T. Hardy Morris - Bandicoot - Good Morning TV - Doctor Lo
T. Hardy Morris is set to return with The Digital Age of Rome on June 25th via the New West Records imprint Normaltown Records. The 10-song set was produced by Adam Landry (Deer Tick, Rayland Baxter) and mixed by engineer Nate Nelson. It follows the Diamond Rugs and Dead Confederate member’s 2018 acclaimed Dude, The Obscure.
After touring Dude, The Obscure, Morris had 13 new songs demoed for a new album. He was excited to get his band together to rehearse the songs before hunkering down in the studio to record...then the pandemic hit. Sequestered at his Athens, GA home with his family, Morris, like most everyone else in the past year, mulled over what was truly important to him and in response, crafted an entirely new set of songs. Enlisting a group of musicians including Drive-By Truckers drummer Brad Morgan, singer-songwriter Faye Webster and many others, Morris pulled no punches with his mesmerizing lyrics and hazy brand of southern glam rock.
Looking directly inward and captivated by the sobering realities of the pandemic, Morris has composed one of his most personal works yet. He tackles the well-worn anxieties of the past year as pandemic and political divisions ravaged America. The Digital Age of Rome is more direct than Morris has ever been and is one of his boldest records yet. Unapologetic and brutally honest, it is a necessary diary for an uncomfortable time that continues to unfold.
Morris remains Athens, Georgia’s foremost purveyor of dynamic rock-and-roll-songwriting and his blend of poetic southern outlaw storytelling is delivered in a haunting vocal howl. The sonic energy and raw emotion in his music captures the same call to adventure that helped launch other Athens-born bands (including R.E.M., B-52’s, Vic Chesnutt, The Drive-By Truckers, The Elephant 6 Collective, Pylon, and The Glands before him) and put the artsy college town on the map. Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood described Morris’ songwriting as, “distilling that subtle truth down to its very essence and expressing it in a way that cuts through the bullshit...I was immediately blown away.
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For Bandicoot "Worried Blues inhabits a world of paranoia, born from a fear of lost love. It carries you down labyrinthine streets like a nightmarish memory, with a contagious strutting rhythm which never lets you stop moving along with it.”
Never missing a beat or taking time to catch their breath Bandicoot are back with a new and impressive single.
‘Worried Blues’ starts with forceful piano chords and an anguished emotional vocal from Rhys Underdown, channeling John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band primal scream as a voice from the dark. When ‘Worried Blues’ intro releases into a riff full of Talking Heads strutting art rock/ dance punk directness it leaves no doubt, Bandicoot are ‘The Sound of Young Wales!’.
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Good Morning TV started in 2016 with a first self titled EP, released by pop diggers Requiem pour un Twister, that managed to echo until miles away from their homeland, France.
At the time a solo adventure of Bérénice Deloire, the project progressively became a band as Barth Bouveret (producer for both the EP and the album), Thibault Picot (Brace! Brace!) and Hugo Dupuis joined their forces, guided by mutual harmony.
After two years of writing together, the quartet isolated itself in a peaceful home of the south of France in order to achieve their first album 'Small Talk' to be released on Géographie Recs (Marble Arch, Paper Tapes, Born Idiot). 'Small Talk' is born in this rough temporary studio, that rather resembled a weird laboratory.
Its singular material, along with a contemporary production that both enhance a bold songwriting are casually passed by familiar choruses. With this record, Good Morning TV paints a melancholic portrait of daily disillusions and claims its own vision of pop, somewhere between Broadcast, Deerhoof or The Olivia Tremor Control.
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Doctor Lo (Faber), formerly of celebrated jam band God Street Wine, shared the title track from his upcoming folk/Americana-leaning LP Claiborne Avenue last Friday. Faber is set to celebrate the release with a limited run of live shows, including a sold-out performance at Albany, NY's The Hollow on June 18 (full dates below).
June 18 - The Hollow - Albany, NY
June 20 - Gabe-Gate - Sussex, NJ
June 22 - The Tap Shack - Duck, NC
June 23 - The Tap Shack - Duck, NC (two nights!)
Doctor Lo Faber’s music exudes the warmth, grit, and enchantment of New Orleans — a city he’s called home for the past decade. A listen to “Claiborne Avenue,” the title track off his new album, reveals a number of specific NOLA settings: there’s the obvious, the street for which the song is named, as well as the iconic Magazine Street. There’s also a hat tip of sorts to The Neville Brothers, with a reference to the “Pocky Way beat;” and it name-checks Louis Armstrong, Mr. Bienville (Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the “Father of New Orleans”), and Mr. Claude Tremé (for whom the Tremé neighborhood of NOLA is named).
If it sounds a bit like a history lesson in song, well, it is. And this historical focus is fitting, given that Dr. Faber (or Doctor Lo, as he’s known in the music world) has his Ph. D. in American History, is a former history professor, and published a book about New Orleans in 2013 entitled Building the Land of Dreams. “Some of the songs are united by being my experience of living here in New Orleans for about nine years now,” Lo explains. And while he notes that his music “is not New Orleans-y,” one can’t help but almost instantly feel transported to the Crescent City while listening to it.
Seemingly a product of the pandemic – said track speaks of the “tourists [who] left without a trace” – Claiborne Avenue (the song and the album) is both observational and introspective at once. It sees Doctor Lo reflecting on the past through a nostalgic lens with a hint of regret (“I broke the rules and I paid the cost / You know nothing comes free”), and the refrain “Who knows what you might catch in the air” takes on more meanings the longer you listen.
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