SUEP - Plastic Barricades - Emiliana Torrini & The Colorist Orchestra - Laure Briard

Photo - Josh Cohen and Max Warren

SUEP - In Good Health.

London indie supergroup SUEP announce long-awaited debut album Shop and drop new single ‘In Good Health’ with a poignant and trippily kaleidoscopic-pop video. SUEP is led by Georgie Stott (Porridge Radio, Garden Centre) and Josh Harvey alongside George Nicholls (The GN Band, Joanna Gruesome, The Tubs), Will William Deacon (PC World, Garden Centre), and Ollie Chapman. Together they make oddball car-boot-sale pop songs with a sprinkling of theatrical storytelling inspired by a mutual love for Paul McCartney, Jona Lewie, the B-52s, Devo and other performative freaks enjoying themselves.

New single ‘In Good Health,’ fronted by Georgie Stott, is a darkly euphoric and pleasantly strange meeting of Siouxsie Sioux and Jona Lewie, with a playfully discombobulating mix of 80s jangly guitar, chirpy keyboard, and moody post-punk. The song was written by Georgie following a stay in hospital due to a mental health crisis, and tackles mental health, drug addiction, and the power of friendship. As Georgie expands:

 “I wanted to write a song that encapsulated how important my relationships with my friends and boyfriend were at that time” she explains “…and one that also felt dark like I did at the time. I couldn’t go outside due to anxiety surrounding my health, so I stayed inside for weeks. People would visit and watch films with me or let me tattoo them or make music with me. My community helped me recover.”

The ‘In Good Health’ video taps into the song’s serious subject matter but also the song’s playfulness. It shows Georgie stuck in what its creator Jess Power describes as “An internalised world, imagining a new day and a fresh start. The overly luxurious bedding, super saturated colours and surreal imagery reflect the idea of seeking clarity amongst inner voices that try to deceive you and bring you down.”

Shop also includes the previous singles, the deliriously catchy kitsch of debut ‘Domesticated Dream’, described by Mark Riley (6 Music) as “perfect pop music”, and the pure cosmic swing-pop wizardry of ‘Misery’, both released in 2021.

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Photo - Elina Pasok

Plastic Barricades - Lucid in the fall / Tallest Trees.

These are two fabulous songs and splendid videos so enjoy the creativity as we let Plastic Barricades explain themselves!! 

“What happens after we buy everything we’ve ever wanted?” We are lucid about our habits, but we keep falling into the same traps over and over again. “Lucid in the fall”, the new single from London indie rock band Plastic Barricades, is out on the 18th of November. Written during those never-ending lockdowns, this track will be the first introduction to the band’s new studio album “We Stayed Indoors”.

When humankind got locked indoors, so many people went on a two-year shopping spree. This constant race to own “the latest” and “the best in class” led us all into a corner, where addiction roams free and credit card debt obscures daylight. In a world of instant gratification and absolute convenience, breaking those consumerism chains is no easy task. But we have to keep trying, right? There’s no denying: we are all responsible for what’s happening to our planet.

Melancholic and brooding yet hopeful b-side “Tallest Trees” is a juxtaposition to “Lucid in the fall”, where centuries-old and infinitely wise trees observe humanity with curious concern, ready to forgive our sins yet puzzled by our self-destructive tendencies. Both tracks come accompanied by weird and trippy music videos, made with the assistance of cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies and image-to-text algorithms.

“We Stayed Indoors” will be Plastic Barricades’ third full-length album, taking on the tricky subjects of hope, mental health, doubts, living in the moment, courage, perception change, regrets about the past and worries about the future.

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Emiliana Torrini & The Colorist Orchestra - Mikos.

Following their recent standalone single "Right Here",  Emiliana Torrini & The Colorist Orchestra announce the release of their new album Racing The Storm, out March 17th via Bella Union. To accompany the announcement Emiliana Torrini & The Colorist Orchestra have shared a beautifully-shot black and white video for “Mikos”, the album’s atmospheric opening track.

Commenting on the song Emiliana says: “When I am triggered by nice music, I see a movie happening in my mind. When writing that song I saw a girl in a school uniform standing at the edge of a harbor looking into a turquoise sea at the body of a girl. She hears the girl's mother behind her looking for her at the market. She turns to look and then walks away not saying a word about it.”

Picture this: a big storm is brewing overhead. You’re careening through the backroads of rural Iceland, trying desperately to catch your flight out of Reykjavik as the skies darken behind you. You’ve just had one of the best songwriting sessions of your life, in a farmhouse deep in the Icelandic countryside, but none of that matters now. You’ve found yourself in a race against time to get all your work to the next studio and continue working on your album—one that just might turn out to be one of the most important of your entire career.

This exact scenario is what befell Belgian duo The Colorist Orchestra and Icelandic-Italian singer-songwriter Emiliana Torrini during one of the many recording sessions for their new collaborative album—and the experience was so emblematic of the entire awe-inspiring, chaotic, life-affirming process, that they ended up naming the record Racing the Storm.

The Colorist Orchestra knows a thing or two about controlled chaos. Since their inception in 2013, close friends and multi-instrumentalists Aarich Jespers and Kobe Proesmans have taken on the task of reinterpreting other artists’ discographies with their unique blend of pop, electronic and world music. In 2015, they entered into a collaboration with Emiliana, who at that time was already well into her own illustrious career, having released six studio albums, as well as the international hit “Jungle Drum”.

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Photo - Diane Sagnier

Laure Briard - Ciel mer azur.

Following My Love Is Right and Ne pas trop rester bleue, Laure Briard shares a third single from her new album to be released in January, leaving behind the blues of melancholy to embrace the azure blue of the sky and the sea in a radiant tropical ballad. But what is this "other planet" to which she addresses the words: "You have conquered my heart / With your wildness / Your joy / Your music"?

We start to get a sense of who she might be talking to right from the beginning of Ciel mer azur which reveals an undulating flute, nonchalant bongos, a smooth walking bass line, a woozy organ and playful guitar riffs. For those familiar with Briard’s discography, the doubt quickly fades. This is the musician who recorded Eu Voo in 2021, an EP of songs written in Portuguese inspired by bossa nova, samba and tropicalismo, and she is singing about the home of Astrud Gilberto, Vinícius de Moraes and Tom Zé.

"It's a love letter to Brazil," confirms Briard, “written during our last tour there in 2019. I really wrote it on the road, between Rio de Janeiro and a village called Vitória, in the tour bus. At one point in the song I mention a gas station, that's how spontaneous it was. It reflects my emotions during this trip. Seeing all the people, the landscapes, both inland and on the seaside, had quite the impact on me. The Brazilian nature is wild and the social life is difficult in many ways, and at the same time, it is such a warm country in terms of the climate, the music, and the people, who are always so joyful, optimistic, and attentive, even if they don't know your music, or don’t speak the same language as you..."

The warmth, the kindness, and the light that Brazil and Brazilians emanate—this is what Briard and her faithful collaborator Vincent Guyot, composer and arranger of this soft and radiant ode to the country of Joyce and João Gilberto, wanted to express. The accompanying music video, directed by Jade de Brito, portrays the sky, the sun, and the sea in vintage film grain split-screens straight out of a '70s film by Brian de Palma or Norman Jewison, with an added flavor of sugary pop. Somewhere between The Thomas Crown Affair, OSS 117 : Rio ne répond plus and a luscious Deee-Lite music video lies Briard’s calm expression, illuminated by swirling lights and a sunny halo, set on a background of moving palm trees and waves,   invoking a rhythm of joyful memories. Fly with Laure Briard to Brazil: to the sky, the sea, and the azure that will never grow dull.

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Rhonda - Laure Briard - Gal Musette

Rhonda - Modelo.

With the release of “Modelo” on October 7th the Germany and Los Angeles based band Rhonda has not only announced their fourth studio album Forever Yours but also tour dates for early spring 2023. Forever Yours follows the critically acclaimed album You Could Be Home Now (2019) and will be released on February 17, 2023 via popup-records.

Musically, the single ranges from soul, rock, pop to film music. The focus lies on an extremely catchy guitar hook and the bittersweet vocal melody of exceptional singer Milo – an instant Rhonda classic.

The pandemic and the resulting restrictions have put the band to the test because of the distance between the musicians who live in Germany and in Los Angeles. However, necessity is the mother of invention: the forced break initiated an intense creative process among the band members. Due to lively exchanges via Zoom and sending back and forth sound files a new album was created.

As an album and intimate snapshot, Forever Yours demonstrates the longing for human contact. The characteristic Rhonda sound, which the band has cultivated in the last few years, illustrates searching and finding in different ways – quietly or brutally, but always carried by human warmth and soul. Rhonda's songs are always personal; they deal with highs and lows, foreign shadows and familiar light and stem from experiences, visions, stories and hopes. Between the poles of sweetness and gloom, new and unfamiliar tones which carry an aestival lightness resonate on Rhonda’s new album Forever Yours.

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Laure Briard - Ne pas trop rester bleue.

After a South American getaway marked by her two EPs Coração Louco and Eu Voo, created at the sides of the Boogarins – along with tours in Latin America and in the United States, where we caught a glimpse of the new tracks Miossec and Lemon Twigs – Laure Briard reveals her fourth LP, celebrating rebirth and letting go.

Not blue, then this record’s color would be yellow maybe; the shade of the Californian sun as it sears the ochre desert of Joshua Tree, reputed for its icy nocturnal temperatures and its sweltering hot days. A two hour drive from the City of Angels, this remote national park is a no man’s land where space and time seem to stretch on and on. While the old gold rush mines lie seemingly untouched, we still find old guitars at the antique dealers in the Yucca Valley. An America both obsolete and haunted by its past legends. A fantasy. It is here that Laure Briard’s new album is born.

It would take nearly three years to finish this new album. The labor was long, enriched by her travels, and in the end, liberating. Lighter and more optimistic than the broken destinies and disillusionments of Sur la piste de danse, Ne pas trop rester bleue follows an autobiographical story punctuated with encounters. It is a cathartic work that would allow Laure to free herself from her ghosts, all while conjuring up new ones. We find there the storytelling of Lee Hazlewood in “Magical Cowboy,” a tale of a solitary and broken-hearted cowboy; the shadows of the weary country poet Don Gibson; and those of Bobby Gentry also figure in these new compositions. But it is above all Carol King who stands as a major influence. Following the example of the singer activist and New Yorker, Laure Briard produces country imbued with soul.

Laure Briard gets closer and closer to the light, a journey that already began with Un peu plus d’amour s’il vous plaît, appearing in 2019, and continues in the video of the first clip “Ne pas trop rester bleue,” where the proliferation of the protagonist’s possible destinies are dizzying, as well as in “Me pardoner,” a song about liberating oneself from the past. If we had to compare her to more contemporary artists, we would have to look at Cate le Bon for the rough psychedelic pop, the airy pop songs of Aldous Harding for the romanticism, or the falsely naïve innocence of Laetitia Sadier.

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Gal Musette - Je Vois Le Ciel.

The new single from indie baroque pop artist and piano virtuoso Gal Musette is entitled "Je Vois Le Ciel." This enchanting song, sung entirely in French, explores feelings of loneliness and isolation coupled with an unfulfilling mundane daily life, heightening the human need for companionship and someone special to share in the magic of beautiful moments, thus making our lives more complete.

Inspired by acclaimed French poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert, the song pays homage to his style of "song poems" - orchestrated works consisting of free verse, dramatism, and sentimentality intertwined with clever humor. With emotive whimsical vocals over playful keys and steady upright bass, "Je Vois Le Ciel" is a captivating sonic offering.

"The thousand mornings I spend alone, I watch the sky turn from gold to blue, I walk by foot, I walk everywhere, I see the sky but I don't care." Gal Musette has toured with The Magnetic Fields, Donavon Frankenreiter, and has collaborated with Rufus Wainwright.

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The Little Unsaid - Laure Briard - RoseWood

photograph by Pete Millson

The Little Unsaid - Vibrant Life.

Fable is the mesmerising and powerful third album from South London based 4-piece The Little Unsaid, introduced via its first single Vibrant Life, an intense stream of consciousness reminding us not to lose momentum, imagination, and curiosity in these dark times.

The Little Unsaid have always evaded categorization, blending on the new record an expansive multi-instrumented post-rock approach to song structures; touches of jazz’s improvisation; an earthiness that hints at folk and roots influences: and a dramatic art-rock edge heightened by frontman John Elliott’s intense delivery (with a hint of the dramatic that nods to John’s other works as a composer for stage, with his music featuring in Cruise currently touring the West End).

The Little Unsaid’s incredible live energy (with the band having played countless UK/European tours and festival appearances, including a set at Glastonbury 2022), has been harnessed on Fable with the entire record being carved out of hours of raw live improvisation recorded during an impromptu visit to Dorset Mill Farm studio following a cancelled gig. As frontman John Elliott explains:

“Without pre-written material or musical ideas, we set up in one room and recorded long improvisions until the sun went down, seizing on the energy and positivity we found through playing again (post-lockdown). We had one rule: Every idea had to come to us in the moment; melodies, rhythms, lyrics.”

Fable’s lyrical themes capture this moment in time, described by John as “Songs which unavoidably reflect the chaos and simmering collective anxiety that was (and still is) everywhere around us while we recorded but held together by a defiant and palpable sense of gratitude and joy.”

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Photo - Louse Comet

Laure Briard - My Love Is Right.

‘My Love Is Right’ is a psychedelic pop/soul song about keeping faith in yourself and being confident in your love. It’s the first taste from her upcoming fourth album, ‘Ne pas trop rester bleue’ (due February 2023)

Warm piano and bass guitar set the tone of ‘My Love Is Right’ before a drum fill throws us into the verse, with Laure Briard’s vocals chanting; “I have to clean the bad vibrations, make everything ok”. 

The song shifts gears with layers of strings, vocal harmonies, guitar and keys pulling us up into the self affirming chorus. Tasteful orchestral embellishments combine with vintage rock instrumentation, creating a symphonic pop sound.

 

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RoseWood - Fire And The Flame.

"Fire and the Flame" by RoseWood is a fire-y, almost sexy, rock song, with a quasi-indie punk vibe. 

RoseWood are a three-piece rock band based in Middle Tennessee consisting of Caleb Wood, Kasen Johnson, and Mike Hicks. 

They originally formed in 2020, and their debut single is "Fire and the Flame."