as Katzin.
Drawn to music from a young age, beginning with the music he witnessed at church (his father is a theologian and priest), he was fascinated with the sound of good records. He wasn’t sure how to go about replicating these sounds, but started early figuring it out: At 13, he began writing and recording his own music, and at around 15, he became a part of a teenage music scene of bands playing New York City basements, rooftops, and wherever they could turn up the volume without (or with) the threat of being shut down.
He went on to study music at both CalArts and the New School, before electing to take a break from his studies when he signed to the Brooklyn independent label Mexican Summer (Jessica Pratt, Cate LeBon, Hayden Pedigo) earlier this year.
Today, Katzin is sharing “Anna,” first taste of his forthcoming, yet-to-be-announced debut album.
Battle wrote “Anna” during his freshman year at CalArts. As he settled into college, he was struck by how the people around him sometimes struggled to adjust to their new lives, and often mourned the adolescence they’d left behind. Weaving together guitar, banjo, and synths beneath Battle’ssearching vocals, “Anna” is a sensitive portrait of young people making room for new realities as their old attachments fall away.
Battle says of the track: “Anna is a song about distant lovers — growth in distance. To be ‘off and on’ can feel like endless torture. But there’s nothing more euphoric than to run back into the arms of something so familiar.”
Here’s an interesting one. Ty Segall‘s sixteenth album, Possession, taps into Americana, 1970s groove rock, and some psychedelia to tell tales of people dealing with economic disparity, injustice, and finding meaning in the minuscule and simple.
“Shoplifter” is about Segall, working in a store, falling for and refusing to turn in a woman for stealing from the place because he knows she’s broke. The title track is a tribute to women tried and punished as witches and a skewering of those who did so. “Buildings” has a great bass groove and a great message about holding your head up during the daily grind (“Don’t stop tonight. You can make it all right. They say get up. You got what it takes to ride.”). The slightly off-key electric piano on this is a cool touch.
Remember me mentioning 1970s groove rock? You’ll hear it on “Shining” — a song about cruising in your convertible. “Skirts of Heaven” seems to be a tribute to hard-working moms (all of them). “Fantastic Tomb” is the story of a man who agrees to help with a burglary and ends up trapped in the house they hit…but he’s happy about it because he realizes he, like the rich man, doesn’t need “crystal, lace, vulgar paintings, too,” “a silver horse that looked right at you,” or “a big, empty bed covered in fur.” Segall’s guitars mix with slightly warped saxophone to good effect. Those guitars turn just the fuzz on “The Big Day,” a song encouraging everyone to stay strong in these strange times (“Love is here to stay. Don’t let them break us now.”).
“Hotel” might be a song about a prostitute who’s trying to find a way out of the business or one half of an illicit love affair looking to end something that’s become a an addiction. It mixes piano and drums to create a slightly panicked rhythm while string instruments portray the confused thoughts of the song’s main character. “Alive” pushes acoustic guitars to the front and blends them with slightly frantic string instruments to give you a sense of the anticipation / apprehension of the song’s main character.
Segall wraps up the album, and perhaps a vision of his career’s future, on “Another California Song.” He mentions, with the help of thick bass and fuzzy guitars, how, perhaps down the road no one will be calling him to record new music or tour (“Waiting on the studio. Hell, the landlord says I go to go. A star I was supposed to be. Now nobody’s calling me.”). It’s a fun, self-deprecating track Segall probably had fun writing.
The same goes for the whole record. Segall is enjoying his newfound role as a storyteller, and Possession is a fun story.
