We have the brand new single "Easy to Love" from alt/pop meets folk duo Loud Forest. The track is the second single off of the band's forthcoming full length album Family Tree set for release in May 2022. "Easy to Love" is a folksy, meditative tune with stunning harmonies. Rachel confides on the inspiration behind the release, "I’ve spent a lot of years with a hard heart, trying to be strong and power through. Through my own journey of motherhood and growing, therapy and working through love, I’ve had to really do the hard work of mending this hard heart, learning to listen and let my heart guide how I think and feel. This is not an easy road, but it’s been the best and most beautiful path to working toward a tender heart."
The band Loud Forest is based in Los Angeles, CA where Bernard and Rachel Chadwick, a married couple, collaborate out of their experimental project space in Pasadena. Merging elements of alternative rock, Americana, and pop as well as post-punk into their moody, crafted indie rock, their earliest albums won a dedicated fan base and radio attention.
An album-oriented band, Loud Forest is doused in indie credibility from years of self-releases, homemade microphones and hosting rock shows in their studio. With influences ranging from Wilco to the Staples Singers, from Bob Dylan to Trey Sivan, from Spoon to Anderson .paak - the band distinguishes themselves with an acute attention to hooky melodies and intentional lyricism that plays with themes of love, fidelity and family. Drawing inspiration from their two daughters, Bernard and Rachel started the band to end all other bands they were in; a merging of creative forces and a project surrounded by their LA community.
Their 4th and forthcoming album, “Family Tree,” returns to their DIY approach; a beautiful lockdown creation of sparkly jams and alternative rock anthems that tell stories of their childhood through raw and angular expressions. Coming May, 2022.
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This Rock is the debut album from Glasgow trio Jill Lorean, following on exquisitely from their 2020 EP Not Your First, musing on nature, relationships, love, grief, motherhood and memory over frenetic, hypnotic drum beats and playful, subversive bass and guitar lines.
Jill Lorean as a living breathing thing, featuring Jill O’Sullivan (Sparrow And The Workshop, Three Queens in Mourning) in collaboration with Andy Monaghan (Frightened Rabbit) and drummer Peter Kelly, the band is a unique beast inhabiting its own world, incorporating elements of many genres from folk and lo-fi to post-punk and underground rock.
At its heart This Rock is a timeless rock record rooted expert musicianship, perfectly capturing that live band spirit while commenting on where we come from, where we live and how we interact with our surroundings, while maintaining a raw energy that cruises from the danceable freak folk of ‘Black Dog’ to hook laden ode to love songs ‘Walls’, all the while O’Sullivan’s unmistakable soothingly yet intoxicating vocal performance thrusts your attention front and centre.
Nature runs as a central vein through the record, taking a chance to disconnect from the sometimes disorienting digital world, taking step back and putting a lid on the noise and appreciating the natural world on ‘Beekeeper’, and then human nature on eerie pulsing of opener ‘Breaking Down’, which makes a statement on the meaning of freedom to different people.
Meanwhile, This Rock looks to generations of women, from childhood to granny-hood, from tracks inspired by O’Sullivan’s five-year-old daughter asking “what is war?” and how to broach such a dark subject matter with someone so young, to trying to capture that childlike spirit again on the urgent, powerful single ‘Mothers’, while ‘Kneading’ looks to Jill’s granny and her extraordinariness through some people’s unextraordinary lens.
“I like to feel surprised, I want people listening to it to feel alive and awake. And a lot of music feels a bit stale and gentle. And now you can say, Alexa, I would like some exercise music or I'm in a sad mood play me sad mood music. And I feel like, I just want to shake Alexa and be like, Alexa, fuck off. I just want people to listen to the music and feel a little bit stirred or slightly disturbed by it.
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Ritual Cloak follow-up an ambitious year of releases (Divine Invasions, A Human Being is the Best Disguise & Orange Crush) with a collaboration between the duo and photographer Michal Iwanowski.
Witaj w Domu was recorded during the Divine Invasions sessions, but it felt like the track deserved to stand alone. Having been inspired by Iwanowski’s photographic project, Go Home Polish, Ritual Cloak composed a piece of music in response, inviting Iwanowski to contribute spoken word, drawn from writings of his 1900km journey between his two homes - Wales and Poland. Michal narrates three stories, all different, yet all similar and asks, just like the photographic project, where is home? The answer is elusive and complex, a riddle that transcends time and administration.
“The title of the song was inspired by images of Michal’s mother and family awaiting his return as he walked the final stretch towards the family home in Poland, holding the sign Witaj w Domu (Welcome Home). We wanted the title to completely contrast the hostility of the graffiti that Michal felt compelled to respond to. The composition even features audio sampled from a live streamed video of his arrival at his family home. The sounds and voices of his family played a key part in closing the track as these are the people that mean the most to Michal, especially the sound of Michal’s mum’s laugh weaving between the piano notes that brings an emotional texture.” - Ritual Cloak
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Willi Carlisle is a poet and a folk singer for the people. Like his hero Utah Phillips, Carlisle's extraordinary gift for turning a phrase isn't about high falutin' pontificatin'; it's about looking out for one another and connecting through our shared human condition. On his anticipated second album, the magnum opus Peculiar, Missouri (coming July 15, 2022 on Free Dirt Records), Carlisle makes the case across twelve epic tracks that love truly can conquer all.
Born and raised on the Midwestern plains, Carlisle is a product of the punk to folk music pipeline that’s long fueled frustrated young men looking to resist. After falling for the rich ballads and tunes of the Ozarks, where he now lives, he began examining the full spectrum of American musical history. This insatiable stylistic diversity is obvious on Peculiar, Missouri which was produced by Grammy-winning engineer and Cajun musician Joel Savoy in rural Louisiana. The songs range from sardonic trucker songs like “Vanlife” to the heartbreaking queer waltz “Life on the Fence.”
The album also imbues class consciousness in songs like “Este Mundo,” a cowboy border ballad about water rights, and the title track’s existential talkin’ blues about a surreal panic attack in Walmart’s aisle five. Though Carlisle's poetic words evoke the mystical American storytelling of Whitman, Sandburg, and e e cummings, ultimately this is bonafide populist folk music in the tradition of cowboys, frontier fiddlers, and tall-tale tellers. Carlisle recognizes that the only thing holding us back from greatness is each other. With Peculiar, Missouri, he brings us one step closer to breaking down our divides.
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After almost four years since Sad & Easy, Colyn Cameron is excited to be sharing a new album Freehand. While living in Vancouver, BC, the new material emerged within the paradoxical spaces of experimenting with dispersed and concentrated rhythms. He used the material to explore themes of technology, adventure, self-worth & love with mild nods to worldly trepidation. The album was again recorded mostly at home, with additional instrumentation from close collaborators Aiden Ayers and Josh Contant.
It has now been ten years since the release of Wake Owl’s first album. In the years since, Colyn has also composed original music for 2 feature films and numerous different independent projects, and formed new musical and broader artististic collaborations.
Early this year, Colyn and other local Vancouver collaborators founded the record label Market Garden Records. It will serve as a foundation for releasing his new music and supporting collaborations.
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