Quality Not Quantity: Renders - Arc Iris - La Legacie - Chain Wallet
Kelly McMichael (Renders) has this to say about the featured song and forthcoming EP - The song is my 'take back the night' anthem, inspired by Slutwalk, dedicated to empowering those of us who feel vulnerable walking at night, and to protest victim-blaming. It's the first track off my Self-titled EP. The EP is out July 8th.
On this EP, I am looking both inwards towards the emotional core and outwards to the dance floor. I write about the fluid and complex relationships we face - relationships tied to personal growth, inner struggles, and the multi-faceted world of human relations. This debut EP is about claiming space and demanding acceptance. Writing from an emotional intelligence; and singing for the fluid and tangled forces tied to nature. Keeping a keen ear to both classic and contemporary pop music.
There are four really cool songs on the EP and featured track 'Running Through The Night' is the opener. Beehive Candy featured Renders in the latter part of 2015 and we were impressed back then. Her music remains consistently pleasing and there is considerable variety packed into the new EP.
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Arc Iris - Kaleidoscope.Background - On August 19, the New England based Arc Iris will release a new album called Moon Saloon. Produced by the group and mixed by electronic producer David Wrench of FKA Twigs and Caribou fame, the album showcases beat-heavy melodies and textural, groove-riding rhythms.
Lead singer and lyricist Jocie Adams, Tenorio-Miller, and drummer Ray Belli form the core of Arc Iris, all virtuosic musicians in their own right. Adams spent eight years as a key member of indie darlings The Low Anthem, effortlessly zipping from hammer dulcimer to clarinet to bass to vocals, sometimes barely pausing to take a breath. As the band members see it, Moon Saloon works like a song cycle that parallels the arc of everyman’s passage through modern day dilemmas. According to Adams: “The album is meant to be cathartic. There’s an imbalance in everyone’s lives. When there’s often so much going on, we yearn for simplicity.”
The album starts with “Kaleidoscope”, mimicking a kind of fanciful stroll down the street, and ends with the title track, a delicate soliloquy in a strange, desolate landscape. The album sometimes offers a sharp counterpoint to the mean-spirited nature of current American political discourse. One example is “Paint with the Sun,” a paean to those who help others in need. Soaring over each song is Adams’ ethereal voice, often joined in close harmonies with other members of the band.
Tour dates:
7/5: Brooklyn, NY - C'mon Everybody
7/12: Brooklyn, NY - C'mon Everybody
7/19: Brooklyn, NY - C'mon Everybody
7/21: New Haven, VT - Cafe Nine
7/26: Brooklyn, NY - C'mon Everybody
9/9: Elizabethtown, NY - Otis Mountain Get Down
'Kaleidoscope' suggests there will be considerable quality across the awaited album. Production is superb and the musicianship is quite stunning. Add to this the exquisite vocals, and waiting another couple of months for the rest seems a bit of a tease.
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La Legacie - Dinner. Background - La Legacie is an award winning band of 5 with Vermillion and SouFire. La Legacie is based out of Northern France and are all English except their drummer, Baptiste who is French and their Lead guitarist and Pro Engineer, Benoit (who is also French, but completely bilingual), making La Legacie a bilingual band.
La Legacie has their our own recording studio which they create classics out of. Originally setup purely for writing and recording songs for the band, but now they are opening it up for others to use. (www.dusktodawnstudios.com) Dinner is La Legacie's latest single, described as a cheeky song.
'Dinner' may be 'cheeky' however it's one really good listen. The band are clearly making good use of their own studio, and there is plenty of room on Beehive Candy for good quality music that can add a smile anytime.
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Background - You can’t deny that there is something sorrowful behind the Bergen-based, lo-fi dream/psych pop trio Chain Wallet, and you can’t hide that their music suits the environment wherein it was created. It may be a cliché that it always rains in the band’s hometown, but when you play Chain Wallet’s self-titled debut album, it’s not too difficult imagine the mist hanging heavily over their indie dystopian vision of Bergen.
Even though feelings of nostalgia and melancholy lurk in the Scandinavian shadows, it’s not difficult to find indie-pop gold in its purest form, glittering below the heavy layers of synth and reverb. Tracks like ‘Shade’ and ‘Abroad’ have an up-tempo urgency to them which calls to mind bands like Motorama, whereas other dreamy psych ballads like ‘Muted Colours’ and ‘Stuck In The Fall’ occupy a rich and hazy middle ground between Diiv and Wild Nothing.
On their debut album, Chain Wallet explore themes of betrayal, idleness and crushed dreams against the backdrop of an existential breakdown; The album is loosely based in the same universe, and portrays different aspects of the quarter-life crisis, ensuring that ‘Chain Wallet’ hits on a visceral, teenage level, amongst the shimmer and haze of the lo-fi soundscape that they conjure.
Frode Boris from the band explains the band’s ethos and sound - “We want to capture the acute distress of an afflicted character; his self-indulgent pity, gradual loss of touch with reality and his forlorn attempts on returning to normal life. The abrupt disintegration unveils interesting tensions between urgency and inertia. The album is about fragmented memories, unfulfilled ambitions and the quiet whisper of a stranger.” Self-title debut album due out 7th Oct 2016 via Jansen Plateproduksjon.
Having read the bands promo material I was left wondering what to expect. 'Muted Colours' is actually a pretty bright song, with lot's of dreamy vibes and psychedelic leanings. The bands brand of Indie pop, has another fan.
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