Louise Lemón has released a new single comprised of 'Almond Milk' and the B side an acoustic version of 'Not Enough'. Our fourth feature for Louise, her previously described death gospel has moved more towards psych rock without losing any of the atmosphere or originality that has consistently set her apart from her peers.
We have a new lyric video from Sis and the song 'Moon at the Peak' a gentle dreamy piece taken from their 'Gas Station Roses' album. It's a little genre defying, however it's also quite gorgeous.
Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster has a new album entitled 'Take Heart, Take Care' due for release at the end of this month and from which we have 'Educated Guesses' as a preview. His style of indie folk and notable vocals pretty much explain the huge number of streams the previous album received, this song suggests that trend will continue.
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Brighton UK's The Wedding Present return with Tommy 30, a re-recording of their essential early tracks compilation Tommy on HHBTM Records (North America) - Scopitones (Europe).
George Best became The Wedding Present's first album in 1988. But Tommy, released one year later, was made up of the early songs from the singles and radio sessions that had catapulted them from being bedsit musicians into indie darlings: "Go Out And Get 'Em, Boy!" with its purposefully super-fast guitars, "You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends" an anthem for those long time Wedding Present fans, "My Favourite Dress" the only single in the collection that ended up on George Best, the classic, fraught tale of losing one's first love that perfectly played on the heart strings and began David Gedge's legacy of understanding everyone's heartbreak.
Tommy 30, a brand-new re-recording of Tommy, did not come about simply as a "follow on" to George Best 30. The band felt, during a Tommy 30th anniversary concert tour, that the songs had grown and evolved. Enter a more confident vocalist... an altogether growlier guitar. A bigger sound. The urgency of a 25-year-old Gedge is replaced with a charming vocalist with years of experience. Everything's warmer and, maybe, gentler... but in a satisfying way. It's like your old friends have come home to see you.
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Louise Lemón is releasing new single ‘Almond Milk’, the latest cut from her album A Broken Heart Is An Open Heart.
The Swedish artist pairs soulful vocals with the macabre undertones of Chelsea Wolfe and Lorde. Stark, reverberating guitars cut through forlorn lyrics as the song builds to its melancholic climax.
Louise tells us that ‘Almond Milk’ is about "not letting go of the thought that your love would last forever. A bittersweet feeling that I’d stay no matter what. Regardless of what happens and not being able to see that the love has run out."
Her latest full length is an album of psych-rock tinged pop that was produced and mixed alongside regular collaborator Randall Dunn (Chelsea Wolfe / Thurston Moore / Algiers) in Copenhagen and New York.
The album has been taken on the road with a European tour with Sólstafir (IS, several shows at Eurosonic ESNS (NL), a well-received Roadburn Festival appearance (NL) and a Scandinavian tour.
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Gas Station Roses, Sis’s second full-length album, is the Berkeley-based band’s devotional document of six months spent in the dream zone of the studio. Lovingly made, with earthen percussive elements, chance technique, inside a glimmering forest full of synths and guitars, the album reunited Sis for their most assertive musical statement yet.
It all started with a visit to Lark in the Morning, a legendary store full of percussion instruments in Berkeley. The band left with a gopichand, a one-stringed lute from Bangladesh, a huge African drum, and pan flutes. Meanwhile, singer and multi-instrumentalist Jenny Gillespie Mason, also the founder of Native Cat Recordings (Meernaa, John Vanderslice, Luke Temple, Brijean) was writing at home on an OP-1 synth and tenor guitar, and readying her sketches to bring to co-collaborators and husband and wife team Carly Bond (electric guitar, flutes, vocals) and Rob Shelton (synths, programming), both of the band Meernaa.
Originally envisioning a quieter acoustic album to complement the darkly swooning r ‘n b of their debut album Euphorbia (Native Cat Recordings 2018), once in the studio, the band started playing each other songs by other artists before getting to work on anything, such as “Shadows from Nowhere” by the obscure dream-pop 80s band Blue Gas, the feminist and funky album Raw Like Sushi by Neneh Cherry, and the anthemic weirdness of Toto. It seemed, rather than head towards quietude, the band was keen on recreating the dramatic, layered beauty, the dance-ready and big moments of 80s-era recordings. Unabashedly drawing from the well of that musical era’s emotional yet funky potency, you can hear Blue Nile, Grace Jones, Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel in the elegantly shifting soundscapes of the album.
A longtime solo artist, Mason did not intend to form a band. When she stepped into the studio with Bond and Shelton in 2017, who, by chance assignment, were her engineers for a solo project at Tiny Telephone in San Francisco, she had no idea where the session would take her. Being a mother to a toddler and a baby at that point, Mason was unsure if she could fit music into her life again. But with Bond and Shelton, the recording process was so fun and unpredictable, and the undeniable lure of creating music together so strong, that any fear of balancing art with the raising of children was stamped out. The trio emerged from the studio a few months later as bandmates and co-producers, having completed their debut album, Euphorbia (Native Cat Recordings 2018).
Gas Station Roses’ songs travel through varying emotional states just like one going through one’s own life, but each song is marked by hopeful tenderness. There’s the grungy lust-driven rock of “Weathered Romeo,” the plaintive Japanese pop-influenced ballad to a suffering partner, “Moon at the Peak,” the Afropop-tinged “Automatic Woman” with its message of defiance against misogyny, and the robust compassion of the final song, “Human Poses,” in which Mason sings “they’re roughin’ heaven up…turn it all off, I”m gonna turn it all off.” Going into the studio during a turbulent time on the Earth, turning it all off, gave Mason a therapeutic way to understand and cope with all that was happening politically, while trying to offer something beautiful back to the world. In her words, Gas Station Roses is about “desiring life so badly still as a grown-up, getting the joy and beauty in big gulps, but also recognizing its limitations, corruptions, and sadness, more than I ever would as a child. And in the face of that, choosing to smile and stay awake to the beauty around us.”
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Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster's new album 'Take Heart, Take Care,' is due out August 30 on Big Legal Mess. The former Water Liars (14+ million streams on Spotify) indie-folk artist has earned raves from NY Times ad NPR and fans like Julien Baker and opening slots for Pedro the Lion but he's outdone himself on his sophomore record.
Musically, the Arkansasan's signatures are there: a sort of windswept soundscape; his vulnerable tenor; gorgeous melodies; and guitar figures that weave from Americana touchstones into unexpected indie rock territory. Lyrically, it's his most nuanced work to date; it's a result of finding a life with some balance in it.
Whereas much of his previous work explored darkness, there's a sense of curiosity on this album that's illuminating, examining different aspects of life (including darkness). As with his strongest work, it conjures humid Southern nights and kudzu-encased vistas but with unpredictable scenes and lines that cut to the core. I'm telling you: this is a great, great record.
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