Astrid Swan - Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters - Little Galaxies

Astrid Swan – Luxuries.

After delivering her much-loved singles ‘Not Your Mom’ and ‘Silvi’s Dream’ in recent months, Finnish singer and songwriter Astrid Swan continues the support for her new studio album ‘D/other’ with the warm and soaring new offering ‘Luxuries’.

Much like what we have heard so far, ‘Luxuries’ sees the artist transport us to a bright and atmospheric realm, filled with euphoric textures. The light and effervescent energy of her music creates a fresh and vivid alt-pop direction that compliments not only her sublime songwriting, but her bold and sweeping voice as well.

Speaking about the new release, Astrid said, “Time and life are the resources we run out of first, the most treasured luxuries. This is very clearly about being ill, knowing death is near and living life to the fullest while idealizing the state where one does not worry about each day and season because it may well be the last.”

Her new full-length ‘D/other’ finds Swan writing about motherhood, dreaming and sleeping – realising her most complete and personal musical statement yet. Composed over the course of the last five years, the stories Swan tells over the ten songs of ‘D/other’ cover themes of dream-states, mothering, loss, creativity, digital versus analogue, feminism and relationships. ‘D/other’ was produced by Swan herself. Her long-time collaborator Mikael Hakkarainen recorded and mixed the album. Along with Hakkarainen and Swan’s trusted musical partners Alina Toivanen, Veli Kauppinen and Johannes Salomaa, the Canadian visionary Owen Pallett also performs and arranges the strings for the album.

Continuing about the new record, Swan said, “I set out to write about mothering, being a daughter and a mother. I was informed by the simultaneous research process for my PhD which investigates maternal life writing in blogs and memoirs. The title D/other comes from this research. It is a mother/daughter in digital form, and a trans-affirmative concept which argues that mothering is done by anyone who performs care. In my songs, I wanted to explore sleeping and dreaming as states of unconsciousness which connect us to each other, and to different times and to those who are dead and that which is in the future. I wanted to explore the logic of the liminal and intra-active, that which slides and transforms. I focused on clear, comforting and uplifting lines, trying to crystallize what I do melodically. In this case the lyrical depths are presented in comforting pop structures.”

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Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters - Great Confession / Even Good Men Get the Blues.

As Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters reach the halfway point of their “deconstructed album” release with two more singles embodying the collection’s over-arching The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea concept, the singer-songwriter has chosen a pair of titles that offer complementary glimpses of parent-child relationships framed in contrasting musical settings.

“‘Great Confession’ was the first song I wrote after the birth of my daughter,” says Platt. “It carries a lot of the same themes that repeat on this album… growing up, growing old, learning more about what it means to be a parent and a child and a human. Rick Cooper plays the electric guitar, showcasing another one of his unsung talents.”

Indeed, Cooper’s contribution here fits perfectly into the song’s mellow, melancholy country-rock mood nestling next to Matt Smith’s pedal steel guitar as they glide over the bed of sustained organ chords and flashes of piano supplied by Kevin Williams and drummer Evan Martin. With its cold vocal start, swelling, steel-driven outro and meditative story line built around choruses that ask two different, yet equally wistful questions: 

“...now you're up at dawn just waiting on another great confession
don't it seem like there should be some kind of lesson?...”

“...now you're staring at the business end of all your bad decisions
don't it seem like there should be some kind of wisdom?"

Amanda Anne Platt · Great Confession / Even Good Men Get the Blues

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Little Galaxies - One with the Waking Sea (Album).

Little Galaxies has released their vibrant new album One with the Waking Sea, available to stream and download everywhere now. With unique instrument manipulation, emotive themes, and graceful lyricism, One with the Waking Sea is sure to entice any individual or crowd. The 10-song LP is being released on Coconut Spaceship Records.

Little Galaxies describes One with the Waking Sea as being inspired by “the turbulence of life,” just as the ocean is constantly moving and changing. “The album explores central themes like accepting fate, getting closer to what brings us joy, and learning how to co-exist in an ever-changing world that can throw us into the trenches at any moment,” explains lead singer Jeanna Fournier when describing how she translated her trauma to song.

The opening track, “Find Yourself in Orbit,” welcomes the sound of an ocean with crashing waves overcome by an ominous drone of a theremin, as if it is disrupting the calm ambiance. This sets up the overall tone for the entire album. The next track, “Waking Sea,” carries themes of both balance and uncertainty, inspired by the PTSD Fournier has experienced after a life-altering car wreck and her journey to acceptance. Adding to the intimate emotion in the song, Ken Oak brings on comforting cello alongside Phoebe Silva on the violin. These delicate and soulful instruments add to the deep-seated listening experience. Other songs to note are “Fate” and “It’s Natural,” which both carry motifs of accepting destiny and change. The listener is drawn in to appreciate the more profound meaning Little Galaxies conveys with Fournier’s powerful, soulful vocals accompanying mesmerizing instrumentation.

Little Galaxies · One with the Waking Sea

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Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters - Heavy Manners - We Were Promised Jetpacks - TeenCanteen - King Park - Jessica Smucker

Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters - Dallas / Reverie.

Since April, Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters have been releasing music from their upcoming collection, The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea, a concept suite built from songs recorded under the straitened circumstances of quarantine and envisioned as a “deconstructed album,” released, not as a package, but in a series of paired singles, with each pair drawing on both of the titular concept’s two sides. 

The latest, “Dallas” and “Reverie,” finds the Organic Records artist bearing down on unanswered questions, whether they’re framed in a slowly simmering country-rocker (“Dallas”) or by the more introverted, acoustic treatment of “Reverie.”

“‘Dallas’ is kind of a tribute to our old tour van, Toby (no vehicle of mine goes without a name),” Platt notes — though, as is often the case, the ostensive subject barely makes an appearance in the song’s lyric — ”and also to all that went on in the years I spent traveling the country in that van. 

It’s weird to look back on that time and realize how young I was for a lot of it. This is a song about feeling older but maybe not any wiser…or wiser just by virtue of understanding how little you know. The track features Kevin Williams on keys and my dad, Mark Platt, on harmonica.”

Amanda Anne Platt · Dallas

 

Amanda Anne Platt · Reverie

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Heavy Manners - Flamin' First (2021 Fresh Mix).

The reason for the release of the new mix is that Heavy Manners are featured in two new Ska-centric books! In Defense of Ska by Aaron Carnes and was released in May; Skaboom! An American Ska & Reggae Oral History by Marc Wasserman was released on July 27.

Heavy Manners formed in the early 80s and both headlined and played support slots at Chicago's earliest punk, Reggae, and new wave clubs, including Tuts and Park West. They opened for a wide array of national and international acts including The English Beat, The Clash, Third World, Jimmy Cliff, The Ramones, The Go-Gos, Grace Jones, and Peter Tosh, who produced tracks for the band that would appear on a 7" record and later a CD and 12".

Heavy Manners, who have played out sporadically in the last decade, is comprised of vocalist Kate Fagan, vox/sax/keyboard player Frankie Hill, drummer Shel Lustig, guitarist Mitch Kohlhagen, multi-instrumentalist and singer Kevin Smith and bassist Joe Thomas (who replaced original bass player Jimi Robinson, who passed away in 2018).

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We Were Promised Jetpacks - Not Me Anymore.

Scottish alt-rock trio We Were Promised Jetpacks today share a new cut from their forthcoming album Enjoy The View – single ‘Not Me Anymore’ showcases a different side to the band. Moving away from the complex guitar driven rock they’ve become known for, the track offers a change of pace and a glimpse into what to expect from Enjoy The View, which is released on 10th September via Big Scary Monsters.

Talking about the track, lead vocalist Adam Thompson says; “I started this song within a few days of us having finished recording our 4th album. I had felt completely lost leading up to recording that album but after finishing recording it, I began to feel like I was turning it around and that maybe everything was going to be ok. I didn’t necessarily feel it was going to be a song for a Jetpacks record but once we got into writing this album together, we felt it that it definitely had its place along side everything else we were working on. We loved our demo version of this song so kept it pretty true to that when recording it. All the vocals were a sort of stream of thought, and we kept it that way. We were originally thinking of putting this song in the middle of the record as a bit of an aural break but by the time of submitting the track list we couldn’t see it being anywhere else but first.”

Accompanying video by Adam Keene and Mathew Marchlewski also highlights the theme of change and progression. “The concept of not being yourself anymore evokes an image that never ceases to change. An evolution of life in motion. Labels peel away and leave the underneath unrecognisable. That’s where we connected with the song, and that’s where we went” they said of the video.

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TeenCanteen - How We Met (Cherry Pie).

To mark the five year anniversary of their lauded debut album, Say It All With A Kiss, Glasgow four-piece TeenCanteen have decided to unleash This Is How It Starts, the collection of recordings that should have been their debut album four years prior.

This Is How It Starts is a raw, fresh exciting record that captures the buzz that surrounded TeenCanteen when they first burst onto the scene, it’s a record full of joyous eccentricities, delightful pop drenched harmonies and some Scottish indie pop royalty cameos to boot (Duglas T. Stewart (BMX Bandits) and Eugene Kelly (The Vaselines)), but ultimately it’s the sound of friends making music together, finding their feet and gives huge insight into the begins of an exciting band.

TeenCanteen are Glasgow formed four-piece known for their sticky soda pop harmonies, stomping beats and classic pop sensibilities, they were championed by BBC 6Music’s Marc Riley and went on to release SAY Award long listed album Say It All With A Kiss (2016) and acclaimed EP Sirens (2017).

Lead vocalist/synth player Carla Easton comments: “Having written and released five albums I can look back at this with different eyes and I think it’s good, it’s energetic, it’s the sound of four friends in a room having fun learning as they go and discovering how they sound together. This Is How It Starts is a key part of our journey and story that has been lost and overlooked.

TeenCanteen · HOW WE MET (CHERRY PIE)

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King Park - Coffee Cheques.

King Park has been turning out mercurial, high-contrast indie rock since they released their 2017 breakout track, “Stay.” Gritty and lush, the quartet’s sound mirrors the antitheses of their hometown, Hamilton, Ontario: on the one hand, blue-collar and raw, and, on the other, artful and lovely.

Following their self-released debut EP, The Light I Can’t See, King Park won the 97.7 HTZ-FM’s Rock Search 2018 contest, which helped launch other Canadian rock groups like Finger Eleven, the Trews, and Glorious Sons. The basement-to-ceiling intensity of their live show has since continued to earn them a growing and devoted following across southern Ontario.

At the heart of the group you’ll find childhood friends and musical co-conspirators Timon Moolman (vocals, guitar) and Tyler Heemskerk (bass, vocals), rounded out more recently by guitarist Brenden Campbell and the animated Nate Wall on drums.

Sneak peeks of their upcoming 2021 full-length, Everett, show the quartet exploiting its strengths. Guitars chime, drums thwack, and Moolman’s broken-up baritone—which often veers into shouted speak-sing—is ornamented one minute by barber shop harmonies, and the next by barstool gang vocals. Songs like “This is the End,” “Stuck in the Middle,” and the title track set up camp in that familiar moment after life has fallen apart, and before a way forward seems possible. King Park’s Everett promises a collection of elegies for ordinary, apocalyptic losses.

King Park · Coffee Cheques

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Jessica Smucker - Dinosaurs.

Lancaster, PA-based singer-songwriter Jessica Smucker is gearing up for the release of a new single, an irrepressibly catchy slice of synth pop called “Dinosaurs.”  The song balances melodic buoyancy provided by her five-piece band, with markedly darker themes that reflect a nagging sense of despair for a future that to her resembles a “slow-rolling apocalypse.”  

Indeed, the song wastes no time illustrating that fact as the opening lyric reads: “I thought the world would end in blood and bones...” Dark stuff for sure, but the song is not without a sense of optimism as well.  Ultimately, Smucker chooses living in the moment and embracing the hope found in nurturing a home and family and finding a fragile peace.  “Dinosaurs” will be released digitally on August 13.

Recorded at Kinsey Audio in Lancaster, PA and co-produced by Chad Kinsey and Matt Thomas, “Dinosaurs” features Thomas on synthesizers and organ, Mike Bitts (The Innocence Mission) on bass, and Paul Murr (Jeffrey Gaines, Fauna Flora) on drums. Megan Woodland Hewitt (The Wild Hymns) and Keith Wilson (Movies With Heroes) provide layered vocal harmonies and counter-melodies. The track was mixed by sound engineer and singer-writer Steve Ward (Cherry Twister), and mastered by Grammy-nominated sound engineer Philip Shaw Bova (Feist, Devendra Banhart, Angel Olsen).

The video, showcasing a stylized and slightly surreal version of her home life, was directed by Joe Terranova and produced by Reverie.

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Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters - Render Sisters - Violent Vickie - the Slowinks -

Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters - New York / Open Up Your Door.

There’s no doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has challenged every artist to think differently about their work, but Amanda Anne Platt and her band, The Honeycutters, are probably one of the few inspired to work on an innovative project at once more sweeping and yet more intimate than anything they’d previously done — a concept suite built from songs recorded under the straitened circumstances of quarantine and envisioned as a “deconstructed album,” released, not as a package, but in a monthly series of paired singles.

For the first Organic Records release, Platt has chosen two numbers — "New York” and “Open Up The Door” — that exemplify the project’s essential concept of duality and its ultimate title: The Devil / The Deep Blue Sea. As she explains, “I’ve always liked that saying. For me, the two groupings of songs represent different sides of the creative process, with The Devil including the more manic, upbeat, outgoing — maybe even grotesque at times — and The Deep Blue Sea being more reclusive, contemplative, understated. As an artist I’ve spent a long time judging myself when I’m at either extreme, so it’s nice to have an opportunity to celebrate the balance they provide one another. As a good friend of mine put it, ‘Sometimes you’re drowning in The Deep Blue Sea and you need The Devil to pull you out.’”

With Evan Martin’s nervously insistent cymbal taps, rolling keyboard and steady drums underpinning a pared-down, two-chord progression, “New York” offers listeners their first glimpse of The Devil — and a bit more of a pop sensibility than is usual for Platt. It’s a note of departure, a message of admiration, and an image-laden, poetic love letter to her home state that carries plenty of punch in Matt Smith’s electric guitar and bassist Rick Cooper’s simmering bass lines.

“‘New York’ is a song I wrote when my parents were selling the house that I grew up in,” the singer recalls. “I hadn’t lived there for a long time at that point, but it came at a time when I was saying goodbye to a lot of people and places that had meant home and comfort to me, and it just felt like kind of a final break from something I had been. This makes sense to me as the first ‘A side’ for just that reason- goodbyes sometimes make the best beginnings. We’re not in Kansas anymore… or New York.”

The first “B side,” on the other hand, serves up a more melancholy meditation on creativity, artistic ambition and, perhaps, the enforced idleness of quarantine. In "Open Up Your Door" the mournful sobs of the steel guitar (Smith), and the warm, R&B flavor of Martin’s electric piano echo Platt’s wistful tones, as she looks back at “all the miles I tried to fly on broken wings” to recall “those hungry days we had, And dreams that kept us up ‘cause we wanted them so bad.” And while the narrator offers that “tonight I think I’d trade every memory I made to get that back,” she still offers a wistful toast to hope as the song subsides into an instrumental coda that is somehow sparse and lush at the same time.

Still, Platt’s wit emerges when she notes, “‘Open Up Your Door’ in title alone would have been a good kicker for the B sides. It’s a call to the muse — don’t forsake me, I’m still here and I have all this shit to make sense of.” And irreverent though it may be, that’s a sentiment that augurs well for the entire series to come, The Devil / The Deep Blue Sea.

Amanda Anne Platt · New York / Open Up Your Door

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Render Sisters - Black Roses.

Pop-country duo Render Sisters from Pine Bluff, Arkansas continues to grow as up-and-coming singer-songwriters with their harmonious new upbeat single “Black Roses,” available across all major digital music platforms (linktr.ee/rendersisters) on Friday, April 2. However, fans can listen to the new tune now on their SoundCloud. Stella and Mary-Keaton Render co-wrote the song with hit-making Nashville songwriter Britton Cameron (Don Williams, Jon Pardi, Dillon Carmichael), who's been writing with and developing the sister duo since their emergence in 2020.

“Black Roses was such a fun and unique song to write with Britton,” said Mary-Keaton. “We laughed and joked around about roses not always symbolizing true love, and how black roses demonstrate the reality of what relationships can become.”

The Renders Sisters also have a brand new video for “Black Roses” which they’ll premiere in the coming weeks. Shot in and around Nashville, the video was Directed by country music icon Pam Tillis, who has been mentoring and working with the girls on the artistic direction of their music videos since last year.

“We had such a blast working with Pam while she directed our fun-filled video,” Stella laughed. “She always has a great perspective on how to best visually portray the song’s message. The energy we felt with her while filming was simply amazing. My favorite part was getting to eat the yummy donuts during the video!”

Render Sisters · Black Roses

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Violent Vickie - Circle Square.

Los Angeles-based Dark Synth-Riot artist Violent Vickie's  "Circle Square" Video is out now. The music video for Violent Vickie's "Circle Square" is a layered, rhythmic collage directed by AJ Strout of Ex Corpse Art Collective.

The video was shot on Vickie's Photobooth computer app in her apartment during the pandemic when in-person creativity was not a possibility. Much like Violent Vickie's epic Serotonin project, the black and white video features the counterculture design and aesthetics that visual artist AJ Strout has presented at goth clubs throughout Los Angeles. 

"Circle Square" is a gloomy, noisy electronic track with forlorn and haughty vocals that, conceptually, is an exploration of the illusion of not belonging. Released on Violent Vickie's Division LP in September 2020, "Circle Square" is a mix of techno/electro beats and noisy synth texture reminiscent of the dark techno tunes that Vickie once partied to in Oakland warehouses.

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the Slowinks - Stay With Me Awhile.

Get ready to kick up your heels, because today Montreal's The Slowinks release their debut album Stay With Me Awhile on (weewerk) and all digital platforms.
With a sound that combines Classic Country, Jazz and Western Swing, Montreal’s The Slowinks have successfully charmed their hometown and are now poised to do the same to the wider world. Stay With Me Awhile was recorded in February 2020 by acclaimed Quebec singer/songwriter Fred Fortin at his home studio in the wilds near Lac Saint-Jean, with its eight tracks capturing The Slowinks in their purest form yet.

Fronted by powerhouse vocalist Felicity Hamer—formerly of United Steel Workers of Montreal—the drummer-less combo also features lead guitarist Martin Tremblay, rhythm guitarist Olivier Pépin and double bassist Mathieu Deschenaux who together infuse their original songs (plus covers of the Tin Pan Alley standard “Ain’t Got Nobody” and the soul classic "Let Them Talk") with an undeniably modern energy, while adhering to tradition.

Listeners got a taste of The Slowinks' at their rowdiest on the album's first single “One Shoe,” on which Felicity cuts loose in full Rose Maddox-meets-Neko Case fashion. However, Stay With Me Awhile also delivers its fair share of  heartache on songs such as “Nobody But You,” while the band proves to be just as potent en français with “Solange.” In fact, Stay With Me Awhile’s haunting title track began life as one of Martin’s demos with French lyrics. Felicity chose to write new lyrics in English to reflect her own experience of trying to hold onto someone she lost, and in the process gave the song an entirely different power.

Felicity says, “Just weeks after our return from recording, the pandemic hit Montreal and the song has since taken on even more meaning. This is just one of those songs that feels like a memory—‘These streets are filled with ghosts, hard to crack a smile. I miss you the most, stay with me awhile.’”

Indeed, one of the great joys in listening to Stay With Me Awhile is in knowing it was recorded just before the pandemic, when there was still fun to be had. Those days will come again, hopefully sooner than later, and The Slowinks are ready to provide the soundtrack.

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