Loveland Duren - Romanie - Lunar Vacation - Whiskey in the Pines

Loveland Duren - Tumbledown Hearts / Within Crying Distance.

“Tumbledown Hearts” really is a song about two people finding a way to celebrate life together in spite of turmoil, misunderstandings, disappointments, and a life lived long enough to know that while rose colored glasses may not be reality, we can sure put them on if we choose to.  It’s about two creative romantics on a journey, literally, but also about sharing companionship and comfort in an adult world with another battered but hopeful and optimistic soul.

The lyrics tell the tale. You’ve heard the expression “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade!”  We just found another way to tell a relatable story about people doing exactly that…having fun and sharing affinity for each other, with each other.  When our thoughts are shining just a bit too brightly on all our fears, we say “Snap off the light immediately; leaving the outside suspended;” put the past behind you, and share “another toast for what’s up ahead!”   You can “hypnotize” yourself, so to speak, and let love have prominence; enjoy and celebrate the beauty of the moment. —Vicki Loveland & Van Duren , 2021

“Ringing guitars, cracking drums and a “get up and dance” melodic bass line announce the new fetching pop rocker, “Tumbledown Hearts,” the opener on Loveland Duren’s new album, Any Such Thing (Edgewood Recordings). Co-written by the Memphis duo Vicki Loveland and Van Duren, the track was cut and mixed at famed Royal Studios by Adam Hill, who also plays lead guitar on the song. Vicki and Van’s powerful vocals alternate verses, then join together on the choruses and bridge; weaving a tale of two worldly wise companions on a very late night “falling sideways around the room.” Familiar and new all at once, “Tumbledown Hearts” sets the stage for the inspiring listening experience that is Any Such Thing”

Vicki Loveland—vocals, tambourine, shaker Van Duren—vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards Ian Duren—drums, Adam Hill—engineer, lead guitars Produced by Loveland Duren Executive Producer Vicki Loveland.

Loveland Duren · Tumbledown Hearts

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Romanie - Stranger In My Skin.

Melbourne based Romanie’s new single is her most personal and vulnerable song to date. The track captures her feelings whilst enduring Melbourne’s extended lock down last year. Produced by long time collaborators,  James Seymour (Feelds, Merpire) at Small Time Group, and mastered by Isaac Barter, ‘Stranger In My Skin’ is a song that Romanie has been playing while busking for a while, “where people have stopped in their tracks to come tell me how relevant it feels to them. I hope this song can help anyone that has a bad day to allow themselves to feel sad and know that another good day will come too.”

Speaking more about the inspiration for her new single, Romanie says,“Stranger In My Skin is a song about feeling lost and alienated from the outside world and yourself. I wrote it during the second lockdown in Melbourne last year - a period in which I felt very alone and very far away from home (literally as well). I had some really bad days where I wouldn't take good care of my mental health and this song was written the first time after I had picked up my guitar again. I was really angry with myself for feeling that way and let myself slip.”

Romanie’s forthcoming sophomore EP ‘Little Big Steps’ explores Romanie’s personal story and journey from Belgium to Australia so far.  It’s about being in motion and growing as a person and musician.

Led by a pair of dreamy indie-pop singles ‘I’m Anything But Myself Around You’ and ‘Fake Friends’, Romanie’s full length EP is marked by its diversity of themes and tempos, yet anchored together with the consistency of the ideas of transition, self-reflection and authentic songwriting.

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Lunar Vacation - Mold.

Lunar Vacation have announced their debut album Inside Every Fig Is a Dead Wasp today with a brightly-colored psychedelic music video for "Mold" (directed by Rach Rios Rehm).

Produced by Daniel Gleason of Grouplove, Lunar Vacation’s upcoming full-length is a vibrant offering of melodious guitars, propulsive rhythm, and fitful, gripping vocals that take on the contemporary strain of coming of age. The album boasts a celebratory sound, a reckless sense of ecstasy specific to youth, and rock-solid friendship. Drawing from early influences like Rilo Kiley and Tame Impala, and landing closer to contemporary favorites like Alvvays and Slow Pulp, Lunar Vacation make rich music replete with bliss.

The album will be released October 29 and is available for pre-order on pale pink vinyl (exclusive to Keeled Scales and the band), black vinyl, CD, digital, and cassette.

The band's hometown record store, Criminal Records in Atlanta, will also carry an exclusive pressing, with UK retailers Rough Trade and Recordstore.co.uk carrying deluxe editions with signed prints.

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Whiskey in the Pines - Hotel Bar.

Armed with the prowess of longtime alt-country storytellers and a heartland rock style built over years on the road, Tallahassee band Whiskey in the Pines is entering into the latest chapter of their careers with their new track, “Hotel Bar.” To inaugurate their latest work, the band returned to a longtime fan favorite, newly pulled from the archive and reworked into a moving paean to hotel bars across the country.

The track came about as a combination of, “Mexican food, copious amounts of alcohol and perhaps a little magic,” as frontman and songwriter David Lareau describes with his characteristic self-effacing humor. Born out of reflections on life on the road, the song came to Lareau in a strike of inspiration while on vacation. Sitting at an Orlando hotel bar, fragments of lyrics came together in his head and were quickly transferred onto a nearby bar napkin. There they sat until Lareau, fresh off the night shift, stumbled into the song’s Rolling Stones tuning at his home studio. With the assistance of a little whiskey and a spliff, he began piecing the track together.

As Lareau describes, he’s “a rock n’ roll kid that ended up writing singer-songwriter songs.” After signing his first record deal at 19, he’s spent over two decades crafting music to move you, paired with a rebel core. Few better descriptors apply to “Hotel Bar,” with its dogged tales from the road and its lonely lyricism. Over forlorn fingerpicked guitar, Lareau tributes hotel bars and their solitary occupants, finding beauty in his fellow lonely faces. Lareau himself is far from alone, though; backed by Kelly Chavers on guitar, Aaron Halford on bass, and Erik Wutz on drums, the band builds into an emotive climax as they pose a simple question: “How does it feel when you’re away and on your own?”

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Mamalarky - Tall Heights

Mamalarky - Meadow / Moss.

Last November the Atlanta (by-way-of-LA-by-way-of- Austin) band Mamalarky released their self-titled debut full length on the buzzing Brooklyn label Fire Talk (Dehd, Pure X, PACKS). The LP was one of the most critically-acclaimed debuts of the pandemic year, seeing praise from outlets like NPR, VICE, Billboard, among many others. Now Mamalarky are returning with their first new music since their LP, a pair of singles entitled "Meadow" and "Moss" that are being released to mark the announce of the band's first touring in support of their debut, a run of dates that includes shows with Slow Pulp as well as an East Coast headline and a New York showcase with their labelmates PACKS & Wombo.

Accompanied by a pair of videos directed by the band (who have worked on several of their own videos and recently began directing videos for other artists as well), the tracks both concern different experiences of nature and were appropriately, according to singer and guitarist Livvy Bennett, both written outdoors.

"Monotony is an illusion, or at least it’s a very tired way to look at things." says Bennett. "Nature always has something new to offer when we slow down enough to absorb it - isolation made me appreciate and deepen this relationship significantly. I realized I’m never actually alone when I’m out under some trees. Moss offers more of a coming to terms that the surrounding landscape could be my anchor and company for the time whereas Meadow is a spark of excitement at finding a less traveled path on my daily route that opened out onto a beautiful stream with singing frogs. I wrote both these songs outdoors which I had never tried before. I still go to these spots often and they hold me up!"

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Tall Heights - Hear It Again.

Tall Heights have relentlessly built a career from the ground up. Starting as buskers on the streets of Boston and now performing in packed venues across North America, Europe, and beyond, the duo has distilled their sound in an organic and unself conscious way. The unmistakable DNA of their music draws on many elements, but the blend of their two distinct voices, in both harmony and unison, is what elevates it and separates it from the pack.

Hailing from the Boston area, Paul Wright and Tim Harrington met each other in their hometown of Sturbridge through Tim’s older brother. The friendship blossomed in high school when they both took up the guitar and began working on music together. It didn’t take long for them to see the potential hidden in these casual jam sessions. As Paul recalls, “Tim transformed from kid brother to musical collaborator over the course of a summer.”

Combining Paul’s lifetime of classical training, Harrington’s spontaneous artistic instincts, and the prismatic union of their unique voices, Tall Heights’ sonic imprint is in a category all its own.

Tall Heights · Hear It Again

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Third Lung - Gabe Watkins

Third Lung - What is a Life?

Third Lung, an Indie/Alt-Rock four-piece comprised of Tom Farrelly (Lead Vocals/Guitar), Cams Jurasek (Lead Guitar/Backing Vocals), Rob Jacques (Bass) & Sam Waugh (Drums), released their new track, What Is A Life?, on the 30th of July 2021. 

The band, with their third single of the year, ask us the deep philosophical question: What is a life on your own? Indeed, who are we when not guided and supported by the people around us we cherish and love?

Third Lung will continue the year as they started it. Full of drive and purpose. Following their latest single, What Is life?, the fourth and final single of the year, Climb, will be released on the 24th September. They will then unleash their 6 Track EP Dialogues Of The Fatal Few on the 26th November.

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Gabe Watkins - One Summer.

Gabe Watkins is an Australian-Thai indie-pop solo artist with a distinctive voice. The inspired young man has been brought up having an admiration for pop rock and alternative music. After finishing high school, taking a gap year at 19, he decided to fully immerse himself into the music world and started to intensely produce music pieces, and finally released his first official track ‘One Summer’. 

For this piece of his career launching moment, he has Toon’ Iamjamrat from the band Three Man Down (one of the most famous bands in Thailand at the moment) served as a producer, refining every detail to accentuate Gabe’s talent as an artist.

One Summer, an easy listening indie-pop song, is the first single of Gabe that reflects on the memory of the past summer about that intimate someone during the good time spent together.

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Martha Wainwright - Single Girl, Married Girl - Nelson Sobral

Photo - Gaelle Leroyer

Martha Wainwright - Hole In My Heart.

Martha Wainwright is beginning again. The beguiling performer and songwriter returns with Love Will Be Reborn, out in August. Not since 2012’s Come Home to Mama has a Martha Wainwright record been so full of original written material. Wainwright’s fifth studio album follows recent years of loneliness and clarity in search of optimism and joy.

Wainwright wrote the first song—and what would become the title track— of the record a few years ago. It was a very dark time, she says, but the positivity and luminosity of “Love Will Be Reborn” signalled what was to come. Wainwright was at a friend’s home in London to collaborate on something else entirely when she was struck by the need to write the song. Wainwright demures when songwriting – her process is undisciplined and she prefers to be alone. That day, soon left to that solitude, “Love Will Be Reborn” poured out of her.

“I wrote the song in its entirety within ten or fifteen minutes. I was bawling.” The track feels very English to Wainwright with a soft melody and thrumming guitar, evoking pastoral scenes. Wainwright croons, “There is love in every part of me, I know / But the key has fallen deep into the snow / When the spring comes I will find it, and unlock my heart to unwind it.” It’s poetic and mysterious, yet still there is a yearning for joy and renewal. Wainwright sang the as-yet recorded “Love Will Be Reborn” on tour, serving as an anthem, giving her hope in a time when it was hard to have some.

Much of Wainwright’s songwriting since 2016’s Goodnight City felt too raw. “There were several years where I picked up the guitar, and I was so, so sad and depressed. I would just put it down because It was terrible.” Before writing it out, or writing through it for catharsis, Wainwright had to live it. Album opener “Middle of the Lake” reinforces Wainwright’s path forward as she sings over voltaic chords and percussion, “I sing my songs of love and pain / Winds of change or simply singing, I’m singing in the rain.” Her work never shies away from an existential throbbing wound. “There are a couple major subjects on the record. From what I can tell, there’s really dark and then light,” she says. “It really is reflective of a very difficult period of divorce. Then, after that, it’s meeting somebody new and amazing. And so you hear certain songs about this new love.”

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Photo - Anna Azarov

Single Girl, Married Girl - Hurt Her So.

Steeped in a folk songwriting tradition that harkens back to Pete Seeger and Joan Baez mixed with modern songwriting elements in the style of Jenny Lewis and Brandi Carlile, Single Girl, Married Girl, fearlessly tackles issues ranging from loss and drug addiction to insecurity and depression.

The LA-based pop/folk/Americana group fronted by singer/songwriter and banjo player, Chelsey Coy, have released “Hurt Her So,” their first offering since 2017’s album, Spark. The haunting, harmony-rich track offers a taste of what’s to come from the band, filled with poignant lyrics, lush instrumentation, catchy melodies and sweeping musical arrangements.

Coy co-wrote this song, along with many others to be released soon, with her husband, Gary Knight, drawing on personal struggles including the death of close family members, health challenges, and battles with depression that paralleled the Coronavirus pandemic. "Art happens on a subconscious level and sometimes it's only after you've written the songs that you look back on them and realize what you’re processing," Knight says.

Single Girl, Married Girl · Hurt Her So

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Nelson Sobral - In The Middle Of The Night.

Following in the footsteps of “Pendulum,” the acclaimed spring 2021 single from Toronto-based songwriter Nelson Sobral, comes “In The Middle Of The Night,” a song which marks a further venture into Sobral’s eclectic and trademark mix of soul, country and rock and roll. While equally reminiscent of ’70s Rolling Stones, the most stomping numbers by Johnny Cash, and the most celebrated tracks from the extensive Stax Records catalogue, “In The Middle Of The Night” was written as an ode to those fleeting moments shared only by lovers bound for the deepest of deepest bonds. “It’s about the early days of when you first start seeing each other,” Sobral describes. “Where you’re just sort of sharing little secrets, and starting to build that private, intimate thing.”

Composed after a trip to Nashville, Sobral recalls how overwhelmingly inspired he was by the rhythm and texture of the bustling, musically vibrant city. “If you walk away from that place without coming away with that energy, you’re sort of missing the point,” Sobral explains. Visiting all the iconic landmarks that adorn Broadway or Music Row, Sobral was deep within the grips of Nashville’s bustling and contagious buzz. Of the teary pedal steels, shimmering acoustic guitars, pounding kick drums, and glowing horns constantly emanating from the fronts of open bars, Sobral remarks: “You should always walk away from an experience like that feeling inspired.”

With its bombastic horn sections provided by Selcuk Suna and featuring Sobral’s virtuosic and guitar playing, “In The Middle Of The Night.” exemplifies the songwriter’s effortless amalgamation of the touchstone styles of Americana, of which Nashville is a welcoming, beckoning light. The single further explores Sobral’s passion for mixing soul, country, and rock and roll into one celebratory style. “This is like Otis Redding wrote a song with Willie Nelson,” Sobral reveals. “My two main roads are old country and old soul, driven down the rock and roll path.”

Nelson Sobral · In The Middle Of The Night

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