STRABE - Shelf Lives - The Pearl Harts - Kieli

STRABE - All My Heart.

STRABE have today dropped brand new single "All My Heart", which is available now on [PIAS] Recordings alongside a stunning video directed by Tom Furse (The Horrors). It introduces the musical and visual world behind the band’s upcoming debut album, having gone viral with first track "Best Worst Year" (which has surpassed over 10 million streams) and won widespread praise for debut mixtape JUVENOIA.

"All My Heart" summons the wistful alternative-pop of bands like The Cardigans or The Cranberries, alongside a keen ear for emotive, electronic and dance influences like Romy or Fred again.. Both uplifting and melancholic, on "All My Heart" STRABE aim to capture - they say - “when love feels so simple. Something wonderful that I (Angelica) realised when in my first queer relationship was how natural, easy and joyous loving as your authentic self can be.”

The video to "All My Heart" sees STRABE further explore new territory, as well as a water-theme that recurs throughout their upcoming work. Directed by Furse, the band’s seaside performance in Margate is replicated by a unique AI model, with the results blurring the line between fact, feeling and reminiscent of a live Matisse painting.

STRABE are alt-pop duo Angelica and Emmet, soundtracking those chaotic coming-of-age experiences with innate musical maturity. Angelica (originally from Scotland) met Emmet - who was born and raised in Ireland - in the smoking section of a Cork music festival: the pair quickly realized they represented the missing part of each other’s projects, but failed to swap numbers at the end of a long night. Both, in their own way, used STRABE (and the blossoming, unconventional friendship at the heart of it) to work through their own emotional journeys, which were vividly explored across debut mixtape JUVENOIA. 

From the soon-to-be-prophetic "Best Worst Year" - which climbed to 10 million streams over the pandemic - to "Life On Pause" (channeling Gen Z’s suspended experiences of growing up over lockdown), here were songs variously affecting, euphoric and hugely accomplished. Having since moved to London, played their first ever live shows, and picked up support across BBC Introducing, 6Music and more, STRABE threw themselves into a brand new project which begins beguilingly with ‘All My Heart’. Watch out for more coming soon.

 

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Shelf Lives - All The Problems.

Swiftly rising electro-punk two-piece Shelf Lives release new single "All The Problems" - which will feature on a new EP due for release this autumn. The new single follows NME describing the duo as "the extroverted electro-punk duo we need right now", and their recent stint across the UK in support of Cardiff band Panic Shack. "All The Problems" arrives ahead of a busy spring and summer of festival appearances at Liverpool Sound City, The Great Escape, Glastonbury, London Calling, FOCUS Wales, Sŵn Festival and more.

Co-produced by SPACE (Do Nothing, IDLES), "All The Problems” confronts the crisis of masculinity with one of Shelf Lives' most gentle, melodic choruses. “Tell me something you like about yourself,” the duo sing softly in unison, evoking a question therapists often ask and most people can’t answer. Seeking the reasons behind male rage, the track balances extreme acts of violence with the jarringly passive way the wider world processes them.

Speaking more on the release of the new single, the duo said: "To be vague about it, “All the Problems” is a casual chat about the suppression of emotions, specifically among those who identify as males and what it could lead to as a result. The track goes through the motions of seeking a reason behind the resulting rage and offsets extreme, sometimes violent, acts with the World's passive and unsettling way of dealing with them. There's nothing casual about the topic and events itself, yet, socially we've reached a ridiculous, dangerous place where we feel like in order to survive we need to be.  Essentially, so we can... "get on with our day"."

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The Pearl Harts - Baby Chaos.

The opener of the band’s new album ‘Love, Chaos’, “Baby Chaos” is a powerful statement of intent from The Pearl Harts, igniting the starting fuse that winds its way into their explosive latest collection.

Produced by the band themselves, “Baby Chaos” sees retro-rock flourishes and a riotous no-holds-barred attitude prickling amongst raw rock’n’roll guitars and melodic punk sensibilities. The end result makes for a record that sounds like the warped lovechild of Bikini Kill, The Stooges and Tony Visconti, funnelled via the N.E.R.D school of production. Of the new track The Pearl Harts explain:

“Ever had that kind of love that feels so right but so wrong… it jitters in the gut but aches in the heart? A twin flame kind of mentality — this is what “Baby Chaos” is about. The kind of love that brings madness, codependency: feeling alive and out of control yet so comfortable at the same time. Relationships aren’t black and white… love can cause us to confront our shadow itself.”

With references to the David Lynch road-movie classic ‘Wild At Heart’, complete with the black leather jackets, ‘60s rockabilly chic, long drives, escapist desires, and romanticism; “Baby Chaos” arrives with an official video.

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Kieli - O.

Kieli is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter and composer Elin Pöllänen. Kieli’s artistic expression is inspired by her Swedish-Finnish-Karelian roots. On her multilingual debut album From Summer to Spring, due out on May 26th via Cognitive Shift (PJ Harvey & Harry Escott, Roger Goula), Kieli invites the listener to a cinematic soundscape that is simultaneously beautiful, ingenuous, uplifting, and melancholic.

For years, Pöllänen has worked as a researcher exploring human relations to other animals and nature. New single ‘O’ is a marching anthem for the power of grief with particular reference to mass extinction, a tragedy she says is “upheld by indifference and separation”. “I wanted ‘O’ to portray a sense of wonder for our planet and the impactful everyday encounters with nature that are often taken for granted,” she says. “The song processes complex emotions, such as a kind of modern nostalgia: a deep longing for an interconnected and living world - a world that already exists, but that we are at risk of losing due to our inability to act and join the movement that already exists,” she continues.

From Summer to Spring explores the emotions that arise in life-changing transitions; grief, exhaustion and worry, but also feelings of hope, gratitude and unconditional love. “From Summer to Spring is a very personal album that I wrote during a life-changing time,” explains Elin. It is a personal portrait of a daughter and her father during their last years together, as well as the experience of being a caregiver to someone who is disappearing, yet as close to you as they will ever be. “Amidst the fear, music really became the most attentive and merciful language that I could use to communicate with myself and explore my emotions so that I stayed resilient and open to life,” she explains.

Throughout the album’s nine songs, Kieli expertly blends cinematic indie-folk with neo-classical composition and swirling electronica, creating mystical and surreal soundscapes. Non-verbal and verbal vocals sung in Swedish, Finnish, English and the endangered Karelian language Livvi all help to evoke the many parallel feelings she experienced during this time.

Cognitive Shift · Kieli - O

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Mary Hennessy - Photo Ops - The Pearl Harts - ROWSIE

Mary Hennessy - Teeth.

Teeth is a fabulous new song where a smooth flowing indie soundtrack is the perfect backdrop for Mary's melodic and distinctive vocals that glide and dance above. Mary Hennessy is a 24-year-old, Liverpool based singer-songwriter, who has been releasing music since 2018. Her debut album came out during June of 2020. Mary released her single Rollerblade on Friday 3rd March, as the first of three singles in anticipation for her new album.

For the past three years now, she has been making her second, long-awaited follow up album ‘Feels Like’ which drops Friday 5th May. Mary has an atmospheric nature to her music, which is guided by her delicate vocals that deal with all thing’s life in her lyricism.

“I wanted Teeth to have a sense of impatience about it, like something was gradually building under the surface that you could no longer ignore. The lyrics don’t directly say how they really feel, but from what they are saying, the situation is not a happy one. So, I knew I wanted the song to end in a sort of chaotic way, as if the situation is getting out of hand, but something is still yet to be done about it.”

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Photo Ops - When You See Something Beautiful In The World.

The autumn blaze maple tree, famous as music in Nashville, is a fast grower. Imagine its teeming majesty of red leaves from above one house in the city’s Inglewood neighborhood. You see it ensconced like a controlled flame by rolling hills and winding roads. A familiar pattern lulls you from days into nights in this dreamy park town. You never realized from the ground, under the shade of that tree, how all these beautiful designs in any city keep you sane.

The sweeping vantage points of Photo Ops’ Burns Bright belong first to the quiet of Nashville’s first modern suburb after World War II. Terry Price lived there while perfecting the melodic soft-rock modes that pleased audiences on tour with Camera Obscura and Fences.

Price took this way of seeing to a new home in Los Angeles. Long drives through dimensional vistas ended in his room in Los Feliz where he recorded Burns Bright. When Etta James, Molly Drake, and The Byrds are all touchpoints of sound and silence, what emerges is a gentle homage to the commonalities of lasting influence in pop music, a kind of time-bending presentiment — the moment of tracking in a studio when everyone senses it’s a moment that will be remembered. Reaching through the layer of industry noise in both hallmark cities as we know them from a distance — is this a hit? — Price treasures the visceral experience of making and recognizing music.

The most devout of craftspeople, Price is on a quest toward the merciful essence of recognition when he writes songs; each line discovers a pure element of comfort, calling back to the land and to his musician mother’s love of transcendent melodies. Burns Bright reminds us how those forces are one and the same.

Price’s heroes in music are more than inspirations. To him, they offer examples of how to keep breathing in a culture that discourages total presence. It’s true that moving an open heart through the world comes with constant risk. Looking out at the expanse we all share — really seeing that world — is the practice of Burns Bright, and the special ability that makes Price a songwriter to cherish.

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The Pearl Harts - Hypocritical.

SE London rock duo The Pearl Harts have unleashed “Hypocritical”, the second single to be taken from their awaited second album ‘Love, Chaos’ (out 21 April, via Double Bang Records).

Blending amped-up punk motifs with booming alt-pop stylings, “Hypocritical” sees the two-piece challenging the perceptions of what it means to be a woman making rock music and relishing the freedom. Spirited and sardonic in equal measure, it’s a playful power-pop anthem with a bitter sting in its tail. As The Pearl Harts explain:

“Hypocritical is a bratty, fun, scream-a-long song, influenced by the hi-octane pop of Miley Cyrus and Gwen Stefani with the punk attitude of ‘Impeach My Bush’-era Peaches. It’s an empowerment song for women and girls taking on the world.”

Following comeback cut “More”, a track praised by Classic Rock as “a single that adds a little polish to their gritty blues-rock sound”, and the Steve Lamacq (BBC 6 Music) and Radio X supported “Wild Me”; “Hypocritical” is the third sampler of the duo’s eagerly awaited second album ‘Love, Chaos’ (out 21 April 2023).

Produced by the band themselves in collaboration with Danio (Husky Loops, Kari Faux), the record features twelve tracks of the high-octane rock’n’roll The Pearl Harts have become known for, while adding some ‘90s NYC punk, 2000s hip-hop and modern polished pop touches into the mix.

Teasing the album, the duo say: “‘Love, Chaos’ is about saying goodbye to unhealthy patterns that we all identify with in our lives. Be that work, alcohol, sex, drugs, procrastination, love… Whether we like it or not our whole lives are a series of patterns that shape our personality, they can come about through the unconscious, through family dynamics, through everyday interactions and through trauma. ‘Love, Chaos’ is about realising and accepting this and forging a life beyond.”

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ROWSIE - Makeshift Grave.

ROWSIE, the four-piece band from London known for their thought-provoking, emotive brand of rock n roll, have released a new charity single titled ‘Makeshift Grave’.

Recorded at the world-famous RAK studios, the song takes a hard, honest look at the mindless ongoing violence and conflict in Ukraine, shedding light on how the destruction of truth is often the first step in rationalising psychopathic behaviour that leads to the carnage we are blatantly witnessing today.

For the video the band thought to involve some first-hand witnesses to the recent atrocities produced by vocalist & guitarist Richard Rothenberg with bassist Alan D. Boyd taking on director’s duties. It’s a simple concept with Ukrainian dancer Angelina Lengyel and choreography by Anastasiia Artiushok. Costumes and floral crowns were provided by designers Nataliia Horbenko and Anfisa Polyushkevych. All have been affected by the war in personal ways.

Proceeds for the sales of this single will go to the charity British-Ukranian Aid who ROWSIE have worked with in 2022 raising over £10,000 for the charity in a previous benefit concert.

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