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Monday, December 23, 2024

Best holiday wishes from Birch Street Radio

We wish all our listeners a wonderful holiday season - whatever, wherever and however you celebrate!

Our Marvelous Mix of musical variety keeps on streaming through the holidays and beyond!

Saturday, December 21, 2024

Lucius, George Marinelli, Michael Kiwanuka, Movieland, Lauren Mayberry bring the news


Lucius: Old Tape (feat. Adam Granduciel)


Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig are joined by the guitarist/vocalist from The War On Drugs on this new single from an album expected in the new year. "We wrote 'Old Tape' while working on new music at [bandmate Danny Molad’s] studio in LA," the two say. "We were discussing the loops we get stuck in, the rabbit holes our minds go down." For the sound of the track, they "wanted to make something that was both driving and uplifting," so they called Adam - for whom they had provided guest vocals on TWOD's “I Don’t Live Here Anymore.”

George Marinelli: Except Always


This is the title track from a new album by a founding member of Bruce Hornsby & the Range and more recently Bonnie Raitt’s lead guitarist. It's quite literally a solo LP: he plays every instrument, recorded the songs himself, found time to mix and master them and created all the artwork for the album.

Michael Kiwanuka: Rebel Soul


The new album Small Changes, says Kiwanuka, was inspired by the birth of his two children and moving out of his hometown London. He was motivated by the desire to transcend what’s deemed “cool”, adding: "We were trying to shoot for something that might have made it onto a Bill Withers album or a Sade album" - a good description of this track. (Photo by Marco Grey)

Movieland: I Relate


Here's a "new" track recorded in the 1990s by this Vancouver shoegaze group. Released only on a cassette back then, it's been remastered and included on a new collection of the band's work, Then & Now. The LP is part of a new archival series from 604 Records, paying tribute to Vancouver’s overlooked artists from decades past. Singer-guitarist Alan D. Boyd says this song is "about being in a flux state after meeting somebody."

Lauren Mayberry: Crocodile Tears


The Chvrches lead vocalist explores a range of different pop sounds on her new solo album, Vicious Creature. The Guardian says the album "shapeshifts frequently, often into realms that feel wilfully unbothered about current notions of 'cool.' 'Crocodile Tears' is so 1980s it should come with an obligatory tight perm." Mayberry says she wrote the song when feeling "trapped in an unhealthy, negative feedback loop with someone." She adds that she "consciously put in a lot of animal imagery (crocodile, rabbits, wolves) because I wanted it to feel escapist."

NOTE: This will be our last New Music update for 2024. Onward to 2025!

Saturday, December 14, 2024

New sounds: Inhaler, Beach Riot, Krooked Tongue, KC Armstrong, The Sea The Sea


Inhaler: Open Wide


Here's the title track from the Irish band's next LP, scheduled for February release. An earlier single, "Our House," had the indie-rock sound we've come to expect from the band, but this track uses a wider palette, "featuring a rolling bass line, expansive guitar lines and Balearic-style percussion," as NME puts it. Photo by Lewis Evans.

Beach Riot: Meltdown


The new single from this Brighton, UK, "fuzz pop band" is its first release since a pair of songs early last year. "We’re sorry we’ve been quiet for a while, but hey…life gets in the way sometimes. ... Thank you so much to everyone who still listens and turns us up loud," the band said in a post that suggested they're having "just a little pause." Hopefully there's more to come.

Krooked Tongue: Ember Mile


Jumping a couple hundred klicks from Brighton to Bristol, we catch up with the latest single from this rock trio. Vocalist Oli Rainsford describes the song as a “kick up the arse” for anyone who talks about their dreams but never quite follows through. The title "refers to a proverbial golden, fiery strip of road where the final idea awaits on the horizon."

KC Armstrong: Waiting For The Rain (To Fall)


This singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Brantford, Ontario, has spent years playing festivals and bars across Canada, including a stint as one of Ronnie Hawkins' Hawks. In recent years he honed his producing skills, then built a recording studio in his basement (and we do mean built - framing, putting up drywall, insulating, etc.). The result was his LP Finally Crafted, released a few months back. We're catching up with this "swamp-rock/southern rock song" that concludes the album.

The Sea The Sea: All Along


We're happy to catch this new single from a duo we've featured before, Mira and Chuck E. Costa, now based in Nashville after years in New York's Hudson Valley. The lyric suggests finding what you're meant to find (love? destiny?) when you're not looking for it. "What are we waiting for / It was right here all along."

Saturday, December 7, 2024

Our latest picks: Larkin Poe, Warren Haynes, Vanishing Shores, The Accidentals, U2


Larkin Poe: Mockingbird


This news snuck up on us: The Nashville roots duo of Rebecca and Megan Lovell have a new album, Bloom, coming in January - and they've already released four singles, each of them excellent. The album theme, says Megan, is "finding yourself, knowing yourself, and separating the truth of who you are from societal expectations." Rebecca says it embraces "the flaws and idiosyncrasies that make us real." The theme comes through in this song's lyric: "I'm a mockingbird / Singing a thousand songs / That don't belong to me ... But if you listen closely ... you just might hear ... my secret melody."

Warren Haynes: This Life As We Know It


Continuing in the rootsy-bluesy-rock vein, we have this track from Million Voices Whisper, the latest solo album from the Grammy-winning guitarist best known for his work with Gov't Mule and the Allman Brothers Band. We'll be adding several tracks to our Marvelous Mix, but our pick for the New Music Bin is this optimistic number. "I was in Montauk on vacation with my family over the 4th of July, and there was a full moon and fireworks. We were looking out over the ocean, and it was just this spectacle, this beautiful thing," Haynes told Relix. "The next thing you know, I had this lyric that was all about moving forward and looking at life through a more positive lens, which is not a very typical lyrical approach for me."

Vanishing Shores: Coast Road


Here's one of the many indie artists we keep following, featuring on our stream, and wondering why they aren't better known. This latest single is a new version of a song that frontman Kevin Bianchi originally recorded with his former band, The Chestertons, in 2017. "The new version is energized and full of vivid color and passion," Bianchi says. It features his brother Brian, who was also in The Chestertons, and vocal harmonies by Kelley Elle.

The Accidentals: What A Waste


Another fine indie band, but new to our ears and playlist, is this trio from Traverse City, Michigan. Founded by high school classmates Savannah Buist and Katie Larson in the early 2010s, the band now includes drummer Katelynn Corll. This song is a co-write with Nashville singer-songwriter Mary Bragg.

U2: Evidence Of Life


We round out this week's New Music picks with another of the new/old tracks on How to Re-Assemble an Atomic Bomb, the "shadow album" of unreleased songs from the two-decades-old recording sessions for How to Dismantle... Yep, it sure sounds like classic U2!

Saturday, November 23, 2024

Kim Deal, The Weather Station, 21 Dark Years, Dangermuffin, Colin James in the New Music Bin


Kim Deal: Crystal Breath


The veteran of the Breeders, Pixies and Amps just released her first solo album, Nobody Loves You More. AllMusic notes the "outsized influence she's had on indie and pop music since the late '80s," adding that the new LP "reveals she can still surprise ... getting more overtly personal than ever before." The site says this track fuses "crunchy beats, a harmonica breakdown, and wagging guitar hook into 'Cannonball' levels of catchiness.

The Weather Station: Window


The musical project of Toronto's Tamara Lindeman will release its seventh album in January. Lindeman says its title Humanhood, "is a word that opens up so many thoughts for me in this time when the very state of being human feels so shifted, so uncertain, amid the attempt to invent AI, amid climate collapse. Amid my own personal journey that led to this record ... a journey from dissociation back out to connection." On this track she sings: "My heart is racing as a window opens somewhere to let me out - to let me in."

21 Dark Years: We Drift Through Time


New music from a new band: This "indie rock/alternative rock/pop rock" group was formed in Chicago just this year. So far they haven't revealed much about themselves, saying they believe "it's all about the music, not who they are." They have released two EPs in recent months; this track is on Stand Tall, which came out in July.

Dangermuffin: We Push Mountains


We dip again into this South Carolina-based jam band's self-titled album, released a few months back. It marked a return from a hiatus the quartet took after their 2017 release, Heritage. Hometown publication Charleston Magazine says this track, the new LP's opener, "is classic Dangermuffin, with punchy, orchestrated stops complementing the feel-good shuffle."

Colin James: Protection (feat. Lucinda Williams)


The Vancouver-based blues-rock guitarist opens his 21st album, Chasing the Sun, with a track that is both a cover of a Lucinda Williams song and a duet with the singer-songwriter. “Lucinda is such a revered songwriter, such a legend,” James says. “But she’s so nice. And hearing our voices together on tape was such a pleasure.” Gospel singers Ann and Regina McCrary chime in as well. Photo by James O'Mara

Saturday, November 16, 2024

More new music variety: EWAH, Brett Dennen, Amy Helm, Sadie Campbell, The Harbours


EWAH: Touch The Light


We reach all the way around the globe from the Birch Street Studios to pick up music by this artist based in Tasmania. The frontperson of EWAH & The Vision of Paradise will release her first solo album in 14 years, Souvenir, next month, and we're pleased to have early access to this single. The LP is billed as being "full of cautionary tales, struggle and self-discovery." This song advises: "Keep the people close who don’t bring you down / Hold onto the ones who pull you up." Photo by Bree Sanders

Brett Dennen: Careful What You Wish For


The California singer-songwriter just issued his eighth LP, If It Takes Forever. This track has a slinky, Tom Petty-ish sound as Dennan cautions, "I may be your guardian angel / I may be the devil too." The album is dedicated to and inspired by Dennan's father, who passed last year. "This album is about life and how I look at it now. ... Ultimately it's about love. It's meant to be a celebration."

Amy Helm: Money On 7


We previously featured "Baby Come Back" from the new album, Silver City, and now we dip back in to feature another selection. Americana Highways calls this song "Helm’s ode to shunting away the fears of the night with each sunrise," adding: "the harmonies bring an almost gospel feel to the song." We'll add that the woodwinds and horns bring great depth to the track.

Sadie Campbell: Metamorphosis


This is the title track from the first full-length album by a Canadian-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter. Campbell mixes strands of country, rock, and soul in her songs about sadness, discovery and joy. “I wanted this record to have songs about these totally polar opposite topics, because that’s life,” says Campbell. “Songs about anxiety and hopelessness can live on the same record as love songs and hopeful songs.”

The Harbours: Live It Up


Although this band was formed just this year, the outfit from Leicestershire, UK, has already released six singles. We previously featured "So Sweet," and now liven up our New Music bin with this new party-time track. We're in good company - it was a recent song-of-the-week on BBC Introducing.

Sunday, November 10, 2024

New Music from JD McPherson, Belfountain, Carnival Xhibition, Never the Name, The Cure


JD McPherson: I Can't Go Anywhere with You (feat. Bloodshot Bill)


We previously featured the single "Sunshine Getaway," which previewed Nite Owls, the new album from this Oklahoma-born, Nashville-based singer and guitarist best known for a 60s-style rock 'n' roll sound. On the new collection, writes No Depression, "He’s smoothed out the rootsy edges and incorporated a slew of pop influences, from The Beach Boys to girl groups to New Wave, while retaining the gusto that’s always informed his music." This track is perhaps the closest to his previous style, and he's joined by Montreal-born rocker Bloodshot Bill.

Belfountain: Give It Up


We're dipping back into Some Hearts, the debut album from this indie-folk-rock project fronted by Canadian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Chris Graham. Canadian Beats calls the LP "an authentic, roots-inspired collection that provides an earthy mix of old and new, always familiar yet full of surprises."

Carnival Xhibition: The Simulator


From Florida comes the rock'n'soul duo of Lashawn Bowens and Daniel Edell, who combine various blues, rock and folk influences. They cite influences including Tina Turner, Mumford and Sons and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. "We are bringing back an old feeling that has a new sound," says Edell. This single arrives ahead of their first full-length album, due in February.

Never the Name: Quasimodo's Love Note


This is the debut release from a New Jersey indie-rock group headed by bassist Will Blakey, also a mainstay of the Bryan Hansen Band. We look forward to hearing more soon as the new outfit prepares its debut album for release next year.

The Cure: All I Ever Am


Pulling out another track from Songs of a Lost World - one that Billboard points out features bassist Simon Gallup, the longest-tenured Cure member besides Robert Smith. "Gallup’s rumbling bass lines have always been a major component of the Cure’s signature sound, but his highly distorted bass is front and center in the mix on Songs of a Lost World like never before. That’s really hammered home on 'All I Ever Am,' which features Gallup playing a very catchy melody that probably would’ve been played on piano on an '80s Cure album."

Saturday, November 2, 2024

What's new: Spun Out, Autopilot, Tunde Adebimpe, The Far Out, Kathleen Edwards


Spun Out: Paranoia


More than 40 years after The Kinks sang about it in "The Destroyer," this Chicago band gives us a fresh take on unsettling fear. They even include a line saying "don't let it destroy you." This is the lead single the group's just-released second LP, Dream Noise. Singer/guitarist Michael Wells says, "I got taken out by a rip tide in the Pacific a few years back, and that feeling of trying to remain calm physically while not being in control of your surroundings definitely informed the psychology of the tune." Although technically, paranoia is an unfounded fear - while rip-tide danger is real!

Autopilot: Here Comes the Pressure


From a song about paranoia we go to one about "the anxieties we experience in a world full of pressures, and how we do our best to handle it," according to Marlon Harder, lead vocalist/guitarist of this three-piece band from Saskatoon. We've featured them previously, most recently in May with the single "Say Something."

Tunde Adebimpe: Magnetic


Even as TV On The Radio is touring to mark the 20th anniversary of its debut album, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, its frontman makes his solo debut with this new single and an album coming next year. Adebimpe is also an actor, animator, director and visual artist, and has been a musical collaborator with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Massive Attack and Run The Jewels, among others.

The Far Out: Packed to Go


Here's a funk-soul-pop band from the north shore of Massachusetts whose six members have been playing together since they were kids, through genres including jazz, theater and orchestral music. They've put out a couple of EPs, but this new single is the first to reach our ears. Glad it did!

Kathleen Edwards: Crawling Back To You


We're told she has a new album on its way, produced by Jason Isbell, but in the meantime the Ottawa-based singer-songwriter just released this cover of a Tom Petty song from his album Wildflowers, which came out exactly 30 years ago. Edwards says that album "is unquestionably one of the finest albums of [Petty's] career and remains one of my favourite recordings of all time." She was working with producer and engineer Jim Scott, who also worked on that album, when she "mustered up a bit of courage" and asked to try this song. "The track feels like an old friend sitting next to me on a comfy sofa reminiscing about teenage memories."

Saturday, October 26, 2024

The Head And The Heart, Lilly Hiatt, Lost Leaders, Phantogram, 311 - Variety in our New Music bin


The Head And The Heart: Arrow


Here's the first sample of an upcoming album to be announced shortly, on which the band returns to self-producing and something closer to their early folky sound. "We really wanted to make our next music our own way, and it was a lot of fun to have all of us in a room together again," says vocalist/guitarist Jonathan Russell. This song, he says, is "very self-empowering ... It’s nice to know that you have your own way of providing yourself with confidence when you're out there in the dark.”

Lilly Hiatt: Shouldn't Be


The upcoming album Forever was written and recorded by Hiatt and her husband, Coley Hinson, in their home outside Nashville. Hiatt calls this first single "a song about standing in your truth" and not needing validation from others. "I hate when you leave me on my own / I start spinning now - but I shouldn't be." 

Lost Leaders: Cookie Jar


We're catching up with the recently released Hungry Ghosts, an 8-song collection (is that a short album or a long EP?). The title refers to a Buddhist concept about people searching to fill the void. The duo of Byron Isaacs and Peter Cole says the album captures them "in all of our moods: pointedly snarky, whimsical and outlandish, reflective and confessional. It starts very worldly getting caught up in the surge, moves to psychedelia, then the journey ends with getting yourself back home. In the end things are alright."

Phantogram: Running Through Colors


The duo of Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter just released their fifth studio album, Memory of a Day. The AU Review writes: "The album creates a rich, atmospheric soundscape that feels incredibly cinematic and immersive." This track is one of several highlights, with "a bold, confident sound."

311: Full Bloom


The title track of the Omaha, Nebraska band's 14th (!) album is "about maintaining some innocence and sense of wonder and not becoming jaded," says lead singer/guitarist Nick Hexum. "One can decide that they’re in the prime of their life and choose to live in full bloom."

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Maggie Rogers, Dawes, The Cure, Bottlemoth, Sapling


Maggie Rogers: In The Living Room


Just six months after her Don't Forget Me album, the singer-songwriter releases another track that could easily have fit in that collection. (We're guessing it's destined for a "deluxe edition.") "Like so much of the album, it’s a song about the beauty and pain of memory, and the way that interweaves with reality when you’re processing the exit of a person in your life," Rogers says.

Dawes: Front Row Seat


We've previously featured a couple of its singles, and with the full release of Oh Brother, we're picking this track for our New Music bin. It's a rocker that takes a break midway for a jam-band interlude. The lyric suggests anxiety about the U.S. political situation, then takes a fatalistic attitude: "But if that’s the ball game / If the experiment’s complete / And we both stand around / To watch it all come down / At least we got a front row seat."

The Cure: A Fragile Thing


Robert Smith & Co. are back with Songs of a Lost World, sounding as cheery as ever. Billboard says of this track: "The swirling, midtempo rocker is classic Cure, with a morose, nearly minute-long instrumental intro that sets up a most on-brand tale of devastating love." Smith says the song "is driven by the difficulties we face in choosing between mutually exclusive needs and how we deal with the futile regret that can follow these choices.”

Bottlemoth: Everything Works Out in the End


How about we inject some optimism into the mix? The debut album by this indie-folk quintet from the UK, Even Us Ghosts, comes out this week. Singer-songwriter Ethan Proctor says of this song's title and key lyric: "I can’t recall who said it first to me, perhaps my parents or grandma said a lot when I was growing up. It’s a sentiment that has stuck; our biggest problems now won’t matter in 6 months, and that is a calming ideal. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end yet."

Sapling: Rabbit Hole


This synthy and very catch single is first we've heard from Sapling, a native of Dumfries, Scotland, now based in Glasgow. "Having been influenced by early folk and protest music growing up, she now turns to her own expression of emotion and protest mixed with the inspiration of dance, pop and soul," per her Bandcamp page. 

Sunday, October 6, 2024

U2, Dear Rouge, Monica Moser, The Wild Feathers, Sarah Jarosz land in our New Music bin


U2: Picture Of You (X+W)


If this sounds like a U2 track from the early 2000s, that's because it is. 
The boys from Dublin are marking the 20th anniversary of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb by releasing a batch of previously unreleased songs from that album's recording sessions. The Edge says "I went into my personal archive to see if there were any unreleased gems and I hit the jackpot. ... Although at the time we left these songs to one side, with the benefit of hindsight we recognize that our initial instincts about them being contenders for the album were right, we were onto something."

Dear Rouge: Cutting Teeth


We dip again into Lonesome High, released last month, for this high-energy track that songwriter-vocalist Danielle McTaggart says "embraces the thought that even negative experiences can be where you get your strength, and your chance to succeed in life." "Got something to cut my teeth on," she sings. "I've sharpened up and I'll bite down."

Monica Moser: Find You Yet


This singer-songwriter - a native New Yorker previously based in Nashville and now part of the Austin, Texas scene - has been in our mix for a half-dozen years now. Her latest collection is 27teen, which includes previous singles like "Shortcut" and "Headlines" along with new tracks such as this one, which Kindline Magazine calls "a seamless fusion of indie-pop and introspective songwriting. The lyric suggests a desire to desire to meet a soulmate, but having other priorities that come first: "You're all I want in the end / I just don't want to find you yet."

The Wild Feathers: Stereo


Nashville meets Los Angeles on Sirens. The Feathers, based in Nashville, traveled to LA to record the new album with Shooter Jennings producing - and the result is country-rock with echoes of Laurel Canyon. Bassist/singer Joel King says this track "began as an instrumental soundcheck jam while on tour, and we knew we had to make it a finished song ... We loved the idea of an explosive harmony/chorus right up front in the song, then followed by fun musical idiosyncrasies throughout. Lyrically, it struggles with the duality of life. How can life be both beautiful and depressing at the same time?"

Sarah Jarosz: Just Like Paradise


Unlike U2, Jarosz didn't wait 20 years to release extra tracks from Polaroid Lovers, her seventh album. Eight and a half months after its release, she has issued a deluxe edition with two additional tracks - Wildflowers In The Sky and this song, co-written with Nashville-based Daniel Tashian. "We were overlooking the Gulf of Mexico and taking in the cool ocean breeze," she said in a post. "The way the sunlight was sparkling on the water led us to imagine a place where you never have to be cold or worried or lonesome and you can let go of all your darkness and fears.

(Photo: Jarosz at the Ryman Auditorium, by Erika Goldring via Facebook)