Katy Kirby is a songwriter and indie rock practitioner with a writerly focus on unspoken rules, misunderstandings of all kinds, and boredom. She has just released a new video for the gorgeous song 'Juniper'.
Kirby was born, raised, and home schooled by two ex-cheerleaders in small-town Texas, where she started singing in church amidst the soaring, pasteurized-pop choruses of evangelical worship services. After high school, Kirby moved to Nashville, where she managed to graduate college with a rapidly expanding circle of artistic allies, an amorphous collection of leftist beliefs, and a few handfuls of songs.
After a series of painful failures to complete a record that reflected the temperament of those songs, Kirby finally turned to dear friends and co-conspirators to form a band capable of constructing a satisfying full length.
Willie tells us - "I'm excited to share "Need Your Love," a song that captures the live vibe of my band: upbeat, rowdy, and very old school."
He adds - "My single has that rowdy, angsty mood of being young and restless as we follow two people who want to break out of the confines of their current world and experience something more daring."
In our opinion the song is all of that, the simmering energy and slick guitar break along with a no nonsense pulse are all notable on what is a mixture of old school rock & roll with modern & fresh production. This is a come & see us live song, if ever there was one!
At the heart of Hamilton, ON group King Park, you'll find childhood friends/musical co-conspirators Timon Moolman (vocals, guitar) and Tyler Heemskerk (bass, vocals), accompanied by the animated Nate Wall on drums. The trio's new album, Everett (out this Friday October 29th), is a collection of elegies for ordinary, apocalyptic losses.
Fitting together lyrically and thematically, Everett is not so much a story of heartbreak about not getting the girl, but more about being heartbroken that something beautiful could end up so hurtful – that so much love could turn into hate. It's a story of being stuck in a moment, unable to move forward – surrounded by fear, guilt and shame.
Title track, "Everett," sets the theme for the entire record as it tells a coming-of-age story, speckled by the loss of innocence. It's a snapshot of a time when the rigorous set of black and white lines one grows up believing in finally faded away, forcing re-evaluation.
KIM HON explain the origin of ‘Bach o
Flodyn’: “The riff and song were formed as a result of watching a
documentary about Robert Johnson, and then we tried to emulate his
acoustic guitar skills. Of course, we didn’t get to play anything like
Johnson played but this song was born as result anyway”
As with
every KIM HON release you don’t know what to expect and are always taken
on an unexpected journey towards the uncharted horizon.
‘Bach o
Flodyn’ is the sun setting on a joyous imaginary festival field, bathing
the audience in a golden warm rays. The stars come out one by one to
the hypnotic bluesy groves of KIM HON at their most magical.
Innovative indie-folk duo The Sea
The Sea – frequently lauded for their immaculate vocal harmonies and
unusual arrangements – has had a particularly fruitful 2020. Comprised
of Chuck and Mira Costa, the duo released four highly acclaimed singles
before dropping their damn-near-flawless full album, Stumbling Home,
during the dwindling days of summer.
Now, The Sea The Sea is
starting out the new year by releasing “Stumbling Home: Oil on Paper,”
the official video for Stumbling Home’s title track. And the video is
something to be admired.
Directed and painted – yes, painted – by
Zachary Johnson of The Made Shop, the video uses the rotoscope
technique and brings a series of stunning oil paintings to life. “The
technical feat of this film is less the massive number of oil paintings
but in the incredible meticulous way they’ve all been conceptualized and
arranged musically with the song,” describes Chuck.
The Sea The
Sea previously collaborated with Johnson to create the video for the
song “Waiting,” which appeared on the band’s 2014 debut album, Love We
Are We Love. “We’d been waiting for the right moment to collaborate with
Zachary and the Made Shop again since making video for ‘Waiting,’”
explains Mira. “And there was something about ‘Stumbling Home’ that
kept eliciting images in the style of his paintings, so we immediately
reached out.”
Rather than using the continuous motion that
characterized the video for “Waiting,” Johnson wanted the video for
“Stumbling Home” to focus more on fleeting moments, lit up and frozen in
fading vignettes, while still maintaining the sense of a roving camera
eye.
“We eventually came up with idea of painting various people,
unmoored from their surroundings, each passerby an individual
moving against an inky emptiness of black,” explains Zachary. “We
couldn’t be more thrilled with the way this turned out,” says Mira.
Katy Kirby has released the fourth and final single from her highly anticipated debut album Cool Dry Place out February 19 on Keeled Scales (via Secretly Distribution), the critically acclaimed indie label home to the likes of Tenci, Buck Meek, Sun June, Twain and more.
“Portals” is Kirby’s gentlest offering to date, an off-kilter introspection at a relationship’s end: if we peel apart / will we be stronger than we were before / we had formed ourselves together / in a temporary whole / and if we reunite, will we still know / the things that we had learned before? / we’re not boxes, doors, or borders / we were portals.
Kirby’s ability to blend wit with heart over inventive, affecting melodies has positioned her on shortlists for the most anticipated albums in 2021 by Vulture, Vice, Stereogum, The Line of Best Fit, and Paste Magazine. Just last week, Kirby was spotlighted in an extensive profile by VICE’s Noisey Next, who hailed her upcoming album as “the best debut album of 2021 so far.” Bob Boilen of NPR All Songs Considered has praised Katy for ”putting her own twist on pop” and tastemakers at Consequence of Sound, Under The Radar, Earmilk, Austin Town Hall and more have echoed enthusiasm.
Says Katy: I’ve always been uneasy with the idea of alternate universes, or realities. Even choose-your-own-adventure books used to stress me out. I wondered if it might be equally interesting and more helpful to consider “alternate universes” something as simple as other people. Around the time I wrote this song, I had been considering what I’d retain from a relationship if or when it ended—what I might be left with in the long run, after it didn’t hurt anymore. I realized that it’d be an alternate version of myself. Hell, how many parts of whatever I call a self aren’t even accessible without a particular interaction? “Portals” is me thinking about the alternate, purely interior worlds that slide open with each person/universe we intersect with, and if what we think of as “closeness” to that person has anything to do with what gets opened.
POSTDATA, the solo music project of Wintersleep frontman/songwriter, Paul Murphy, is to return on March 5, 2021, with his third record, Twin Flames (out via Paper Bag Records). Murphy is today sharing the visual accompaniment for the recent single, "Nobody Knows."
A breathtaking and introspective new album, brimming with deep wonderings and intricately excavated soundscapes, Twin Flames – which comes co-produced by Bristol-based Ali Chant (PJ Harvey, Perfume Genius, Portishead) – borrows its namesake from the centerpiece song on the album. Twin Flames is about a storm, but perhaps more importantly, it’s also about a fire burning through it. Paul says that being in a storm can be a freeing and powerful experience. “You’re navigating this place…you can’t really see super far in front of you,” he says. “I kinda like that place.”
Described by The Guardian as "a song that sounds as if it’s surfing an avalanche on a copy of Rumours," "Nobody Knows" is an infectious late night kitchen-party acoustic number that finds Murphy rhyming off a laundry list of his faults and failings: “I’m not good when the party’s packed/I’m not good when there’s nobody left/I’m not good when I’m all by myself, I fear for my health.” The accompanying video, directed by Chris Mills, comes part-inspired by the general weirdness surrounding performance videos and the act of trying to capture that live energy in an often empty room. Murphy and Mills here have taken the idea and twisted it into a dystopian, pandemic world where performances take place in hazmat suits and at obscure, outdoor locations.
Speaking about the video, Murphy says: "During the first lockdown, when I was gearing up for planning the video, my brother Michael and I were talking about performance videos and the general weirdness of them, but then about how it’d be kind of interesting to try one with all the COVID protocols in place. So, I think it started as a dystopic idea for how shows in the future would be or something to that effect. Chris loved the idea and thought he could expand on it with different visual techniques. We made some dialogue for it. Planned out scenes. The only issue is that we couldn’t travel to actually be in the same room to do it."
“Hard On You”, the third release from the upcoming Covers record, is one of the sparser offerings in Mo Kenney’s series of cover songs, and for good reason. A staple of and standout in the wildly prolific Daniel Romano’s songwriting quiver, the tune conjures a frustrated snarl, giving hell to someone who’s overstayed their welcome.
Kenney’s lonesome, unadorned version captures the psychic exhaustion of dealing with human fallibility and protecting loved ones, using nothing but earthy acoustic fingerpicking and her weary, raspy voice.
“Hard On You” follows “Game of Pricks” (“a fittingly stripped-back and haunting number for these times” says Indie88) and Mo’s lonesome Patsy Cline classic “You Belong To Me”. Says Kenney of “Hard On Your”, “I’ve been a big Daniel Romano fan since I first heard this song. It was so nice to hear a modern country song that was reminiscent of the old stuff. The songwriting is so good, I was excited to strip it down so the lyrics really shine. Recorded in front of one mic at the New Scotland Yard.” Mo continues to perform when and where possible.
In December, Toronto's Bernice announced their forthcoming LP Eau de Bonjourno, the follow up to their celebrated 2018 LP Puff: In the air without a shape. Now the band are sharing the album's second single "It's Me, Robin".
"This song for me, lyrically, was an exercise in trying to be as blunt and transparent as possible with myself," Bernice's leader Robin Dann explains to NPR's Bob Boilen. "It starts out in a non-poetic way: "it's me, Robin. you don't really know me. I thought if I just expressed this you might let me be me" - which I think is a universal desire. We all just kind of want to feel permission to exist, unconditionally, not based on any career milestones or whatever personal successes or failures. We want every life to inherently have value. This song, in a really playful way, (referencing ducks and potatoes) addresses the not-so-straightforward feelings that we have in life, but ultimately asks the big question, who are you? We’re all just in this beautiful, endless search for joy."
Eau de Bonjourno is the Bernice's first collaboration with producer Shahzad Ismaily, the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist who has worked with artists as varied as Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, John Zorn, and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. While their genre reconstruction remains distinctly Bernice, Dann’s lyrics bring a newfound focus to storytelling in the present moment, compassionately meeting ourselves where we are, and finding joy in spaces that are familiar but ever changing.
Eau de Bonjourno, according to Dann, “openly plays with the shape of a pop song,” drawing on the band members’ backgrounds in jazz, subverting rhythmic formulas, and resting in grooves that sit just outside of predictable. Instead of letting instruments take extended solos, the tone is set on opener “Groove Elation” with brief blurts of synthesized sax, patient passages of space, or clusters of beats, tenderly held together by Dann and Williams’ intimate vocals. The album’s sound is experimental in its truest definition, chopped up like musique concrète and then delicately placed back together with the loving touch of a scrapbook collagist.
“We have an impulse to open doors that you might not expect, and that translates from groove to melody to lyric,” says Dann. “Phil and Thom have this strong aversion to building a beat that sits there in front of you and does exactly what you expect it to do. We come out of so many musical traditions and are trying to make something that’s not a direct descendent of any of them. We’re trying to make the music that feels like us right now.”
Katy Kirby has released the third single from her highly anticipated debut album Cool Dry Place out February 19 on Keeled Scales (via Secretly Distribution), the critically acclaimed indie label home to the likes of Tenci, Buck Meek, Sun June, Twain and more.
Kirby’s ability to blend wit with heart over inventive, affecting melodies has positioned her on shortlists for the most anticipated albums in 2021 by Vulture, Vice, Stereogum, The Line of Best Fit, and Paste Magazine. Today’s release follows ”Traffic!,” a buoyant rumination on privilege, as well as ”Cool Dry Place,” a clever flip of the Tylenol package advisory into a plea for human compassion and acceptance. Bob Boilen of NPR All Songs Considered has praised Katy for ”putting her own twist on pop” and tastemakers at Consequence of Sound, Under The Radar, Earmilk, Austin Town Hall and more have echoed enthusiasm.
Says Katy: This is a song about motherhood, mostly. It sometimes seems like there’s far more material written on how dads can be terrifying and awful, or everyone is just less surprised about it. I’m uncommonly open and close with my mom, (and she’s asked several times if it’s about her — if you’re reading this Lisa, I swear, it’s not!!), but I was trying to work out how many distinct ways that sort of dynamic can uniquely harm. I wound up thinking a lot about vacancy, sort of how abandonment can happen even if someone technically sticks around. I heard Greta Gerwig say in an interview about Ladybird that “nobody doesn’t have a complicated relationship with their mother.” That feels pretty reasonable to me as far as super-broad statements go, and is maybe (probably) part of what scares me to death about raising a kid.
Meggie Lennon shares 'Mind Games' which is a dreamy indie song, where her smooth flowing vocals are immersed in an equally melodic musical backdrop. === Katy Kirby new song 'Tap Twice' gently unfolds adding a few musical layers moving from a folk vibe into a refrained indie rock song, her fine vocals keeping the flow going.
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Meggie Lennon - Mind Games.
Somewhere in the land of uninhibited love and playful sins, Meggie Lennon is both the game and the rule that begs to be broken, crafting her songs through spirals of unrepentant escapism.
Following the release of GAMIQ nominated EP Endless Dreams and Dreamlike Mornings in 2017, under the name Abrdeen, the singer-songwriter wasted no time making a name for herself, taking her music across the province alongside well-established acts such as Good Morning, The Dears, Julie Doiron, Sugar Candy Mountain and Laura Sauvage.
Now working under her own name, Lennon teamed up with producers Samuel Gemme (Corridor, Anemone) and Jules Henry to work on her new release Sounds From Your Lips, which is due in 2020.
An original take on modern music where dream pop and make-out psych rock become the soundtrack to whatever comes next.
"Tap Twice is about the formation of unspoken agreements in a new relationship, the process of silently negotiating with someone what you might mean to each other, and what happens when negotiation turns into an arm wrestling match over how much you’re willing to reveal. About the weird rapport that develops as you’re circling each other this way (unless it’s all in your head?), triangulating data from small gestures and two-word texts, analyzing the face smiling at you from a profile picture, reading into the murky details of an internet persona. It’s about sooner or later accepting all this as part of the territory--learning to live in that spooky interpretive space with someone, respecting it as a part of the deal you’ve struck up."
Katy Kirby is a songwriter and indie rock practitioner with a writers focus on unspoken rules, misunderstandings of all kinds, and boredom.
Kirby was born, raised, and home schooled by two ex-cheerleaders in small-town Texas, where she started singing in church amidst the soaring, pasteurized-pop choruses of evangelical worship services. After high school, Kirby moved to Nashville, where she managed to graduate college with a rapidly expanding circle of artistic allies, an amorphous collection of leftist beliefs, and a few handfuls of songs.
After a series of painful failures to complete a record that reflected the temperament of those songs, Kirby finally turned to dear friends and co-conspirators to form a band capable of constructing a satisfying full length.
