Smut announces their new EP, Power Fantasy, out November 20th on Bayonet Records, and shares an official lyric video for the explosive lead single “Fan Age.” The Chicago-based band, originally hailing from Cincinatti, is comprised of Bell Cenower, Andrew Min, Sam Ruschman, and Tay Roebuck.
Uniting crunchy guitar tones and swirling synths, Smut embraces a liminality and experimentation that pushes the boundaries of pop music. They blend melody and moodiness to yield to a droney and percussive sound, taking influence from shoegaze, 90s hip hop, and trip-hop. Smut have conquered national tours with acts like Nothing, Swirlies, and Bully. Previously working as an actor, Roebuck’s performance is uninhibited, reflective of the stage presence of Blur’s Damon Albarn. Roebuck’s caustically sung, meditations on grief, guilt, and growing into oneself hover over a wall of sound, making us nostalgic for shoegaze bands past.
On Power Fantasy we find Smut in a state of transition. “Fan Age” begins in a dreamscape of guitar chords as Roebuck sings of climbing the backs of giants. About a minute and a half in, Smut has their feet firmly planted as “Fan Age” transforms into an infectious, self-assured anthem – “I don’t feel bad, I hold no guilt.” Power Fantasy demonstrates a new direction for the indie outfit, one characterized by continued self-reflection and sonic renewal.
To celebrate the release of Power Fantasy, Smut will livestream a performance via Baby’s All Right’s BabyTV on November 20th. Tickets are available here. Watch “Fan Age” Lyric Video
Portland post-punk five piece Soft Kill share their third single, ‘Floodgate” featuring singer-songwriter Tamaryn, taken from their forthcoming November 20th album release “Dead Kids, R.I.P. City”, the long-awaited follow up to 2018’s ‘Savior’. Says the band’s Tobias Grave, “Floodgate is about unraveling mentally and pushing away your lifelines. It’s about being trapped in solitude, suffocating in a world you created.”
The band have shared two other singles these past few weeks; “Pretty Face”, which encapsulates listeners with its steady pulse of bass and cinematic-like guitar melodies, taking a slightly left field approach to post-punk with its triumphant and upbeat energy. That followed the lead doom and gloom pop single “Roses All Around‘, which is dark yet luminous in every sense, from its driving percussive beats, harmonic grooves and melodies, while also creating an opportunity to openly discuss its sociopolitical message that is especially prominent now as Portland became the epicenter of unrest these past few months.
Soft Kill had been growing with pretty much every record – but a deep maturation, achieving a level of emotional intensity that, even for a band known for exactly that, was nothing short of awe-inspiring and inarguably a high water mark. The question then, was how do they possibly follow that up? Well, here we are, two years later with Dead Kids, R.I.P. City, and we can all set down our worry beads. Soft Kill, Tobias Grave, Conrad Vollmer, Owen Glendower, Daniel Deleon and Nicole Colbath, have in fact put any such concerns commandingly to rest.
Two years in the making, desperate, redemptive, its contrast of light and shadow favoring the latter, Dead Kids, R.I.P. City is like no other album in the genre, featuring the brave and abandoned, the tender and the afflicted, all teetering in memory on the edge of the city. For all the sadness and pain of addiction haunting it, however, the record, by its very existence, proves that hope doesn’t necessarily win but that, even if at great cost, it can. It’s what makes Dead Kids, R.I.P. City so powerful beyond just the scope of its dark luminous sound and indelible melodies, and is one of the many reasons you’ll carry it with you.
That’s the question that arose when I began listening to Screaming Females‘ second album, What If Someone Is Watching Their T.V.? for the first time. Let’s see if a trip through this blistering, wailing, shredding, and sometimes tender album can provide an answer.
“Theme Song” starts the album with Marissa Paternoster‘s guitar sounding like something you’d hear blasting from the Mach-5 as it whizzes by you. The song goes from post-punk to pure punk power by the end, which makes one think the album is going to be full of this same energy if the opening track is, after all, the theme song of the album. Lyrics such as “You are always talking and you never stop.” and “I am a victim of the general public.” certainly fit in with the theme of death by television.
That thought turns out to be correct, because “The Real Mothers” doesn’t let up on Paternoster’s vocal fury ((“The cost of killing is free.”), and “Humanity Arranged” doesn’t let up on Mike Abbatte‘s funky bass riffs. Drummer Jarrett Dougherty puts down some of his best chops on “Starve the Beat” – a track (about good and bad memories of youth) that has the great low key / heavy thrash swerve that Screaming Females do like no other band I know. Paternoster’s solo on it is one of her best.
“Little Anne,” a lovely song about love, lets us catch our breath, and makes us wonder if perhaps the answer to the album title’s question is that many will miss out on love right in front of them if they’re too busy with distractions. “Fun” is a song about moving on from death (of a loved one, or our own) with Abbatte and Dougherty swinging a great groove for over three straight minutes.
“Limbs” is the only song to mention television in it, and the lyrics “When you keep a fight, I pass your room at night, pinned to the brain, birthed the insane, set your TV live.” bring to mind images of Paternoster looking for some kind of solace while someone else is zoned out watching trash TV. The song has a slightly creepy vibe to it that makes it a standout.
“I will tear the heads off this culture,” Paternoster proclaims on “Pedro.” A bold statement in 2007, and even bolder now as both sides of the political aisle claim to be, or at least desire, to be doing just that. Paternoster’s guitar deftly moves from garage to metal to psychedelic, making it sound easy.
“If mother knows best, then mother knows why,” Paternoster sings on “Mothership,” a fast track that includes handclaps among Dougherty’s sharp drumming. “My Earth’s gone flat and the sun burns sour.” All of this is happening while we’re scrolling through Netflix and Amazon watchlists we’ve created but never view. The closer, “Boyfriend,” is one of Screaming Females‘ greatest punk-as-fuck tracks as Paternoster sings / screams what could well be a real conversation she had at age nineteen about her sexuality and Abbatte and Dougherty go for broke as sets the damn studio on fire screaming “While you sit on the fence I will burn in hell.” over and over.
What is someone is watching their TV? My guess is that they run the risk of missing the present world around them, which includes passion and compassion. Screaming Females were warning us thirteen years ago that we were drifting away from each other and toward our screens. They were right, but this album can still shake you out of it. Turn off your TV. Listen to this album instead.
Los Angles, CA quartet Here Lies Man announce their forthcoming fourth album Ritual Divination today and share the lead single “I Told You (You Shall Die)” via YouTube, Bandcamp and Spotify. Please see track listings for vinyl and digital variants below.
Four albums in, the convenient and generalized catchphrase for Here Lies Man’s erudite sound — if Black Sabbath played Afrobeat — might seem a little played out. But Ritual Divination is perhaps the best rendering of the idea so far. Particularly on the Sabbath side of the equation: The guitars are heavier and more blues based than before, but the ancient rhythmic formula of the clave remains a constant. “Musically it’s an opening up more to traditional rock elements,” says vocalist/guitarist/cofounder Marcos Garcia, who also plays guitar in Antibalas. “It’s always been our intention to explore. And, as we travelled deeper into this musical landscape, new features revealed themselves.”
The L.A. based band comprised of Antibalas members have toured relentlessly following their breakout 2017 self-titled debut. Their second album, You Will Know Nothing and an EP, Animal Noises, both followed in 2018. Third album No Ground To Walk Upon emerged in August 2019. All of them were crafted by Garcia and cofounder/drummer Geoff Mann (former Antibalas drummer and son of jazz musician Herbie Mann) in their L.A. studio between tours. Ritual Divination is their first album recorded as the full 4-piece band, including bassist JP Maramba and keyboardist Doug Organ.
Ritual Divination continues with an ongoing concept of HLM playing the soundtrack to an imaginary movie, with each song being a scene. “It’s an inward psychedelic journey, the album is the trip,” Garcia says. “The intention and purpose of the music is to create a sonic ritual to lift the veil of inner space and divine the true nature of reality.”
Likewise, musically and sonically, the album is self-reflexive. “On this album the feel changes within a song,” Garcia says. “Whereas before each song was meant to induce a trancelike state, now more of the songs have their own arc built in.” Similarly, the guitar sounds themselves herein eschew the fuzz pedals of previous recordings, going for the directness of pure amp overdrive and distortion using an interconnected rig of 4 amplifiers. And, here, the well-versed live band is able to record as a unit, giving it much more of a live and dynamic feel.
Rough Trade named the band’s self-titled debut in their prestigious Top 10 Albums of 2017. BBC 6 & Classic Rock Magazine deemed it among the year’s best, as well as countless other press outlets singing its praises. Each subsequent album furthered the band’s reputation for genre-smashing rhythmic experimentation, topping many year-end lists as well as earning features from countless metal and indie rock outlets, plus cover stories in weekly papers.
“We’re very conscious of how the rhythms service the riffs,” Garcia explains. “Tony Iommi’s (Black Sabbath) innovation was to make the riff the organizing principle of a song. We are taking that same approach but employing a different organizing principle: For Iommi it was the blues, for us it comes directly from Africa.”
Ritual Divination will be available on LP, CD and download on January 22nd, 2021 via RidingEasy Records.
Digital & CD: 01. In These Dreams 02. I Told You (You Shall Die) 03. Underland 04. What You See 05. Can’t Kill It 06. Run Away Children 07. I Wander 08. Night Comes 09. Come Inside 10. Collector of Vanities 11. Disappointed 12. You Would Not See From Heaven 13. The Fates Have Won 14. Out Goes The Night 15. Cutting Through The Tether Vinyl: Side A: 01. In These Dreams 02. I Told You (You Shall Die) 03. Underland 04. What You See 05. Night Comes Side B: 01. Come Inside 02. Collector of Vanities 03. Disappointed 04. The Fates Have Won 05. Out Goes The Night Bonus 7″ (UK pressing & direct from RidingEasy) Side A: Run Away Children Side B: I Wander
Earlier this summer, The Beths released their “lush, melodic” (New York Times) second album,Jump Rope Gazers, on Carpark Records. The new album has earned them nominations at the Aotearoa Music Awards for Best Group, Best Alternative Act, and Album of the Year. Previously in 2019, The Beths won Best Group and Best Alternative Act in addition to performing at the awards show.
Today, The Beths share the new video for “Mars, The God Of War.” Backed by buzzing guitar and crisp percussion, Elizabeth Stokes personifies the planet: “Mars, the god of war, is watching over me // So passively // From the twinkling scenery // Mars, the god of war // Pretending so serene // He’s keeping his hands clean.” As described by Stokes, the track is about communication and miscommunication through technological mediums, specifically while conveying anger. The accompanying video, directed by Callum Devlin and Annabel Kean of Sports Team, features The Beths comically attempting to pull off a heist. “The video has a really silly energy that everyone really embraced,” says Stokes. “With NZ being COVID-free, there’s a real palpable joy and euphoria in being able to get together and make something. We feel very lucky and Sports Team smashed it out of the park once again.“
Devlin and Kean add: “As well as being genius musicians, in our minds The Beths are defined by being a committed, intelligent and extremely efficient team, and have turned the collaborative inner workings of an indie rock band into an art in itself. We wanted to explore that side of the band in the ultimate team-up genre; a high stakes twist laden heist movie. Obviously. Also, we seem to find the idea of The Beths entering into a life of crime frankly hilarious. We love working with The Beths. No band is more committed to exhausting every possible gag out of a situation. We initially plotted out the entire film, but decided to abandon it in favour of making as gag-dense a video as possible, if that makes sense.”
The Beths will livestream a performance from Auckland Town Hall on Nov. 14th at 5PM Eastern Timevia Bandcamp. “Soon, here in Auckland, New Zealand, we get to take the stage of our home’s beautiful Town Hall, and we would love you to join us. We’re trying to make something to come together for, online, around the world. We’ve been saying it over and over, we are so lucky to be able to play live shows right now. So we’re going to try to share that. We’ll be there for a warm-up hang out, and we’ll be in the chat throughout the performance too. Come and hang xo.” Tickets are available here.
The Beths Tour Dates (tickets): Fri. Nov. 6 – Auckland, NZ @ Town Hall Sat. Nov. 7 – Gisborne, NZ @ Gisborne Beer Festival Sat. Nov. 28 – Wellington, NZ @ Beers at the Basin Sat. Dec. 19 – Hawkes Bay, NZ @ Black Barn Winery Sun. Dec. 27 – Taupo, NZ @ Le Currents Fri. Jan. 8 – Kerikeri, NZ @ Bay of Islands Festival Tue. March 30 – Southampton, UK @ The Loft Wed. March 31 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club Thu. April 1 – Manchester, UK @ Club Academy Fri. April 2 – Glasgow, UK @ Saint Luke’s Sat. April 3 – Dublin, IE @ The Workman’s Club Mon. April 5 – Bristol, UK @ SWX Tue. April 6 – Birmingham, UK @ Castle and Falcon Wed. April 7 – London, UK @ O2 Kentish Town Thu. April 8 – Brighton, UK @ Concorde 2 Fri. April 9 – Paris, FR @ Point Éphémère Sat. April 10 – Lyon, FR @ Marché Gare – Hors les mursSun. April 11 – Milan, IT @ BIKO Tue. April. 13 – Düdingen, CH @ Bad Bonn Wed. April 14 – Lausanne, CH @ Le Romandie Thu. April 15 – Munich, DE @ Kranhalle Fri. April 16 – Vienna, AT @ B72 Sat. April 17 – Prague, CZ @ Underdogs’ Ballroom Sun. April 18 – Belin, DE @ Lido Tue. April 20 – Copenhagen, DK @ Vega Ideal Bar Wed. April 21 – Hamburg, DE @ Molotow Thu. April 22 – Cologne, DE @ Artheater Fri. April 23 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso Noord Sun. April 25 – Brussels, BE @ Ancienne Belgique Fri. Aug. 6 – Sun. Aug. 8 – San Francisco, CA @ Outside Lands
Keep your mind open.
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Today, the post-punk five piece, Portland’s Soft Kill share their second single “Pretty Face” from their forthcoming November 20th album releaseDead Kids, R.I.P. City, their long awaited follow up to 2018’s ‘Savior’. Says the band’s Tobias Grave, “‘Pretty Face’ was written immediately after finding out about the loss of our friend Zachary Delong. It recounts some time we spent together on the edge of oblivion, late 2011 into the first weeks of 2012. Survivors guilt pouring out into song form” – ‘Relax your pretty face boy, the pain has left you.’
“We shot this to be a lyric video but we worked in some scenes, starting in Washington and traveling into the far north section of Portland, stopping by the abandoned dog track at Portland Meadows and ending at the motel made famous by Drugstore Cowboy. The imagery will resonate with some, I’m sure. The song is one we’ve played live for two years and it’s got a big cult following without ever having a studio version circulating.”
“Pretty Face” encapsulates listeners with its steady pulse of bass and cinematic-like guitar melodies, taking a slightly left field approach to post-punk with its triumphant and upbeat energy while still channeling the doom/gloom sound Portland’s Soft Kill has built their identity around. The song reflects the darker side of what the band has experienced the past few years. The single follows Soft Kill’s return last month when they dropped the lead doom pop single “Roses All Around.” It’s dark yet luminous in every sense, from its driving percussive beats, harmonic grooves and melodies, while also creating an opportunity to openly discuss its sociopolitical message that is especially prominent now as Portland has become the epicenter of unrest these past few months.
Soft Kill had been growing with pretty much every record – but a deep maturation, achieving a level of emotional intensity that, even for a band known for exactly that, was nothing short of awe-inspiring and inarguably a high water mark. The question then, was how do they possibly follow that up? Well, here we are, two years later with Dead Kids, R.I.P. City, and we can all set down our worry beads. Soft Kill, Tobias Grave, Conrad Vollmer, Owen Glendower, Daniel Deleon and Nicole Colbath, have in fact put any such concerns commandingly to rest.
Two years in the making, desperate, redemptive, its contrast of light and shadow favoring the latter, Dead Kids, R.I.P. City is like no other album in the genre, featuring the brave and abandoned, the tender and the afflicted, all teetering in memory on the edge of the city. For all the sadness and pain of addiction haunting it, however, the record, by its very existence, proves that hope doesn’t necessarily win but that, even if at great cost, it can. It’s what makes Dead Kids, R.I.P. City so powerful beyond just the scope of its dark luminous sound and indelible melodies, and is one of the many reasons you’ll carry it with you.
Gustaf have announced their signing to Royal Mountain Records, alongside their debut single and video “Mine“. The first recorded material from a band who have played sold out shows around the United States based solely on word of mouth, “Mine” offers an engagingly weird and frantically off-kilter look into the all-encompassing world of the Brooklyn-based art-punk quintet.
Vocalist Lydia Gammill explains: “This song is about having a false sense of entitlement. Someone who feels attacked or like they’re being pushed out of their own world and not getting the credit they deserve. Someone with a delusional sense of self whose anger and frustration is humorous like the superintendent in a college frat movie. The opening lines make it seem like the narrator is being criticized by someone else and their retaliation is like “you’ve got to be kidding me, you can’t say that about me! I invented water you punk!” …. sort of.“
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Formed in 2018, Brooklyn’s Gustaf have built a kind of buzz that feels like it comes from a different era. The art punk 5 piece are yet to release any recorded music, but rapidly established a reputation as one of New York’s “hardest working…and most reliably fun bands” (BrooklynVegan), and excitement about their danceable, ESG-inspired post punk has expanded outside of their city with remarkable effect despite their scant online presence. The band have found early champions in all quarters, catching the attention of luminaries like Beck – who had the band open for him at a secret loft party he played around the release of his latest album – the New York no wave legend James Chance, and have shared stages with buzzing indie acts like Omni, Tropical Fuck Storm, Dehd and Bodega, while word of mouth led to sell out shows when they played their first LA headline dates in late 2019.
While recent events have curtailed Gustaf’s live schedule, the band have remained relentless as ever in 2020, and entered the studio with producer Chris Coady (Beach House, Future Islands, TV On The Radio) to work on their first official release.
Mine 7″ is out on Royal Mountain Records on December 4th. It is available for pre-order here.
New Zealand-born, London-based singer, songwriter and producer October and the Eyes announces her debut EP, Dogs and Gods, out November 20th on KRO Records. October recently signed to the label following an introduction by fellow musician and friend Yves Tumor. Today, she shares the lead single and video “All My Love,” a track that lures you into a warm embrace of October’s coy and breathy sweet-nothings.
“’All My Love’ is unfortunately a love song – something I told myself I would never write, yet here I am,” says October. “But it’s not all sweet. In fact, I would call it more of a lust song. It’s about being in love but lusting for something more. It’s about desire, greed, and infatuation with a stranger. The song became strangely prophetic in recent months as I watched the one I once loved self destruct from afar ‘in tin cans and other crumbs of temporary self satisfaction’ – a line I wrote before I could even comprehend that it would become remotely true. Because of this, the song is now tainted with a strange sadness that I’ll carry with me every time I perform it.”
October is no newcomer to music – despite only being 23, the New Zealand born musician has been involved in musical pursuits since she was a child. Heralding from a musical family, the prospect of pursuing music in one form or another was almost inescapable: A classical pianist mother, fanatic music fan father, and two older multi-instrumentalist brothers who were always holding their band practices in the family playroom. Having grown up in a small rural town in New Zealand’s wine country, she turned to songwriting as a means to stave off boredom, teaching herself how to record and produce her own music.
After moving to East London, October wrote and produced the Dogs and Gods EP, a dizzying, darkly kaleidoscopic, and dauntless collection of music. Thematically, the EP explores the complex dynamics of love, lust and infidelity in the 21st century.
Self-describing her music as “collage-rock,” October pulls musical inspiration from the likes of Bauhaus, Bowie, Siouxsie Sioux and Suicide, then squeezing her influences through the gauze of modernity and electronics. With nods to acid rock, psychobilly and post-punk, October and The Eyes’ music is equal parts nostalgia-drenched as it is future forward, employing layers of ambient synth drones, crunched guitar, jagged organ parts, and October’s theatrical voice, creating something entirely her own.
“Donuts Mind If I Do” is lush with layered vocals and dreamy, laidback instrumentation. The track is mellow until the twins’ voices join together and its synth swells as they proclaim “Keep going on!” CHAI says: “When you’re feeling vigorous, when you’re feeling sick, You like what you like! No changing that! Even if what I like is as simple as a donut <3. It’s this type of song!”
The accompanying video, directed by Hideto Hotta, shows CHAI sitting on a grassy hill, enjoying colorful donuts. Later, they appear as older versions of themselves. “In order for various concepts of society, societal structures to have been built up and exist today, there had to be changes to those concepts, to those structures in every era to continue to lead to the next society…with that said, in this music video we explore the CHAI you know today, and then CHAI as elderly women,” explains Hotta. “On an all-white table cloth, eating donuts, sits CHAI. They can even sip on the tea in the teapot if they’d like! Ultimately time passes, and the elderly CHAI is still there, enjoying their last supper in the middle of the meadow, white-table cloth and all eating their donuts. CHAI changes physically, but one thing that does stand still is them living in their truth. If finding true happiness is one of the goals the human race is constantly in search of, then conveying this in this visual, spreading what happiness means to CHAI, to me, is something I feel is important in us living in our truths.”
The song is from CHAI’s forthcoming “Donuts Mind If I Do” b/w “Plastic Love” double A-side single. The second track, “Plastic Love,” will be available on all DSPs from Sub Pop on November 6th. Both songs will also be released together as a limited edition 7”, which is available to pre-order now from Bandcamp (on either orange or turquoise colored vinyl), and Sub Pop Mega Mart (on lime green vinyl). All three options will be available while supplies last. The “Donuts Mind If I Do” b/w “Plastic Love” 7” single will be available worldwide (excl. Japan and Asia) with an estimated ship date in late November.
CHAI is a revolutionary four-piece, made up of miracle twins Mana and Kana, and the impeccable rhythm section of Yuuki and Yuna. Combining their powerhouse musical prowess with “pinkish punk” sensibilities, CHAI has managed to create a huge splash in the music scene in their homeland, Japan, and abroad. Now ready to build on their infectious sound and musical accolades, CHAI is gearing up with their new label to release even more new music into the world.
Buffalo, NY quartet Alpha Hopper announce their forthcoming third album Alpha Hex Index will be released via Portland, OR label Hex Records on November 6th, 2020. Today the band shares the first single, “The Goods” via Echoes & Dust HERE. (Direct Bandcamp.)
“A bartender, a personal trainer, a graphic designer, and an immigration attorney walk into a practice space…”
Formed in Buffalo, New York in 2014, Alpha Hopper creates a frenetic stew of guitar-driven rock’n’roll with ingredients from punk, hardcore, noise rock, and no-wave. Their 3rd LP Alpha Hex Index shows them deeper than ever down their rabbit hole. Sassy, snotty vocals punctuating the ever growing wall of catchy, bizarre riffs and prison break drum beats. Dummy math, noise-rock for art-punk drop outs. For this album the band decided to record the effort themselves in their homes. Pandemic-related shelter in place recommendations caused some hiccups in being able to track the entire effort in a single block, and instead recording sessions were conducted in intervals when the members could safely get together and hash out their respective parts. Once they were satisfied with the mix they handed things over to engineer John Angelo (Gwar, Every Time I Die, Gas Chamber) to handle mastering duties.
Alpha Hex Index will be available on LP, CD and digital on November 20th, 2020.
