News – Page 12 – 7th Level Music

King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard are set to release yet another album and embark on yet another tour…with a full orchestra.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard announce their 27th album Phantom Island, out June 13th, and share its lead single “Deadstick.” If you’re worried that, 15 years and 26 albums into their epic quest, polymorphous psychedelic voyagers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard might be running out of new frontiers to traverse, then let their latest opus set your mind to rest. The band’s second release on their own (p)doom records label, Phantom Island sees our intrepid heroes add a new dimension to their ever-evolving songcraft, embracing the symphonic and embroidering their tangles of lysergic riff and melody with strings and horns and woodwind.

WATCH THE VIDEO FOR “DEADSTICK”

The roots of the album can be traced back to the group’s legendary show at the Hollywood Bowl in June 2023. Gizz met some members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic backstage who urged them to take part in an annual series where the orchestra plays alongside rock and pop acts. Fast-forward to 2024, and the Gizz are hunkered down in their clubhouse, plugged into tiny practice amps and choogling to their hearts’ content. The results of these sessions yield that year’s Aria-nominated Flight b741. But these sessions yielded ten further songs that didn’t quite fit the Flight b741 vibe, and which, Mackenzie says, “were harder to finish. Musically, they needed a little more time and space and thought.”

Quickly, the group’s collective mind leapt to the LA Philharmonic. “The songs felt like they needed this other energy and colour, that we needed to splash some different paint on the canvas,” Mackenzie says. He reached out to friend, British historical keyboardist, conductor and arranger Chad Kelly. “He brings this wealth of musical awareness to his chameleon-like arrangements,” Mackenzie says. “We come from such different worlds – he plays Mozart and Bach and uses the same harpsichords they did, and tunes them the exact same way. But he’s obsessed with microtonal music, too, and all this nerdy stuff like me. Lead single “Deadstick” puts Kelly’s elaborate orchestrations on display, raising the graceful and complex song to the sublime, transforming it into a giddy jazz-rock riot.

On the song’s accompanying video, director Guy Tyzack says: “I started off wanting to create a frame that looked like a landscape painting with many different people and set pieces dotted about. Deadstick refers to when a plane propeller stops midflight so I decided to have a massive plane made out of cardboard crash land into a beautiful location. The song is big and chaotic so then I went about casting swing dancers and eccentric extras to fill the landscape.”

If Flight b741 was an album of rambunctious adventure stories, Phantom Island picks up that thread, spinning its tales of quests and piracy out into the stars. But it’s a more interior album than its predecessor, more melancholy – more “introverted”, Mackenzie says. Sure, these are tales of high adventure in galaxies far, far away, but the focus is less on the action, and more on the interior lives of those adventurers, reflecting the kind of insight Gizz have gleaned from 15 years of travelling the world and leaving their homes behind to take their music to the people. There’s a wiser, more mature, more sensitive Gizz at play here, questioning their place within the universe, their responsibilities, the ties that bind. “When I was younger, I was just interested in freaking people out,” admits Mackenzie, “but as I get older, I’m much more interested in connecting with people.”

King Gizzard will embark on their 2025 Phantom Island orchestral tour this July. Featuring a different accompanying 29-piece orchestra in each city – and ably led by conductor & music director Sarah Hicks – the tour will see the group perform with some of the country’s most renowned ensembles, before concluding with Field of Vision, the band’s own 3-day residency camping event at Meadow Creek in Buena Vista, CO. This represents the band’s only U.S. tour of 2025, so don’t miss out on your fix for a full calendar year. A full list of dates are below with tickets available here.

PRE-ORDER PHANTOM ISLAND

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD TOUR DATES
(New dates in bold)
Sun. May 18 – Tue. May 20 – Lisbon, PT @ Coliseu dos Recreios *
Fri. May 23 – Sun. May 25 – Barcelona, ES @ Poble Espanyol *
Thu. May 29 – Sat. May 31 – Vilnius, LT @ Lukiškės Prison 2.0 ^
Wed. June 4 – Fri. June 6 – Athens, GR @ Lycabettus Theatre City of Athens #
Sun. June 8 – Tue. June 10 – Plovdiv, BG @ Ancient Theatre ^

Fri. June 13 – Sun. June 15 – Manchester, TN @ Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival

Mon. July 28 – Philadelphia, PA @ TD Pavilion At The Mann (w/ Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia) $
Wed. July 30 – New Haven, CT @ Westville Music Bowl (w/ Orchestra of St. Luke’s) $
Fri. August 1 – Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium (w/ Orchestra of St. Luke’s) $
Sat. August 2 – Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium (Rock ‘n Roll Show) $
Mon. August 4 – Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion
(w/ National Symphony Orchestra) $
Wed. August 6 – Highland Park, IL @ Ravinia Festival (w/ Chicago Philharmonic) $
Fri. August 8 – Colorado Springs, CO @ Ford Amphitheater (w/ Colorado Symphony) $
Sun. August 10 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl (w/ Hollywood Bowl Orchestra) $
Mon. August 11 – San Diego, CA @ The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park (w/ San Diego Symphony Orchestra) $

Fri. August 15 – Sun. August 17 – Buena Vista, CO @ FIELD OF VISION at Meadow Creek %

Fri. October 31 – Manchester, UK @ Aviva Studios (Rave Set)
Sat. November 1 – London, UK @ Electric Brixton (Rave Set)
Sun. November 2 – London, UK @ Electric Brixton (Rave Set)
Tue. November 4 – London, UK @ Royal Albert Hall (w/ Covent Garden Sinfonia)
Wed. November 5 – Paris, FR @ La Seine Musicale (w/ L’Orchestre Lamoureux)
Thu. November 6 – Tilburg, NL @ 013 (Rave Set)
Fri. November 7 – Den Bosch, NL @ MAINSTAGE ( w/ Sinfonia Rotterdam)
Sun. November 9 – Gdansk, PL @ Inside Seaside Festival
(w/ The Baltic Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra)
Mon. November 10 – Berlin, DE @ Columbiahalle (Rave Set)
Tue. November 11 – Prague, CZ @ SaSaZu (Rave Set)
Wed. November 12 – Vienna, AT @ Gasometer (Rave Set)
Fri. November 14 – Copenhagen, DK @ Poolen (Rave Set)
Sat. November 15 – Gothenburg, SE @ Gothenburg Film Studios (Rave Set)

* w/ Etran De L’Aïr
^ w/ King Stingray
# w/ King Stingray, DJ Crenshaw
$ w/ DJ Crenshaw
% w/ Babe Rainbow, Gaye Su Akyol, King Stingray, Mannequin Pussy, Memo PST, Pearl Charles, The Mystery Lights, The Songs For Kids Band!, White Fence, DJ Crenshaw

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe!]

[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Paddang share wild new single, “Predator,” from their upcoming “Lost in Lizardland” album.

Paddang is a psychedelic rock trio formed in Toulouse (France) in 2020. With Osees and King Crimson all over the radio and a band name inspired by a surf spot in Indonesia, Paddang are speeding through a cosmic epic that sounds like a Herbert prophecy. Far from hiding behind a wall of fuzz or a mountain of reverb, the three voices dictate the tone and invoke an urgent need to do something in a world on the brink of chaos. Their debut album ‘Chasing Ghosts’ was released in March 2023, backed up by a fifty-date tour in France (including festivals such as Ecaussystème, Musicalarue, Montauban en scènes, Guitare en Scène, V&B Fest and support slots with bands such as MADAM, Pogo Car Crash Control, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, and It It Anita).

Their second album will be released on June 6th 2025 on LE CÈPE RECORDS & STOLEN BODY RECORDS. After a first single, ‘‘PRESSURE’‘ released in April, the band will reveal on Friday a second track from the album, “PREDATOR” : youtube.com/watch?v=vudrz5XHbK8

Fierce and visceral, “Predator” explores the fragile boundary between human nature and primal instinct. It’s a raw track about survival, fear, and the predator that lies dormant within each of us. With powerful vocals and a relentless rhythm, it delivers an urgent message—where rock becomes a weapon against apathy. “Predator” is more than just a song; it’s a cry against the loss of our humanity. Shot like the final episode of a thrilling B-movie, the “Predator” music video picks up where Pressure left off. Deep within the belly of a cave, the Lizard Corp industrialists have gone too far, recklessly exploiting Draconite, a stone of mystical energy. Mutated into reptilian creatures, they launch a savage hunt for Moros through the scorched landscapes of a dying planet. Rescued at the last moment by a mysterious guardian inspired by Quetzalcoatl, Moros sets off for Agartha—a legendary city where she hopes to find a glimpse of peace.

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe!]

[Merci á Angi á NRV Promotion!]

“Today You Can Learn the Secret” of Punchlove’s new single.

Last March, Brooklyn’s Punchlove released their debut LP Channelson Kanine Records. Composed of multi-instrumentalists Jillian Olesen, Joey Machina, Ian Lange-McPherson, and visual artIst viz_wel, the group’s debut earned praise from outlets like Stereogum, Bandcamp, FLOOD and Paste, who called the album “one of the most compelling shoegaze debuts in recent memory” and included the album on their Best Debut Albums of 2024 list.

The album’s reception has paved the way for a busy start to 2025 for the band, who have already toured across the UK and Europe, and will be heading out in the US later this month. Last month, they also released a new single called “(sublimate)” that teased a promising new direction for the band. The track moved beyond the shoegaze swirl of their debut, introducing layers of glitchy electronics and a heavier sound, a wave of industrial-inflected noise pop that Consequence called “further proof of the Brooklyn-based outfit’s proclivity for tasteful disturbance.“

Today, the band are returning to share another new track, a single called “Today You Can Learn The Secret.”

Where every Punchlove release to date has been self-produced, “Today You Can Learn The Secret” was co-produced with Xav Sinden. As Olesen explains, the track was inspired by an experiment in automatism that led to a revelation about the way her digital life had been impacting her subconciously.

Olesen says of the track:

This release is a surrealist, portal fantasy-inspired encounter with the unconscious mind. This latest song started with just the title itself (“Today You Can Learn the Secret”), and then Ian wrote all the instrumental parts. When it came time to write the lyrics, I had started leaving an open notebook next to my bed each night as a creative exercise in automatism I’d read about somewhere and basically started waking up to find all kinds of scribbles and chicken scratch all over the pages each morning. It was like scary psychological Christmas each morning. At times there was really raw stuff in there. It kinda freaked me out, but it was also exciting and really started to shift my perspective on my own humanity, as well as the world around me. It felt like I had a new window into understanding how certain things were really affecting me, and to start grasping the nuances of how I had been unknowingly absorbing and filtering my (excessively digital) daily stimuli on an unconscious level, from which I could begin to make real changes. So outlining my own experience and some of the recurring themes of these bizarre dream entries, O is the journey of moving from an outward facing, always-on, digital world in towards the deepest, darkest, realms of ourselves, where we are found face-to-face with our own humanity and mortality in new and unexpected ways.

Keep your mind open.

[Today you can subscribe!]

[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]

Elle Barbara showcases our weird modern times with her new single.

Elle Barbara is an avant-garde singer-songwriter, recording artist, and performer based in Montreal, Quebec. Her music alternately combines elements of sophisti-pop, jazz, and glam, with an interest in library music and psychedelic soul. She has become an iconic and ubiquitous presence in Montreal, as comfortable at the DIY art show as she is performing with Madonna.

Rising from artist-run spaces at the turn of the 2010s, Elle Barbara has seen her work soar to enduring albeit niche acclaim, in a part-time artistic career whose highlights include duets with Lætitia Sadier and Sean Nicholas Savage. In the later half of the 2010s, Elle Barbara’s efforts mostly centered around community organizing and solidarity work. She notably helped establish an anti-poverty grassroots collective whose mission was to grant discretionary funds to low-income trans feminine people, and did peer work to promote harm reduction methods and offer active listening and legal support to society’s most vulnerable. She mainly releases music as Elle Barbara’s Black Space, a concept group she formed to feel less culturally isolated in Montreal’s underground. She is also partly responsible for reviving Montreal’s ballroom scene.

Today, Elle is announcing her American debut, Word On The Street, which will be out June 27th on Celluloid Lunch, K Records / Perennial / K and Elle’s own House of Barbara. To mark the announce, Elle is sharing the single and video for her track “Hitler, Satan & Associates LLP.”

Word on Street was written, composed, arranged, and produced by Elle Barbara, in close collaboration with Renny Wilson, who recorded, engineered, and mixed the album over a challenging 8-year arc that saw Elle transition socially and medically while on welfare and frequently eating off as little as $11 CAD per week. In that sense, Word on the Street is a victory against class struggle and nepotism, and is a brazen testament to how a low-income, welfare-assisted, middle-aged, Black male-to-female transsexual beat the odds, using all resources to make the music of her mind while ignoring music industry conventions.

The albums is a genre-defying concept album that promises to become a cult classic and solidify Elle Barbara’s reputation as an uncompromising auteur, champion of queer eccentricity, all-around visionary, and working-class heroine.

Each track on the album conjures up unique pictures composed of seemingly incongruous images such as corrupt justice systems, aliens, industrial food production, religious fanaticism, and the Montreal Canadiens hockey team.

As such, “Hitler, Satan and Associates LLP” makes an excellent introduction to the album, as Elle explains:

“Hitler, Satan & Associates LLP is a psychedelic avant-pop number with elements of free jazz. The lyrics are about as absurd as the economic times we live in.”

Keep your mind open.

[Why not subscribe? You’re already here.]

[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]

Hotline TNT release new single, “Julia’s War,” with a full album due this June.

Hotline TNT — the New York-based band fronted by Will Anderson — announce their third album Raspberry Moon, out June 20th via Third Man Records and share its lead single, “Julia’s War.” The follow up to Cartwheel, the band’s “exquisite” (Billboard) 2023 breakthrough, Raspberry Moon is the most sweeping and compelling Hotline TNT album to date and, crucially, the first built by a full band. Funneled into the album are moments of vulnerability and romance, creating a generationally great statement of youthful wistfulness and very adult growth that also happens to be very charming and sometimes funny.

While in the studio of modern D.I.Y. hero Amos Pitsch (Tenement), Anderson found himself in an unusual position. This time, and for the first time, the quartet that had toured for the last 10 months as Hotline TNT had come with Anderson, somewhat unexpectedly. He had intended to make one more album his way—holing up with a producer and building songs piece by piece, as he’d done for Cartwheel—before making Hotline TNT a full-band affair in the future. But there was no avoiding it. Guitarist Lucky Hunter, bassist Haylen Trammel, and drummer Mike Ralston wanted in. Anderson relented.

In making Raspberry Moon, Anderson confronted a burgeoning if occasionally difficult belief: Hotline TNT was now a band, and this was the band. The benefits are self-evident— it is the most texturally rich and energetically nuanced album Hotline TNT has ever made—from start to middle to finish. Some of these 11 songs deal with the sting of regret, of being left or leaving, as Hotline TNT always has. But this is a record animated by a sense of newness and possibility, of pushing back against the global sense that curtains are closing to make room in your own life for new friends. It is perfect music for looking forward, no matter how fucked the past may feel.

Lead single “Julia’s War” is an anthem of nascent affection where a simple and wordless chorus of “na na na nah” paints a horizon of possibility. The guitars are perfectly warm and sharp, cutting into you but simultaneously pulling you into the song. Of the track, whose title is a hat tip to regional contemporary They Are Gutting A Body of Water’s sprawling imprint, Anderson says: “In a world of half-hearted hooks, and buried-in-the-mix vocals, we had to muster the courage to do what the rest of the shoegaze community could not… We looked out to the stadium and reassured the audience: Our voices, together, will be heard. You’ve never heard a TNT chorus this straightforward – when we stress-tested it during the writing process, the ‘try not to sing along challenge’ came back with a 100% fail rate.”

Of the song’s accompanying video directed by Johnny Frohman, Anderson says: “When it came time to cook up the music video, Johnny Frohman created a Full-Metal-Jacket-style shoegaze bootcamp… It’s not the Marine Corps, it’s Slow Corps. Edy Monica, Dan Licata, Peter Mills Weiss, and an ensemble cast of NYC comedy underworld alts rounded out the platoon and drafted us into a world where we could enlist in a strict regimen of pedalboard assembly and underwater vocal lessons.”

Watch the Video for “Julia’s War”

Musical auteurs have been a feature of rock ’n’ roll since its very early days—folks who could imagine a sound and the path to it, largely alone. Something akin to Moore’s Law has made it easier to become exactly that during the subsequent decades, since studios with solid gear are now as accessible as a bedroom. It is increasingly convenient to be solo. The real work, though, is to abandon the ego and singular devotion to your absolute vision and make something better with the people you trust. Hotline TNT has done exactly that on Raspberry Moon, an album where Will Anderson gives himself space to fall in love with the world around him and sing as much in songs so loaded with hooks you’ll need to choose which ones to hum at any given moment.

Hotline TNT will play a series of headline shows in early May and will then embark on a North American Tour supporting Hippo Campus with stops in Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, Austin, Chicago, and more. A full list of dates can be found below.

Pre-Order Raspberry Moon

Hotline TNT Tour Dates
Thu. May 1 – Louisville, KY @ Mag Bar
Fri. May 2 – Urbana, IL @ Rose Bowl Tavern
Sat. May 3 – St Louis, MO @ Sinkhole
Sun. May 4 – Columbia, MO @ Rose Music Hall
Tue. May 6 – Colorado Springs, CO @ Vultures
Thu. May 8 – Boise, ID @ The Shredder
Fri. May 9 – Sat. May 10 – Portland, OR @ Roseland*
Mon. May 12 – Tue. May 13 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox*
Wed. May 14 – Vancouver, BC @ Vogue*
Fri. May 16 – Sacramento, CA @ Channel 24*
Sat. May 17 – Las Vegas, NV @ Brooklyn Bowl*
Sun. May 18 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren*
Tue. May 20 – San Antonio, TX @ Aztec*
Wed. May 21 – Austin, TX @ Moody Theater*
Thu. May 22 – Dallas, TX @ Bomb Factory*
Sat. May 24 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Jones Assembly*
Sun. May 25 – Bentonville, AR @ The Momentary*
Tue. May 27 – Columbus, OH @ Kemba Live*
Thu. May 29 – Grand Rapids, MI @ GLC Live at 20 Monroe*
Fri. May 30 – Chicago, IL @ Salt Shed*
Sat. May 31 – Minneapolis, MN @ Surly Brewing*
Sun. June 1 – Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club % (early & late shows)
Tue. June 3 – Buffalo, NY @ Rec Room

* w/ Hippo Campus
% w/ Slow Pulp

Keep your mind open.

[Why not subscribe?]

[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Thor & Friends share their new single — “Anne Sexton’s Monocle.”

Today Thor & Friends announced their upcoming album, Heathen Spirituals, set for release on May 16, 2025, via Joyful Noise Recordings. Led by the legendary Austin-based percussionist Thor Harris (best known for his work with Swans and Shearwater), the project also shared a preview from the album — an excerpt titled “Anne Sexton’s Monocle” — accompanied by a new video.

Thor Harris is a prolific collaborator, having worked with an array of influential artists, including Bill Callahan, Devendra Banhart, and Shahzad Ismaily. Most recently, he toured with the experimental-rock supergroup Water Damage and performed at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville—both as a solo artist and as part of various group projects. Thor & Friends embodies this intense spirit of collaboration; since we last heard them the adventurous instrumental project has grown from an intimate trio of mallet players to a minimalist orchestra.

The curious marimba rhythm that sets up “Anne Sexton’s Monocle” invites you in like a call to prayer, then puts you in a trance. As a variety of instruments weave in and out of the sonic spotlight, the constant melodic pulse propels into a cognitive crescendo of french horn, cello, violin clarinet, pedal steel, and more. Has everything changed or nothing at all? The enchanting instrumental, tracked live in an empty orchestra hall, seems a fitting tribute to Sexton, poet known for brave confessional verse.

About the excerpt and its full track “Anne Sexton’s Glasses,” Harris says:

Anne Sexton’s actual glasses are housed in a museum on the UT campus next to the auditorium where we recorded this album. This monstrous piece is a 10-note percussion exercise over a pentatonic scale. I play in odd meters because I am a child of prog rock. I apologize.

Like a scene from a dream, Thor Harris stood upon a crowded stage, 13 players deep: tapping, plucking, bowing, blowing lyric-less love songs to a grand auditorium of 325 shining red seats – without a soul sitting in any of them. This was the creation of Heathen Spirituals, the fifth recorded work by Harris’ adventurous instrumental ensemble Thor & Friends and the first that accurately resembles the skyward repetition of the Austin-based group’s live performances.

It’s a century-old concept: cutting a record in an empty music hall. Masterminded by intrepid producer and lifelong Harris collaborator Craig Ross (Patty Griffin, Spoon), Thor & Friends’ roster of musically accomplished misfits spent two days wired up, playing free-flowing meditational pieces on unamplified orchestral instruments inside Jessen Auditorium, a stunning Art Deco relic from the early days of the University of Texas’ Butler School of Music – the esteemed institution that Harris dropped out from decades ago.

A craftsman, artistically and otherwise, Thor Harris is master plumber, carpenter, and woodworker. In musical contexts, his name is often followed by the five words: “known for his work with,” having been a member of avant rock godheads Swans and high-minded indie favorites Shearwater, while also factoring into important recordings by Bill Callahan, Devendra Banhart, and Shahzad Ismaily. In many circles, Harris is equally well-known for being an openhearted mental health advocate with a devilish sense of humor and a penchant for entertaining social commentary (Harris’ “How to Punch a Nazi” instructional video got him famously banned from Twitter in 2017).

Heathen Spirituals, arriving May 16th, 2025, on Joyful Noise Recordings, contains three original pieces with a 35-minute runtime. The rhythmic repetition of opening seance “Anne Sexton’s Glasses” evokes a cognitive crescendo, while the spellbinding “Christmas Eve at the Wizard’s House” evokes a sense of weightlessness, sucking the listener up into the firmament then floating them back down. The crashing, choir-backed “Heathen Spiritual,” meanwhile, stirs a gorgeous requiem for a dying planet. In glorious fidelity, the sessions capture the instinctual purity of Thor & Friends’ live performances, which thrive on skyward repetition.

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe!]

[Thanks to Helly at Joyful Noise Recordings.]

Sparks release new single and new tour dates.

Sparks, brothers Ron and Russell Mael, release “Drowned In A Sea Of Tears,” the new single from their upcoming album, MAD!, out May 23rd via Transgressive Records. Having recently added more dates to their European tour they now announce a North American tour in September, kicking off in Atlanta and wrapping in Los Angeles with stops along the way including Boston, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, and more. Tickets go on general sale Friday, April 11th at 10am local time. A full list of dates is below with tickets and further information available here.

On the heels of the “sweeping, theatrical breakup tune” (Stereogum) “JanSport Backpack,” “Drowned In A Sea Of Tears” is a minor key mini-tragedy about the perils of emotional continence, of the stiff upper lip, of keeping it all in. The protagonist keeps her emotional landscape guarded behind high walls, and the narrator is unable to be her saviour. Unusually, for a Sparks song, there is no punchline, no twist in the tale. The accompanying video is a visual theater piece about a woman succumbing to her tears of grief.

Watch the Video for “Drowned In A Sea Of Tears”
Despite the efforts of Edgar Wright’s superb 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers, which introduced the duo to a wider audience than ever before, the exact creative dynamic between Ron and Russell Mael remains inscrutable, as mysterious and unknowable as their private lives.

The one thing we know for certain is that Ron Mael is one of our most acutely perceptive observers of social mores. In a different discipline – dramaturg, cartoonist, novelist, cineaste, chronicler – he’d be a Moliere, a Hogarth, a Fitzgerald, an Altman, a Swift. He just happens to work within the medium of popular song. His brother Russell Mael has the asset of a talent to put those observations across in a uniquely arresting manner, captivating as a frontman and gifted with a countertenor voice of extraordinary range. The alchemy between Ron on keys and Russell on vocals is simply what they do. And they’ve rarely done it better than on MAD!.

MAD! finds Ron and Russell examining cultural phenomena such as branded backpacks, tattoos, performative devotion (whether to a God, a lover, a celebrity or a sports team), the hegemony of banter, and the rise of influencers. The satire is never on-the-nose, always retaining enough ambiguity for the listener to fill in the blanks. And the exquisitely unusual lexicon (you won’t hear the word “epistemology” on many other albums this year) and cultural references leap out on every listen.

Musically there are nods to New Wave, Synthpop, Art Rock and Electronic Opera – all genres Sparks had hands in pioneering, or straight-up invented. When you hear echoes of other artists, from Air to Shostakovich, you remind yourself that they’re all people who Sparks influenced in the first place. (Well, maybe not Shostakovich.) Ultimately, however, MAD! is a modern record, which belongs in, and speaks to, the modern world. Which is all the more remarkable when you consider the vintage of its creators.

Further information on MAD! and background on Sparks is available here.

Pre-order MAD!

Listen to “JanSport Backpack”

Watch the Video for “Do Things My Own Way”

MAD! Tour Dates:
(New Dates in Bold)
Sun. June 8 – Kyoto, JP @ ROHM Theatre
Tue. June 10 – Osaka, JP @ Zepp Namba
Thu. June 12 – Fri. June 13 – Tokyo, JP @ EX Theater
Wed. June 18 – Thu. June 19 – London, UK @ Eventim Apollo
Sat. June 21 – Sun. June 22 – Manchester, UK @ O2 Apollo
Tue. June 24 – Glasgow, UK @ Royal Concert Hall
Thu. June 26 – Haarlem, NL @ PHIL Haarlem
Sat. June 28 – Brussels, BE @ Cirque Royal
Mon. June 30 – Paris, FR @ La Salle Pleyel
Tue. July 1 – Cologne, DE @ Live Music Hall (venue upscale)
Thu. July 3 – Copenhagen, DK @ The Koncerthuset
Fri. July 4 – Stockholm, SE @ Grona Lund Tivoli
Sun. July 6 – Berlin, DE @ Uber Eats
Tue. July 8 – Milan, IT @ Teatro degli Arcimboldi
Sat. July 12 – Bilbao, ES @ Bilbao BBK
Tue. July 15 – Dublin, IE @ National Stadium
Wed. July 16 – Dublin, IE @ National Stadium
Fri. July 18 – Edinburgh, UK @ Edinburgh Playhouse
Sat. July 19 – Wolverhampton, UK @ The Halls
Fri. Sept. 5 – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
Mon. Sept. 8 – Philadelphia, PA @ Keswick Theatre
Tue. Sept. 9 – Washington, DC @ Lincoln Theatre
Thu. Sept. 11 – Boston, MA @ Berklee Performance Center
Fri. Sept. 12 – Brooklyn, NY @ Kings Theatre
Sun. Sept. 14 – Columbus, OH @ The Athenaeum Theatre
Mon. Sept. 15 – Cleveland, OH @ TempleLive at Cleveland Masonic
Wed. Sept. 17 – Toronto, On @ Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Sat. Sept. 20 – St. Paul, MN @ Fitzgerald Theater
Tue. Sept. 23 – Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre
Wed. Sept. 24 – Seattle, WA @ Moore Theatre
Fri. Sept. 26 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall
Sat. Sept. 27 – San Francisco, CA @ Golden Gate Theatre
Mon. Sept. 29 – El Cajon, CA @ The Magnolia
Tue. Sept. 30 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theatre

Keep your mind open.

[I might drown in a sea of tears if you don’t subscribe.]

[Thanks to Jessica at Pitch Perfect PR.]

The Brian Jonestown Massacre announce new single and U.S. tour dates.

THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE announce a new single, ‘Makes Me Great / Out Of Body’, on red transparent 10” vinyl, released April 25th via Anton Newcombe’s record label A Recordings. Pre-save here. Following a hugely successful UK and Europe tour earlier this year, the band will return to North America this fall for an extensive run of live shows, including two dates with special guests, Cast, making their first US appearance in nearly 30 years. Tickets on sale now.

It is over 30 years since Anton Newcombe – frontman, songwriter, composer, studio owner, multi-instrumentalist, producer, engineer, father, force of nature – and his band The Brian Jonestown Massacre released their first single She Made Me / Evergreen. Released in 1992, as the British music press descended on the US to anoint the next US guitar band as flavour of the month and major labels were on the hunt for the compliant hopefuls to be their latest quick fix, Anton Newcombe had an idea: say no. As leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Newcombe had already established himself as a visionary songwriter, a man to whom making music wasn’t a lifestyle choice or a hipster haircut but the very fabric of existence itself, and he had observed in silent horror as his peers meekly acquiesced to everything – yes to contracts, yes to management, yes to suggestions, yes to this, yes to that, yes, yes, yes. But he was different. Anton Newcombe was going to say no to everything. “I just knew I would be more successful in a certain way by saying no, just being contrary because I figured that if people liked me they were gonna like me anyway,” he says. “Or dislike me. It doesn’t matter.”

Much of this was documented on the controversial documentary ‘Dig!’, which is still hailed as one of the best rock documentaries ever made, and celebrates its 20th Anniversary this year with the remastered, expanded version “Dig! XX.”

Brian Jonestown Massacre’s shoegazing-tinged debut album Methodrone was released in 1995 and since then numerous band members have joined Newcombe on his sonic escapades, but he has remained the sole constant, the creative mastermind at the centre of one of music’s most fascinating bands. There have been a further 20 albums under the Brian Jonestown Massacre moniker since then, each embarking on their own mind-expanding adventure and exploring the outer realms of rock’n’roll; psychedelic rock, country-blues, snarling rock’n’roll, blissed-out noise-pop and more.

Along the way, Newcombe has established himself as a once-in-a-lifetime talent who saw the direction in which mainstream indie-rock was heading and opted to take the long way round. He’s emerged as a revolutionary force in modern music, an underground hero. There was no other way, this was how it had to be. “My only option with everything in life has always been that you just jump into the fire,” he declared. “It doesn’t matter what it is.”

It’s with that spirit that he’s hopped around the globe, from the West Coast to New York, from Manhattan to Iceland, and then to Berlin, where he’s lived for 15 years and has two flats, one to live in and one that’s been converted into his studio.

After a hugely prolific 2010s that saw the release of eight long-players and one mini-album, Newcombe had been going through a period of writer’s block when one day he picked up his 12-string guitar and The Real (the opening track on previous album Fire Doesn’t Grow on Trees) came out of him. Like the kraken, it was as if he’d summoned it. “All of a sudden, I just heard something,” he says. “And then it just didn’t stop. We tracked a whole song every single day for 70 days in a row.” By the end of it they had 2 albums ready to go. Joining Newcombe in the studio for The Future Is Your Past were Hakon Adalsteinsson (guitar) and Uri Rennert (drums).

Brian Jonestown Massacre released their 20^th full-length studio album The Future Is Your Past, in February 2023 on Anton’s record label, A Recordings. In 2022 / 2023, they completed a massive world tour that saw them play 34 dates in North America, 25 dates across Europe and 16 dates in the UK. Towards the end of 2024, they released ‘Don’t Look At Me’ ft. Aimee Nash. It is a delicious slice of hypnotic shoegaze with Nash lyrically casting a spell with the mantra “Do No Harm.”

There is no such thing as a defining statement in Anton Newcombe’s world anymore, just more chapters that contribute to the tale. “Nobody can stop me, I’m not asking somebody, I’m not making the rounds at Warners, saying ‘please put out my record!’. It’s just for me,” he says. He hopes he can be an inspiration to others. “I would love to see more groups, people playing music in the UK and everywhere else because I really enjoy it. That’s the only reason I need. It’s the only reason to do stuff.” That hits to the core of what makes Anton Newcombe and Brian Jonestown Massacre tick. He’ll keep jumping in that fire. That’s how he rolls. Savor it.

LIVE SHOWS:

Sept. 3 – Cat’s Cradle – Carrboro, NC
Sept. 4 – Variety Playhouse – Atlanta, GA
Sept. 5 – Basement East – Nashville, TN
Sept. 6 – Orange Peel – Asheville, NC
Sept. 8 – 9:30 Club – Washington, D.C.
Sept. 9 – Webster Hall – New York, NY – with special guests, Cast
Sept. 10 – Union Transfer – Philadelphia, PA – with special guests, Cast
Sept. 12 – The Sinclair – Cambridge, MA
Sept. 13 – Beanfield Theatre – Montreal, QC
Sept. 14 – Danforth Music Hall – Toronto, ON
Sept. 16 – Globe Iron – Cleveland, OH
Sept. 17 – Majestic Theatre – Detroit, MI
Sept. 18 – Mercury Ballroom – Louisville, KY
Sept. 19 – Hi-Fi Annex – Indianapolis, IN
Sept. 20 – Majestic Theatre – Madison, WI
Sept. 22 – Metro – Chicago, IL
Sept. 23 – Slowdown – Omaha, NE
Sept. 24 – recordBar – Kansas City, MO
Sept. 26 – Studio at The Factory – Dallas, TX
Sept. 28 – White Oak Music Hall – Houston, TX
Oct. 31 – Music Box – San Diego, CA
Nov. 1 – Pappy and Harriet’s – Pioneertown, CA

Nov. 2 – Observatory OC – Santa Ana, CA
Nov. 4 – SLO Brew – San Luis Obispo, CA
Nov. 6 – Swan Dive – Las Vegas, NV
Nov. 7 – The Van Buren – Phoenix, AZ
Nov. 8 – Tumbleroot – Santa Fe, NM
Nov. 10 – Gothic Theatre – Englewood, CO
Nov. 11 – Fox Theatre – Boulder, CO
Nov. 13 – Metro Music Hall – Salt Lake City, UT
Nov. 14 – Shrine Social Club – Boise, ID
Nov. 15 – The Showbox – Seattle, WA
Nov. 16 – The Pearl – Vancouver, B.C
Nov. 18 – Revolution Hall – Portland, OR
Nov. 20 – Regency Ballroom – San Francisco, CA
Nov. 21 – Rio Theatre – Santa Cruz, CA
Nov. 22 – Teragram Ballroom – Los Angeles, CA
Nov. 23 – Teragram Ballroom – Los Angeles, CA

TICKETS

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe!]

[Thanks to Jo Murray!]

Lockstep churn up thick riffs on their new single – “Drag Along.”

Lockstep, the Nashville-based trio of Austin Rolison (drums, vox), Matt Schumacher (guitar, vox) and Tanner Ihrie (bass), “make[s] doomy, heavy shoegaze in the vein of bands like Cloakroom and Jesu” (Brooklyn Vegan). Today, they present “Drag Along,” their first new single in nearly two years and a heavy-hitting “hello.” It screeches into existence with a squall of feedback and Rolison’s swirling vocals: “Collapse into you // Won’t avoid it // Everything you wait for // On display // The helpless weeping // Uninvited // Forever remain // In the grey.” As the song reaches its peak, massive waves of guitar and crashing percussion come together in a shuddering wall of noise. In the band’s words, “Drag Along” “touches on the passage of life and the things left in its wake.”
Watch Lockstep’s Video for “Drag Along”

Lockstep first formed in 2021. Since then, they’ve released two EPs, “Lockstep 1” and “Arrival,” both of which earned significant interest in Reddit forums and on Bandcamp. These EPS expertly weave heavier, more abrasive elements into a melodic/gazey sound to be “as enveloping as possible.” As New Noise praises, “pulling from post-rock, shoegaze, doom, and noise-rock, Lockstep creates a sonic output that is both punishing and atmospheric.”

Although they began primarily as a recording project, they’ve evolved into an active touring pursuit. Lockstep has played shows with notable bands and peers in hardcore, punk, and shoegaze, including The Armed, Wisp, Doused, REZN, Gumm, Prize Horse, and others. “When we were first writing as a group, we weren’t considering how or if these songs were going to be played as a trio and in front of people,” says the band. “Which allowed for a little more freedom when thinking of composition. We’ve tried to keep that spirit present when we write now.”

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t drag along to the subscription box. Zip over there now.]

[Thanks to Jaycee at Pitch Perfect PR.]

JAWNY is in “Control” on his new single.

JAWNY (aka Jacob Sullenger) returns with the new single “Control,” from a forthcoming release out later this year. “Control” follows JAWNY’s debut album, It’s Never Fair, Always True, on which he “showcased his sonic experimentation, hopeless romantic-tinged songwriting and indie pop ethos” (Alternative Press), and a series of singles across 2023-2024 including “Boy Scout,” “Running” and “MAGIC.”

Each release has added new wrinkles to his already ornate sound—which helped him grow from a maker of pristine pop songs to a thoughtful songwriter with his eyes on intricate stories and life’s big questions. All the while, he’s never lost touch with the technicolor melodies that fans fell in love with in the first place. He’s learned to write with real empathy and depth—the mark of a songwriter who remains more wise and gifted than his years suggest.

Born out of a period in which Sullenger spent time exploring interests beyond music (i.e. writing screenplays, painting, traveling), “Control” reflects his return to music with, as he puts it, “a renewed sense of purpose.” He elaborates: “After spending six years immersed in a world I created—both visually and sonically—it felt like time to move forward. Over the last year and a half, I stepped away from the stage, the public eye, and releasing music to explore what’s next for me. I needed that space to rediscover my creative direction, and I realized that meant stepping away from music for a while to gain a fresh perspective on where JAWNY should go.

‘Control’ is the perfect representation of this new chapter. The song embodies the idea that you can’t keep doing the same thing forever. I hope people connect with it as much as I do.”

Stream “Control”
With over two billion streams globally, JAWNY has built his career by intuition, allowing his music to evolve naturally as he grows personally. Instead of chasing the high of past successes, he’s following his gut and tapping into a childlike wonder that’s wide-eyed and widescreen. Born in the Bay Area, and raised in Philadelphia, JAWNY first picked up a guitar at age 6 after watching his dad jam to the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin. At 13, he began making beats with his brother, eventually landing placements with rappers on SoundCloud.

In his early 20s, he began writing his own songs, and started to gain buzz with his 2018 debut EP under the name Johnny Utah, landing placements on critically acclaimed shows like the HBO series, High Maintenance. JAWNY followed that up with a handful of buzzworthy singles, including “Honeypie,” garnering millions of streams. In 2020, JAWNY signed to Interscope Records and soon released a pair of vibrant, critically acclaimed projects, For Abby and The Story of Hugo, which further showcased his sharp storytelling and sonic experimentation. Upon releasing The Story of Hugo, JAWNY headlined a U.S. tour, selling out shows across the country. With career highs under his belt, JAWNY remained steadfastly in the moment, reaching a wider audience with the release of It’s Never Fair, Always True.

JAWNY’s songs continue to grow in scope and scale—elevating him from songwriter to indie-pop auteur with a kaleidoscopic vision and rich sense of narrative that informs everything he does.

Keep your mind open.

[You’re in control of subscribing.]

[Thanks to Patrick at Pitch Perfect PR.]