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Saturday, June 24, 2023

New sounds from Jenn Grant, Thompson Springs, Creamery Station, Patrick Bamburak, Beach House


Jenn Grant: Lion's Mane feat. Kevin Drew


Each of the 12 tracks on the Nova Scotia-based singer's new album, Champagne Problems, is a collaboration with one or two other Canadian artists. Here she's joined by Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene on a song about her relationship with her father. Grant credits Drew with “getting me to dig deeper. ...Kevin really opened up that part of me that made me feel like it was valuable.”

Thompson Springs: All I Wanna Do


Following last year's Homefield album, this Chicago indie band has released a couple of singles, suggesting another album of their laid-back, country-tinged rock may be in the works. 

Creamery Station: Story to Tell


Here's the title track from the newly released third album by this multi-generational jam band from Connecticut. The song has been in their repertoire for some time, and was issued as a single last year, but with the LP release we're deeming it new enough to be featured in our New Music bin.

Patrick Bamburak: What Other Reason


This veteran New York-area recording artist and producer covers a 35-year-old track from 80s pop band Johnny Hates Jazz. “I’ve been a huge fan of JHJ, of Clark Datchler and Mike Nocito, since I got the Turn Back the Clock album, on cassette no less, when it was first released in 1988," Bamburak says, adding that this "has been my favorite JHJ track from the moment I heard it - it’s the hidden gem on that perfectly crafted album.”

Beach House: Black Magic


Photo by David Belisle
Following last year's releas of their 18-track album Once Twice Melody, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally recently issued an EP with five more songs from the same recording sessions. "We didn’t think they fit in the world of OTM, but later realized they all fit in a little world of their own," the duo say. "To us, they are all kind of scuzzy and spacious, and live in the spirit realm. It’s not really where we are currently going, but it’s definitely somewhere we have been."

Saturday, June 17, 2023

The latest from Cold War Kids, Arlo Parks, Margaret Glaspy, Deer Tick, Selwyn Birchwood


Cold War Kids: Double Life


The first new music in two years from the California band comes ahead of a summer tour (opening for Tears for Fears). Does it also signal that an album is in the works? No word on that. Of the song itself, frontman Nathan Willett says: “We all lead dual lives to some extent: one that reflects our authentic selves and another that feels uncomfortable or out of place in our surroundings.” 

Arlo Parks: Devotion


Photo by Alexandra Waespi
The UK singer's delicate vocals are suddenly overtaken by driving guitars on this track from her new album, My Soft Machine. Parks says "to me, it's a song about feeling so in love it’s almost like being ripped apart -- there’s an intensity, a wildness, and a tenderness. This is one of my favorite songs I’ve ever made. It draws from the bands that made me fall in love with music, from Deftones to Yo La Tengo to Smashing Pumpkins to My Bloody Valentine."

Margaret Glaspy: Act Natural


Here's the first taste of the New York-based singer's third album, Echo the Diamond. The song is “about trying to play it cool when you meet someone remarkable,” Glaspy says. From the lyric: "I don't know what to say or do / And I know that we've just met / But I'm willing to bet / That I'm falling in love with you."

Deer Tick: Forgiving Ties


Photo by Laura Partain
This track comes from the Rhode Island band's new album, Emotional Contracts. Consequence of Sound writes: "Despite its buoyant sound, 'Forgiving Ties' is filled with pensive lyrics about just trying to stay afloat amidst adversity." Guitarist/vocalist Ian O'Neil says it deals with "the fear that results from a sudden traumatic event, and how to move forward and take care of yourself and your loved ones.”

Selwyn Birchwood: Done Cryin'


The Florida-based blues guitarist's sixth LP, Exorcist, "brings even more artistic fire than the heavy, ferocious sound of its predecessor, Living In A Burning House, writes Blues Rock Review. This opening track is "his own stinging take on an age-old blues theme that’s a perfect partner for his gravelly, old-school bluesman pipes."

Technical trouble appears to be resolved

We experienced an outage on our Live365 stream earlier today, apparently due to a wider internet issue. As of now (12:15pm EDT), we're back and streaming as usual on Live365 in the USA.

Our Canadian stream on TorontoCast is also up and running.

Thanks for listening!


Saturday, June 10, 2023

Our New-Music picks: Night Talks, Night Flight, Peter Gabriel, Driven Snow, Dizzy


Night Talks: Roll On


Three years later, songs about pandemic lockdown continue to emerge. "We wanted to capture the feeling of what it literally feels like to be stuck inside your apartment, unable to do much of anything," says Soraya Sebghati, the singer in this LA trio that's been turning out indie-pop gems for some seven years. “The only thing we could do was work on writing songs and other small projects, and that’s exactly what this song came out of."

Night Flight: Imogen


It's just a coincidence that we're featuring bands called Night Talks and Night Flight in the same week. But we happened to come across this recent single and it grabbed our ears. This London-based quartet describes its music as "dreamy, experimental indie-folk." Mixes well with: Real Estate, Grizzly Bear.

Peter Gabriel: Road to Joy


The strategy of releasing an album one track per month is working well for Gabriel's I/O, giving each song a chance to stand out. This is the sixth song and the third to land in our New Music bin. It features backing vocals by the Soweto Gospel Choir. "I’m working on a project which is partly a story focused around the brain and how we perceive things and this song connects to that," says Gabriel. "It deals with near-death experience ... [I]t’s a lyric about coming back into your senses, back to life, back into the world."

Driven Snow: In Moonlight


This is the fourth single from the Irish duo of Kieran McGuinness (guitars, vocals, synths) and Emily Aylmer (vocals, keys). Challenged by their producer to "to come up with something more upbeat and different" from their previous releases, they made this jaunty song about "the difficulty of being a musician in the city,” given high rent and cost of living. "You can dance while being melancholic, like all decent songs."

Dizzy: Close


The latest single from the upcoming self-titled album by Kate Munshaw and company opens with an anecdote about a difficult yet happy day on tour, then shifts into a lament about a relationship that may have run its course: "But if you gotta go, go / We can blame it on timing / I will leave the light on in the hall."

Saturday, June 3, 2023

This Week's New Music: The Revivalists, Bully, Great Lake Swimmers, Hannah Georgas, Wye Oak


The Revivalists: Don't Look Back


The New Orleans band's fifth LP, Pour It Out Into The Night, is billed as "a life-affirming album ... a celebration of resilience, living for who you are and what you’re about." Americana Highways writes: "The 8-piece band navigates soulful alt-rock waters with a distinctive mix of American classic rock styles. ... The Revivalists are chefs in a world-class kitchen."

Bully: Days Move Slow


On her new album, Lucky for You, Bandcamp writes that Alicia Bognanno "hasn’t strayed from her stable of ‘90s grunge influences, but this time she’s colored in the gaps with a certain pop-punk pizzazz, particularly on songs like 'Days Move Slow.' She’s achieved a sense of restraint with the [vocal] rasp that has become something of her trademark."

Great Lake Swimmers: Uncertain Country


This is the title track from the Toronto-area group's latest album, its first in five years and its ninth over its two-decade career. Songwriter Tony Dekker and his band continue to expand on their atmospheric folk sounds, venturing into fuzzy alt-rock territory here. The press release for the album explains that the title refers to "a territory we, as humans, inhabit in the 21st century - a world that, more often than not, is confusing, unfamiliar and unsettling."

Hannah Georgas: Better Somehow


Here's the lead single from I’d Be Lying If I Said I Didn’t Care, due in August. For this album, Georgas took on the role of lead producer, with the aid of her partner Sean Sroka of Ten Kills The Pack as co-producer. “This record is a big step for me from a creative standpoint and it feels like a true representation of where my writing and head is at,” says Georgas. This song "is ultimately about how much better I think we’d all be if we just communicated exactly what we were feeling or what we were going through."

Wye Oak: Every Day Like the Last


Photo by Graham Tolbert
As many bands are doing these days, the duo of Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack is shifting from releasing "album-length groups of songs" to putting out singles and later collecting them in packages. So the nine-track release due later this month consists of six songs released over the past few years plus three new tracks, including this one. The title, says Wasner, "could mean every day like the day that came before, or it could mean every day like the last day that you get. Both meanings apply. But for me, trying to live inside of the uncertainty is the theme."