Kurt Wagner has announced his latest Lambchop record: The Bible will be out September 30 through City Slang and Merge in North America. Lead single ‘Police Dog Blues’ comes paired with an Isaac Gale-directed video created using the Unreal 3D graphics engine. Check it out below.
“During the unrest surrounding the horrific injustice in Minneapolis in 2020, I had been re-listening to a song by Blind Blake, ‘Police Dog Blues’,” Wagner said of the new track. “Of note, it was originally recorded in 1929, the year my father was born, and it seems John Peel played it on his show on Sept. 11, 1968. It was deceptively upbeat musically and not what I remembered at all. Then I remembered a police dog is a Shepherd.”
Gale added of the visual: “We took the police dog from the song title literally and imagined a city, post cop-apocalypse, overrun by German Shepherds just kinda doing their thing “White privilege and apathy in the face of disastrous reality. I don’t think it’s stretching it to compare the police in Minneapolis—where myself and the producers of the record, Ryan Olson and Andrew Broder, all live—to a human-made catastrophic disaster.”
Commenting on the album’s title, Wagner explained: “I had this idea that—I’m not a religious person but I do believe that there’s a spirituality to a lot of people and they’re not religious. You don’t have to be religious to be a spiritual person, right? You just don’t have to, there should be an acceptance, or a way of recognizing spirituality without it being overtly religious.”
The Bible also marks the first time Wagner has worked with outside producers on a Lambchop album. “Ryan and Andrew, they’re like two sides of my personality,” Wagner commented. “And if you put them together as a team, they represent me”.
The Bible Cover Artwork:
The Bible Tracklist:
1. His Song Is Sung
2. Little Black Boxes
3. Daisy
4. Whatever Mortal
5. A Major Minor Drag
6. Police Dog Blues
7. Dylan At The Mouse Trap
8. Every Child Begins The World Again
9. So There
10. That’s Music
Belief, the project of Stella Mozgawa and Boom Bip, have shared ‘WOT’, the latest single from their forthcoming debut self-titled album. Following earlier cuts ‘Art of Love’, ‘Jung’, ‘I Want To Be’, and ‘Ulu’, the single arrives with an accompanying video by Jim Hosking. Check it out below.
“‘WOT’ is a playful track that we added last minute to the album,” Mozgawa explained in a statement. “It has a cheeky, mischievous spirit that we felt was missing from the record. It all came together quickly and in a shared flow state.”
“Stella came to me with this killer Oberheim part, which is the main synth in the track,” Boom Bip added. “It has this driving energy and atonal quality that sits satisfyingly alone quite well.”
“I once glimpsed a man in Oxford busking by performing a one footed dance and he was making a lot of money,” commented Hosking. “I remembered him when I heard the track “WOT” by Belief—the track burrows into your brain and never relents, rather like the one footed dance I once glimpsed in Oxford. The video was shot in Willesden Green in London where the sun always shines. That’s why they call it the L.A. of London.”
DC Gore has released a new song called ‘Sisyphus’. It’s set to appear on his upcoming album All These Things, which is set to land on July 29 via Domino. Give it a listen below.
“’Sisyphus’ is a song about giving up on trying to pretend you know what the hell is going on or what you’re supposed to do,” Gore explained in a press release. “It feels like because we have access to the internet, now everyone has to have an opinion on everything all of the time and yet the complexity of the world we live in makes that impossible. I suppose the question the song asks is – after clumsily struggling through your life would it be possible to give in and actually enjoy it?”
Whitney, the Chicago duo comprised of Julien Ehlrich and Max Kakacek, have announced their third album, SPARK. The follow-up to 2019’s Forever Turned Around is out September 16 via Secretly Canadian. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the lead track ‘REAL LOVE’, which comes with an accompanying Aaron Brown-directed video. Check it out below, along with the album cover and tracklist.
Ehlrich and Kakacek wrote most of SPARK while quarantining together in Portland during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic; ‘REAL LOVE’ was the first song they wrote upon returning to Chicago in May 2021, and the first one they finished before heading to Texas to record the LP with producers Brad Cook and John Congleton.
“Max and I wrote ‘REAL LOVE’ in June 2021 right after a cross country move back to Chicago,” Ehlrich explained in a statement. “I was experiencing heightened levels of anxiety and panic, while the entire city was re-emerging from isolation. I’ve been running away from and self medicating my anxiety for as long as I can remember, but for whatever reason, it felt like it was time to dive straight into it. During late night sessions over a two week period, we captured the embrace of anxiety and fear in a way that resonated with us immediately. We spent the next few summer nights driving on Ashland with the windows down and the song turned up. It felt like an emotional and musical burst of light and we’re so grateful to finally be sharing that with people.”
SPARK Cover Artwork:
SPARK Tracklist:
1. NOTHING REMAINS
2. BACK THEN
3. BLUE
4. TWIRL
5. REAL LOVE
6. MEMORY
7. SELF
8. NEVER CROSSED MY MIND
9. TERMINAL
10. HEART WILL BEAT
11. LOST CONTROL
12. COUNTY LINES
Father John Misty has shared the music video for his Chloë and the Next Century track ‘Buddy’s Rendezvous’, directed by filmmaker and photographer Emma Elizabeth Tillman. The deluxe box set version of the LP includes a 7″ single featuring a cover of the track by Lana Del Rey, and today her rendition has also been made available on digital platforms. Listen to it and watch the new video below.
Talking about the visual, Emma Elizabeth Tillman explained in a press release:
‘Buddy’s Rendezvous’ is a world unto itself. It is a place out of time. My dream for the video is that it would surrender itself to the power of the song. An unnamed man (played by Craig Stark), fresh out of jail and down on his luck makes his way across the fractured landscape of Los Angeles to meet his daughter (played by Arrow DeWilde). All the while he is beset by memories of a more innocent time. Despite her hesitance, his daughter and her boyfriend (played by Gilbert Trejo) agree to meet her father and find moments of sadness and sparks of tenderness in the connection made. Although the video and the song can be considered love letters to Los Angeles, the themes are universal. Disappointments, regrets, forgiveness, tenderness, perseverance, and love. The incredible performances by Arrow, Craig, Gilbert, and David Haley all coalesce to bring this vision to life. Cinematography by James Wall on 16mm evokes the down and out feeling of LA, merging past and present. This video could not have been accomplished without the talent of producer Bria Little and creative director and editor Jonathan King.
Grace Ives has announced her first headline world tour, sharing a video for her Janky Star track ‘On the Ground’ to mark the news. The tour kicks off in her home city of Brooklyn and includes dates in Philadelphia, Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, and more, before Ives heads to Europe in November. Tickets go on sale this Friday, June 10 at 10am. Check out the Sara Magenheimer-directed visual for ‘On the Ground’ and find the full list of dates below.
“Grace was one of my students who eventually became my assistant and friend,” Magenheimer explained in a statement. “I have been rooting for her for years, so in a way this video is a love letter to her, a way of showing how much I see in her and how truly incredible I believe she is. This video is also a celebration of music videos as an art form. I referenced Warhol’s work for MTV and Deee-Lite’s videos to honor the way in which this humble form has acted as a Trojan Horse, bringing experimental moving image art into homes across the world. I love the punk vibe of this medium and this video embraces its young wild history.”
Grace Ives 2022 Tour Dates:
Thu Sep 8 – Brooklyn, NY – Elsewhere Zone One
Fri Sep 9 – Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s
Sat Sep 10 – Washington, DC – DC9
Mon Sep 12 – Toronto, ON – Drake Underground
Wed Sep 14 – Chicago, IL – Schubas Tavern
Fri Sep 16 – Denver, CO – Lost Lake Lounge
Tue Sep 20 – Los Angeles, CA – The Moroccan Lounge
Wed Sep 21 – San Francisco, CA – Cafe Du Nord
Fri Sep 23 – Seattle, WA – Barboza
Sat Sep 24 – Vancouver, BC – Fox Cabaret
Sun Sep 25 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge
Mon Nov 14 – Manchester, UK – YES
Wed Nov 16 – London, UK – The Lower Third
Fri Nov 18 – TBA, ES – TBA
Sat Nov 19 – Paris, FR – TBA
Thu Nov 24 – Berlin, DE – Introducing at The Reed
Fri Nov 25 – Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso
Ugly Season is the sixth album from Michael Hadreas (aka Perfume Genius), the decade-reigning master of forlorn indie pop. Each album in his body of work deviates from its predecessor, spiraling into increasingly ambitious territory. Nonetheless, Ugly Season still feels unexpected. The album is an acrobatic menagerie of sounds, something of an amorphous mystery. Like Scott Walker announcing his out-of-left-field reinvention with the brooding opening of ‘Farmer in the City’, Ugly Season begins with a foreboding orchestral passage which instantly evokes an all-consuming abyss. The album, never stagnant, moves beyond its menacing interlude into an invigorating and unpredictable work, casting a disorienting spell. Ugly Season is both a welcome evolution for Perfume Genius and an experimental pop triumph, championing all things defiant and beastly.
Initially, Ugly Season arose as a collaboration with choreographer Kate Wallich. Performed through sessions with fellow musicians Blake Mills and Alan Wyffels (also Perfume Genius’ longtime romantic partner), the album scored Wallich’s contemporary dance performance The Sun Still Burns Here. A few weeks after finishing the music for Ugly Season, Perfume Genius recorded Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, a more structured and pop-styled rumination on similar ideas of collectives and kineticism. Whereas Set My Heart… released shortly after its recording, Ugly Season hibernated for three years. Nonetheless, the two albums are companion pieces, born of similar internal landscapes, yet channeled into opposing directions. Set My Heart… revealed Perfume Genius at his apex as a pop maestro, with compositional precision and adventurous dancefloor-friendly production. Ugly Season, a more experimental endeavor, luxuriates in spaces between words. It’s an atmospheric kaleidoscope of moods and sounds: neither fully avant-garde nor pop. It’s both the most exciting and excited Perfume Genius has ever sounded.
On Learning, Perfume Genius’ debut from twelve years ago, he sang in haunted and quivering whispers backed by piano accompaniment. The songs were intimate articulations of queer melancholia, performed with stripped-back and sincere balladry. UglySeason, the longest and most expansive Perfume Genius record to-date, decenters the delicate humanity of his earlier work, pushing further into abstract spaces (the opener is ironically titled ‘Just a Room’). These new songs embrace a cryptic emotionality, eschewing conventional songwriting narrativity. Instead, they’re corporeal expressions: alien waves of sound articulating feelings beyond mere words.
Built from free-form improvisation, the songs evolve in unpredictable directions. ‘Pop Song’—surprisingly not an ironic title—sways with ethereal synths and grooving percussion against a rapturous lyrical description of collective self-sacrifice. It’s a joyous and spiritual track, building towards a grand catharsis. Yet the album immediately follows ‘Pop Song’ with ‘Scherzo’, a skin-crawling instrumental piece. ‘Scherzo’ unfolds through a dissonant jumble of keys played at impulsively shifting tempos. The transition between the two songs is jarring, from an uplifting pop attraction to a deranged concerto performed by a seemingly unstable pianist. Unlike Perfume Genius’ tonally consistent early albums, Ugly Season never settles into a singular mood or sound. Dark, baroque passages of orchestral strings and organs (‘Just A Room’) thrive next to intense and simmering quasi-reggae sounds (‘Ugly Season’) and droning art-rock-esque electric-guitar-frenzies (‘Hellbent’).
Yet despite Ugly Season’s diverse palette, it’s more than just a playlist of eclectic songs stitched together into album form. The tracks imagine a high-camp, queer utopia: a space of subversive communal belongings and becomings. Whereas the emotional core of early Perfume Genius manifests through the songs’ lonely intimacies, Ugly Season never feels isolated. The music often gestures towards social spaces. ‘Eye in the Wall’ (likely the best song Perfume Genius has ever released) evokes a hypnotic and sweat-drenched rave and then slows into a dream pop-esque comedown. Even in their most experimental moments, these songs rarely show a glimmer of alienation. They’re big songs that bustle as a soundtrack for tangoing bodies.
Ugliness is the crux of Perfume Genius’ imagined utopia. The spaces he conjures thrive on raptures and loves outside of normative standards. To move forward is to reject conventional notions of beauty and embrace the ugly. On the title track, Perfume Genius narrates as a being “Turned from God/ Slick with rot/ Thick as vaseline/ Knee deep and filthy” yet, whenever the chorus arrives, he declares: “Bitch, it’s ugly season/ And I love it.” The song is a self-affirming body horror: a celebration of a new flesh. Ugliness is never shunned but, rather, revealed as a platform for deeper connectivity. Ugly Season offers a carnal space where so-called hideous outcasts assemble and rave, where old values are shed, new ideals embraced, and new potentials are imagined.
Beyoncé is returning with a new project titled Renaissance, which is set to arrive on July 29, her official website, social media bios, and posts by variousstreamingservices suggest. The follow-up to 2016’s Lemonade apparently comprises 16 tracks and is subtitled ‘act: 1’, though it is unclear if the full project will be released on July 29 or if there are more installments to come.
Beyoncé teased the new record last summer in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar. “With all the isolation and injustice over the past year, I think we are all ready to escape, travel, love, and laugh again,” she said. “I feel a renaissance emerging, and I want to be part of nurturing that escape in any way possible. I’ve been in the studio for a year and a half. Sometimes it takes a year for me to personally search through thousands of sounds to find just the right kick or snare. One chorus can have up to 200 stacked harmonies. Still, there’s nothing like the amount of love, passion, and healing that I feel in the recording studio. After 31 years, it feels just as exciting as it did when I was nine years old. Yes, the music is coming!”
Back in November 2021, Beyoncé shared the song ‘Be Alive’ as part of the soundtrack for the Venus and Serena Williams biopic King Richard.
Katy J Pearson has shared ‘Float’, the latest single off her forthcoming album Sound of the Morning. The track, which follows previous offerings ‘Talk Over Town’, ‘Alligator’, and ‘Game of Cards’, features black midi’s Morgan Simpson on drums and was co-written with Pet Shimmers frontman Oliver Wilde. Check it out below.
“I wrote this track with Oliver Wilde, a founding member of the excellent Pet Shimmers – he’s been at the centre of the Bristol music community for several years,” Pearson said in a press release. “For the new album, I wanted to collaborate with some of my peers that I admire, so I jammed with Oli for a few weeks – he’d come round with his laptop and interface and we’d write songs together. ‘Float’ is one of the tracks that came out of those writing sessions and as soon as we wrote it I knew that it had to be on the record; it was one of my favourites to write and I love it. It has such an atmosphere and I think you can really feel the emotion and pain of the song; it’s about life experiences and all the things that lead up to certain moments. It’s quite nostalgic and given the past two years we have had, references wondering about when things will become more stable again.”
Phoebe Bridgers appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night (June 15), where she and her band performed her recent single ‘Sidelines’ in skeleton-themed football uniforms. Watch it below.
Released in April, ‘Sidelines’ was written and recorded for Hulu’s Sally Rooney adaptation Conversations With Friends. Bridgers has shared two separate videos for the track, the most recent one featuring footage from her ongoing Reunion Tour.
