Erika Lewis - Shayla McDaniel - Alas The Sun - Renata Zeiguer

Photo - Sarrah Danziger

Erika Lewis - Loser.

Erika Lewis, of beloved New Orleans trad jazz band Tuba Skinny (but currently based in Asheville, NC), has released her fantastic new single "Loser." The track is from her phenomenal forthcoming LP A Walk Around The Sun, out on April 29th.

Erika says the upbeat "Loser" is "loosely based on my own experience in romantic relationships and the push and pull that comes with it. The push of dedication and loyalty and the pull of betrayal and broken promises. Feeling like you would do anything in order to make it work yet not really knowing what to do." She brilliantly distills the sound of heart wrenching, classic country into each of the album's poignant tracks. She has the voice of an angel, I think I could listen to her read Wikipedia entries and be happy forever.

When this album was made, a crisis had struck - she was given a health diagnosis that required surgery that could permanently damage her vocal nerves and end her career. Her friend Lani Tourville, wife of The Delondes' John James Tourville (who also produced the record), told her she had to make one last record before the surgery. She made the album, and the surgery was a success!

Erika Lewis · Loser

==========================================================================

Shayla McDaniel - Depend On.

"Depend On" is a retro soul song with a modern twist that elicits a cool head nod with a groovy vibe that's perfect for cooking dinner, cleaning the house, or just hanging out. It's about longing for someone to depend on in a relationship, romantically, in business, or a friendship, after being hurt by someone you trust.

“I was in a jam when someone bailed on me. I was thinking in the shower and trying to figure out what to do,” McDaniel said. “I said to myself, ‘I want someone I can depend on, like the kick on the one’s and three’s.’ Then I was like, ‘Dang! This needs to be a song.’ I just sang the lines to see what melody came out, and it stuck.”

Shayla’s honeyed vocals, her pop-rock songwriting, and her instrumental instincts invite comparisons to John Legend fronting an indie rock band, The Roots affiliate Cody Chestnut (“The Seed 2.0”), and a silken Gary Clark Jr. But the truth is, there aren’t many talents who sound like Shayla. Her smoothly emotional vocals, self-contained artistry, and indie rock outlook is singular. Shayla counts as influences artists as diverse as the band Joseph, Lianne La Havas, Andraé Crouch, and Deep Sea Diver, among others. She released her debut single in 2016; her debut EP in 2017; and a follow-up EP in 2019.

It took a little prodding to get lifelong musician, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Shayla McDaniel onstage. A friend of hers had never heard the Knoxville-based singer-songwriter’s musical gifts, but was well-versed in her steely determination and Type A personality. He suggested she take her music out of the basement, and Shayla took his sage advice and emerged an award-winning prolific artist with a soulful, guitar-driven alt-rock sensibility.

 

==========================================================================

Alas The Sun - Out For Something.

Swiss indie pop duo Alas The Sun are back with their infectious new single 'Out For Something'! The female/male vocals and dreamy guitar melodies make for a sparkling Indie gem, taking you on a roadtrip through sunny climes!

Following on from critically-acclaimed debut album "You And Your Love" (2019), new single "Out For Something" opens up a new chapter. Nuria Thie is now the group’s front woman, completing the line-up alongside founding member, Sandro Raschle. She has been a permanent fixture since February 2021, and this first single since her arrival offers a luscious appetiser of Alas The Sun’s sophomore record “Wild Honey Inn”, out May 6th via Taxi Gauche Records.

A glimmering infectious indie pop gem that makes you want to move your hips and hum along simultaneously, ”Out For Something" was co-produced by Tim Frey at firstdoorleft in Aarau together with the band. Frey and Raschle were responsible for recording almost all instruments, given helping hands by Simon Truog (bass) and Yvan Brunner (guitar), both of whom form part of the live line-up. Raschle: ‘I wrote "Out For Something" a few weeks before the release of our debut album. Unfortunately, the song didn't make it onto the record, but the band liked it so much that we included it in our live set. It made sense to have Truog and Brunner in for the studio sessions as they had helped shape the song while playing it live.’

==========================================================================

Photo - Josh Goleman

Renata Zeiguer - Evergreen.

Brooklyn-based Filipino/Argentinian artist Renata Zeiguer today is sharing her new single “Evergreen” from her upcoming album, Picnic In The Dark, releasing April 8th, 2022 via Northern Spy. In the meditative and driving "Evergreen," Renata Zeiguer sings of a transformative migration from her lifelong NYC hometown to the Catskills of upstate New York. “The move was a pivotal rite of passage, where leaving every familiar thing behind in exchange for exploring a completely new environment in solace allowed me to see a new world of perspective,” says Zeiguer. “Rewiring the brain through meditation in nature and constantly feeding it with new environmental signals helped me uproot the hold of past life-experiences.”

The song was the last to be recorded for Picnic in the Dark, symbolizing the trajectory of the album's journey, as well as the idea of leaving one concept of home behind in order to find home within oneself. Like a prayer honoring the forest, the lyrics are a reverent homage to the evergreen trees as the song flows in and out of expansive choruses that conjure big sky horizons and feel ethereal and grounded all at once.

Picnic in the Dark follows Zeiguer through a dreamworld of magical realism as she navigates her memories and seeks to confront inherited dysfunctional patterns head-on. As Zeiguer reconciles her childhood and her adult lives with careful compassion, Picnic in the Dark reveals itself as an album not only of transformation, but of healing and self-actualization.

==========================================================================

Dahlia Sleeps - Renata Zeiguer - Kindsight - Josienne Clarke

Dahlia Sleeps - The Calm You Keep.

London based duo Dahlia Sleeps release new track "The Calm You Keep", the latest cut to be heard from the band's debut album Overflow, out 8th April.

A pensive, indie-rock track "The Calm You Keep" is the album's closing song and completes the record in cathartic fashion. A stunning examination into motherhood; vocalist Lucy Hill captures the poise of a mother supporting her child through mental ill-health, with the lines "I climbed into your bed, just like a child I laid and wept / You did not show your fear, you knew the sun was somewhere near".

Filled with nostalgic electric guitar and live drums it paints images of a dreamlike world - "It's a portrait of a parent providing the calm within the storm; half a Dalí-esque soundscape from within an unwell mind, half a paradise of safety”, Lucy says of the track.

Two years in the making and almost 6 years since their debut single, producer/writer Luke Hester and singer/writer Lucy Hill bring a new weight sonically to their debut album Overflow, depicting a new kind of freedom for the duo – from managing and coming to terms with mental health problems to experiencing love in all its forms despite them.

With eclectic influences ranging from electronic acts including MOVEMENT, Autechre and Burial to the lyrically poetic works of Florence + the Machine, Radiohead and The National, Dahlia Sleeps shift seamlessly between genres; from dance to electronic to pop.

Dahlia Sleeps · The Calm You Keep

============================================================================

Photo - Josh Goleman

Renata Zeiguer - Sunset Boulevard.

Renata Zeiguer—the Filipino/Argentinian, Brooklyn-based artist who has recorded on albums by Cassandra Jenkins, Landlady, Quilt, Ava Luna, Mr Twin Sister, among others—today announced Picnic In The Dark, her second full-length album for Northern Spy, will release April 8, 2022.

Zeiguer takes us by the hand and leads us into her surreal storybook realm by way of lead single “Sunset Boulevard”, which arrives alongside a music video by OTIUM (Hand Habits, Widowspeak, Ana Fox Rochinski). We are guided through the metamorphosis of a caterpillar, a kaleidoscopic metaphor for the process of letting go of the seemingly safe and familiar in order to evolve and thrive.

Picnic in the Dark follows Zeiguer through a dreamworld of magical realism as she navigates her memories and seeks to confront inherited dysfunctional patterns head-on. As Zeiguer reconciles her childhood and her adult lives with careful compassion, Picnic in the Dark reveals itself as an album not only of transformation, but of healing and self-actualization.

In collaboration with co-producer and old friend Sam Griffin Owens (Sam Evian), Zeiguer sonically invokes the meeting point of memories and dreams, calling to mind Broadcast, Cindy Lee, or David Lynch’s multidisciplinary ventures. With generous splashes of spring reverb, ghostly vocal harmonies, antique drum machines, cinematic strings, and the comforting warbles of synthesized organ, all bolstered by a tight indie rock sensibility, the sonic palette of Picnic in the Dark is magically anachronistic.

 

==========================================================================

Kindsight - Sun Is Always in My Eyes.

Danish four-piece Kindsight make music that draws from 80’s and 90’s alternative rock and combines it with the shimmering Scandinavian pop that the region has become so renowned for, resulting in a sound that is both fuzzy and melodic in equal measure. Releasing their first material in 2020, the up and coming Danish four-piece have been quick on the rise, picking up steam with a series of new singles over the last 18 months. Now, they are announcing their debut album, Swedish Punk, will be released on March 25th, 2022.  New single Sun Is Always in My Eyes is out now alongside a DIY video made by the band.

Kindsight formed when front-woman Nina Hyldgaard Rasmussen and guitarist Søren Svensson bonded over a shared love of The Sugarcubes. They went on to recruit bass player Anders Prip and drummer Johannes Jacobsen and over the past few years have earned a reputation within Copenhagen’s thriving indie scene for their exciting live shows.

On the album’s title, Rasmussen says “Swedish Punk’ was an off the cuff term our producer, Adam, came up with when we needed a working title for a new song we wrote during the recording sessions. Our bass player, Anders, then wrote some lyrics based on the working title and we ended up liking the whole ‘Swedish Punk’-thing so much it became the name of the album”.

There’s a real coming of age charm to Swedish Punk. ‘Don’t You Grow Up’ was the first song the band ever wrote together. Written in “a time when we thought to be a sunny teenage rock band, you had to write songs about teenagers in the sun,” they say. Atop jangling guitars, Rasmussen’s distinctive voice dances somewhere between that of Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval and Alvvays’ Molly Rankin, leaving the listener drenched in the nostalgic optimism of summers gone by. Lead single ‘Sun Is Always In My Eyes’, an unrelenting indie-pop earworm, continues in that same vein. Recalling a time when life was carefree, the band say the track is about ‘stealing money from your mother and feigning to run away from home. Being blessed and unable to see because you've got too much sun in your eyes’.

==========================================================================

Josienne Clarke - Workhorse.

Today, award-winning singer, songwriter and producer Josienne Clarke has shared 'Workhorse', the second cut to be taken from her forthcoming EP I Promised You Light. ‘Workhorse’ is one of the most experimental tracks of Clarke’s career to date, with Sharon Van Etten and Sylvan Esso being the song’s musical touchstones. “This is the most joyous one on [the new EP], to me,” Clarke says of the song which she describes as a “weird dance acoustic mashup.” The song’s video, by Alec Bowman_Clarke, sees the artist roller-skating at a silent disco to emphasise the sheer joy of the track. “It’s just me in a massive room with loads of disco lights with silent disco headphones on just messing about to my own positivity anthem,” she smiles.

Of the track’s experimentation, Clarke says she has been “slightly flirting with synths and electronic sounds more” and using “less acoustic music” in an about turn from her usual style. “I don’t intend to  renounce my acoustic roots at all, but I feel like the old set-up in the industry was quite keen to tell me what type of music I could and couldn’t make,” Clarke explains. “I feel like ‘Workhorse’ is like: ‘What if I could do whatever I wanted? What would that sound like? That sound is this track,” Clarke says assuredly, mirroring the confidence of a track that is sure to become a standout of her career.

I Promised You Light follows on from Clarke’s critically acclaimed 2021 LP, A Small Unknowable Thing, an emotionally charged album bubbling with courage and defiance. If A Small Unknowable Thing were a sentence, I Promised You Light is the full stop at the end, or “the light at the end of that particular tunnel,” as she puts it. “People over the years have often tended to be a little intense at my merch stand, it sort of comes with the territory when you write the kind of music I do. But none more so than a lady who stood there and pleaded for me to ‘write a more positive song, one with a happy ending’” she explains. It was a request that stuck with Clarke over the years. “That’s basically what this EP is,” she says. “It’s all the positive lessons I’ve learned over the past few years and presented in my own, somewhat melancholic, way.”

==========================================================================