Singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe and Jess Gowrie have announced the formation of a new band called Mrs. Piss. The duo have also shared two new tracks, ‘Downer Surrounded by Uppers’ and ‘Knelt’, which you can listen to below. The singles are taken from the group’s upcoming debut LP titled Self-Surgery, due on May 29 via Sargent House.
Wolfe and Gowrie started working on their collaborative project while touring in support of Wolfe’s 2017 album Hiss Spun. They recorded their debut album as Mrs. Piss at the Dock Studio in Sacramento, California and at Wolfe’s home studio the Canyon, with Wolfe on vocals and guitar and Gowrie on drums, guitar, bass, and programming.
Wolfe, who released her latest solo LP Birth of Violence last year, said in a statement:
Working on this project brought Jess and I so much closer as songwriters and production partners, after reuniting as friends and bandmates. It was freeing and fun to channel some wild energies that I don’t typically put into my own music. We tried not to overthink the songs as we were writing them, but at the same time we did consciously put a lot into crafting them into our own weird sonic vision. This project was a chance for us to do things our own way, on our own terms, and we plan to invite more womxn musicians along for future Mrs. Piss recordings.
Gowrie added:
To me, Mrs. Piss represents a musical chemistry cut short long ago that now gets a second chance. Creating with Chelsea has always been very liberating for me, and we both push each other to try new things: anything and everything. Both of us have grown so much as writers and musicians since our first band together (Red Host), and with the journeys we had to take separately to get there, we both have so much more to say; so much more pain and anger to express. That said, we also had a lot of fun doing it, not to mention how freeing it is to not give a f-k and to just create.
Charli XCX is back with her fourth studio album titled how i’m feeling now, out via Atlantic/ Asylym. The album was written and recorded entirely during lockdown, reflecting on the current situation around COVID-19. Executive produced by by PC Music’s A. G. Cook and BJ Burton, how i’m feeling now took a DIY collaborative approach involving the artist’s fans, who contributed to the writing process via weekly Zoom conferences. “The nature of this album is going to be very indicative of the times just because I’m only going to be able to use the tools I have at my fingertips to create all music, artwork, videos everything – in that sense, it’ll be very DIY,” Charli explained when announcing the album. how i’m feeling now features the singles ‘forever’ and ‘claws’.
Mike Hadreas aka Perfume has released his new album, Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, out now via Matador. The follow-up to 2017’s No Shape was recorded alongside longtime collaborator Alan Wyffels and finds the singer working once again with producer Blake Mills. It also features musicians Jim Keltner, Pino Palladino, Matt Chamberlin, and Rob Moose. “I wanted to feel more open, more free and spiritually wild, and I’m in a place now where those feelings are very close—but it can border on being unhinged,” Hadreas explained in a statement. “I wrote these songs as a way to be more patient, more considered—to pull at all these chaotic threads hovering around me and weave them in to something warm, thoughtful and comforting.”
The Magnetic Fields have come through with a new collection of tracks titled Quickies, out now via Nonesuch. The collection features 28 new short songs under 3 minutes long, which will be spread across five vinyl EPs, as well as being available as a single CD and on digital platforms. Describing the album’s concept, songwriter Stephin Merrit said in a statement: “I’ve been reading a lot of very short fiction, and I enjoyed writing 101 Two-Letter Words, the poetry book about the shortest words you can use in Scrabble. And I’ve been listening to a lot of French baroque harpsichord music. Harpsichord doesn’t lend itself to languor. So I’ve been thinking about one instrument at a time, playing for about a minute or so and then stopping, and I’ve been thinking of narratives that are only a few lines long.”
After releasing græ: Part 1 back in February, Ghana-born, L.A.-based musician Moses Sumney has now put out the full double album via Jagjaguwar. græ is the follow-up to Sumney’s critically acclaimed debut album Aromanticism, released in 2017, and is described by a press release as “conceptual patchwork about grayness”. While the first part was pressed on black and grey vinyl, the second part is pressed on white and grey.
