“One of the reasons we wanted to do this tour was to highlight this incredible band,” “Weird Al” Yankovic said at one point during the packed show at Elkhart, Indiana’s Lerner Theatre. The show consisted of all original material and style parodies from Yankovic’s huge catalogue. None of his parody hits were played until the encore, and even then in a medley.
Instead, he and his band (of over forty years) played a lot of lesser-known songs that had everyone rocking and / or laughing. Speaking of laughing, veteran stand-up comic Emo Philips opened the show with his odd and often dark humor in which he skewered everything from religion to dating. He had a joke about a banana that he set up within the first ten minutes of his set and then didn’t pay off until near the end – much to the delight of everyone.
Yankovic and his band soon showed everyone how well they can rock by playing hard tracks like “Young, Dumb & Ugly,” “My Own Eyes,” and the dark, twisted “Larry.” The theme to his film, UHF, was a bit hit with the crowd, and the lounge version of “Dare to Be Stupid” (their famous Devo style parody) was stunning. “He’s even parodying himself,” said a guy next to me about it after the show.
It was a great example of how he and his band can play multiple genres with high skill (and switch back and forth between them) with apparent ease. The Doors style parody, “Craigslist,” showed how well they can play psychedelic rock. The closer of the main set was “Albuquerque,” a wild track that has to be seen and heard to be believed. How Yankovic remembers all those multi-layered lyrics is beyond me.
After a fake encore, in which they went barely offstage and pretended to check their phones and tune a guitar while in full sight of everyone, they came “back on” to do a sharp cover of The Isley Brothers‘ “Nobody but Me” and then the parody medley that went from “Amish Paradise” to “Yoda” and included everything from calypso to acapella Afrobeat chanting. I missed a lot of the humorous lyrics because I was too stunned try their musicianship to notice them.
It was a fun show, and one you should catch if it’s anywhere close to you. Don’t go for the hits, go for the experience.
Frayle’s newest single and video may be their most gripping yet. The ritual doom metal act, featuring frontwoman Gwyn Strang andguitarist Sean Bilovecky, is partnering with Knotfest.com to premiere the video today. Filmed in New York City and Salem, Massachusetts, the infamous site of the Salem Witch Trials, the provocative art piece is a powerful meditation on empowerment and shedding the mask to reveal the true self.
Says Strang, “’Bright Eyes’ is about the facade we wear when we’re going through something heavy. Sometimes we’ll mask what we’re going through so that everyone around us feels comfortable or doesn’t ask us to show and share our vulnerabilities.
The imagery of a female ‘goth’ roller skating past the house that was once lived in by a judge that was personally responsible for the executions during the Salem Witch Trials is powerful to us.”
As Knotfest.com declares, “Embracing a unique balance of doom that encapsulates an element of the harmonious and the hulking, the band’s pedigree spans a sophisticated stylistic spectrum … Anchored by Strang’s often heartbreaking, harrowing vocal harmony is countered by Bilovecky’s metallic blare – the kind of lumbering guitar riffage that layers with suffocating heft.”
“Bright Eyes” is from Frayle’s forthcoming LP, Skin & Sorrow, which will now be released September 23 via Aqualamb Records.
Skin & Sorrow was fully written and recorded by Bilovecky and Strang from the third floor of their own studio, on the edge of Cleveland, surrounded by ancient lakes and woods that echo the howls of coyotes. The band is rounded out live by Jason Knotek on bass and Jon Vinson on drums.
The record follows Frayle’s groundbreaking debut 1692in 2020 that further introduced the world to their penchant for creating “lullabies over chaos.” Tracks feature Strang’s ambient vocals laid over the voluminous instrumentals of Bilovecky (formerly of Disengage), morphing into disturbing harmonies best described as music for the night sky and are poised to dominate the doom circuit.
In addition to haunting original tracks that push heavy music into new dimensions (an inspirational mix of Sleep and Portishead, or Black Sabbath and Bjork), the duo is known for their cryptic covers including takes on Johnny Cash’s “Ring Of Fire” and Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”
Their passioned creations have caught the attention of Revolverwho named the band “one of the five artists you need to know in April” as seen HERE, who called their previously-released title track “eerie and ethereal for its first half, but slowly lets more crunchy fuzz into the fold that builds up to a detonating finish with gobs of spiritual atmosphere.” As well Metal Hammer has heralded Frayle as “the new face of doom” in their latest issue.
Recently, Frayle signed to The Oracle Management, now part of the roster that also includes Cradle of Filth, DevilDriver, Jinjer, Wednesday 13 and more hard rock and metal acts all represented by co-owners of The Oracle ManagementDez and Anahstasia Fafara. In one of the first orders of business, Frayle joined on for Cradle of Filth’s “Existence Is Futile” Headlining Tour.
The track listing for Skin & Sorrow includes:
1. Treacle & Revenge
2. Bright Eyes
3. Skin & Sorrow
4. Ipecac
5. Stars
6. Roses
7. Sacrifant
8. All The Things I Was
9. Song For The Dead
10. Perfect Wound
Presales forSkin & Sorrow are available now atAqualamb Records’ website with iridescent, metallic blue, metallic turquoise and metallic violet vinyl variants, CD and digital options. dditional Europe only vinyl variants will be coming via Lay Bare Recordings. Each purchase comes with an accompanying 100-page book filled with lush artwork, drawings, lyrics and additional content to get inside the mind of Frayle and the creative process.
About Frayle
Heavy, Low, & Witchy. Frayle is a doom, sludge band from Cleveland, formed in 2017 by guitarist Sean Bilovecky (ex-DISENGAGE) and singer Gwyn Strang. They draw their inspiration from bands like Sleep, Portishead, Bjork, Kyuss, & Black Sabbath. Frayle makes music for the night sky.
Fuzzed in Europe is a six-song live EP from Swedish psych-voodoo rockers, GOAT, that compiles some of their favorite tracks from a European tour in the autumn of 2016. The tracks were picked due to them being alternate versions of album releases or even “normal” live cuts. As a result, we get to hear GOAT further expanding their cosmic sound into new dimensions.
The opener, “Talk to God,” is over seven minutes of hypnotizing psychedelia that takes on a bit more drone than the album version. The same goes for “Time for Fun,” which practically turns into a mantra by the end of it. “I Sing in Silence” transforms from a blissful dance into a trance-inducing vision of something much like the album cover.
The guitars on “Gather of Ancient Tribes” (possibly also known as, you guessed it, “GOAT”) are almost like magic wands casting spells as the female duo lead singers keep singing / chanting, “Into the fire!” “The Sun the Moon” speeds up in this live version, becoming a frantic voodoo-disco track.
A ten-minute-plus version of “Run to Your Mama” ends the EP, being heavier than other versions and no less head-spinning. You might end up dancing around shirtless and seeing visions of Egyptian gods riding boats across the sky while listening to it. I didn’t, but the fact that the image came to mind while writing this suggests otherwise.
The whole EP is full of moments like this. Don’t let it slip by you.
WATCH A NEW VIDEO FOR A PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED, DEMO VERSION OF ‘IRON FIST’ PLUS PREORDERS & EXCLUSIVE MERCH BUNDLES HERE –
https://motorhead.lnk.to/IronFist40thPR
The time-honoured phrase “Follow that!” rang with deafening resonance when Motörhead were faced with having to follow a rock milestone (Ace Of Spades), a number one album (No Sleep Till Hammersmith) and their bomber – the most spectacular stage prop rock had ever seen. As last shout from the three amigos line-up of Lemmy, Fast EddieClarke and Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor, Iron Fist was rudely dismissed by some ignorant loud mouth hap’orths as being ‘less’, and has always suffered slightly from that initial idiotic disdain. We’re here to finally correct that nonsense, as Iron Fist reveals itself as a vital snapshot of the band at a crucial period when they found themselves caught in the tornado ignited by success and, in true Motörhead style, careered into their next phase at such velocity it transcended logic or reason to become this trio’s final kamikaze joyride. Forty years later, Iron Fist sounds like prime Motörhead with the gloves and seat-belts off. For sheer velocity, it could be fastest, most out-of-control of them all. If you know, you know, and if you don’t enjoy the gloriously wreckless education that is Iron Fist!
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of this seminal cannon in the Motörhead armoury, it is being presented in new deluxe editions. There will be hardback book-packs in two CD and triple LP formats, featuring a hammer fist blow, remaster of the original album, previously unreleased demo bonus tracks and a full concert, originally broadcast on Radio Clyde from 18th March 1982. Plus the story of the album and many previously unseen photos. There’s also a limited edition, blue and black swirl of the original standalone album.
See below for full details of the Iron Fist releases and be sure to visitwww.iMotorhead.comfor news and updates!
LP AND CD TRACKLISTING
Original Iron Fist album
Iron Fist
Heart of Stone
I’m the Doctor
Go to Hell
Loser
Sex and Outrage
America
Shut It Down
Speedfreak
(Don’t Need) Religion
Bang to Rights
Jackson’s Studio Demos October 1981
Remember Me, I’m Gone
The Doctor
Young & Crazy
Loser
Iron Fist
Go To Hell
CD & Digital Bonus Tracks
Lemmy Goes to the Pub
Some Old Song, I’m Gone
(Don’t Let ‘Em) Grind Ya Down (Alternate Version)
Shut It Down
Sponge Cake (Instrumental)
Ripsaw Teardown (Instrumental)
Peter Gunn (Instrumental)
Live at Glasgow Apollo 18/3/82
(Previously unreleased)
Iron First
Heart of Stone
Shoot You In The Back
The Hammer
Loser
Jailbait
America
White Line
(Don’t Need) Religion
Go to Hell
Capricorn
(Don’t Let ‘Em) Grind Ya Down
(We Are The) Road Crew
Ace of Spades
Bite The Bullet
The Chase Is Better Than the Catch
Overkill
Bomber
Motörhead
Keep your mind open.
[Race over to the subscription box before you go.]
The Beths share the new single/video, “Expert In A Dying Field,” from their new album, Expert In A Dying Field, out September 16th on Carpark Records. “Expert In A Dying Field” introduces the thesis for the record: “How does it feel to be an expert in a dying field? How do you know it’s over when you can’t let go?” Elizabeth Stokes sings. The question hangs in the air: what do you do with how intimately versed you’ve become in a person, once they’re gone from your life? “Love is learned over time ‘till you’re an expert in a dying field.”
“I really do believe that love is learned over time,” explains Stokes. “In the course of knowing a person you accumulate so much information: their favorite movies, how they take their tea, how to make them laugh, how that makes you feel. And when relationships between people change, or end, all that knowledge doesn’t just disappear. The phrase ‘Expert in a Dying Field’ had been floating around my head for a few years, I was glad to finally capture it when writing this tune.”
Densely littered with melodic hooks and the incisive phrasing that Stokes has become known for, the driving verses of “Expert In A Dying Field” intentionally contrast with a restrained, delicate chorus. Here, the stripped-back instrumentation acutely hones in on Stokes’ emotive vocals. The accompanying video, directed by Frances Carter, honors this intimacy and vulnerability. Carefully placed relics and symbolic totems strewn about a charming, white-washed home evoke a sense of nostalgia and sentimentality. While Stokes sings directly to the camera, her bandmates play their instruments and sing backing vocals in various parts of the home, surrounded by treasures laden with meaning and memory. It’s an evocative series of vignettes that perfectly match the song’s bittersweet themes and culminates in a joyful, heart-stirring full band performance that shows off The Beths’ unparallelled four-part vocal harmonies.
On Expert In A Dying Field, Stokes’ songwriting positions her somewhere between novelist and documentarian. Across 12 tight, guitar-heavy jewels, Stokes traverses the autobiographical, but also presents character sketches of relationships – platonic, familial, romantic – and more importantly, their aftermaths.
Expert In A Dying Field is an incandescent collision of power-pop and skuzz, filled with songs that worm their way into your head. With Expert, The Beths wanted to make an album meant to be experienced live, for both the listeners and themselves. They wanted it to be fun — to hear, to play — in spite of the prickling anxiety throughout the lyrics, the fear of change and struggle to cope. Expert is an extension of the same sonic palette the band has built across their catalog, pop hooks embedded in incisive indie rock.
Tickets available from thebeths.com Sun. Jul. 24 – Seattle, WA @ Capitol Hill Block Party Mon. Jul. 25 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret Fri. Jul. 29 – Brooklyn, NY @ BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival Sun. Jul. 31 – Denver, CO @ UMS – The Underground Music Showcase Tue. Aug. 2 – San Diego, CA @ Belly Up Tavern Wed. Aug. 3 – Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory Thu. Aug. 4 – Santa Barbara, CA @ SoHo Restaurant & Music Club Fri. Aug. 5 – San Francisco, CA @ Outside Lands Music Festival Sun. Aug. 7 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge Wed. Aug. 10 – Davenport, IA @ Raccoon Motel Thu. Aug. 11 – Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop Sat. Aug. 13 – North Adams, MA @ Here and There Festival, Mass MoCA Sun. Aug. 14 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
Mon. Aug. 15 – Detroit, MI @ Magic Bag Tue. Aug. 16 – Chicago, IL @ Here and There Festival, Salt Shed Thu. Aug. 18 – St. Louis, MO @ Blueberry Hill Fri. Aug. 19 – Indianapolis, IN @ Hi-Fi Sat. Aug. 20 – Covington, KY (Cincinnati) @ Madison Live Mon. Aug. 22 – Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall Tue. Aug. 23 – Richmond, VA @ The Broadberry Thu. Aug. 25 – Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar Fri. Aug. 26 – Asbury Park, NJ @ Asbury Lanes Sat. Aug. 27 – Portland, ME @ Portland House of Music & Events Sun. Aug. 28 – Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz PDB Wed. Aug. 31 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Spirit Hall Thu. Sep. 1 – Columbus, OH @ A&R Music Bar Thu. Sep. 15 – Melbourne, AU @ 170 Russell Fri. Sep. 16 – Sydney, AU @ Metro Theatre Sat. Sep. 17 – Brisbane, AU @ The Triffid Tue. Sep. 20 – Adelaide, AU @ The Gov Wed. Sep. 21 – Perth, AU @ Magnet House
Fri. Sep. 23 – Wellington, NZ @ Opera House Sat. Sep. 24 – Nelson, NZ @ Theatre Royal Fri. Sep. 30 – Christchurch, NZ @ James Hay Theatre Sat. Oct. 1 – Dunedin, NZ @ The Glenroy Fri. Oct. 7 – Auckland, NZ @ Auckland Town Hall
Chicago band Pink Frost announce their first new album in 5 years today, sharing the video for the title track from their forthcoming album Until The Summer Comes via Brooklyn Vegan. Watch and share the high production value video directed by Chris Hershman (Alabama Shakes, Wynonna Judd) for “Until The Summer Comes” HERE. (Direct YouTube.) Pre-order/pre-save Linktree.
“It was a new torture, the waiting,” says Pink Frost vocalist/guitarist Adam Lukas.
When life suddenly froze for all of us, it wasn’t the downtime that was unbearable, it was the growing uncertainty as time dragged on that all of our loose threads would ever be connected.
The Chicago band had just completed recording their fourth album — splitting the studio time with sister band Touched By Ghoul (whose 2020 Cancel The World album title proved prophetic) — when plans to reconvene in France with longtime engineer Gregoire Yeche to mixin April 2020 became impossible.
When Gregoire eventually returned to Chicago in 2021, life in limbo seemed the new normal. Yet, the band felt somehow liberated. “We were like ‘F**k it, let’s make our dream record,’” Lukas says. “We went in depth in a way we never have before. There are no compromises on this album. No cringeworthy oversights. We almost lost our minds doing it, but I’m happy we did.”
Indeed, the 9-song album is a feast of hooks and subtle transformations that shows both a slight return to the band’s previous indie-punk take on Smashing Pumpkins style oversized alt-rock, and their ever-growing palette of shoegaze, drone and anthemic rock. There’s even an almost peak NIN, Wax Trax industrial vibe to some tracks that underscores how the band continues to wield new ideas.
“We lost (guitarist) Paige Sandlin during the pandemic,” Lukas says. “But gained Angela from Touched By Ghoul, who now plays guitar and contributed some vocals on the LP, and brings a whole new excitement to the live show.”
Until The Summer Comes was recorded in Chicago at Steve Albini’s legendary Electrical Audio with longtime engineer Gregoire Yeche, just as the band has done on New Minds (2017), Sundowning (2013) and the Traitors EP (2014). “Electrical Audio is almost like another member of the band at this point,” Lukas says. “There is a purity to their method that captures the essence of the performance and preserves it in this magical 3-D way.”
The album opens with the title track’s thumping toms in a marching rhythm, soon joined by buzzing fuzz guitars before the whole song erupts in a huge chorus with chunky guitars reminiscent of peak Downward Spiral era NIN. “Two Faces” is an explosive diatribe driven home by bassist Alex Shumard’s lunging 4-string. “On A Clear Day (You Can See The End of The World)” sets a Beatles-esque acoustic guitar led melody atop psychedelic haze and rollicking drums. “Halo” serves up a lush shoegaze ballad in which drummer Nate Furstenau nods to My Bloody Valentine’s hybrid of drum machines and live drums for powerful effect. “Feed The Hungry Bee” closes the album with a repetitively building tension that leads into a dramatic finish that’s certain to be a live favorite.
Pink Frost’s previous albums received an onslaught of praise from such revered outlets as Pitchfork, SPIN, Noisey, Brooklyn Vegan, Magnet Magazine and Chicago Reader, as well as song placements in a feature film (“The Lookalike”), TV’s Shameless, The Rookie, The Vampire Diaries, CSI: Miami and more. In December 2015, Pink Frost released a completely remixed, rethought and remastered version of their debut album Gargoyle Days, originally issued under the band’s former name Apteka.
Until The Summer Comes will be available on LP, CD and download on September 16th, 2022 via Under Road Records. Pre-orders are available HERE.
Palm – the Philly-based band of Hugo Stanley (drums), Gerasimos Livitsanos (bass), Eve Alpert (guitars/vocals), and Kasra Kurt (guitars/vocals) – announces their new album, Nicks and Grazes, out October 14thon Saddle Creek. Today, they present its lead single/video, “Feathers,” marking their first new music in four years. On Nicks and Grazes, Palm embraces discordance to dazzling effect – capturing the spontaneous, free energy of their inimitable live shows while integrating elements from the traditionally gridded palette of electronic music. Citing Japanese pop music, dub, and footwork as influences on the album’s sonic landscape, the band also found themselves revisiting the artists who inspired them to start the group over a decade ago such as Glenn Branca, Captain Beefheart, and Sonic Youth. Returning to the fundamentals gave Palm a strong foundation upon which they could experiment freely, resulting in their most ambitious and revelatory album to date.
“Feathers” marries Palm’s off-kilter artistic sensibilities with an impossibly catchy vocal melody that unspools around the refrain “Make it up! Like a performer!” As the song progresses, all that’s left is a skeletal arrangement. The stark, black and white medieval video was directed by Daniel Brennan. “‘Feathers’ went through a few drafts – I was initially playing a plodding line on the bass guitar but something about the arrangement wasn’t working. It was only once I switched to bass synth that there was a strong enough center for the atonal guitar and synth pads to make sense,” says Livitsanos. “The first one we tracked in the studio, ‘Feathers’ became an undanceable dance song at the last minute.”
Palm’s live performances are revered for their uncanny synchronicity; one gets the sense that, on psychic levels unseen, the members share an intuition unexplained by logic. Over the last decade, the costs of maintaining such intense symbiosis consumed the lives of its members to a point of exhaustion, and to a place where they were unsure if they’d make another record. It was only after multiple freak injuries followed by a pandemic, forced a pause – from touring but also from writing, rehearsing, even seeing each other – that the four were able to regroup and see a way forward again. “I used to think of Palm as an organism, a single coherent system, and at a younger point in our lives, that seemed like the ideal way to be a band,” Alpert reflects. “I’m realizing now that it’s unrealistic, that for this band to grow we had to tend to ourselves as individuals – little pieces – who create the whole.”
Nicks and Grazes is a natural progression from their 2018 album Rock Island, which found the band beginning to incorporate electronic elements into their sound. While making Nicks and Grazes, the line between songwriting and production was blurred. The band spent the last few years educating themselves on the ins and outs of production by learning Ableton while also experimenting with the more percussive and textural elements of their instruments. Palm also worked with a producer for the first time, Matt Anderegg. “With this record one might assume that we were slowly building a house brick by brick, but it’s more like we were gathering and experimenting with different types of materials for the first couple of years, and then we built the house somewhat quickly,” Stanley says of the making of Nicks and Grazes. “It’s hard to overstate Matt’s role in bringing everything together.”
“Music isn’t about things. It is things,” Richard Powers wrote in his novel Orfeo. While making Nicks and Grazes, Kurt found himself returning to this quote as a guiding philosophy. Though a single narrative remains elusive throughout the album, echoes of the members’ individual and collective experiences come into focus through the use of samples. Snippets of conversation on tour in Spain and the blare of a Philly high school marching band’s early morning practice are just a few examples of daily sonic flotsam the band incorporated with instrumentation to create a new communal experience. The album’s titular track is a prime example; Anderegg combined the band’s disparate field recordings into a diaristic kaleidoscope of sound, as much a collection of memories as it is its own composition. “We’re constantly grabbing at sounds that move us,” Stanley says. “In a sense, the record is cobbled together from these pieces of our lives.”
Cold Gawd is the flag under which California-based multi-instrumentalist Matt Wainwright creates stormy, wounded shoegaze music born of open tunings and R&B melodies. Inspired by these sounds, Cold Gawd presents a refined, modernized take on the genre.
Wainwright cites the thematic common ground between shoegaze and R&B as a central muse, both obsessively fixated on love, lust, and longing, in forms alternately grandiose and minor key. Lyrically, God Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here sways between oblique and desperate, yearning and resigned – with the exception of “Comfort Thug,” a brooding, largely improvised spoken word piece inspired by the notable lack of black musicians in shoegaze.
Cold Gawd is here to change that. God Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here— set for release on September 23rd via Dais Records— channels malaise and melancholy into gauzy, galvanized anthems of escape, change, and introspection. Today, Cold Gawd has unveiled the album’s lush, introspective second single “You Should Be Fine Down There.”
God Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here took shape in the winter of 2020 while Wainwright was working long solo shifts at a coffee shop in Chicago. Fueled by dreams of returning to his hometown of Rancho Cucamonga and reconnecting with old friends from past hardcore bands, Wainright holed up with his coveted pink Jazzmaster, an array of FX pedals, and a laptop, and wrote the entire album in a month. In March of 2021 he made the move, heading back west to the Inland Empire, where he booked sessions with Gabe Largaespada at Open Ocean to track and mix.
Despite recording every instrument himself, the results have the lived-in feel of a practiced live band (which Cold Gawd now are, fleshed into a six-piece). Cascading walls of guitar churn, surge, and ripple, framed by sunken rhythms and Wainright’s distant, defeated voice, veiled in violet haze.
Pre-order Cold Gawd’sGod Get Me The Fuck Out Of Herehere. Revisit the music video for album’s first single “Sweet Jesus Wept Shit”.
London-based band Dry Cleaning release a new single, “Anna Calls From The Arctic,” off their highly-anticipated sophomore album, Stumpwork, out October 21st on 4AD. On “Anna Calls From The Arctic,” Florence Shaw narrates an off-kilter conversation with a distant friend. The track is whacked-out and otherworldly. “The lyrics were partly inspired by phone calls with a friend who was living and working in the Arctic,” explain the band. ”The song developed from a keyboard, bass and clarinet jam. This then took shape during our pre-recording sessions with John Parish and Joe Jones in Bristol and finalized at Rockfield studios a month later, with some musical inspiration coming from the dramatic scores of John Barry. The song is observational and sensual.” Today’s visualizer features the band’s drummer, Nick Buxton, displaying perfect form while skating backwards.
Having already started writing their second record before 2021’s acclaimed New Long Leg was released, they proposed to producer John Parish that they spend twice as much time on the follow-up. Listen to the album and you can feel that increased boldness – vocals which coil tightly around deft and complex riffs, great meshes of instrumental texture and the willingness to launch into full-on abstraction. It is a heady mix that is entirely Dry Cleaning’s own, distinguishing it from their contemporaries.
Shaw demonstrated increased spontaneity in the studio, improvising many of her lyrics straight on to the album. The lyrics are almost entirely observational. There is one quote from the artist Maggi Hambling on the woozy title track, text from an old Macintosh computer virus on “Don’t Press Me,” and snippets from the press cuttings library of archivist Edda Tasiemka scattered throughout, but the use of ‘found lyrics’ employed in the band’s early years is now far in the past. “I wrote about the things that preoccupied me over this period, like loss, masculinity, feminism, my mum, being separated from my partner for little stretches in the lockdown, lust,” she continues, preoccupations from which wider political and social commentary emerges. “I think if you make something observational, which I think I do, it’s political,” Shaw says. “There were two murders of women in London that were extensively covered on the news, and the specific details of one of those murders were reported on whilst we were at Rockfield. That coverage influenced some of my writing and my state of mind.” The band’s instrumentation, too, may well reflect our increasingly bleak socio-political landscape, the way it can pick up intense and urgent momentum, or zone out into icy detachment.
The band’s loss of a number of loved family members over the last year would also have an impact on Stumpwork. Among them was bassist Lewis Maynard’s mother Susan, at whose home the band rehearsed in their early days, the location of which inspired the name of their debut EPBoundary Road Snacks And Drinks. On the day that the band appeared on Later With Jools Holland, she was in hospital and unable to receive visitors due to coronavirus restrictions. “It felt special that what we had achieved from the first record, could still entertain her and communicate with her while no one could see her,” says Maynard. New Long Leg was released a week before she passed away, so she was able to see it reach number four in the charts. “The success of the band became a distraction for the whole family while grieving. And it gave even more importance to what we are doing,” Maynard adds.
Stumpwork was made in the aftermath – they were in the studio writing the day before Susan died – but from their grief they found fuel for the record’s most joyous elements. “I see the album as a celebration of what she gave us and a reflection of how fortunate we were to know her,” says Buxton. Guitarist Tom Dowse also lost his grandfather who was extremely proud of the band’s success. “It’s of course devastating to lose close family members but their legacy in Dry Cleaning is wholly positive,” he says. “The moments in the songs which are upbeat and joyful made me think of them both the most.”
The breadth of influences on Stumpwork is dizzying, a definitive rebuke to those who might reduce Dry Cleaning as a post-punk band. Their music is bolder and more expansive, Shaw’s lyrics explore not only loss and detachment but all the twists and turns, simple joys and minor gripes of human experience too. Ultimately, what emerges from it all is a subtle but assertive optimism, and a lesson in the value of curiosity. As Shaw sings on “Kwenchy Kups,” “Things are shit, but they’re gonna be OK.”
DRY CLEANING TOUR DATES Sun. July 31 – Thirsk, UK @ Deer Shed Festival Sat. Aug. 6 – Katowic, PL @ OFF Festival Thu. Aug. 11 – Haldern, DE @ Haldern Pop Festival Fri. Aug. 19 – Crickhowell, UK @ Green Man Festival Thu. Aug. 25 – London, UK @ All Points East Sat. Aug. 27 – Manchester, UK @ Depot Mayfield w/ The National Sat. Sept. 17 – Solana Beach, CA @ Belly Up Tavern Sun. Sept. 18 – Los Angeles, US @ Primavera Sound LA Tue. Sept. 20 – San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel Wed. Sept. 21 – San Jose, CA @ The Ritz Thu. Sept. 22 – Big Sur, CA @ Henry Miller Memorial Library Tue. Nov. 8 – Paris, FR @ Le Trabendo Wed. Nov. 9 – Cologne, DE @ Club Volta Fri. Nov. 11 – Utrecht, NL @ Le Guess Who? Festival Sat. Nov. 12 – Kortrijk, BE @ Sonic City
Brooklyn band BODEGA shares the new single/video, “The Art of Advertising,” from Xtra Equipment, out today, July 15th, on What’s Your Rupture?. Xtra Equipment boasts eight new bonus tracks from the Broken Equipment sessions, and comes ahead of the band’s summer North American headline tour beginning next week. Much like the songs on Broken Equipment, BODEGA made these tracks extra breezy and hooky as well as more philosophically ambitious than their previous recordings. “Even when in the mode of social critique, I personally tend to think of my songwriting as more literary than analytic but here, the ‘The Art of Advertising’ and ‘Art and Advertising’ diptych functions as a sort of pop rock treatise on the subtle but crucial distinction between art and advertising (’Art creates cosmos’ whereas advertising ‘surface(s) status quo’),” says BODEGA’s Ben Hozie.
For the accompanying video, the band found inspiration from Godard, who, in the 80’s, said he’d fall asleep at the cinema during pre-film and trailer advertisements, later wake up and not be able to tell whether he was watching the feature film or the advertisements. Ben elaborates: “Today you can thumb through any magazine and find it hard to tell what is an ad and what is an article. All music videos (even the extraordinary ones) are essentially advertisements for their respective songs. Here, me and Nikki [Belfiglio] adopted the lyric video genre to playfully illustrate the various ways advertising is always (for better and worse) present in our apartment (and in BODEGA). Dissolves between shots in movies typically signify that time has passed but with screens and advertisements ever-present in our lives, our minds are always experiencing time in hazy ways.”
In some ways every recording on Xtra Equipment is a response to an earlier record; both records were written to expand upon BODEGA’s previous strengths as well as explore terrain outside of the post-punk milieu they found themselves painting in previously. The synth and drum machine led “Post yr Kilimanjaro” is a recent reworking of nu wave jammer “Doers.” BODEGA also recorded two covers very different in timbre from their original source(s): Fugazi’s “Provisional” was originally recorded for a Ripcord Records comp to raise funds for an animal shelter in Scotland. Stretch Arm Strong’s “For the Record” is a loving homage to one of the most important band’s in Ben’s life, who spent most of his youth in Columbia, South Carolina (where Stretch are from). “Everybody’s Sad” (the “Thrown” b-side) highlights and bemoans the connection between the current pop obsession with individuality and the aesthetics of melancholy (“everybody’s sad at the top of the billboard”). “Top Hat No Rabbit” (the “Doers” b-side) was written coming down from a Ulysses induced high, and is a flurry of thoughts attempting to reconcile free will (necessary for any change) with a deep-seated belief (and BODEGA obsession) that all thought is determined (or “thrown”) by external and/or physical stimuli. Conversely, Ben wrote the opening ballad “Memorize w/ yr Heart” (previously only available as a bonus track on the Broken Equipment CD) as a reminder to not get stuck on abstract mind games. Most of all philosophy should be done with the body (or at least with a steady backbeat).
2. Doers 3. Territorial Call of the Female 4. NYC(disambiguation) 5. Statuette on the Console 6. C.I.R.P.
7. Pillar on the Bridge of You 8. How Can I Help Ya? 9. No Blade of Grass 10. All Past Lovers 11. Seneca The Stoic 12. After Jane /// 13. Memorize w/ yr Heart 14. The Art of Advertising 15. Art and Advertising 16. Post yr Kilimanjaro (Doers 2.0) 17. Top Hat No Rabbit 18. Everybody’s Sad 19. For The Record (Stretch Arm Strong cover) 20. Provisional (Fugazi cover)
BODEGA Tour Dates:
Friday, July 29 – Houston, TX @ Wonky Power Saturday, July 30 – Austin, TX @ Antone’s Monday, August 1 – El Paso, TX @ Lowbrow Palace Tuesday, August 2 – Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress Wednesday, August 3 – Phoenix, AZ @ Trunk Space
Thursday, August 4 – San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar Friday, August 5 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo Saturday, August 6 – San Francisco, CA @ Cafe Du Nord Monday, August 8 – Portland, OR @ Holocene Tuesday, August 9 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Wednesday, August 10 – Seattle, WA @ Vera Project
Friday, August 12 – Boise, ID @ The Shredder Sunday, August 14 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court Monday, August 15 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive Wednesday, August 17 – Omaha, NE @ Reverb Lounge Thursday, August 18 – Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club Friday, August 19 – Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club Saturday, August 20 – Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village Sunday, August 21 – Cleveland, OH @ Mahall’s Tuesday, August 23 – Toronto, ON @ The Garrison Wednesday, August 24 – Montreal, QB @ Bar Le Ritz Thursday, August 25 – Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground Friday, August 26 – Boston, MA @ Crystal Ballroom Saturday, August 27 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Made
