News – Page 28 – 7th Level Music

When The Chats claim, “I’ve Been Drunk in Every Pub in Brisbane.”, you tend to believe them.

Aussie punk trio The Chats release a new single/video, “I’ve Been Drunk in Every Pub in Brisbane,” from their new album, GET FUCKED, out August 19th on Bargain Bin Records. Clocking in at just 89 seconds, the rip-roaring track is an entirely unironic celebration of frontman Eamon Sandwith’s first year or two in his new home city. The accompanying video was shot under the influence by the band and their house mate, Rick, who is also in a band with Eamon and Josh called Rick and the Sickos.

“Brisbane is quite a bit hotter than the rest of the country,” says Eamon, “so it’s one of those places where it’s more acceptable to start drinking earlier. I reckon there would be 900 or so pubs that you would have to hit, and I have actually been to a good chunk of them, but if you were go to all of them, it would be hard to even remember which ones you’d been to, and which ones you hadn’t, especially if you’d got fucking pissed.”

WATCH THE CHATS’ VIDEO FOR “I’VE BEEN DRUNK IN EVERY PUB IN BRISBANE”

GET FUCKED is an incendiary, hyper-adrenalized blitz from punk heaven, showcasing an electrifying all-killer-no-filler 13 tracks which perfectly capture the band’s explosive energy. The album, while tackling umpteen eminently relatable beefs ranging from surfer-dude racism to the usual dire impecunity, feels like a classic high-velocity punk-rock party album like they just don’t make ’em anymore – think early Ramones, think MDC’s debut, think invite your mates over and rock hard all weekend. It is, quite simply, another laugh-out-loud, pogo-through-the-floorboards stroke of motherfucking genius.

This fall, The Chats will open for Guns N’ Roses on a Australian and New Zealand tour. A full list of dates can be found below.

WATCH VIDEO FOR “STRUCK BY LIGHTNING”

WATCH THE “6L GTR” VIDEO

PRE-ORDER GET FUCKED

THE CHATS TOUR DATES
Fri. Jul. 22 – Adelaide, AU @ Adelaide Showground
Fri. Jul. 29 – Luxembourg, LU @ Rotondes
Sat. Oct. 8 – Sacramento, CA @ Aftershock Festival
Fri. Nov. 18 – Perth, AU @ Optus Stadium
Tue. Nov. 22 – Brisbane, AU @ Suncorp Stadium
Thu. Nov. 24 – Gold Coast, AU @ Metricon Stadium
Sun. Nov. 27 – Sydney, AU @ Accor Stadium
Sat. Dec. 3 – Melbourne, AU @ Melbourne Cricket Ground
Thu. Dec. 8 – Wellington, NZ @ Sky Stadium
Sat. Dec. 10 – Auckland, NZ @ Eden Park

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[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Medicine Singers fly high with “Hawk Song” from their new album.

Today, Medicine Singers release their self-titled debut album on Stone Tapes/ Joyful Noise, and present the video for “Hawk Song.” Medicine Singers is a genre-smashing kaleidoscope of sound firmly rooted in the intense physical power of the powwow drum, and is the inaugural release on the new Joyful Noise imprint, Stone Tapes. “Hawk Song,” written by band member Ray Two Hawks Watson, is a modern powwow favorite which infuses the Eastern Algonquin tradition with a rock edge. “The guitar turned it into a rock song,” says bandleader Daryl Black Eagle Jamieson. “The two styles mesh together so well, it’s like a fireball taking off, and you can see it in the audience when we play it live.” With hand-held footage of the band performing “Hawk Song,” the accompanying music video – directed by Roy and Gigi Ben Artzi – captures a propulsivity that extends across Medicine Singers’ 10 tracks.

Watch Medicine Singers’ “Hawk Song” Video

The creation of Stone Tapes was inspired in part by Jamieson’s work as an artist and activist, and to make a space for traditional musicians to collaborate with other experimental artists. One dollar from each Stone Tapes album sale will go toward a charity of the artist’s choice. For Medicine Singers, the funds will go to Jamieson’s organization Pocasset Pocanoket Land Trust. “We’re buying back all the land from the original Pocasset purchase – that the colonists took from us. What we are trying to do is preserve the pristine land…Keep it from being built on…Bring it back to our people to have a place to go. Because here in the Northeast most of the land has been taken and built upon, and it’s so expensive that Indian people cannot even afford it,” said Jamieson.

Medicine Singers expands on years of collaboration following a spontaneous 2017 performance by Eastern Algonquin powwow group Eastern Medicine Singers and Monotonix guitarist Yonatan Gat. Bridging multiple dimensions of sound, Medicine Singers expanded into a remarkable supergroup that also includes ambient music pioneer Laraaji, Thor Harris and Christopher Pravdica of Swans, no wave icon Ikue Mori, and rising jazz trumpet star jaimie branch, who also painted the album cover. Alongside producer Ryan Olson (of Gayngs), Medicine Singers’ debut album combines traditional powwow music with elements of psychedelic punk, spiritual jazz, and electronics in a stunning blend.

“I look at it like this, everybody is my brother and sister, no matter where they come from,” Jamieson reflects. “If their culture or music is different, I want to learn about it, and I want to play with them. I think it’s our responsibility as artists to show the world that life is not about war and hate. Life is about music, peace, and culture. We need to communicate with people of different cultures and backgrounds. We need to show people how we can work together and make something beautiful.”

Watch The “Daybreak” Lyric Video

Watch The “Sunrise (Rumble)” Video

Listen to “Sanctuary”

Purchase Medicine Singers

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[Thanks to Yuri at Pitch Perfect PR.]

The Schizophonics have “Won Your Love” with their new single.

San Diego trio The Schizophonics share the video for “Won Your Love” from their forthcoming fourth album today via Punk News. Watch and share “Won Your Love” HERE. (Direct YouTube.)

The band previously issued the lead single “Desert Girl” via YouTube, Spotify and all other DSPs.

The band just recently wrapped up an extensive tour of Europe, and will be very busy for the next year with tour dates around the world. Please see current dates below.

Over the last few years, The Schizophonics have built up a formidable reputation around the world as an explosive live act. Tapping into the same unstoppable combination of rock ‘n’ roll energy and showmanship that fueled The MC5 in the heyday of the Grande Ballroom, their wild live show is heavily influenced by artists like James Brown, Iggy Pop, Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard, and The Sonics.

Singer/guitarist Pat Beers and drummer Lety Beers formed the band in San Diego in 2009 and have worked tirelessly since then, playing hundreds of shows around the globe. In 2013 they were recruited as the backing/opening band for El Vez, which helped the band make a name for itself in Europe. Since then, they’ve played in numerous countries, and supported tours by like-minded acts like Rocket From The Crypt, Little Barrie, The Woggles and have opened for the Damned, DEVO, The Hives and Cage The Elephant. Shindig Magazine described their live show “Like watching some insane hybrid of WAYNE KRAMER, JAMES BROWN, and the Tasmanian Devil.”

The band is more than just a live act; they’re also committed to writing great memorable songs. Their new album Hoof It on Pig Baby Records due in Fall 2022 was recorded by Dean Reis at Singing Serpent studio (Plosivs, RFTC) and mixed by Steve Kaye at Sun King Studios.

Hoof It will be available on LP, CD and download on September 2nd, 2022 via Pig Baby Records. Pre-orders are available HERE.

THE SCHIZOPHONICS LIVE 2022:

07/22 & 23 Saint Paul, Quebec, CA – Le Festif! De Baie Saint Paul

09/07 Boise, ID – Neurolux

09/08 Yakima, WA – Punks Bar

09/09 Seattle, WA – Substation

09/10 Portland, OR – Dante’s

09/11 Eugene, OR – Old Nick’s

09/13 Albany, CA – Ivy Room

09/14 San Jose, CA – The Ritz

09/15 Santa Cruz, CA – Moe’s Alley

09/17 Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon

09/23 San Diego, CA – The Casbah

10/21 Los Angeles, CA – Permanent Records Roadhouse

11/03 Indianapolis, IN – Lo-Fi

11/04 Cincinnati, OH – Motr Pub

11/05 Columbus, OH – Ace of Cups

11/06 Pittsburgh, PA – Club Cafe

11/07 Baltimore, MD – Ottobar

11/08 Washington, DC – City Winery

11/10 Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie

11/11 Brooklyn, NY – TV Ete

11/12 New Haven, CT – Cafe Nine

11/13 Providence, RI – Alchemy

11/14 Boston, MA – Middle East

11/16 Montreal, QC – Casa Del Popolo

11/17 Toronto, ON – The Baby G

11/18 Rochester, NY – Bug Jar

11/19 Cleveland, OH – Beachland Tavern

11/21 Detroit, MI – PJ’s Lager House

11/22 Chicago, IL – Schuba’s

11/23 Milwaukee, WI – Shank Hall

11/25 Minneapolis, MN – Icehouse

11/26 Green Bay, WI – Lyric Room

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[Thanks to Dave at US / THEM Group.]

Cold Gawd drop a shoegaze stunner with debut single, “Sweet Jesus Wept Shit.”

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.

Today, Cold Gawd announce details for their Dais Records debut album, set for release on September 23rd. The group’s second collection, 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.

Watch (+ share) the video for God Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here‘s first single “Sweet Jesus Wept Shit” on YouTube.

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, the album 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 channels malaise and melancholy into gauzy, galvanized anthems of escape, change, and introspection. The crushing closing cut, “Passing Through the Opposite of What It Approaches,” heaves and hovers like looming storm clouds, beneath which Wainright sings (and bandmate Arturo Ramirez screams) as close to a mission statement as the album offers: “leave what you know / and get grown / everyday / remember / why you left.”

Pre-order God Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here here and look for more music and news to surface soon from Cold Gawd.

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[Thanks to Stephanie at Indie Publicity.]

Third Man Records releases a book about the history of drone music – Harry Sword’s “Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion.”

Out now from Third Man Books, Monolithic Undertow alights a crooked path across musical, religious and subcultural frontiers. It traces the line from ancient traditions to the modern underground, navigating archaeoacoustics, ringing feedback, chest plate sub-bass, avant-garde eccentricity, sound weaponry and fervent spiritualism.

From Neolithic beginnings to bawdy medieval troubadours, Sufi mystics to Indian raga masters, cone-shattering dubwise bass, Hawkwind‘s Ladbroke Grove to the outer reaches of Faust and Ash Ra Temple; the hash-fueled fug of The Theatre of Eternal Music to the cough syrup reverse hardcore of Melvins, seedy VHS hinterland of Electric Wizard, ritual amp worship of Earth and Sunn O))) and the many touch points in between, Monolithic Undertow explores the power of the drone – an audio carrier vessel capable of evoking womb like warmth or cavernous dread alike.

Watch (+ share) the trailer for Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion on YouTube.

In 1977, Sniffin’ Glue verbalized the musical zeitgeist with their infamous ‘this is a chord; this is another; now form a band’ illustration. The drone requires neither chord nor band, representing – via its infinite pliability and accessibility – the ultimate folk music: a potent audio tool of personal liberation.

Immersion in hypnotic and repetitive sounds allows us to step outside of ourselves, be it chant, a 120dB beasting from Sunn O))), standing front of the system as Jah Shaka drops a fresh dub or going full headphone immersion with Hawkwind. These experiences are akin to an audio portal – a sound Tardis to silence the hum and fizz of the unceasing inner voice. The drone exists outside of us, but also – paradoxically – within us all; an aural expression of a universal hum we can only hope to fleetingly channel…

Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion is out now and is available for purchase here. The North American edition of the book features an exclusive cover and a new foreword by author Harry Sword.

Distributed Exclusively in North America by Consortium Books/Ingram Content Group.

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[Thanks to Stephanie at Indie Publicity.]

Brijean shows us “Caldwell’s Way” from their upcoming “Angelo” EP.

Brijean – the duo of percussionist/singer Brijean Murphy and multi-instrumentalist/producer Doug Stuart – shares the new single, “Caldwell’s Way,” from their Angelo EP, out August 5th on Ghostly International. “Caldwell’s Way” is a fond farewell to their Bay Area community — “a part of my life that I knew couldn’t come back,” says Murphy. Above shimmering organ sounds, lush strings, and the birdcall of their former neighborhood, she wistfully articulates the uncertainty of moving on by remembering the characters dear to the band. There’s the wisdom of their neighbor, Santos, who refused payment when helping them move out: “I’d rather have 100 friends than 100 dollars.” And the song’s namesake, Benjamin Caldwell Brown, a friend and club night cohort for many years.

“Dougie and I wrote this song in the midst of deep life changes,” explains Murphy. “We found ourselves uprooted in the Southwest, processing both personal and geographic loss. I had never felt physical withdrawals from a place and community, until then. I missed The Bay and our friends in it – even thinking about certain buildings and streets brought me comfort and longing. This song is a loving farewell to the people and places I may never embrace again.”

Stream “Caldwell’s Way”

On Angelo, Brijean explores new moods and styles, reaching for effervescent dance tempos and technicolor backdrops, vibrant hues in contrast to their more somber human experiences. Angelo beams with positivity and creative renewal — a resourceful, collective answer to “what happens now?”

Following the sudden passing of Murphy’s father and both of Stuart’s parents, Brijean left the Bay Area in a haze of heartache to be near family, resetting in four cities in under two years. Named after Murphy’s 1981 Toyota Celica, the Angelo EP features nine songs they crafted and carried with them through a period of profound change, loss, and relocation. Their to-go rig became their traveling studio and these tracks – along with Angelo – became their few constants. Whereas Feelings, Brijean’s acclaimed 2021 full-length Ghostly International debut, was formed over collaborative jams with friends, Angelo’s sessions presented the duo a chance to record at their most intimate, “to get us out of our grief and into our bodies,” says Murphy. Angelo finds Murphy and Stuart processing the impossible the only way they know how: through rhythm and movement.

In support of Angelo, Brijean will play their first headline shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Brooklyn, as well as an international appearance with Poolside in Mexico City. A full list of tour dates can be found below.

Stream:
“Caldwell’s Way”
“Ooo La La”
“Shy Guy”

Pre-order/pre-save Angelo EP

Brijean Tour Dates
Thu. Aug. 11 – San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
Sat. Aug. 13 – Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
Wed. Aug. 17 – Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere Rooftop
Fri. Aug. 19 – Sun. Aug. 22 – Long Pond, PA @ Elements Festival
Sat. Aug. 27 – Mexico City, MX @ Auditorio BlackBerry (with Poolside)

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[Thanks to Patrick at Pitch Perfect PR.]

The Chats floor it on their new single, “6L GTR.”

Australian punks The Chats announce their new album, GET FUCKED, out August 19th on the band’s own label, Bargain Bin Records, and share a new single/video, “6L GTR.” The announcement arrives in the midst of their North American tour (tickets on sale now). Their debut full-length, High Risk Behaviour, dropped just as the pandemic struck, and The Chats have duly been through the same frustrating two years of broken dreams and shredded itineraries as every other combo. Undeterred and now stocked to overflowing with frustration and fury, they strike back with GET FUCKED, an incendiary, hyper-adrenalized blitz from punk heaven, showcasing a rockin’ new guitarist, and an electrifying all-killer-no-filler 13 tracks which perfectly capture the band’s explosive energy. It is, quite simply, another laugh-out-loud, pogo-through-the-floorboards stroke of motherfucking genius.

WATCH THE CHATS’ VIDEO FOR “6L GTR”

The Chats took lockdown as a chance to plan their next move, which is when they enlisted Josh Hardy after the departure of their last guitarist. Sometime in ’21, Eamon Sandwith, Matt Boggis and Hardy decamped to southern Queensland to write at their friend’s place, Vinny’s Dive Bar. Once they’d worked up a rollicking batch of new tunes, they had actually planned to record again near Melbourne, with Billy Gardner, who produced High Risk Behaviour, but due to pandemic border closures, they nailed it instead in six days at Brisbane’s Hunting Ground facility with Cody McWaters, who’d worked on a single for Eamon’s other band, Headlice.

“They weren’t like hardcore working days,” Eamon reveals, “we would start at 11 and finish at 4, and in the middle of that we’d go to the pub for lunch for two hours, and have a few beers. Then we’d go, ‘Oh shit, we better go back and do some recording!’ Our work etiquette wasn’t great.” Consequently, GET FUCKED, while tackling umpteen eminently relatable beefs ranging from surfer-dude racism to the usual dire impecunity, feels like a classic high-velocity punk-rock party album like they just don’t make ’em anymore – think early Ramones, think MDC’s debut, think invite your mates over and rock hard all weekend.

GET FUCKED opens with “6L GTR,” a swingeing takedown of a speed-crazed status-symbol driver – a critique piqued when Eamon spotted the titular licence plate in an airport carpark. “I don’t even know if the car itself was actually a six-liter GTR or anything,” he chuckles. “To be honest with you, I don’t even know what a car like that would look like! I can’t drive! That was the thing, we were just trying to get into this dude’s head.” The video was made by animator and illustrator Marco Imov who spent days creating the band in character form. “They hinted that it would be cool if instead of being directly about the car, it should be about the band wanting the car,” explains Marco. “From there it kind of wrote itself down.”

The more you listen to it, the more you realize that there was only one plausible title for this second Chats album. After all the incarceration and boredom, The Chats are in peak match fitness to deliver the excitement we all crave for the months ahead.

WATCH VIDEO FOR “STRUCK BY LIGHTNING”

GET FUCKED TRACKLIST
1. 6L GTR
2. Struck By Lightning
3. Boggo Road
4. Southport Superman
5. Panic Attack
6. Ticket Inspector
7. The Price of Smokes
8. Dead on Site
9. Paid Late
10. I’ve Been Drunk In Every Pub In Brisbane
11. Out On The Street
12. Emperor of the Beach
13. Getting Better

THE CHATS TOUR DATES
Mon. Jun. 27 – Paris, FR @ La Maroquinerie
Tue. Jun. 28 – Brussels, BE @ La Botanique
Fri. Jul. 1 – Werchter, BE @ Rock Werchter 2022
Mon. Jul. 4 – Amsterdam, NL @ Melkweg
Tue. Jul. 5 – Berlin, DE @ SO36
Wed. Jul. 6 – Hamburg, DE @ Moltow Backyard
Thu. Jul. 7 – Cologne, DE @ Gebäude
Fri. Jul. 22 – Adelaide, AU @ Adelaide Showground
Fri. Jul. 29 – Luxembourg, LU @ Rotondes
Sat. Oct. 8 – Sacramento, CA @ Aftershock Festival

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[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Arp releases title track from his upcoming “New Pleasures” album due July 15, 2022.

Today, composer/producer Alexis Georgopoulos (Arp) has announced New Pleasures, a new album slated for release on July 15th. With the record,Arp sculpts angularities into fresh, alluring shapes, expanding and contracting song form into brain-teasing sound design. The sensation the music offers is almost rubbery; it makes you feel as if you could flex, bend and squeeze your body inside out – a vivid, deconstructed take on high-definition pop, avant-garde, and dance music forms. Drawing on the promise of futurism, New Pleasures reflects the slipperiness of time, the multidirectional, non-linearity of memory; how our minds shift millisecond to millisecond from past to present to future and back again.

Lead single “New Pleasures” comes alongside a striking video directed by acclaimed filmmaker Adinah Dancyger.

“That space between idea and reality, fact and fiction—which drives ‘New Pleasures’—is so often inhabited by commerce, which conjures our fantasies for us,” Georgopoulos explains. “And there we find desire. For connection, luxury, distinction. We think we’re immune to its psychology because we’re conscious of it, but in some ways, it drives everything.”

New Pleasures is the second chapter in Arp’s ZEBRA trilogy and advances the narrative begun with 2018’s acclaimed ZEBRA; pastoral in mood, expansive in style, the record acted as a dawn on a nascent, Edenic landscape, reminiscent of a beautiful, long-lost Fourth World album. In this world, the music approximated the patient cadence of geological time – the way time suspends when you watch a river in motion. There was, nonetheless, the presence of something alien on the horizon.

Now, Arp drops us deep into the grid of the city. New Pleasures fast-forwards a few centuries, locating listeners in a post-industrial Sprawl (to borrow an expression from William Gibson’s Neuromancer) of concrete and glass, imbuing the album with the flinty glow of commerce, the sleek rhythms of industrialization, and the cool finesse of brutalism. The result is a collection of futuristic pop interiors with glinted exteriors; a prismatic inquiry into machine sentience, the economy of desire, and myriad forms of possession.

“Sometimes the most alien thing is simply seeing what we take for granted from a slightly different angle.” – Arp

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Brijean announces new EP out August 05, 2022 and premieres new single – “Shy Guy.”

Brijean announces their new Angelo EP (out August 5th on Ghostly International) with lead single “Shy Guy” and new tour dates. Angelo, named after Brijean Murphy‘s 1981 Toyota Celica, features nine songs Brijean have crafted and carried with them through a period of profound change, loss, and relocation. It finds percussionist/singer Murphy and multi-instrumentalist / producer Doug Stuart processing the impossible the only way they know how: through rhythm and movement.

The months surrounding the acclaimed release of Feelings, their full-length Ghostly International debut in 2021 which celebrated tender self-reflection and new possibilities, rang bittersweet with the sudden passing of Murphy’s father and both of Stuart’s parents. In a haze of heartache, the duo left the Bay Area to be near family, resetting in four cities in under two years. Their to-go rig became their traveling studio and these tracks, along with Angelo, became their few constants. Whereas Feelings formed over collaborative jams with friends, Angelo’s sessions presented Murphy and Stuart a chance to record at their most intimate, “to get us out of our grief and into our bodies,” says Murphy.

Like much of Angelo, lead single “Shy Guy” offers levity and movement in spite of the sorrow, and is a motivational anthem for the wallflowers among us. Murphy sets up the daydream: “We are in junior high, we’re on the dance floor, what’s going down, who is dancing, who is not, how are we gonna make them dance?” The narrator, the MC, hypes up the room as conga-driven rhythms bounce between languid synth and guitar lines. “Show me how to move…I feel something…I know you feel it too,” Murphy sings sweetly, calling back to the opening lines of Feelings, and this time the audience chants it back.

Stream “Shy Guy”

Pre-order/pre-save Angelo EP

Brijean Tour Dates
Sat. June 25 – Denver, CO @ Color Field
Thu. Aug. 11 – San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
Sat. Aug. 13 – Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon
Wed. Aug. 17 – Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere Rooftop
Fri. Aug. 19 – Sun. Aug. 22 – Long Pond, PA @ Elements Festival
Sat. Aug. 27 – Mexico City, MX @ Auditorio BlackBerry

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[Thanks to Patrick at Pitch Perfect PR.]

JayWood is “Just Sayin'” on his new single.

JayWood – the moniker of Winnipeg musician & songwriter Jeremy Haywood-Smith – announces his new album, Slingshot, out July 15th on Captured Tracks, and shares its lead single/video, “Just Sayin.” Since 2015, JayWood has captured the young writer’s journey of self-discovery and heartache through unique songwriting and an ever-evolving sound. After the loss of his mother in 2019 and a global standstill with multiple social crises throughout 2020, Haywood-Smith yearned for forward momentum. “The idea of looking back to go forward became a really big thing for me—hence the title, ‘Slingshot,’” Haywood-Smith explains. Feeling disconnected from his past and ancestry after the death of a parent, Haywood-Smith made a conscious effort to better understand his identity and unique Black experience living in the predominantly white province of Manitoba. Through a year of self-reflection and reconnection with his roots, Haywood-Smith has made the biggest leap forward for JayWood by simply looking back. Slingshot is a self-portrait of JayWood at his surface and his depths, merging fantasy scenarios, personal anecdotes, and infectious pop and dance instrumentals.

The narrative for Slingshot takes place in the span of one day. From the first track to the last track, JayWood takes you on a journey that touches on themes of childhood, religion, and identity. While writing and recording the album, Haywood-Smith put together a complex “script” mapping out all of the plot points, environments, characters that make up this surreal version of his real life. Musically, Haywood-Smith wrote and performed a bulk of the track’s instrumentations, but the LP has notable appearances from Canadian contemporaries Ami Cheon and Mckinley Dixon, and fellow Manitoban musician Kayla Fernandes who fronts the doom-metal band Vagina Witchcraft. One song was co-produced with Jacob Portrait of Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

Today’s “Just Sayin” was originally written by Haywood-Smith with the intention to be given to another artist to perform, but he pushed himself to expand his vocal range and embody the confidence that pop music requires for the track. “The song is about creating equal opportunity for people in need, and lending a helping hand if you can,” says Haywood-Smith. “It’s a super simple thought that I think could easily get overlooked, but having a catchy reminder like this might subliminally provoke some thought.”

Watch JayWood’s Video for “Slingshot”

Jeremy Haywood-Smith was born and raised in the Canadian prairies, spending most of his life in the city of Winnipeg. He taught himself how to write and record during the early days of the JayWood project, but has developed through challenging himself to never fear change. Despite the culturally homogenous nature of his hometown, Haywood-Smith takes inspiration from a wide range of Black performers and artists working in all genres and eras. For Slingshot, visionary artists like Kendrick Lamar inspired Haywood-Smith’s approach to storytelling and world-building. “I love Kendrick’s ability to pull from life experiences growing up and conveying a message that’s greater than himself,” says Haywood-Smith “This album felt like I was making something that I would want my younger self to hear.”

Pre-order Slingshot

Watch video for “God Is A Reptile” by JayWood

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