SoccerPractise have just shared 'Posture' along with a cleverly matched video, the music straddles genres it's lo-fi rock with energised beats, a contradiction that works so well below the "mantra" like vocals.
We have to go back to March of last year for our first and only previous feature for Frankiie, so it's a pleasure now to share their new song and lyric video for 'Compare'. Describing their music as indie dream rock, I would just add that it's full of stylish hooks and subtle charm.
Junaco have now released their debut E.P. 'Awry'. Having already shared a couple of songs from the collection, we now have the whole piece and the duo continue to impress with the melodic and irresistible garage folk.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chicago post-punk outfit Ganser share a new single, “Bad Form,” in advance of playing Riot Fest in September.
The band has been recording material over the past six months towards their second album, after last year’s debut Odd Talk that saw favorable coverage from The New York Times, Billboard, Stereogum, and other publications. “Bad Form” is the cathartic reaction to a year-long songwriting period.
“When you’re in the middle of writing and recording, it’s very easy to fall into extreme feelings of guilt over procrastination, when you’re already stretched thin,” says bassist and vocalist Alicia Gaines. The song expresses a common yet isolating paralysis of not doing enough. Nadia Garofalo’s agitated vocals for “Bad Form” represent the band’s collaborative writing process both lyrically and musically. “It’s nice to operate as a team, and act as a unit that can take the burden of some really ugly inner talk.”
In the video, light blinds in a moment of paralysis. Quick cuts and surreal vignettes communicate the wishful thinking of being someone else, running in circles to no end, disorienting doubles and the blinding light of being seen.
First as a statement, then a command, the track ends with the mantra “Look at the sun,” accompanied by visceral gnashing guitar by Charlie Landsman and punching drums from Brian Cundiff. The cacophony dovetails with Gaines’ methodical bass, as if willing anxiety to burn itself clean.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vocalist Geneva Alexander-Marsters recites her sardonic mantra over a pulsing, lo-fi industrial garage beat that erupts with heady siren guitars and scratched atmospherics – a demented catwalk of self-consciousness caving in on itself.
Speaking on the new track, Geneva explained: "The song is about maintaining composure in a world of myriad contradictions and cynicism. It’s about how best intentions can can be enveloped and absorbed by chaos and things are fall apart all around you. it’s an acerbic self help mantra, but really about how sometimes the only person you have to believe in you is you. It’s also about my parents. And Yoga.”
The video, shot in Hong Kong during the June protests, features dancer and choreographer Sudhee Liao making her way desperately through a labrynth-like mall of food stalls and bemused onlookers - part performance art, part pscyhic breakdown.
The unsettling visual is the first in a planned series by wellington-based visual artists Erica Skelnars [Lady Lazerlight] and Dan Harris [Illojgali], who are working exclusively with SoccerPractise on ‘Te Pō’.
Both the song and video are a taste of things to come from SoccerPractise’s second album. Te Pō (the night or darkness) is a collection of sonic dreams, visual nightmares and fragmented hallucinations set deep in the night of a strangely familiar yet unknown city.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frankiie is a Vancouver-based indie dream-rock group.
With live shows from Mexico City to Haida Gwaii, an east coast tour supporting The Charlatans UK, and recording with Jason Corbett of Jacknife Sound the journey of Frankiie over the last year has been non-stop.
Their forthcoming album Forget Your Head, due September 20th on Paper Bag Records, marries the lush qualities of Big Thief with an intimate anthemic approach reminiscent of Heart.
Reverb-drenched guitars and intoxicating harmonies have united 4 women into a dream-rock outfit whose live performance can’t be missed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Awry is the new debut EP from Los Angeles honeyed garage folk duo Junaco. Entitled Awry, the five track release is filled with soothing guitar riffs that lead into dulcet vocals. With two singles ‘In Between’ and ‘Willow’ already released on the EP, Junaco has attracted passionate listeners in with their flourishing organic sound.
Junaco is the foundation of Shahana Jaffer and Joey LaRosa. Born in the unincorporated mountain town on the outskirts coastal Northern California, the duo found an escape from musical conventions. Fleeing the rituals of rushing through songs, away from the nonsense of worrying, a budding partnership was found based equally on half-parts progression and melody. Mellow bursts of epiphany and pleas of gentle seduction give way to driving grooves in Junaco’s music, leaving the immediate fan with a delicate, instantly familiar and completely unassailable batch of songs.
Jaffer, a natural talent whose limbs were too long to dance, met a counterpart in LaRosa, a guitarist and percussionist’s dream who from a young age had been told that “musician” wasn’t an achievable career. Though conventionally unlikely on the global scale that a Pakistani songstress would find her way into the creative adventures of a drummer from Indianapolis, they found in their partnership a desire to make music for music’s sake; to write honest songs that meant something true enough for themselves, that someone else might be able to take it and make it true for them, as well.
The forthcoming EP helmed by Omar Yakar (War on Drugs, Perfume Genius) from Boulevard Recording, whose engineering and production prowess brought this young and refreshing outfit’s mountainous incubations to life. The duo initially set out with the intention of nothing but creation and expression and resulted in a stunning collection of tracks detailing the emotions of freedom. Jaffer reveals, “The underlying theme is about coming to terms with experiences and hardships we have faced and finally putting them out there. It’s very healing.”
Junaco hope to create music that will leave listeners feeling a sense of connection and closeness to. With the aim to remind others of our innate human emotions, Junaco’s debut EP highlights just how similar we are at our cores.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
