We have two incredible songs today from to highly creative artists! We begin with indie-folk artist Josienne Clarke who has released Now & Then, a surprise ‘extended E.P’ of covers via her own label, Corduroy Punk Records. Now & Then is a diverse collection, with covers of traditional folk songs like ‘Reynardine’ and ‘The Month of January’ sprinkled amongst Josienne’s take on Radiohead’s ‘Nude’ and Sharon Van Etten’s ‘You Shadow’.
Of her new release, Clarke says: "The last few years I've gone through a process of change as an artist and what better way to orient yourself as a singer and a songwriter than through songs and the work of songwriters you deeply admire.
Perhaps this seems like an odd collection of songs to release now and/or to have alongside one another but these are all songs that I’ve been singing live or have secretly held a notion of how I’d interpret them when I gave myself the chance. Each one deeply melancholic in a way that particularly speaks to me, as a singer, songwriter and an admirer of lyricism in songcraft.
The song from which the EEP's title is taken is a rare-ish Sandy Denny demo, as far as I'm aware only a rough early recording of it exists, the song feels almost beautifully unfinished, a rare one of her tunes that never quite got the attention it deserved. It has this poignant and resigned melancholy that I've always been drawn to in her lyrics. Now and then, the present and the past are two different places and states of being. The lyrics seek to reconcile the two and the peace comes from letting them exist apart from one another.”
In addition to covers of songs by artists like Sandy Denny, Radiohead and Sharon Van Etten, listeners of Now and Then will also find a reworked version of Clarke’s own song ‘Undo’, a track which originally featured on 2017’s Such A Sky, a collaborative EP Clarke released with Mercury nominated jazz pianist Kit Downes. “I included a reworking of my own song 'Undo' because in the same way, my own songs have various lives and this song felt timely, during a period of change and upheaval,” she explains.
We continue with the very honest and talented APACALDA who tells us "My self-titled debut EP was fully written and inspired by true events. I chose bold honesty, sharing details about experiences that have maybe hurt me, but also molded and shaped me. It is meant to simulate an inner downward spiral, enchanting the listener to descend into a hauntingly beautiful immersive world that has been meticulously yet authentically curated."
My latest track, "Male Gaze," is deliberate introspection about the unfortunate yet inevitable darker experiences femme/women have endured and tolerated in a world led predominantly by the "Male Gaze." It's about speaking out, the refusal to continue to adapt to what is, and instead confronting the truth with the intention to accept nothing less than change in favour of a safer existence.
Director Maïlis got an instant inspired vision from listening to the first 20 seconds of this song. The depiction of a woman going through some sort of exorcism, releasing all of the residual judgments, the ingrained ideas of the perception of a woman, and confronting the problematic behaviour that has consumed femme/women and their existence for centuries.
The Sleeping Souls are best known as Frank Turner’s loyal bandmates and fellow road warriors having played together for over a decade. But alongside this role, Tarrant Anderson (bass), Matt Nasir (piano), Callum Green (drums), Ben Lloyd (guitar) and together with Frank’s guitar tech Cahir O’Doherty (Fighting With Wire, Jetplane Landing and currently New Pagans) on vocals, they have branched out on their own with their first single ‘Liar/Lover’.
Blending the tight musicianship and ear for a heartfelt hook they’ve picked up during their many years on the road, this immense and affecting track tells the tale of acceptance in a waning relationship.
Written by the Souls whilst on the road over the past few years, the band explain: “We lie to ourselves and each other as easy as drawing breath. Every lover lies. “Liar/Lover” is about that moment in the breakdown of a relationship when you accept that there’s no repair: only ownership of your own part in its failure.”
A slow-burning acoustic rock track that sees gentle guitar plucks and rousing vocals swirl towards an emotive climax, the new cut is the first of a number of singles taken from a debut album from The Sleeping Souls (due next year). The Sleeping Souls have toured with punk-icon Frank Turner since 2006. They have recorded six studio albums with the artist, including 2022 #1 ‘FTHC’, headlined Wembley Arena, performed at the 2012 London Olympics and toured the world many times over.
A couple of songs from the brand new album & I have to say time fly's it was 2020 when we last featured them & it seems just months ago, anyway another superb album from a fabulous band, enjoy!
What's the opposite of locking down, staying in, and yet another mildly satisfying TV night? That would be "going out," precisely what The Claudettes passionately prescribe with their rich, diverse, riveting new album, The Claudettes Go Out! Released on October 14, 2022, via Forty Below Records.
Wielding a one-of-a-kind, piano-powered roots-pop sound, The Claudettes merge earthy blues and soul with pop hooks and punk spirit, writing an intriguing new chapter in American roots music. Pianist/songwriter Johnny Iguana first gained renown as pianist for blues giant Junior Wells and as co-founder of punk-organ band Oh My God. Johnny has toured or recorded with Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Johnny Winter, Derek Trucks, Gary Clark Jr., Shemekia Copeland, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, James Cotton, and more. He has played on three Grammy-nominated albums and earned a 2021 Blues Music Award nomination for Piano Player of the Year. Johnny co-founded The Claudettes with drummer Michael Caskey (Chuck Mangione, Koko Taylor). Caskey is a Downbeat Magazine award winner and a five-time Detroit Music Awards recipient. Michael had previously toured with Johnny's band Oh My God, as had Claudettes bassist/singer Zach Verdoorn. After hearing Berit Ulseth sing in a Chicago country band, Johnny asked her to join The Claudettes in 2016. Ulseth studied jazz vocal instruction at NYC's New School and has sung on three of the band's albums and an EP.
The band completed two sessions for the new album. The first session was recorded and co-produced in Chicago by recent Grammy nominee Anthony Gravino (Kurt Elling, Charlie Hunter) and mixed in NYC by Grammy-winning legend Kevin Killen (David Bowie, U2, Elvis Costello). The second session, in Chicago, was helmed by Grammy-winning producer Ted Hutt (Violent Femmes, Old Crow Medicine Show) and mixed in LA by Hutt and Ryan Mall.
Though the song "Park Bench" features string charts by Jim Cooper, violin and viola by Andra Kulans, cello by Nora Barton, and acoustic guitar by Anthony Gravino, all the rest of The Claudettes Go Out! was performed by the four band members. The album opens with "A Lovely View," a haunting, hallucinatory slice of post-punk soul, before unveiling profoundly heartfelt and sharply sardonic songs. "The American Sky" begins as a bluesy '60s torch song à la Peggy Lee's version of "Fever" before morphing into string-laden Flaming Lips "Superman" territory. "The American Sky" finds the narrator so smitten with his political talking points that he sees them as majestic soaring eagles. Later, the breakneck-paced "Exposure" summons the spirits of everyone from The Who to Devo as the band laments the necessity of music-biz meetings when all they want to do is play.
Growing up in Northern Italy, Cavalo55 didn’t have much to do apart from learning how to play the guitar and dreaming that he was somewhere in America. After playing in a few bands and studying at a film school, he quickly realized he’d never settle to be an armchair wanderer. As soon as he got a chance, he left Italy and traveled to Australia, Indonesia, Scotland, and the United States, where he mingled with anarchists and jammed with New Orleans’ music-loving crust punks. During those days of busking and train-hopping, he dug deep into the great legacy of old-time folk guitar music, absorbing the Delta blues of Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson’s slide guitar, and picking up the Appalachian banjo.
A family emergency prompted him to fly back to Italy, and soon he made his way to Lisbon, Portugal, the westernmost part of the European Continent. After a short while he was already playing with countless local artists with these collaborations bolstering his reputation and songwriting. Now the right moment has presented itself for him to create and release the first songs under his own name as he looks to shape his musical identity as a solo artist.
Now manifesting itself for the first time on ‘Hi’s&Lo’s’. As he explains, recounting one trip in particular, and how it went on to provide the inspiration for the track: “I wrote this song on the way back from France to Portugal. There's this little place called Santo Tomé, close to Madrid, very dry, desert like hills, highways, and nothing else”. Cavalo55 goes on to explain: “it's about opposing forces that want us to keep some things unchanged, forever unspoiled, and at the same time our need to go forward. And it's about being happy, and being sad, and then being ok, and then in the end, it being all good”.
Mainly self-produced and in large part self-recorded at his home studio with a few tools and with additional production coming from Hugo Valverde and Tiago Saga (Time for T), it was mastered by Philip Shaw Bova (Marlon Williams, Bahamas, Andy Shauf) with Catarina Falcão (Monday), Paulo Novaes and Tiago Saga adding backing vocals. ‘Hi’s&Lo’s’ is the kind of gorgeous song you will soon come to expect from Cavalo55.
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(Beehive Candy Music Radio) streaming 24/7 with all the music featured
on Beehive Candy in recent weeks and an eclectic mix of music from days
gone by. BCMR-HERE.
Berlin-based shadow-pop newcomers Bad Hammer have shared new single 'Call Me'. The single comes alongside news that they will be touring the UK and Europe in November and December, including dates with NY's Black Marble. Bad Hammer blends melancholic melodies with poignant guitar riffs, meandering along warm synth pads and subtly driving drum beats to dazzling effect.
Thematically the songs that make up their forthcoming debut, End of an Age, are connected by referring to a state of being on hold, undetermined, between looking forwards and back, holding on to something and anticipating change. End Of An Age will be released on November 25th.
Their new single, 'Call Me' is is a song about the connection between a mother and her child. A six-minute pop epic drenched in emotion and longing. On their new single, Bad Hammer says: "It's about communication, through the umbilical cord, then through touch, then through words, through machines like a telephone, through thoughts and eventually through energies when one is not there anymore. There is that desire, that feeling of solitude and vastness when that connection has become ethereal.”
Bad Hammer are Lisa Klinkhammer (synthesisers, vocals) and Johannes Badzura (guitar, drums, vocals). In 2019, they released their debut EP, Extended Play, and have been touring extensively throughout Europe ever since, opening for like-minded artists including Molly Nilson, Sean Nicholas Savage, Jaakko Eino Kalevi and more.
Julian Shah-Tayler is a new-wave electro-rock artist hailing from Leeds, UK now based in South Pasadena, California. He draws his inspiration from 80s and 90s New Wave, Britpop and Electronic Rock with lyrics inspired by literature and a lifetime of professional touring. Fans have described his sound as “David Bowie and Depeche Mode had a baby”. Synthy, complex, sexy music to make love to.
The album features contributions from David J (Bauhaus/Love and Rockets) and MGT (Tricky/Mission UK) as well as coproductions with Robert Margouleff (Stevie Wonder/Devo)
The new album, the third under his own name, entitled “Elysium” is “the story of *the* love of my life from the very moment we met, and the subsequent and very relatable emotional rollercoaster that comes with the territory of being in love and overcoming vast distances, both literal and metaphorical”.
The record opens with “End Of The Line” which narrates the dissolution of old pain, paving the way for new beginnings. It then takes the listener on a voyage through the building back of hope through the different moods and stages of love and resolves with the triumphant universalism of “Darkling U.” In a word Beehive Candy has no hesitation but to say "superb" no make that SUPERB!!!
Arriving like a twisted fairy tale from the heart of Middle England, the new single from Fe Salomon is off-kilter and unpredictable at every turn. Taking the listener into “the countryside, in the middle of nowhere, with postcard villages and fresh clean air”, “Quintessential England” finds an artist reflecting on a period of her life where she gave up the bright lights of the city in search of a new life in Rutland (the smallest county in the UK on the Northamptonshire / Leicestershire border).
While this beautiful pocket of England provided the change of environment she craved, after spending a couple of years playing at the good life, petting sheep and living an isolated existence’ the daydream began to fade and Fe began to realise that the demons that had driven her there hadn't disappeared.
With its toy-town like melodies, topsy-turvy vocal trills and clockwork-like percussive ticks, it’s a song that twitches with a very palpable presence of paranoia and claustrophobia. Speaking about how she formulated its unique score, Fe remembers: “The starting points of this song were the howls and chirps made by the studio cat, mixed with vocals, then transcribed into violin parts and played with chopsticks.”
Through wry lyricism and vivid imagination, “Quintessential England” paints a lucid, if lonely, depiction of a life lived out in the sticks; one that ultimately arrives at the conclusion that perhaps “the grass isn’t always greener”. She’s still searching for that place to belong.
ALASKALASKA (pronounced “Alaska-laska”) share their long awaited new album, Still Life, via Marathon Records (Lava La Rue, Courtney Barnett, Pond etc). It comes ahead of their 13-date UK tour supporting Porridge Radio, which kicks off next week (dates below). Still Life finds writers and producers Lucinda Duarte-Holman and Fraser Rieley embracing a more free-form electronica while exploring the privileges associated with modern domestic existence and the pressures that come with technology, social media and climate change.
The highly anticipated album features singles "TV Dinners", "Still Life" and "Growing Up Pains (Unni's Song)", which drew support from BBC 6 Music's Lauren Laverne, Chris Hawkins and Tom Ravenscroft, BBC Radio 1's Jack Saunders and Nels Hylton, BBC Introducing's Jess Iszatt and more. Produced by Jas Shaw (of Simian Mobile Disco), the album is full of digital sounds, drum machine and synth melodies cunningly sat beside rich, organic, acoustic instrumentation–a looping tug of war between existential dread and everyday simple pleasures.
To celebrate the album release, they also share a video for the new album single “Glass” Lucinda says of the track: "Glass is about the unhealthy relationships some of us have with work. Do you live to work, or do you work to live? Do you feel like you have a choice? It feels like a lot of people are starting to re-asses their work/life balance after the effects of the last couple of years. Ultimately I think there needs to be a shift in work ethics in general. Bring in the 4-day working week and pay people properly for their time and energy!"
Listen To BCMR
(Beehive Candy Music Radio) streaming 24/7 with all the music featured
on Beehive Candy in recent weeks and an eclectic mix of music from days
gone by. BCMR-HERE.
A tranquil, subtropical rainforest studio made the perfect setting for Meanjin/Brisbane-based funk/rock octet The Steele Syndicate to record their debut album ‘Weekend’s Coming’. The result is an uplifting, delightfully noise-filled listen brimming with feel-good fun, and is out to enjoy now.
Encompassing the themes of work, love and happiness, 'Weekend's Coming' showcases the band at their raucous and rocking best, with signature doses of funk led by plenty of horns. Each song was recorded using only analogue instruments - so every horn stab, synth note, guitar, organ or kick sound is the real deal. Frontman Steele McMahon divulges:
“I remember tracking the lead guitar line for ‘One Beer (Is Never Enough)’, and having this old Roland Jazz Chorus maxed to the proverbial 11, and there being so much thick noise even when the guitar was not playing, that it sounded like the studio was literally drawing breath.
While it was challenging to utilize only real instruments, in a day where nearly every sound can be achieved with the touch of a button, I think it presented a fun and creative opportunity to embrace limitations, and really allow the nuances and idiosyncrasies of analogue instrumentation to shine.”
The band's feature album opens with the thought-provoking, sway-inducing 'City of Dread'. It sets the scene for next track 'Dance' to steal the spotlight, and amp things up with plenty of brassy fanfare.
"Oh what haunted tune can I bring you?" Uhl asks at the opening of "Haunted Tune," the first single from Channels. Her serpentine melodies and operatic storytelling cascade from there in perfectly executed art pop waves that crash over and over, recalling Kate Bush's The Sensual World or Annie Lennox's Diva or Weyes Blood's more recent work. To be sure, this is really not the kind of thing that works if it's only halfheartedly executed or if the artist is anything but exceptional.
And so here's Uhl: fully going for it and fullly pulling it off, supported by the acrobatic production of Peter Murray (Alela Diane, Lisa Crawley). The melodies are memorable, the arrangements are spot on, and the dramatic effect is consuming. Fans of Liz Fraser's and Cindy Sharp's songs on It'll End in Tears, brace yourselves.
Uhl embodies a different character in each song, "channeling" these narratives. In "Haunted Tune," the narrator seems to be singing from the other side, warning that "you can't fool love and you can't cheat fate," but then coolly posing: "Isn’t it a pity / A quick hand deals and suddenly you’re carried away / With all your mistakes / Can’t lose what wasn’t yours to take."
After recently being nominated for 'Best Alternative Artist' at the 2022 Aotearoa Music Awards, Vera Ellen has released her first new music in over a year! It comes in the audio visual form of instant classic 'Homewrecker'.
"Homewrecker is the personification of my inner demon forcing its way in to create chaos where it senses harmony. I'm my own home wrecker. Ain't we all?" - Vera Ellen
The video, directed by Albert River, and made with the support of NZ on Air, is a cheeky tip-of-the-hat to "The King of Cool" Dean Martin, and his 1983 'Since I Met You Baby' video. The high contrast visuals see Vera cheerfully crooning amongst a cast of gorgeous models, despite the bleak and introspective undertones of the song's lyrics.
"I didn't realise it was my dream to dress as Dean Martin and prance about on a roof until a few months ago. Never give up on even your most current dreams!"
Get swept away by Jade Empress when her powerful electro-pop single 'Madness' came out yesterday October 14. Jade Empress has been gaining steam and collecting accolades over the last few years as a talented songwriter. She was the winner of multiple categories of Songsalive!'s Song Comp in 2017, a finalist in the Australian Songwriters Association Songwriting Contest for three consecutive years, a semi-finalist in the International Songwriting Competition 2021, a participant in Ben Folds’ 2021 songwriting intensive retreat - all while working as a frontline doctor in rural and remote Australia.
Now, the artist is swapping the stethoscope for a microphone, and is ready to share her second single with the world, named 'Madness'. A soaring piece that celebrates the artist's impressive vocal ability, 'Madness' speaks to embracing the chaos of daily life. Produced by Grammy award-winning Kon Kersting (who's worked with the likes of The Jungle Giants, Tones & I, The Reubens and many more), this is a moving, melancholic pop track with emotive piano, converging in a dramatically swirling melody that uplifts and carries the songwriter's compelling voice to even greater heights.
Written in response to the chaos of her life in recent years, she chose to welcome it rather than fight against it. "Routine has always been important for me. I thought the pandemic was bad. Now, suddenly I'm finding myself working in the Pacific, as a doctor alongside the Australian Defence Force, and living day to day in an environment of civil and political unrest, I truly appreciate uncertainty and a certain kind of daily madness."
Jade Empress has already received enthusiastic support for her first release from Triple J, Double J, as well as commercial and community radio stations. 'Golden Hours' has also been featured on international music blogs including Send Me Yours Ears, Roadie Music, Indie Dock Music Blog (UK), PopMuzik (Sweden).
Listen To BCMR (Beehive Candy Music Radio) streaming 24/7 with all the music featured on Beehive Candy in recent weeks and an eclectic mix of music from days gone by. BCMR-HERE.
