Megan Brickwood - Gal Musette - Vanity Mirror

Megan Brickwood - Fifth Mile.

Rising musician, singer, and songstress Megan Brickwood is absolutely thrilled to release her beautiful sophomore EP Fifth Mile.

To celebrate the release, Megan has chosen to highlight the title track from the EP, “Fifth Mile.” “‘Fifth Mile’ is one of those 'special gift' songs that I wrote from start to finish very quickly,” Megan Brickwood explains. “One night I decided to try out the CGCFCE tuning and this picking pattern started taking shape. Once that was written, the story for the song just opened up and the song kind of wrote itself from there.

The lyric structure of the song is pretty simple – when I see it written out I realize just how spare the lyrics are – and for someone who is generally a pretty wordy songwriter it was kind of a treat to write this dreamy, abstract tune and really just dig into the vibe and feel of it. I think that the production honored that intention so well, and I think as the title track it's a good representation of a running theme in the EP, which is giving permission to oneself to dream and go off into the unknown....throwing caution to the wind. This track really embraces that on a number of levels.”

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Gal Musette - Plateau.

The new single from Southern California born and bred baroque pop singer/songwriter Gal Musette is entitled "Plateau", the track was written when Gal was in the chaotic traffic that Los Angeles is known for. Gal confides, "While driving the lyrics started coming out as a form of venting, basically I was babying out/complaining about how much time I spend in my car. 

But as the lyrics progressed, they kind of revealed a season of numbness and monotony I was stuck in, and the driving became a metaphor for how I felt in general, going through the motions, mindlessly traveling through life without much direction or emotion."

Sonically, "Plateau" is a cinematic indie pop tune filled with a melodic tenderness rarely seen in today's musical landscape. The kaleidoscopic song highlights a nostalgic bearing melody with fresh and quirky undertones.

Gal Musette has toured with The Magnetic Fields, Donavon Frankenreiter, and has collaborated with Rufus Wainwright and has been profiled by the likes of NPR and Ladygunn, among others.

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Vanity Mirror - Tuesday's News.

 Vanity Mirror, dreamy lo-fi bedroom pop via Toronto and Los Angeles, have just announced their highly anticipated debut LP PUFF (due out Spring 2023 on We Are Busy Bodies) with an advance single and video for the song Tuesday’s News. Tuesday’s News features colorful piano riffs and artful backbeats from Vanity Mirror’s Brent Randall (Gentle Brent, Electric Looking Glass) and percussionist Johnny Toomey (The Turns, Electric Looking Glass). Randal describes Tuesday’s News as “a warm and fuzzy front parlor piano rock piece.” 

This homespun multitrack pop experiment was recorded on a hand-me-down piano in an empty house in Detroit during a February snow storm. While lyrically meditating on winter doldrums the song hopes to hug you with sunny hummable optimism. Randall suggests, “Spin it loud on your living room hi-fi whilst wearing your favorite apple green cardigan.” The result is a multitrack experiment, a nostalgic sweet pop song that is hopeful, beautiful and utterly sentimental. Nods to Emitt Rhodes, Idle Race and The Raspberries are present throughout.

The music video for Tuesday’s News was made with LA based graphic designer/videographer extraordinaire Mat Dunlap. Randall says, “Mat is an old friend and an expat who works with a tonne of Canadian bands. If you know you know!” On the premise of the video, Randall explains, “Johnny had this idea where I’m a chauffeur and I drive around a series of characters that are all Johnny in different costumes.  Johnny, when not drumming in Vanity Mirror, works at a Hollywood costume house and has access to all sorts of great costumes. 

We had limited time and resources so we decided to shoot it against a green screen using a makeshift prop car.  You know in old 50’s movies how they would fake driving around by cutting in stock footage behind the drivers?  We love that look, you can always tell it’s obviously fake. So we leaned into this idea with the green screen and it made for a pretty charming and hilarious video.  I’m singing along to the track and driving around “LA” and picking up these hilarious characters: a 70’s jogger, a far out 60s space dude, a marching band drummer and even a full on lion at a taco stand.”

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Megan Brickwood - Holly Henderson - Michael J. Benjamin

Megan Brickwood - Trinity River Blues.

The rising musician, singer, and songstress Megan Brickwood is excited to announce that her upcoming EP Fifth Mile will be released on February 24, 2023. To mark the occasion, the artist has shared the first single from the EP "Trinity River Blues."

"'Trinity River Blues' is the first song I wrote in an open tuning," Brickwood explains. "I became interested in open tunings studying Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake. This DADGAD tuning was the first I tried, and it completely caught my imagination.

The idea for writing a song called 'Trinity River Blues' popped into my head one day while I wandered around by the Trinity River, feeling lonely and melancholy. Some weeks later when I was back in Los Angeles, working out of my little home studio, I started writing this DADGAD song that I initially conceived of as 'Colors in the Stream.' After I’d written the whole thing, I looked over the lyrics and realized that the song I’d written was 'Trinity River Blues.'"

“The creation of the videos was an adventure,” Brickwood exclaims. “I met Hannah, the co-creator and director for the ‘Trinity River Blues’ video through mutual friends in Redding, CA and we spent a lot of time scouting locations in the areas I’d spent exploring in my youth. ‘Trinity River Blues’ was filmed in McCloud, downtown Weaverville, and at Lewiston Lake. Since both of those songs draw heavily on my experiences in this part of the world, I wanted the videos to reflect that.”

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Holly Henderson - Wendy.

With her new single “Wendy”, Holly Henderson is further teasing her second album, “The Walls”, following the release of last year’s acclaimed single “The Planes”, which Clash Magazine described thus: “bejewelled psych-pop with folk qualities, her work has a haunting after-effect that can’t be shrugged off.”

The long-awaited sophomore release from the UK alternative singer-songwriter brings a very different side to Holly’s musicality and depth. While her debut album, “Monday Green” featured Holly’s impressive rock guitar work and alternative pop anthem prowess, her new work shows a more introspective, and slightly more delicate side to her songcraft.

“Wendy” is a uniquely fresh, yet retro infused ballad, told from the story of a person leaving their dog “Wendy” at home and promising her that she hasn’t been abandoned. It begins with the familiar whimsy and folk sentiments of Holly’s arrangements, and her dreamy, ethereal storyteller vocals. But as the band creep in, and Wendy’s world grows darker and colder, the warmth of the band, as more drums, percussion, guitars, mandolins and harmonies sweep in to remind Wendy, and anyone else listening, that they are never alone.

Recorded in a farmhouse in the English countryside, Holly’s new album “The Walls” brings Holly full circle from her previous Los Angeles recorded album. Finely crafted arrangements, sonic musings, and playful themes take us on a journey with Holly as she deconstructs her Brit Pop and classic influences and reassembles them into progressive-folk wonderment.

On “The Walls”, Holly said, “This album sits within a sense of place. As a songwriter, I can only speak of my own thoughts of home and belonging. I suppose this record is a wandering eye over the fleeting moments from the last few years, of when I felt at home, and when I didn’t. When I felt like the walls were tumbling, when they kept me safe, and when they became my prison. I learned the only way of breaking these patterns, was to let people step over the threshold.

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Michael J. Benjamin - The Deal Has Long Gone Down.

Evoking the likes of Johnny Cash or Leonard Cohen, “The Deal Has Long Gone Down” is a masterclass in mature and measured music-making. With gallant vocals that weave themselves niftily amongst genial plucking guitars, the poignant new track serves as both an introduction to the artist and a testament to his mastered craft. A song stricken with a paranoia for a world spinning ever more rapidly out of control, Benjamin says of the new release:

“The Deal Has Long Gone Down is difficult to pin down. I guess it expresses my fears for the modern climate we all live in, a changing world in danger of moving towards something dark and despairing. When the fortune-teller at the crossroads loses belief, you know it’s tough times ahead.”

Staking his place as a young musician set to shake things up, Michael’s soulful songs express a hard-won sense of authority: embracing the world with an engrossing, truth-seeking style of writing which belies his still-tender years.

Like most other millennials, Michael J Benjamin grew up with the entire history of music readily available at the click of a mouse. He embraced himself in the heroes of old, immersing himself in the works of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash and Paul McCartney, before finding more modern realms of influence in the songbooks of Lana Del Rey, Weyes Blood and Jack Antonoff.

And while many of his musical favourites are American, Michael’s literary influences have a distinctly European flavour with Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Hugo all seeping into the way he looks at his art. His songs flourish in a self-made world of creeping dusk, ever-aware of the foreboding, Lynchian darkness which will inevitably follow.

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