”Uh,-oh, we created a monster!” Pajala’s finest pop trio The Magnettes has stumbled out of the studio, signed a new record deal, and return to form with new single ”Monster” – an upbeat, bass-driven bop blending doo-wop choruses, cut-throat horn stabs, new wave synths and a brushy street shuffle.
”Monster” is about that flirty, sexy, excruciating stage where it’s like ”will-they-won’t-they?”, singer Rebecka Digervall explains. You’re a nervous wreck, trying to downplay your feelings but they’re growing and growing.
We’ve definitely been there, adds Sanna Kalla. The gushing, blood rushing, tingly thing that’s partly sweet, mostly unbearable. The single will feature a 50’s small-screen noir video directed by Martin Åhlin, displaying their flare for playful retro looks and cinematic visuals
The Magnettes hail from Pajala, Sweden and have toured in 19 countries including performances at SXSW, Summerfest, Canadian Music Week, Golden Melody Awards, Eurosonic and Reeperbahn Festival.
Their debut album ”Ugly Youth” dropped in 2017 and featured the singles ”Sad Girls Club”, featured on Netflix’s ”Elite”, and ”Young And Wild”, one of the top-ten most played Swedish tracks on national radio that year. Their single ”American” was in radio rotation throughout the summer, fall and winter of 2020. As of 2021 they’re signed to K51, with ”Monster” being the first joint release.
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The Warp/The Weft happily presents a musicalization of "It May Not Always Be So," an e. e. cummings sonnet that explores intense love and, with it, the need to nurture the other's happiness. It's lyrically beautiful and introspective: the type of meditation that could come from a band after two years of very limited contact.
The Warp/The Weft, active since 2012 in and beyond New York's Hudson River Valley, has earned praise for its uniqueness and song-crafting from casual and devoted listeners alike.
Blending traditional and avant-garde styles, the warmth of a good wool sweater and the sometimes-bleak cold of an upstate winter, the progressive folk and psychedelia that the band brings to bear is propelled by poetic lyrics and a "spirit-conjuring" lilting tenor that prompted psych-folk legend Tom Rapp (of Pearls Before Swine) to ask, "Can I have your voice when you're through with it?"
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Sitting at home in isolation for much of this pandemic has forced us all to wrestle with all kinds of questions. One big one has been: "Why bother?" The question can be applied to most everything, but as performing musicians, we are compelled to wonder why we bother making music if we're not going to be able to get out and play music? To all of us in Last Train Home the answer came loud and clear: Because we love making music and we especially love making music together.
And so, 25 years after forming in Washington D.C., Last Train Home has spent much of 2021 recording an album in lots of different places -- Nashville TN, Alexandria VA, Doylestown PA, Franklin TN, Silver Spring MD, Herndon VA, Washington DC. We sent audio files back and forth, bouncing ideas off of satellites and through underground cables, and thanks to producer/engineer/guitarist Jared Bartlett's uncanny ease at layering myriad soundwaves into a coherent whole, we have album #10, Everything Will Be.
Released today January 14, 2022, Everything Will Be marks yet another chapter in Last Train Home's ongoing audio explorations, with everything from sambas and New Orleans brass bands, Bakersfield picking and reverse guitar tapeloops, bodhráns and baritone saxes all brought into the mix to render seven songs of band leader Eric Brace's and four perfectly chosen covers.
When you tell someone "everything's going to be okay," you know you're lying, right? But if you steer yourself with open mind and heart toward the best things, the beautiful things, then you're going to capture and create moments that will make you glad to be alive, and, with some luck, you can share those moments. I love producer-mixer Jared Bartlett's layers of guitars and Kevin Cordt's bittersweet-yet-hopeful trumpet. Singing along is the sublime D.C. area singer/songwriter Laura Tsaggaris.
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Amsterdam singer-songwriter, VanWyck, announces the US release of her single, “I Was Innocent” today January 14. The single is off her fourth album, The Epic Tale of the Stranded Man, due out on April 8 through Excelsior Recordings. A David Lynchian quality permeates “I Was Innocent,” reveling in isolation at the crossroads of denying responsibility and deflecting through blame.
Setting the stage for the rest of the album, “I Was Innocent” tells the tale of how The Stranded Man will try to find a way out of his predicament. Written from the perspective of an imprisoned man stuck in a place of confinement, he tries to claim his innocence but at the same time lists his faults. We don’t know if he is guilty or innocent. We don’t know what his supposed crimes are. Is he a victim or a criminal? Is he imprisoned, or did he escape? Can he be saved, or is his end near? Americana-UK’s Jonathan Aird says, “There’s a real sense of mystery, and an intriguing confusion as to where the truth might really lie, an edgy unease only enhanced by the excellent support playing.”
VanWyck says, “I noticed that people often blame others for what went wrong. Criminals often do this when interviewed in prison, but also normal people, when they talk about their lives, so often it’s about what was inflicted on them, and not about their own role in that specific history.”
Enchanting, moody, and rich, the album vividly reflects these confusing modern times through whispered tones and cavernous themes. It’s a timeless album portraying the different ways in which modern man is lost, scared, stuck in his ways, and searching for a way out of his predicament. Twelve songs that intertwine both lyrically and harmonically. Together they tell a story about a man who washes up on a wondrous island and doesn’t remember where he came from. Is he a victim or a perpetrator? Has he escaped, or is he imprisoned? Can he be saved, or is his end near? Luckily a woman enters the stage. Will she be able to save him?
The album also speaks of these times in a broader sense: we are living on the brink of epic transitions. We know that the old ways will lead to our destruction but can’t decide on the path forward. VanWyck says, “Sometimes it feels like we are trapped in our own prisons, in our inability to take good care of each other and this wonderful planet, like we are failing in our most epic of struggles, the survival of our humanity.”
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| Photo - Lily Brown |
The most exciting new band to break out of Wales in recent years, Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard have just shared “Break Right In” — a new track taken from their heavily-anticipated debut album Backhand Deals, which will be released on February 25, 2022 via Missing Piece Records / Communion. The band will make their US debut at SXSW this March.
The video for “Break Right In” is the first part of a two-part film, and is the band’s second collaboration with director Will Clark - who also directed the Sunny Delight-inspired video for “You.” Speaking about the video, vocalist and guitarist Tom Rees says: “Nothing quite illuminates the unjust society we live in, riddled with bad actors and nefarious despots seeking to limit our freedoms and starve us economically, like four young men playing dress up in a massive mansion. All joking aside, Will Clark is a genius.” “Break Right In” follows the previous tracks “Yourself,” “You,” “Crescent Man vs Demolition Dan” and “New Age Millennial Magic.”
As presented on their 2020 debut The Non-Stop EP, the band – Rees, guitarist Zac White, drummer Ethan Hurst and Rees’ brother and bassist Eddie – draw from classic ‘70s rock with a distinctly 21st century twist, dragging the sounds of T-Rex and Steely Dan kicking and screaming into the 2020s. With Backhand Deals, Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard ripped up the rulebook – a rejection of rock music's more archaic ideals, their debut album plunges into Tom Rees’ exploration of honesty and authenticity, and untangles what it means to be a “rock star.” The key to this demystification is Rees’ sharp wit — using sarcasm and humour to keep the listener in limbo, and in turn, leading their audience to face their own thoughts.
“With the record we’re really obsessed with denying our traditional influences by overwhelming the music with contemporary references so we don’t sound like your dad’s cover band who are really good when they don’t overdo the Guinness and the lead singer remembers his lyric sheet,” says Rees. “We know deep down we love ‘70s music too much to just abandon it in pursuit of being considered relevant, so it seems like the right thing to do to use modern recording techniques and contemporary references to make something inherently new.”
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