Charlotte Carpenter - Louie & The Wolf Gang - Sara Lew - Fake A Smile - Zito - MOONRiiVR
Spinning Plates is the first track taken from East Midland’s singer-songwriter Charlotte Carpenter’s debut album due late 2023. “There’s a lot to unpack in this song” explains Charlotte, “from societal pressures on the roles you are meant to fulfill as a woman, alongside the struggle of keeping up a relentless positivity to being a musician – and how impossible it is to ever get the balance between the two.”
Born out of being overwhelmed, anxious, and it fight or flight mode, this inner turmoil acted like lighter fluid on the song which Charlotte describes as “Erupting out of nowhere and finished in one day,” with its thundering bluesy edges and burning refrain “I can’t find a way out, a way out, a way out.” Spinning Plates is a defiant return with a background story offering a stark reminder of the prevailing sexism and exploitative power structures with the music industry.
Following a successful run of early EPs, championed by BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 2 and Virgin Radio, with tastemakers like The Line of Best Fit through to rock bible Classic Rock praising Charlotte’s raw, soulful songwriting with comparisons to the likes of Cream, Cat Power, Bonnie Riatt and PJ Harvey, Charlotte set out to make her debut album. The following years saw a period of stagnation, frustration and crippling self-doubt caused by a domineering, autocratic producer.
The experience is told in Charlotte’s new album, one she re-wrote and re-recorded after parting ways with the producer, regaining confidence and excelling in the expansive creative freedom previously denied to her. The result as we see on first single Spinning Plates is not only a warning tale but a powerful cry of defiance and strength.
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Worldwide airplay, a rapidly growing fan base, and performances at renowned festivals and relevant clubs: Louie & The Wolf Gang from Baden/Switzerland have gained attention in the rockabilly-scene and beyond.
After gaining wordwide airplay the trio now release «Betty» as their new single on Friday, May 19. The band will celebrate this new track with two concerts on the weekend, as start of several upcoming live-shows in Switzerland and Germany:
'Betty' tells the story of a romantic ride in a Cadillac that abruptly ends somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It has become a favorite among the live audience. Once again, Louie & The Wolf Gang demonstrate in this song their ability to combine danceable rockabilly in the style of Stray Cats, rockin' country reminiscent of Buck Owens and Johnny Cash, with modern neo-rockabilly in the style of Restless.
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From her long-awaited forthcoming new album “LOUD”, “Out of Nowhere” is about deep love for the people you are close to and connected with. It is about deep cohesion and the relationships we can have together and with each other and it is about losing them. It is about sadness and powerlessness and it's about having to stand on your own two feet and to learn to feel again and carry the beauty we have from each other with us further, even when life doesn't last forever.
In a similar way, Sara Lew's upcoming album “LOUD” is all based around the development of life. It’s about when young people become adults and experience personal confrontations with the past, in which family stories of shame and taboo culture arise from the subconscious. It explores how to rein in anger and grief, to keep your head above water and be a role model for your own children when life all falls apart and how to protect love and togetherness when everyday life rolls on. Essentially, it’s an album about living in the present moment with love for life's stories, memories, moments of happiness but also life’s unforeseen, manifold trip wires.
On the album Sara Lew's musical embrace is intimate, present and raw, with guitar sequences that scratch the enamel of the heart and hit the diaphragm. Sara writes heartbreaking, melodic songs about the trembling complexities of human life and unfolds her own Nordic brand of melancholic, melodic rock. Her style is a hybrid of singer-songwriter, alternative rock, jazzy improv and indie lo-fi which can hook the listener in from many different angles.
On “Out of Nowhere” the music is played and arranged by Sara Lew (vocals and guitars), Anders Filipsen (keyboards/synth) and Jeppe Gram (drums). The track was recorded by, and in collaboration with, sound and studio engineers Troels Bech Jessen and Casper Nyvang Rask. It was produced by Sara Lew, and mixed-produced by Nis Bysted (Iceage & Choir of Young Believers), with mastering by Emil Thomsen.
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Having gained acclaim from areas such as The Line Of Best Fit, 10 Magazine, Fashionably Early and more on sunbleached debut single Prom Dress, rising Bouremouth based trio Fake A Smile once again stand out from the pack with attention grabbing second single, Don’t Stop. Taken from their upcoming debut EP Shoot Me To The Moon, the track sees them connect again with Mercury Award winning producer Gianluca Buccellati ( Arlo Parks,Biig Piig) on a grit-pop offering showcasing a more sombre tone than their summer ready debut. Speaking on the track, the band state:
"Don’t Stop" delves into the less breezy and more dark, grittier sound of our record collection. Topically current, the single channels new fangled cross-atlantic inspirations from the likes of early Verve and BRMC to the early aughts scenes of 'meet me in the bathroom'.
While working at a hotel in central London, members Jamie and Luca met producer and songwriter Gianluca Buccellati (Arlo Parks, Lana Del Rey, Biig Piig) by chance while he stayed at the hotel to attend and ultimately win the Mercury Prize in 2021. The band introduced themselves, igniting a kinship that resulted in the trio quitting their jobs and flying themselves out to Los Angeles to create their debut EP.
“Straight off the plane from LA, wearing a baggy Hawaiian shirt and cork hat, Gianluca walked through the doors off a bustling Tower Bridge Road into the hotel lobby, where behind the desk, Luca and I saw him walk in, sticking out like a sore thumb against the London commuters,” as frontman Jamie Kravos puts it.
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Emerging singer-songwriter Zito returns with her supplicating new single and video, “Please Don’t Leave Me” via FAMA Collective. Inspired by real life, “Please Don’t Leave Me” is a bluesy rock-fueled heartbreak ballad that mirrors the agony of the title’s plea. The story offers a glimpse into the critical moment of a relationship’s demise, sprinkled with lingering memories, thoughts of what could have been, pain, and the uncertainty of unspoken words which have been haunting Zito ever since. Diving deep into Zito’s roots, written in isolation in the Pennsylvania countryside, and recorded with close friends, the self-produced track draws from every authentic resource possible to say what wasn’t said then.
Speaking on the single, Zito shares: “The chorus to ‘PDL’ was one of those melodies that honestly comes to you in the moment, as the dust settles and you process what’s going on. The chorus was the plea repeating in my head. I worked on this song for ages, wrote multiple bridges and outros, and actually have a few different versions in storage. But I sang it to myself on long drives or sitting in airports until it was settled enough in my mind to record, produce, and be able to capture its message. She adds, “By that point, producing it was easy because I’d played it in my head thousands of times over. And when I had to record vocals, I revisited those old wounds, sang it out, and got it out of my system. It was incredibly rewarding.”
The accompanying visual brings to life the track’s emotion as a revolving reel of her travels across the US depicts a reminiscent memory, becoming the foreground to the lyrics all while eliciting a nostalgic feel. “I want the visual to feel like those glimpses of memory you flip through in your mind when you’re really haunted by something in the past that you can’t return to. It’s pretty fascinating how many memories we accumulate in our lives and how some of them are so sweet in the moment but end up being so sad to look back on.”
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MOONRiiVR is a brand new band from Toronto, by familiar musicians Gavin Gardiner (frontperson of JUNO-nominated indie-folk band The Wooden Sky) and “Champagne'' James Robertson (guitarist for Lindi Ortega and Dwayne Gretzky).
Listening to their debut album, aptly titled Vol. 1, is like entering an unfamiliar room down a long hallway, closing the door quietly behind you, and finding oneself lost in a different world, one where you’re not sure whether you’re looking forward, backward, or perhaps even into a mirror.
Their first single, “Blonde Hair Now” is a celebration of the small moments in our days that make up our lives – a beautiful homage to the gravity of the simple everyday decisions that shape our world. It invites listeners to imagine a world where you’re dancing in the RCA studios with the ghost of a young Elvis Presley or fast asleep between Richie Valens and Buddy Holly in the backseat of that ill-fated flight.
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