STRABE - Shelf Lives - The Pearl Harts - Kieli
STRABE have today dropped brand new single "All My Heart", which is available now on [PIAS] Recordings alongside a stunning video directed by Tom Furse (The Horrors). It introduces the musical and visual world behind the band’s upcoming debut album, having gone viral with first track "Best Worst Year" (which has surpassed over 10 million streams) and won widespread praise for debut mixtape JUVENOIA.
"All My Heart" summons the wistful alternative-pop of bands like The Cardigans or The Cranberries, alongside a keen ear for emotive, electronic and dance influences like Romy or Fred again.. Both uplifting and melancholic, on "All My Heart" STRABE aim to capture - they say - “when love feels so simple. Something wonderful that I (Angelica) realised when in my first queer relationship was how natural, easy and joyous loving as your authentic self can be.”
The video to "All My Heart" sees STRABE further explore new territory, as well as a water-theme that recurs throughout their upcoming work. Directed by Furse, the band’s seaside performance in Margate is replicated by a unique AI model, with the results blurring the line between fact, feeling and reminiscent of a live Matisse painting.
STRABE are alt-pop duo Angelica and Emmet, soundtracking those chaotic coming-of-age experiences with innate musical maturity. Angelica (originally from Scotland) met Emmet - who was born and raised in Ireland - in the smoking section of a Cork music festival: the pair quickly realized they represented the missing part of each other’s projects, but failed to swap numbers at the end of a long night. Both, in their own way, used STRABE (and the blossoming, unconventional friendship at the heart of it) to work through their own emotional journeys, which were vividly explored across debut mixtape JUVENOIA.
From the soon-to-be-prophetic "Best Worst Year" - which climbed to 10 million streams over the pandemic - to "Life On Pause" (channeling Gen Z’s suspended experiences of growing up over lockdown), here were songs variously affecting, euphoric and hugely accomplished. Having since moved to London, played their first ever live shows, and picked up support across BBC Introducing, 6Music and more, STRABE threw themselves into a brand new project which begins beguilingly with ‘All My Heart’. Watch out for more coming soon.
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Swiftly rising electro-punk two-piece Shelf Lives release new single "All The Problems" - which will feature on a new EP due for release this autumn. The new single follows NME describing the duo as "the extroverted electro-punk duo we need right now", and their recent stint across the UK in support of Cardiff band Panic Shack. "All The Problems" arrives ahead of a busy spring and summer of festival appearances at Liverpool Sound City, The Great Escape, Glastonbury, London Calling, FOCUS Wales, Sŵn Festival and more.
Co-produced by SPACE (Do Nothing, IDLES), "All The Problems” confronts the crisis of masculinity with one of Shelf Lives' most gentle, melodic choruses. “Tell me something you like about yourself,” the duo sing softly in unison, evoking a question therapists often ask and most people can’t answer. Seeking the reasons behind male rage, the track balances extreme acts of violence with the jarringly passive way the wider world processes them.
Speaking more on the release of the new single, the duo said: "To be vague about it, “All the Problems” is a casual chat about the suppression of emotions, specifically among those who identify as males and what it could lead to as a result. The track goes through the motions of seeking a reason behind the resulting rage and offsets extreme, sometimes violent, acts with the World's passive and unsettling way of dealing with them. There's nothing casual about the topic and events itself, yet, socially we've reached a ridiculous, dangerous place where we feel like in order to survive we need to be. Essentially, so we can... "get on with our day"."
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The opener of the band’s new album ‘Love, Chaos’, “Baby Chaos” is a powerful statement of intent from The Pearl Harts, igniting the starting fuse that winds its way into their explosive latest collection.
Produced by the band themselves, “Baby Chaos” sees retro-rock flourishes and a riotous no-holds-barred attitude prickling amongst raw rock’n’roll guitars and melodic punk sensibilities. The end result makes for a record that sounds like the warped lovechild of Bikini Kill, The Stooges and Tony Visconti, funnelled via the N.E.R.D school of production. Of the new track The Pearl Harts explain:
“Ever had that kind of love that feels so right but so wrong… it jitters in the gut but aches in the heart? A twin flame kind of mentality — this is what “Baby Chaos” is about. The kind of love that brings madness, codependency: feeling alive and out of control yet so comfortable at the same time. Relationships aren’t black and white… love can cause us to confront our shadow itself.”
With references to the David Lynch road-movie classic ‘Wild At Heart’, complete with the black leather jackets, ‘60s rockabilly chic, long drives, escapist desires, and romanticism; “Baby Chaos” arrives with an official video.
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Kieli is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter and composer Elin Pöllänen. Kieli’s artistic expression is inspired by her Swedish-Finnish-Karelian roots. On her multilingual debut album From Summer to Spring, due out on May 26th via Cognitive Shift (PJ Harvey & Harry Escott, Roger Goula), Kieli invites the listener to a cinematic soundscape that is simultaneously beautiful, ingenuous, uplifting, and melancholic.
For years, Pöllänen has worked as a researcher exploring human relations to other animals and nature. New single ‘O’ is a marching anthem for the power of grief with particular reference to mass extinction, a tragedy she says is “upheld by indifference and separation”. “I wanted ‘O’ to portray a sense of wonder for our planet and the impactful everyday encounters with nature that are often taken for granted,” she says. “The song processes complex emotions, such as a kind of modern nostalgia: a deep longing for an interconnected and living world - a world that already exists, but that we are at risk of losing due to our inability to act and join the movement that already exists,” she continues.
From Summer to Spring explores the emotions that arise in life-changing transitions; grief, exhaustion and worry, but also feelings of hope, gratitude and unconditional love. “From Summer to Spring is a very personal album that I wrote during a life-changing time,” explains Elin. It is a personal portrait of a daughter and her father during their last years together, as well as the experience of being a caregiver to someone who is disappearing, yet as close to you as they will ever be. “Amidst the fear, music really became the most attentive and merciful language that I could use to communicate with myself and explore my emotions so that I stayed resilient and open to life,” she explains.
Throughout the album’s nine songs, Kieli expertly blends cinematic indie-folk with neo-classical composition and swirling electronica, creating mystical and surreal soundscapes. Non-verbal and verbal vocals sung in Swedish, Finnish, English and the endangered Karelian language Livvi all help to evoke the many parallel feelings she experienced during this time.
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