For the twenty years, Slovenly Recordings has released brain dissolving garage punk n’roll noise from all pockets on Earth; The Anomalys have been in on the hell ride for seventeen of those years. They’re one of the first bands the Slovenly crew scooped up from Amsterdam and have backed the hard-hitting surf garage trio since releasing their furious n’ assertive “Black Hole Blues/Nat Approved” single in 2005, all the way to their latest offering in 2022 with Glitch.
Glitch is twelve years in the making, with the band pumping out a slew of singles leading up to this release since launching their no-frills raw n’ raucous Slovenly epoch S/T LP in 2010. In the time frame since then and Glitch, The Anomalys kept their style of high octane garage punk n’ roll in the mind of the masses through a slew of single releases coinciding with sporadic touring throughout Europe and into the United States and down to South America with festival appearances at SXSW, Burning Man, Gonerfest, We’re Loud!, Funtastic Dracula, Cosmic Trip, Hipsville, Psycho Carnival, Curitiba Rock, and many others.
In 2019, The Anomalys kicked it into high gear once again with their ringleader, Bone, recruiting his Aquitaine-based brothers-in-arms Looch Vibrato (Magnetix, Louder Than Death, Avenue Z) and Remi Pablo (Weird Omen, Escobar) to round out the new lineup and reconvene in Toulouse at Swampland Studios to begin the Glitchsessions with studio maestro Lo-Spider at the production helm. Three years later, and a different world since Glitch sees the light, this track rock n’roll propaganda machine debuts their frantic surf-groove single, “Panic,” to showcase the session’s sweat soaked effort.
Glitch will be available on all digital platforms February 18th and in black and highly limited transparent red vinyl (100 copies pressed) exclusively through the Slovenly Recordings mail order on March 25th.
With a tour throughout Spain just concluded this past weekend, The Anomalys are planning more dates in late Spring/Early Summer around Europe, including an appearance at Cosmic Trip Festival in Bourges, FR in late May.
Portland, OR band Blackwater Holylight announce Summer 2022 North American headlining tour dates today in support of their third album Silence / Motionon on RidingEasy Records. The tour kicks off on May 9th. Please see complete dates below. Tour assets HERE, ticket links HERE.
Quote from the band: “We’re gearing up for our first US headlining tour and couldn’t be more excited to be sharing the road with Bleakheart and Spirit Mother! We will have a ton of merch available and can’t wait to see you all out there.”
Watch/share “Silence/Motion” video on YouTube HERE.
Empty surrounds all of me. It’s a poignant line from the third album by Blackwater Holylight that encapsulates the search for self when suddenly everything has changed. There’s a theme of processing vast personal trauma throughout Silence/Motion that eloquently — both lyrically and musically — and simultaneously embodies the crushing emptiness, sorrow, strength and rebuilding of recovering from personal devastation.
“There was so much grief both in the world and interpersonally during the process of creating Silence/Motion,” says vocalist/bassist Allison “Sunny” Faris. “The four of us gave one another more space to be ourselves, to experiment with each other’s ideas and to be gentle with one another more than we ever have before.So, we knew this tenderness would manifest in extremely honest arrangements, and I think that you can hear that throughout the record.”
Curiously, considering the dark times in which it was created, this is the band’s most melodic and catchy music so far. Blackwater Holylight, as the name suggests, is all about contrasts: It’s a fluid convergence of sound that’s heavy, psychedelic, melodic, terrifying and beautiful all at once. And, Silence/Motion finds the band honing those contrasts, letting ideas and moods fully develop from song to song, rather than filling every song with a full range of their capabilities. It allows the band to go fully prog-rock here, and simply stay hushed and intimate there. There’s a new confidence to the band in how seamlessly they wield their stylistic amalgam.
“Writing this album was extraordinarily difficult emotionally, however it did come to fruition fairly quickly,” Faris says. “In the past, the theme of vulnerability has always been a big player and it definitely showed up full force while writing this album.” Blackwater Holylight recorded the album as a four piece: Faris on vocals and guitar (on “Silence/Motion”, “MDIII”, “Around You” and “Every Corner”) and bass for the remainder, Sarah McKenna on synths, Mikayla Mayhew on guitar (and bass when Faris plays guitar) and drummer Eliese Dorsay. For Silence/Motion the band chose to work with a producer for the first time, bringing in A.L.N. (of Mizmor, Hell) to produce, along with recording engineer Dylan White — who also helmed their previous album Veils of Winter (2019) — at Odessa Recording Studio in Portland, OR. Guest vocals on album opener “Delusional” are by Bryan Funck (Thou.) Mike Paparo (Inter Arma) and A.LN. (Mizmor, Hell) lend guest vocals to album closer “Every Corner.”
“The analogy is that with our first record (Blackwater Holylight, 2018) we were getting into to the car and buckling up,” Faris says. “The second (Veils of Winter, 2019) we were turning the car on, and with this third we have kicked into drive toward our destination. Our destination is a bit mysterious and has the ability to change from day to day, but we’re on our way.”
Silence/Motion is available on LP, CD and download, released October 22nd, 2021 via RidingEasy Records.
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Today, METZ and Adulkt Life announce a split 7”, out March 4th on What’s Your Rupture?, and share Metz’s “Demolition Row.” This split 7” is a dogged, startling response to today’s spoilt life. The two bands are paired perfectly: their shared, resolute force carries an urgency that belongs to this era alone. Both are capable of goading listeners, both are capable of unearthly moments of alloyed beauty. And both bands are made for that unflinching space between the truths that can’t be absorbed and the truths that can’t be forgotten.
METZ are undisputable. Their warning, an unflinching assessment of the vastness and insignificance of this life, is precisely counterbalanced by their lesson, which models the resilience that this understanding demands. Today’s “Demolition Row” is persistent, concise, and alarmingly physical, its punch escorted by hypnotizing, unstrained vocals. “It’s quite singular,” says METZ’s guitarist/singer Alex Edkins. “We’ve never sounded this way before.”
Adulkt Life’s debut LP, 2020’s Book of Curses, is a contorted, forceful declaration. The 7”’s “Book of Curses” was intended for the LP, but didn’t quite fit. Singer Chris Rowley describes it as a “belligerent satellite” for the end of time: “like in a few weeks.” It’s matched here with the blip of “Ants & Lions,” a near-joke that instead feels accusatory. Atop the carnival swells of the song, only that voice could make “yabba dabba doo time” burn like acid.
The impact of these two sides, taken together, reveals a shared, defiant intention. “When you’ve made yr small space attack ship mostly from sharp sticks and dashboards and recycled fuel stuffs METZ ship looks clean and tended for battles to come,” says Chris Rowley. “Very happy to be sharing crew n rink with them.” For METZ, this record lives within their legacy of complementary projects including splits with Mission of Burma and Clipping. and their collaboration with John Reis. “It’s because we are fans of the music,” explains Edkins. “METZ are mighty aren’t they?” replies Rowley.
Emily Jane White, the intriguing Northern California-based songwriter who Pitchfork noted for her ability to pair her “wispy and sweet” vocals with “world-weary” introspection and Brooklyn Vegan has championed for her “gothy, ethereal folk” releases Alluvion on March 25 via Talitres.
“’Show Me the War’ calls attention to the convergence of misogyny and racialized violence as a pervasive worldwide epidemic,” explains White. “During the summer of 2020 in Oakland, California, I wrote this song in response to the many political uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd. ‘Show Me the War’ also highlights more global examples of injustice like femicide in Juarez, Mexico and the near-total abortion ban in Poland. By grieving the many losses resulting from social and ecological injustice, we shed light on these unacceptable epidemics and those deeply affected by them, further enabling change.”
News of the Alluvion’s forthcoming arrival is paired with today’s release of “Show Me The War” and its accompanying, Bobby Cochran-directed video (https://youtu.be/ENrsd0YjjBs). The black and white clip filmed in Oakland features local teen dancers Satya Zamudio, Olivia Wenzler, Dinah Cobb, Kalia Morales, and Lina Santos, displays bold Gen Z women powerfully claiming public spaces with their art form, touching the sacredness of nature, while also contending with current social justice issues and the climate crisis.
Rooted in a moment of catastrophe, Alluvion is an album about personal and collective grief resulting from the loss of human life and the continued loss of our natural world. We live in a moment of merging traumas, of converging environmental, social, and political crises. These crises are exacerbated by our lack of cultural practices for individual and also shared, public grieving–which is not without consequence. Emily’s album offers a space to consider where grieving is absent in our world, and where it is deeply necessary. Grief moves in waves and cycles, and through its flood we can build anew. Alluvion: the gradual addition to the land by the wash of water against a shore.
Alluvion was produced by and arranged by multi-instrumentalist Anton Patzner (Foxtails Brigade, Bright Eyes) and mixed by Alex DeGroot (Zola Jesus).
Southern California’s Dream, Ivory – a duo composed of brothers Christian and Louie Baello – shares the new video for the single, “Blue,” from their self-titled debut album on AWAL. Dream, Ivory is the product of long hours spent in their Lake Elsinore bedroom, Christian helming the production and Louie growing into lead vocalist. Only 11 months apart, the Baellos shared everything – clothes, toys, and music. “We played rock-paper-scissors to choose who got to keep a Gorillaz album; Louie won and I cried the entire way home,” says Christian. “He ended up giving it to me because he felt bad.”
Raised in a Filipino household, Christian and Louie’s parents wanted them to be stars. “Ever since we were kids, our Dad would always tell us that our star is shining, and will forever shine on,” say the brothers. Their parents enrolled them in piano lessons, which they both hated at the time. “We would dread going to class, because we wanted to go and play like the other kids. Now, we are so grateful that we had the opportunity.” Their earliest musical experiments included reenacting guitar solos from performance videos they watched online and sharing their own cover songs on YouTube, which would be the impetus to creating their own art.
“When we first started Dream, Ivory I was still in high school and it was a way of self-expression,” says Louie. Dream, Ivory’s hazy and melancholic atmosphere was inspired by bands such as Beach Fossils, Slow Dive, and Beach House. “Blue” is an enthralling glimpse into their collaborative energy. “It’s a typical ‘heartbreak song,” adds Louie. The accompanying video was produced by Hungry Ghosts, and is the first in a series of new videos the band will be sharing ahead of more new music in 2022.
Lucy Dacus released Home Video via Matador last year, solidifying her place as one of music’s best storytellers, with a remarkable showing on year-end lists. After a series of flyers appeared in several US cities last week with tear-off tabs for a “Kissing Lessons” hotline, a stream of callers to the number then reported being able to hear a new song by Dacus. No longer requiring a phone, “Kissing Lessons” is now available as a single for all to hear. It is accompanied by a video directed by Mara Palena. Complete with hand-drawn hearts and Polaroids, “Kissing Lessons” is another gem mined from Dacus’ childhood in Richmond, Virginia. It was recorded and mixed during the Home Video sessions, and stood out with its sweet and relatable reflection of childhood infatuation as Dacus sings atop infectious guitars, “We’d take turns being seduced // Imagining the day it would come into use // Imagining the day we’d start breaking hearts // And taking names.”
“Kissing Lessons” and “Thumbs Again” will be released as a 7” on June 3rd. The 7” is available for pre-order now.
Next week, Dacus kicks off a US tour where she will play many cities not yet visited in support of Home Video, and a few rescheduled shows from the fall. Additionally, after selling out three Brooklyn Steels last year, Dacus announces a headline performance at New York City’s SummerStage in Central Park on Thursday, July 21st. Tickets go on sale this Friday, February 4th at 12pm Eastern. Watch Lucy Dacus’ Video for “Kissing Lessons”
Home Video Tour (new dates in bold) Wed. Feb. 09 – Pitts, PA @ Stage AE * Thu. Feb. 10 – Detroit, MI @ Majestic * Fri. Feb. 11 – Newport, KY @ Ovation * Sat. Feb. 12 – Indy, IN @ Egyptian Room * Mon. Feb. 14 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Ballroom Valentine’s Day * Tue. Feb. 15 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall (Rescheduled Date) * – SOLD OUT Thu. Feb. 17 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Ave (Rescheduled Date) * – SOLD OUT Fri. Feb. 18 – Iowa City, IA @ Englert Theatre (Rescheduled Date) * – SOLD OUT Sat. Feb. 19 – Lawrence, KS @ Liberty * Sun. Feb. 20 – OK City, OK @ Tower Theatre * Wed. Feb. 23 – Athens, GA @ Georgia Theatre * Thu. Feb. 24 – Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel * Fri. Feb. 25 – C-Ville, VA @ Jefferson * – SOLD OUT Sat. Feb. 26 – Asbury Park, NJ @ Stone Pony * – SOLD OUT Mon. Feb. 28 – Ithaca, NY @ Hangar Theatre Tue. Mar. 01 – Holyoke, MA @ Gateway City Arts Thu. Mar. 03 – Providence, RI @ The Strand Sat. Mar. 05 – Baltimore, MD @ Ram’s Head Fri. Mar. 18, 2022 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club ^ – SOLD OUT Sat. Mar. 19, 2022 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club ^ – SOLD OUT Sun. Mar. 20, 2022 – Glasgow, UK @ St. Lukes ^ – SOLD OUT Mon. Mar. 21, 2022 – Dublin, IE @ Olympia Theatre ^ Wed. Mar. 23, 2022 – Manchester, UK @ Gorilla – SOLD OUT Thu. Mar. 24, 2022 – Bristol, UK @ Marble Factory ^ Fri. Mar. 25, 2022 – London, UK @ Kentish Town Forum Sat. Mar. 26 – London, UK @ Rough Trade – In-Store Performance Sun. Mar. 27 – Brighton, UK @ Concorde 2 ^ Tue. Mar. 29, 2022 – Brussels, BL @ Rotonde ^ – SOLD OUT Wed. Mar. 30, 2022 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso Noord ^ Thu. Mar. 31, 2022 – Cologne, DE @ Artheater ^ Sat. Apr. 02, 2022 – Hamburg, DE @ Molotow ^ Sun. Apr. 03, 2022 – Copenhagen, DK @ Loppen ^ – SOLD OUT Mon. April 04, 2022 – Aarhus, DK @ Atlas ^ Wed. Apr. 06, 2022 – Oslo, NO @ Parkteatret ^ Thu. Apr. 07, 2022 – Stockholm, SE @ Nalen Klubb ^ Sat. Apr. 09, 2022 – Berlin, DE @ Lido ^ Sun. Apr. 10, 2022 – Jena, DE @ Trafo ^ Tue. Apr. 12, 2022 – Vienna, AT @ Chelsea ^ Wed. Apr. 13, 2022 – Munich, DE @ Milla ^ Thu. Apr. 14, 2022 – Zürich, SU @ Bogen F ^ Fri. Apr. 15 – Paris, FR @ La Maroquinerie ^ Thu. Jul. 21 – New York, NY @ SummerStage in Central Park # Sun. Aug. 7 – St. Charles, IA @ Hinterland Festival Fri. Aug. 26 – London, UK @ All Points East Festival Sat. Aug. 27 – Sun. Aug. 28 – Darmstadt, DE @ Golden Leaves Festival Thu. Sep. 1 – Sun. Sep. 4 – Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival
* = with Indigo De Souza ^ = with Fenne Lily # = with Hop Along
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Levitation France has announced the first group of bands scheduled to play the 2022 festival in the cool town of Angers. This is also the first year the festival will be a three-day event. Tickets are on sale now.
The lineup is already looking good. The Brian Jonestown Massacre will surely bring in a large crowd, and it will be cool to see Kim Gordon perform. Death Valley Girls and Frankie and the Witch Fingersalways put on good performances, and I won’t miss Automatic‘s set.
Following the fêted success of 2021’s Wet and Tired, The Wife Guys of Reddit are back with their forthcoming single “Pig Fat” – a song that poses two questions:
What would happen if I literally decided to fight God?
What would happen if God turned out to be a little bit sexy?
Arion Xenos and Niamh MacPhail once again lend their vocal talents to the track, melding their trademark irreverence with a healthy dose of spunk. The addition of seasoned instrumentalists Elise Atkinson and Angus Fernie to The Wife Guys of Reddit’s ranks shines through on this single, with the band concocting their thickest sound yet. While their hardest studio release to date, this shift should come as no surprise to those who have managed to catch one of the band’s protean live shows; Xenos said of “Pig Fat”: “With the band being able to flesh out the single together in the studio, we were able to properly experiment and push the boundaries of what we want The Wife Guys to be: “Pig Fat” bridges that gap between mellower past studio releases, and the wired energy of our live performances.” Not content with stopping there, the single release will be accompanied by a found footage horror-inspired homemade video, demonstrating the full creative prowess of this outfit.
In spite of their recent inception shortly before Christmas 2020, the self-titled ‘purveyors of soupy rock’ have already sparked interest in DIY circles across the globe, gaining coverage in BBC Radio Scotland with Vic Galloway, NARC. Magazine, Tenement TV, Amazing Radio with Jim Gellatly, and KXSF Radio, among others. The band are additionally looking forward to weirding out the 2022 live circuit at Left of the Dial Festival, The Great Western, NXTGN Festival, and supporting She Drew The Gun on tour; as well as working on their forthcoming EP, produced by Catholic Action’s Chris McCrory.
Failure have announced a North American tour in support of their recently released, widely-praised sixth album, Wild Type Droid.
Ken Andrews said of the live outings: “I have not been this excited to bring new material to the stage since Fantastic Planet. Prepare yourself for an out-of-body experience.”
The dates, which kick off on June 2 in San Diego and run for five weeks before culminating in a hometown show at Los Angeles’ Regent Theatre, are on-sale today at 10 am local time. All shows will open with a special preview of the forthcoming Failure documentary.
Wild Type Droid (https://failure.ffm.to/wildtypedroid) arrived in December via the band’s own label, Failure Music. Rolling Stone called the 10-song collection “incredibly expansive,” Guitar World described the album as “one of the most inspiring alternative guitar records to arrive in 2021,” and Paste Magazine said the trio “make a career-defining statement.”
“To me, it captures a lot of the new musical approaches and techniques we were going for on this album, but somehow is still quintessential Failure,” Ken Andrews explained as news of the album was revealed. “We’ve been together long enough to know that some of our best ideas come directly from these experimental sessions. For this album, we simply cultivated that methodology for a much longer time than we have in the past. It brought out the trio aspect of the band. There was a feeling we could really push the individual parts further away from each other and let the more interesting and challenging combinations take center stage.”
Failure is Ken Andrews (vocals, guitar, bass, programming), Greg Edwards (vocals, guitar, bass, keys), and Kellii Scott (drums, percussion). Forming in early ‘90s Los Angeles, the trio have released six albums: Comfort (1992), Magnified (1994), Fantastic Planet (1996), The Heart Is A Monster (2015), In The Future Your Body Will Be the Furthest Thing from Your Mind (a series of EPs released as an album in 2018), and Wild Type Droid (2021). The group is considered one of the era’s most influential rock bands with Vice, in an all-encompassing retrospective upon the band’s return saying: “While many of their contemporaries became prolific by releasing an ungodly amount of materials, Failure’s [initial] three-record catalog is minuscule, but just as important in terms of content, style, and music texture.”
Formed by the members of the beloved and now defunct New York post-punk band Pill and their NYC underground peers Eaters, P.E. have been trafficking in boundary-pushing, dystopian grooves since the release of their mesmerizing first single “Top Ticket” in 2019. Collaborating with artists like Parquet Courts, Xiu Xiu and Liars, the band have developed a growing cult following that has continued expanding as they come to broader attention with the release of their first LP Person, in 2020 and last year’s The Reason For My Love EP, which have earned praise from outlets like Stereogum, BrooklynVegan, Bandcamp, The Guardian (who had the EP’s title track on their 2021 Best Songs You Haven’t Heard list) and Pitchfork (who had the EP on their list of Great Records From 2021 You May Have Missed). Today, the band are returning to announce their most fully-realized artistic statement to date, an album called The Leather Lemon that will be released on the buzzing Brooklyn label Wharf Cat Records (Palberta, Water From Your Eyes, Lily Konigsberg) on March 25th, and sharing that album’s first single “Blue Nude (Reclined)” which is premiering today on FADER.
LISTEN: to P.E. – “Blue Nude (Reclined)” on YouTube // FADER
Writing about the band’s last single The Guardian said that P.E. channel “the fidgety, dark, and inescapably danceable sound of Mudd Club-era, underground bands like Bush Tetras, the Contortions and ESG,” and this latest single feels like a further refinement of that direction. Their sound is far from a retread however, as they process the sounds of the 70s and 80s Lower East Side through the filter of contemporary influences and recording techniques, using surprising building blocks to create something that is as effective as pop music as it is forward-looking.
“This was one of the first songs we wrote for the new record, shortly after settling ourselves mentally & physically around the country,” singer Veronica Torres says of the song. “With all of our tour plans scrapped in the initial wave of the pandemic, the five of us decided to put our energies into writing new material for the next record, trading files back and forth in order to shape our new sound. “Blue Nude” quickly became an inspiration for the rest of The Leather Lemon – something that foregrounded both the song and the sound, as fun as it was abstract.”
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P.E.‘s sophomore album, The Leather Lemon (Wharf Cat Records, out March 25, 2022), ushers in a new era for the New York band. A wild ride through chewy bubblegum pop, sweeping synthetic orchestrations, and mutant club beats, the album slides ever closer to the fully-realized pop sensibility only winked at with their debut album Person (2020) and subsequent releases.
Digging into mystery, romance, and sex appeal with The Leather Lemon, the group — composed of members of Pill (Mexican Summer/Dull Tools) and Eaters (Dull Tools/Driftless) — centers its sound within a Bermuda Triangle of dance music, electronic composition, and experimental rock. Members Jonathan Schenke, Bob Jones, and Jonny Campolo play within pop parameters, building upon free-form collaboration to create a fluorescent groove machine that harnesses the energy of their frenetic live shows. Singer Veronica Torres explores her softer side, expanding her vocal repertoire from spoken word and jagged growls to cherubic and sensuous psalms. Sax virtuoso Benjamin Jaffe’s chiseled experimental tone is heard in an extended solo of true romance in “Tears in the Rain,” a somber surrealist duet penned by Torres and Andrew Savage, singer/guitarist of Parquet Courts.
Recorded primarily at Schenke’s Studio Windows in Brooklyn, NY, The Leather Lemon was cultivated from a fertile creative period between spring 2020 and summer 2021, which also yielded 2021’s acclaimed The Reason For My Love EP, of which Pitchfork writes:
The quintet refines their impulses on their 2020 debut Person and transforms them into a body-moving EP. The jittery electronics are still there, but the drum cuts feel sharper and lighter, bringing a sense of structure to what could easily be shapeless. Vocalist Veronica Torres abandons spoken-word and leans fully into singing about poetry, beauty, and the contours of the body. Her lovely vocal stretches fill up the space once occupied by industrial bass drops. Sensuality suits them well.
The Leather Lemon is a reckoning record for the times; an album of psychedelic resurfacing, real-time response to world events, and soft, sympathetic magic. This is a collection of songs shaped by five individuals who embrace music-making as a way to center themselves in times of uncertainty; it’s resilience and imagination given shape. The Leather Lemon is a true sweet-and-sour listening experience, an album as bright and clear as it is fractured and fun. Get turned UP and ON with the electrifying new lemon drop from P.E.!
The Leather Lemon will be released on Wharf Cat Records on March 25th. It is available for preorder here.
