Oslo Twins - Jill Andrews - Charlie Kaplan - Blanco White
Bristol born dream-pop outfit Oslo Twins have released the title track from their upcoming debut EP 'Back To Nothing'. The new EP will be released on 12" vinyl and digitally on 28th July via Fascination Street Records, a new label founded by producer Ali Chant (Yard Act, Perfume Genius, Aldous Harding, Katy J Pearson) in partnership with Bristol's Factory Studios.
The band's upcoming debut EP 'Back To Nothing' is subtly influenced by dance, industrial and lo-fi music of the 80s and 90s, adorned with distinctive, hooky pop melodies, all connected by a sense of distance and the tension between unity and isolation.
New single and EP title track “Back To Nothing” is lyrically suggestive of romantic loss, yet its steady rhythm and bright legato synths evoke a sense of calm acceptance. The violin courtesy of Tom Connolly (Quade) adds a melancholic folk depth, before the song arrives as its rich, euphoric climax. “I wouldn’t say it was about longing, but the stage after,” says Eric. “I wrote the lyrics by the River Avon in Bristol on a warm evening. It’s a melancholic, reflective song.”
Speaking more on its inspiration, vocalist Claudia said: "Sometimes you know that something is coming to an end, but you’re not quite there yet - you’re in the mournful, wistful transition period. There’s a sense of steady movement in both the lyrics and the music, but it’s ambiguous whether it represents progress or surrender."
Led by songwriters Claudia Vulliamy and Eric Davies, completed by Ed Lyness (keys), Will Snelling (bass/guitar) and Luke Brown (drums), over the past 18 months Oslo Twins have taken the London and Bristol live music scenes by storm, supporting acts such as Blondshell, The Comet Is Coming, The Last Dinner Party, Folly Group, English Teacher, Do Nothing and Honeyglaze.
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Nashville singer-songwriter Jill Andrews just unveiled her new single “Better Life” off her forthcoming album Modern Age (out August 18th on Vulture Vulture/Tone Tree). The nucleus to Modern Age and the song that inspired the record, “Better Life” finds Andrews grieving the loss of a “golden-haired beauty queen” to addiction, wishing there had been another path. The track also features guest vocals from fellow Nashville favorite Becca Mancari. Holler debuted the track and called it “a delicious slice of soft 70s country pop that brings to mind the sadder moments of Golden Hour or the luscious introspective dream pop of Weyes Blood.”
"I traveled back to my hometown in East Tennessee after hearing the news of a childhood friend who had passed away after a long battle with addiction,” stated Andrews. “While I was there, I swung by our old neighborhood. I drove by her house and walked to the bus stop where we used to stand on all of those cold, dark mornings together. I had known her since second grade. She was with me at the AMC Theater when I saw Titanic for the first time, crying into the same box of popcorn. She was with me when I smoked my first cigarette (one of her Grandmother’s Benson and Hedge’s 100’s that she had sneakily lifted from some mystery drawer).
She was with me the day that I decided to see if the fire extinguisher worked on the school bus and promptly sprayed white foam all over my friend’s and new found enemies’ heads. It turns out it worked very well. Standing there as an adult, at the bus stop, I was struck by how close we had lived to each other. If I turned left, I could see my house, and if I turned right, I could see hers. It was startling how different our lives were, even back then. And how our paths grew further and further apart as we got older. So far apart that we really didn’t recognize each other anymore.”
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This week we're announcing the new Charlie Kaplan LP due on September 15 and follow up to 2020's excellent Sunday, and we're presentling "Talkin' French," a jangly, blissful ode to his wife, with a brief instrumental detour through outer space.
My wife’s first language was French, and I’ve always felt a little like the Gomez to her Morticia. When this song came together, I was incredulous it was about her: I’d never written a love song before for fear it’d fall short of my feelings. But with her as the slender verse, me as the smitten chorus, and the bridge as the life we escape to together, I finally feel like I got it. Of particular note is Winston Cook-Wilson’s gorgeous, out-of-time passage, recorded at the piano in my childhood home, where he is momentarily relieved of the song’s jangling gravity before falling back to earth and into form.
Singer-songwriter Charlie Kaplan’s releases play like tours through a musical memory palace. The Office Culture bassist’s guitar-based songs are overrun with ear-catching gestures redolent of classic rock radio hits, Americana standards, baroque pop micro-symphonies, and more-music that shaped him personally and artistically at a formative age. Ten years ago-during a time when the logistics of making an album seemed impossible-Kaplan began to catalog his acoustic phone demos around themes, feels, and personal associations. Eventually, he created a roadmap for an entire imagined discography. His new LP, Country Life in America, contains the earliest entries into this canon, painting a picture of a young man bursting with ideas, not certain where to channel his energy and not overly worried about it.
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Blanco White has announced his new album Tarifa will be released 29th September via Nettwerk (Miya Folick, Matt Maltese), and has shared the lead single and title track. The new album release will coincide with a headline run across the US, Canada and Europe this autumn, culminating in a momentous homecoming at the Barbican in London on 21st November.
Tarifa is the second full length album from the project of Londoner Josh Edwards following his 2020 debut On the Other Side which has since seen over 130 million streams and led to tours with Jose Gonzalez and Gregory Alan Isakov as well as hugely popular world tours of his own, including a sold out night at London's famous Union Chapel. New album Tarifa was written predominantly in the town of the same name in southern Spain; the southernmost tip of Western Europe just 5 miles from Morocco. Self-producing, Josh also collaborated extensively with afro-jazz collective Nubiyan Twist’s percussionist Pilo Adami (from Cascavel a town in the southeast of Paraná a southern Brazil state below São Paulo) who co-produced most of the record.
Nathan Jenkins aka Bullion (Westerman, Nilüfer Yanya) also contributed back in London with additional production in the final stages. It was recorded between Tarifa and Blanco White's home studio in London, almost entirely on a mobile recording rig.
The album's title track and newly released single "Tarifa” was the first to surface from the album's writing sessions in Spain, following a debilitative chronic pain diagnosis. Imbued with the sunshine and restless energy of Tarifa’s famously windy climate, the song is adorned with swirling electronics and punctuated by more organic percussion elements, all tied together by Edwards' inviting vocal and his intricate, finger-picked work on the charango - a Bolivian instrument in the guitar family - made by luthier Juan Achá Campos.
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