Pollyanna Blue - Ariana Delawari - Ora Cogan - Bandits on the Run
Bristol-based alt-rock two-piece Pollyanna Blue are pleased to announce the release of their upcoming debut studio EP ‘Trials and Tribulations’ on June 23rd 2023.
Formed in the summer of 2019, Pollyanna Blue is led by Zoe Collins (guitar and vocals) and Rich Earle (Bass and vocals). Although based in different cities, the pandemic forced the band to really utilise the digital age, writing tracks back and forth online before travelling to Bristol to complete them in person.
Their name was inspired by a self help book ‘Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway’, which talks about a nickname ‘Pollyanna’, typically given to a person who is deemed overly optimistic. That ethos, blended with the waves of difficult emotions life throws at you, creates a concept of musical juxtaposition within a 90s/00s alt rock atmosphere which sees the duo wield their self discovery, vulnerability and love of music to create something authentic and raw to connect with anyone experiencing some type of hardship.
Following up on the April release of their latest celebrated single Stray, comes their debut studio EP Trials & Tribulations, recorded with Ash Scott (Memorist, Harper, Aniimalia). The title of the EP was inspired by personal and abstract experiences, from the trials of being in a band that started right before a pandemic, to the personal tribulations of battling with your own mental health.
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Ariana Delawari is an Afghan-American musician, activist and filmmaker. Her film We Came Home (2013) documents her family, her travels to and from Afghanistan over a ten year period, in which Delawari recorded her first album. That album, Lion of Panjshir, was released on David Lynch’s record label to great acclaim.
The events that transpired during the recording of her new album, I Will Remember, were even more personally significant and traumatic, as Delawari’s mother and brother-in-law both passed away and she saw her home country fall to the Taliban. Delawari explains:
“I started to write about my mother, about living and dying, Earth and Heaven, Afghanistan and my life growing up in America, refugees, love of different forms, and about the social justice and environmental justice themes that my mom taught me about which shaped my own activism as well. I never could have imagined that COVID-19 would hit a few months before she died, and that I would lose her during quarantine. I’ll never forget the day I wheeled her up to a nurse in a hazmat suit at a sidewalk and couldn’t even kiss her goodbye.”
“I never could have imagined that just as I was finishing the album, a little over a year later, we Afghans would lose Afghanistan to the Taliban. Afghanistan is my whole heart, it is the cause of my entire lifetime and all of my activism. I am a very loud anti-Taliban Peace Activist, so the fall of the country was my biggest nightmare coming true.”
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Ora Cogan has announced the August 25 release of her new album Formless via Prism Tongue Records. Along with the announcement the cinematic singer-songwriter shares the VHS/Super 8 video for the first single “Cowgirl”, a haunted acid trip of intense sorrow, deep solitude, and dark nights of the soul.
“Cowgirl” is a psychedelic, country slow jam reckoning with social isolation in grief. The ghostly guitar lines blanket ethereal vocals to create a twilight landscape of deep solitude, setting the stage for show work or a saloon brawl.
Formless, finds beauty, absurdity, humor, and unlikely joy in the bleakest of times. Cogan’s smoky, psychedelic approach to gothic country and hazy folk merges with post-punk, groove, psych rock, and traditional balladry. With a singular voice as much sensation as sound, Ora Cogan seeks out new realities within the smoke-and-mirrors labyrinth of our cruel society.
“Writing this album was a very much a lifeline… transformative and healing,” Cogan recalled. “Re-calibrating an internal compass constantly thrown off by the magnetism of a deranged world.”
Raised by a photographer and a singer-songwriter on the islands of Canada’s Pacific coast, where she once again resides, Cogan shaped her approach to music far from big-city scenes. Her childhood home played host to a constant stream of artists as it served as a professional recording studio. Cogan absorbed a myriad of influences from Édith Piaf, Ladino and Rumbetico to Karen Dalton, and American country blues, all feeding into her glacial and cinematic yet tinglingly intimate sound.
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Known for their vivacious performance style, genre-defying sound, soaring harmonies, and ability to make music-magic happen everywhere from subway platforms to concert halls, Bandits on the Run kick off a tour with the release of “Radio” and an appearance at Milwaukee Summerfest, opening for Deer Tick and The Avett Brothers.
Formed upon a chance encounter while busking in the subways of New York City, Bandits on the Run have become modern troubadours, the flower children of the digital age. The Brooklyn-based indie-pop-Americana trio is anchored by three-part harmonies and eclectic instrumentation, including accordion, cello, melodica, and a suitcase-kick-drum. Since their first release, 2017’s, The Criminal Record, they’ve received accolades from NPR Music’s All Songs Considered, American Songwriter, NPR Weekend Edition, and the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project. Their most recent EP, 2021’s Now Is The Time, was produced by Ryan Hadlock (Brandi Carlile, The Lumineers). This year has seen a new phase in Banditry, with band members Adrian Enscoe, Sydney Shepherd, and Regina Strayhorn jointly producing their own recordings for the first time.
“‘Radio’ was written at a time when I felt like I was living in a funhouse mirror... I was dealing with intense feelings of anxiety, dissociation, and dread about the state of the world and the state of my place in it. Many songwriters talk about songwriting as therapy, and I suppose that's true in this case, though it felt a bit more like expelling demons -- and does simultaneously reveling and revolting in your own inner world of absurdity count as a coping mechanism? Who's to say? I do know the bones of this song poured out of me all at once, and afterward, I felt lighter, freer,” Shepherd says. “I shared it with Adrian and Regina the very day it was born, and their brilliant care and thoughts and arrangements crafted it into the beautiful wild entity it is today. We've performed this song out many times (after I got over the weirdness of singing a Bandits song without a cello in my hand), and many folks have come up to us after shows and expressed a kinship with this song, and gratitude for giving a safe space to work out some darkness and dance with their own skeletons.”
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