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JOHN Release New Song ‘Trauma Mosaic’

JOHN – the duo of drummer/lead singer John Newton and guitarist/backing vocalist Johnny Healey – have shared a new single, ‘Trauma Mosaic’. The track was recorded by Tom Hill at The Bookhouse in South London. Check out a video for it below, along with the band’s upcoming tour dates.

“We like to think the back catalogue really shows how the project has evolved and expanded over the many years/releases,” Newton said in a statement. “‘Trauma Mosaic’ feels like a real testament to the ongoing journey, proving that there’s plenty of exploration even within our inherent limitations as a duo. It’s actually become our strength – helping simplify the decision making process, whilst further defining what JOHN is – in a unique sense.”

JOHN 2023 Tour Dates:

May 5 – Oxford, UK – Jericho Tavern
May 6 – Exeter, UK – The Cavern
May 7 – Falmouth, UK – The Cornish Bank
May 24 – Bedford, UK – Esquires
May 26 – Overzande, NL – Klompop Festival
May 27 – Den Haag, NL – Sniester Festival
May 28 – Rotterdam, NL – Rotown
May 29 – Groningen, NL – VERA Downstage
Oct 3 – Phoenix, AZ – Linger Longer Lounge
Oct 4 – Los Angeles, CA – The Echo
Oct 5 – Santa Ana, CA – Constellation Room
Oct 7-  San Francisco, CA – Brick and Mortar
Oct 10 – Seattle, WA – Sunset Tavern
Oct 11 – Portland, OR – Mission Theater
Oct 13 – Salt Lake City, UT – The DLC
Oct 14 – Denver, CO – Skylark Lounge
Oct 17 – St. Louis, MO – Off Broadway
Oct 18 – Chicago, IL – Schubas
Oct 20 – Toronto, ON – The Baby G
Oct 21 – Columbus, OH – The Basement
Oct 24 – Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie
Oct 25 – Washington, DC – DC9
Oct 26 – Brooklyn, NY – St. Vitus

Deer Tick Announce New Album ‘Emotional Contracts’, Share New Songs

Deer Tick have announced a new album titled Emotional Contracts. The Dave Fridmann-produced LP is set for release on June 16 via the band’s new label home, ATO Records. Check out the new songs ‘Forgiving Ties’ and ‘The Real Thing’ below, and scroll down for the album’s cover art and tracklist.

“Each track is like a little deal you make with yourself (a contract if you will),” the band wrote in a statement. “Much of the material focuses on the fight to survive. A timely coincidence with all the COVID lockdowns and cancelled shows…or perhaps all of that was subconscious inspiration. But here we are; Deer Tick lives to see another day.”

“The song is essentially a metaphor for the fear that results from a sudden traumatic event, and how to move forward and take care of yourself and your loved ones,” Ian O’Neil, who takes on lead vocals on ‘Forgiving Ties’, explained. Of ‘The Real Thing’, the band’s John McCauley added: “At first I had an idea for a song called ‘The Last Book on the Shelf,’ which I ended up using as a title for a song about all the creepy book-banning happening lately. ‘The Real Thing’ became about living with depression, which has been part of my existence since I was a kid, and how it takes even more work to keep your head above water as you get older.”

Emotional Contracts Cover Artwork:

Emotional Contracts Tracklist:

1. If I Try To Leave
2. Forgiving Ties
3. Grey Matter
4. If Only She Could See Me
5. Running From Love
6. Once In A Lifetime
7. Disgrace
8. My Ship
9. A Light Can Go Out In The Heart
10. The Real Thing

Crumb Unveil New Single ‘Dust Bunny’

Crumb have put out a new single called ‘Dust Bunny’. It follows recent outing ‘Crushxd’, which was co-produced by Jonathan Rado and Johnscott Sanford. Check it out below, along with the band’s just-announced UK tour dates.

Crumb’s most recent album, Ice Melt, arrived back in 2021.

Crumb 2023 UK Tour Dates:

Nov 9 – London, UK, Hackney Church (Pitchfork London)
Nov 10 – Brighton, UK, Chalk
Nov 11 – Manchester, UK, Band on the Wall
Nov 12 – Leeds, UK, Brudenell Social Club

Jess Williamson Shares Video for New Song ‘Chasing Spirits’

Jess Williamson has released ‘Chasing Spirits’, the second single from her upcoming album Time Ain’t Accidental. The track, which follows lead offering ‘Hunter’, arrives alongside a music video directed by Rocco Rivetti. Check it out below.

“‘Chasing Spirits’ opens with a question: are my love songs lies now that the love is gone?” Williamson reflected in a statement. “You can write a deeply devotional love song about a partner and then one day break up. In that same vein, the title of this song has multiple interpretations. Chasing spirits can be a way of trying to connect with supernatural entities or one’s own higher self, and also, you order spirits at the bar or pick them up at the liquor store, maybe with a chaser.”

Time Ain’t Accidental comes out June 9 through Mexican Summer.

Suzie True Announce New Album ‘Sentimental Scum’, Share New Single ‘Keep in Touch’

DIY pop-punk band Suzie True have announced that their new LP, Sentimental Scum, will drop on June 30 via Get Better Records. According to bassist/singer Lexi McCoy, it’s “kinda all over the place, inspired by artists like Babes In Toyland, The Muffs, Jeff Rosenstock, Josie & The Pussycats, and anime theme music” Today, they’ve shared a new song called ‘Keep in Touch’, which follows the early single ‘Backburner’ and comes with a Rae Mystic-directed video. Check it out below and scroll down for the album cover and tracklist.

Sentimental Scum Cover Artwork:

Sentimental Scum Tracklist:

1. Backburner
2. Better Fool
3. Drain
4. Keep in Touch
5. Dumb
6. Friends At Best
7. Sentimental Scum
8. Honeybear
9. I Lost It (Self Respect)
10. Live Fast, Die Fun!!!
11. Wallflower
12. Wine Stains

Home Is Where Announce New Album ‘the whaler’, Release New Song

Home Is Where have announced their new album, the whaler, which lands June 16 via Wax Bodega. It follows the band’s 2021 LP I Became Birds and 2022’s split with Record Setter, dissection lesson. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the new single ‘yes! yes! a thousand times yes!’, which “tells the story of two people faking normalcy in the normalcy of faking,” according to frontwoman Brandon MacDonald. “The idea or even the image, no matter how altered or perfectly copied, of love is no substitute for the real.” Check out its Texas Smith-directed video and find the whaler‘s details below.

“The idea for the record came to me in the spring of 2021 when I realized I wasn’t doing too hot mentally, and had a nervous breakdown,” MacDonald explained. “A lot of it is a very negative record, which was scary to write because I was being honest with myself and allowing a lot of fucked up thoughts to be in the songs. I was more vulnerable than I was used to being in art.”

the whaler Cover Artwork:

the whaler Tracklist:

1. skin meadow
2. lily pad pupils
3. yes! yes! a thousand times yes!
4. whaling for sport
5. everyday feels like 9/11
6. 9/12
7. daytona 500
8. chris farley
9. nursing home riot
10. floral organs

Kevin Morby Announces ‘More Photographs (A Continuum)’, Unveils New Songs

Kevin Morby has announced More Photographs (A Continuum), which is billed as a companion piece to last year’s This Is a Photograph. The project will arrive on May 26 via Dead Oceans. It includes six brand new songs and three reworkings of tracks from the album; two of them, ‘This Is A Photograph II’ and ‘Five Easy Pieces Revisited’, are out now. Take a listen below.

“If This Is A Photograph is a house that you have been living inside of…then More Photographs, perhaps, is the same home just experienced differently,” Morby explained in a statement. “As if you, its inhabitant, have taken a tab of something psychedelic and now, suddenly, you’ve replaced your eyeglasses with kaleidoscopes. With every collection of songs I feel I must cast them out of me before moving onto the next project, and here I knew that what I had begun with This Is A Photograph was not finished. Releasing this is my tying a bow on that time and place in my creative life.”

More Photographs (A Continuum) Cover Artwork:

More Photographs (A Continuum) Tracklist:

1. This Is A Photograph II
2. Triumph
3. Bittersweet, Tennessee
4. Going To Prom
5. Lion Tamer
6. A Song For Katie
7. Five Easy Pieces Revisited
8. Mickey Mantle’s Autograph
9. Kingdom Of Broken Hearts

Thundercat and Tame Impala Team Up for New Song ‘No More Lies’

Thundercat and Tame Impala have joined forces for the new song ‘No More Lies’. Listen to it below.

“I’ve wanted to work with Kevin since the very first Tame Impala album,” Thundercat said in a press release. “I feel that I knew that us working together would be special. I’ve been excited about this song for a long time and hope to create more with Kevin in the future.”

In an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Thundercat elaborated:

For me personally, this is one of the greater moments for me. I don’t even know where to begin with this. This is me and Kevin Parker. And from the day I heard Kevin’s music, I knew me and him could do something. I knew it from the minute I heard it…I was like, “Man, I would’ve been in his band.” I remember something like saying, “I’m a fan of your music,” it almost feels like tongue in cheek. It’s a weird way to fluff. But there’s a part of it where I’m like, genuinely, for me, I own all your albums. And I remember a very specific thing for me, and we both, we were sitting there while we started working on it, and I had to make sure I had… Because there’s a part where it’s all washed over in alcohol psychologically for me. And I was like, “When did Apocalypse Dreams come out?” Just to see which order this is in, because there’s a part that this could’ve inspired that, and there’s a part where we both were just in the same mind frame, psychologically, in the feelings of certain things, I think. And I expressed to Kevin how Apocalypse Dreams got me through one of the hardest moments in my life. That song, I can distinctly remember myself in the car crying and screaming the lyrics to that song, but it was coming out like vomit. Just was kind of one of those things where I’m like, maybe if I ever meet him one day. Here we are. There’s only a couple songs like that. And it was like that helped me cope. That was one of the helps. That was one of a genuine spiritual moment for me. And I told him, and I was like, “The minute you said ‘Everything is changing,’ it just made me feel okay.” And I then I was like, “Kevin, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying.” So what you’re hearing with this is everything from that. That’s what this feels like for me. Yeah, he’s a G. Yeah. Kevin’s sick, man.

‘No More Lies’ marks the first official Thundercat single in over three years. In 2020, the musician released It Is What It Is, which won the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Progressive R&B Album.

Kesha Announces New Album ‘Gag Order’ Produced by Rick Rubin

Kesha has announced her fifth studio album, Gag Order. Rick Rubin produced the LP, which arrives May 19 via Kemosabe Records and RCA Records. Its first two singles, ‘Fine Line’ and ‘Eat the Acid’, will be out on Friday (April 28). Find the album’s cover art below.

Introducing the album, Kesha wrote in a statement: “Without the darkness there is no light. So I let my darkness have the light. I can’t fight the truth. Life is difficult and painful. It is for everyone. An artist doesn’t exist to make others happy. I believe an artist gives voice, motion, color to the emotions we all have. The good emotions, and the unmanageably fucking miserable ones.”

The album’s title appears to be a reference to Kesha’s nine-year legal battle with her former producer Dr. Luke. Since the legal battle began, all of the singer’s albums, including Gag Order, have been co-released via Dr. Luke’s Kemosabe Records. In a new Rolling Stone feature, Kesha said, “I feel as if there has been an implied gag order for a very long time now.” She added, “With my ongoing litigation hanging over my head, I have not been able to speak freely because I know everything I say is scrutinized.”

Kesha’s last album was 2020’s High Road.

Gag Order Cover Artwork:

Harry Belafonte Dead at 96

Harry Belafonte, the legendary singer, actor, and civil rights activist, has died at the age of 96. According to The New York Times, Belafonte died of congestive heart failure at home in Manhattan today.

Harry Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. in Harlem, New York to Carribean immigrants. He returned with his mother to her native Jamaica at the age of eight, where he spent much of his childhood before serving in the Navy during World War II. After his discharge, Belafonte studied acting at Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop alongside the likes of Marlon Brando and Tony Curtis and eventually began performing at the American Negro Theater. In 1954, he won a Tony Award for his work in the Broadway revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.

Belafonte launched his singing career by performing in nightclubs, releasing music on the Jubilee label before signing with RCA in 1953. His 1955 album Calypso topped the Billboard album chart for 31 weeks on the strength of singles like ‘Jamaica Farewell’ and ‘Banana Boat (Day-O)’. 1962’s Midnight Special featured the first-ever recorded appearance by a young musician named Bob Dylan, who played harmonica on the album. Belafonte’s final studio LP, Paradise in Gazankulu, came out in 1988.

In addition to releasing numerous albums, Belafonte was invited by Frank Sinatra to perform at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, and, as a guest host on The Tonight Show in February 1968, interviewed Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Throughout his career, he supported humanitarian causes like UNICEF, USA for Africa, and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, and helped organize the star-packed charity single ‘We Are The World’.

Belafonte received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1989, the National Medal of Arts in 1994, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. Last year, he became the oldest living person to receive the Early Influence Award from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.