The Rolling Stones have announced that Hackney Diamonds, their first album of original material in 18 years, will be released on October 20. Lead single ‘Angry’ comes with a music video starring Euphoria/The White Lotus actress Sydney Sweeney. Check it out below, along with album cover and tracklist.
The Rolling Stones worked on Hackney Diamonds in Los Angeles, London, Jamaica, and New York. The LP was helmed by producer Andrew Watt, while Paul McCartney is rumoured to have played bass on a song.
The band’s last album of original songs was 2005’s A Bigger Bang. They released Blue & Lonesome, a collection of blues covers, in 2016.
Hackney Diamonds Cover Artwork:
Hackney Diamonds Tracklist:
1. Angry
2. Get Close
3. Depending on You
4. Bite My Head Off
5. All Wide World
6. Dreamin Skies
7. Meesed It Up
8. Lived by the Sword
9. Drively Too Hard
10. Tell me Straight
11. Sweet Sound of Heaven
12. Rolling Stone Blues
Prewn is the project led by Northampton, Massachusetts artist Izzy Hagerup, who is also a member of Kevin McMahon’s Pelican Movement collective. She’s been working through some of the material that comprises her visceral debut LP, Through the Window, recently released via Exploding in Sound, for the better part of a decade, but the record largely came together during the pandemic with McMahon co-producing at his Marcata Studio. Immersing herself in these solitary sessions not only gave Hagerup the drive to concentrate on writing and recording, but the space to realize the volatile emotions behind the music, which can range from surreal to strikingly specific in its intensity. Her searing voice hangs over and pierces through the heavy ache of these songs like it’s the only thing capable of holding the fragile pieces together, but it also leaps towards transcendence (‘Alive’) and escapes itself by adopting different perspectives (‘But I Want More’). Having expanded Prewn into a four-piece with bassist Mia Huggs, guitarist Calvin Parent, and drummer Karl Helander, Hagerup can only keep finding new ways to bring her ideas to life.
We caught up with Prewn’s Izzy Hagerup for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about her earliest musical memories, working with Kevin McMahon, writing through different perspectives, and more.
Do you mind sharing some of your earliest memories of connecting with music?
I started playing cello when I was in second grade. I played in orchestra until eighth grade, but I never really appreciated it. And then I started playing guitar – I had a guitar in my room for years before I touched it, and it just became like my best friend. When I started high school, I started dating this boyfriend who was really not a good guy, but he was really good at guitar, and I think that really motivated me in a way, like, “I wanna be good, too.” My dad played music growing up, so that was always around my life. Once I started playing guitar, that was just for fun for a long time, but I never, ever would have thought I’d be pursuing music or taking it this seriously at this point in my life. I’m still surprised by that sometimes. It just feels like music is the thing that l’m always going to love and have with me.
Was there a specific moment when you realized music was something you wanted to really pursue?
It was really when I went to Kevin McMahon – he has a barn that’s a studio, and during COVID he wasn’t having bands come record, so he let me go for days at a time. With this pressure of wanting to use this time and be gracious of what he’s offering, I was like, “Oh, I can write a song every day, that’s cool.” I had these songs that that years ago I went in the studio and recorded with him. Throughout our relationship of me going to his barn a lot, we just would talk a lot, and he really pushed to help me see that maybe I could take this seriously. In my mind, I knew I wanted to keep writing songs, but I don’t think I understood there’s a world in which I go for this. I think it was when I spent that COVID time going to the barn for a week at a time that just made me realize this is the thing I love the most, and Kevin was helping me believe maybe I could try to do this. I’m like, this is my greatest joy – I mean, it’s torture, too, trying to write songs – but just realizing maybe there’s a world in which it’s not crazy to pursue this, and realizing this is what I want to do over anything. At the end of the day, it’s just the most fulfilling thing.
In a quote about ‘But I Want More’, which explores your dad’s battle with Parkinson’s disease through his perspective, you talked about what it’s like writing a song with “real feeling,” one that you “really, really mean.” It made me wonder if it’s ever a challenge for you not to lean too much on a more detached headspace when you’re writing.
I feel like I can be dissociative pretty often, and really getting to my feelings can be pretty tough. The most powerful music, essentially, is feeling, so I’m always trying to write from a place of feeling. But then it’s that constant battle of, well, you can’t try to feel things. There’s a few songs where they have forced me to write a song; the feeling was, I need to let this out. Honestly, the songs that happened to really have that tend to be about my dad. That’s the only thing that really gets me fully there. But a lot of the songs that kind of show up, I’m like, I just want to make music, and then I see what can come out. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m writing about, and I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling. And then after the fact, if I got into the pocket, it shows me what I was feeling. I feel like it can be such a good processing tool for me. Sometimes I catch myself trying too hard, and then you can hear the cerebral attempt, and it’s never, you know… A lot of times I can write from a more dissociated place, but it’s just a different energy. ‘Woman’, for instance, was a song that I wrote when my grandma was passing away, and I was trying to write from like a place of feelings. I’m like, “I should explore the feeling in this.” But I couldn’t attach to the feeling because I was just so detached, so there’s just a different energy from that.
It’s almost more interesting if you write from a detached headspace and then you realize you’re saying a lot more than you thought you did.
Yeah. I feel like a lot of songs, that’s not even me talking, that’s a different character, and that can be a really cool tool. A song I wrote recently – I got a tick bite, and I was really scared that I had lyme, and I was like, “What ifwrite a song about a tick?” And then I ended up writing from the perspective of the tick, and I was like, “This is so weird, what am I doing?” But then after the fact, I was reading the lyrics and thinking about it, and it was actually very reflective of a lot of stuff that I’m going through and things in my life. I’m not consciously writing that, but that’s what’s so cool about art and writing music and just letting yourself step away from it: you’re always gonna be inside of everything you make, and the less you try to, the more you can discover. I get writer’s block all the time, but I always try to remember, you have to go in with curiosity, not criticizing it when it comes out. It’s all really hard, I struggle with it all the time. [laughs] But I think disassociating a little bit and letting yourself be a different character has been a really cool tool to learn more about myself and the world.
This makes me think your song ‘Perfect World’, except instead of a tick it’s, I don’t know, patriarchy?
Yeah, sometimes I’m writing from the perspective of – in this it’s like this evil man, and afterwards I’m like, “Oh no, I see myself in this evil thing.” [laughs] I wrote that song on a day when I broke up with my boyfriend at the time, and I also got in a huge stupid fight that I still haven’t talked to this person since then, but they were deep into conspiracy stuff. It was a song where it just came out, and I didn’t even know exactly what I was writing about. I was just feeling angry but also detached, and just finding the irony in like, “They’re the evil one, they’re the evil one.”
Do you feel like writing from a different perspective on those songs actually helped you connect with yourself in a different way?
Yeah, writing from the perspective of someone else really lets me explore the topics that those songs are about in a very different way. When I was writing ‘But I Want More’, at first I had it from my perspective, talking about my dad, and it felt like I was talking in a negative way about him or something. When I let myself really speak from his perspective, it let me take away all the judgments and let me be like, “This isn’t about me, I can become someone else.” It takes away all those rigid boundaries of my own self. In a very different way, but with ‘Perfect World’, tapping into this other character opens up this whole different freedom and lets me think about the world in a way that I never would. And then afterwards, I’m like, “Oh, interesting, okay.” Even though a lot of it came from anger and not talking well about myself as that character, but towards the end, I feel like it helped me even find empathy for these evil characters that are just the classic, “Oh, they’re just scared little children on the inside that need love.” It usually helps me find a whole new lesson that the quarters of my own mind will not let me see.
What’s the story behind album artwork by Gideon Bok?
Gideon is very close friends with Kevin, I’ve known him since I went on a little tour with Kevin and Pelican Movement. I love that man, I just think the world of him. Gideon painted some stuff for Pile’s latest album [All Fiction]. He also has a barn studio in Maine, and we went up there for like four days. It was really cool to watch his process; he had a bunch of paintings, and he painted me into eight of them. We would just hang out every day, I was just playing music with Kevin or chatting or eating food. He was just hanging out there, I didn’t have to pose or anything. I would just sit there, and he would just paint. I just think his art is so incredible. I’ve never been painted into a painting before, much less by Gideon Bok. Gideon is someone who I just feel like a special connection to, and I feel seen by him. It felt like in this whole circle of what this music is, Gideon was in this peripheral part of this project, so it felt really special to let him create what’s gonna represent this. It’s really an honor to get to work with him.
Since recording Through the Window, the project has grown into a four-piece, and I read that you plan to release full-band versions of these songs. What excites you about this expansion and the way your songs can evolve?
We’ve been playing a lot of these songs as a band for years – it’s been a couple different arrangements of people. I just really love and musically trust and respect and I’m honored to be playing music with the people that are in this band at this point. I still have a deep attachment to recording alone and and I’m never going to stop doing that, but I feel like it’s taken a lot of time to step back and trust them to bring what they bring. I’m watching it like, “Oh, this is different, but this is so special in its own way.” We haven’t recorded together yet, but we have a plan to in a month, just a couple of songs to start. For Prewn, I’m just going to have songs that I’ve made on my own that I’m too attached to let go of, and I’m also going to want to have the other version with the band that’s going to be a very different thing. I’m like, “Can I just do both?” [laughs] But everyone in the band is just so talented and really sees the music through in the way that I hope they do, but also with their own perspective. It’s cool to let it come alive in these fresh ways.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Do you love art but feel as though you’re limited in your artistic abilities? Do you ever look at a piece of artwork and think “I wish I could do that?” Well, you’re not alone.
There’s a reason we’re so impressed when we see a stunning piece of artwork, and it’s because it takes a tremendous amount of skill and work to put that together. Even seemingly simple works can represent hours of time and training. Does this mean that it’s a hopeless dream to step into the world of art? Should we just leave everything to the artists?
Well, the short answer is no. Not if you don’t want to. Here are some ways to start your digital art journey.
What is Digital Art?
In short, digital art is any art that has been created using a computer or tablet. Most digital artists use drawing tablets now because they are essentially the best of both worlds. With a drawing tablet, you can access all of the software you might need to create your art, but you also have the tactile element of being able to hold a stylus and draw naturally.
Other than that, digital art can cover a wide range of styles and even mediums. Some people combine digital art with traditional art, either using it to design an art piece before they get started, or literally scanning in images that have been drawn, painted, or sculpted.
You can also take photographs and edit them or include them in your digital art. This is a valuable tool for some photographers who want a more artistic shot.
You’re only limited by your creativity and your software.
Digital art can also be shared over digital means, which makes it much easier to sell to potential customers or share with your friends.
Art Classes
While some people are naturally talented, nobody can just create an amazing art piece without training or practice. If you’re serious about wanting to become an artist, you need to put the work in.
Keep on drawing, keep on creating, keep on experimenting with your ideas. It doesn’t matter if your work doesn’t look brilliant to start with, as you continue to build up your skills and become more experienced, you’ll only ever get better.
It’s a good idea to keep some of your early works around. If you get discouraged by your seeming lack of progress, look at your past work. You will notice a significant improvement in your skill and your artistic eye.
Using AI Tools
You can also use different tools to help you come up with ideas and to inspire you. AI, while it has its limitations, can help you to come up with different compositions and character designs. For example, anime AI can help you to design anime characters and scenes.
You can then edit and tweak these designs and use them as inspiration for your own work. AI works with different parameters that you give it, so it won’t create a particularly emotionally resonant art, but it can come in handy when you’re short on ideas.
heka has unveiled a new single called ‘monkey’. It’s taken from her new EP swan songs, which is out on October 6 and includes the earlier singles ‘april (away)’ and ‘i’m the thorn’. The accompanying video was made in collaboration with artist Tobias Bradford, and you can check it out below.
“Symbolically referencing the ‘three monkeys’ (don’t see, don’t hear, don’t speak) to describe the context of an emotionally abusive relationship, monkey follows thematically from i’m the thorn, expressing a similar sentiment of codependency and conflict in its first section: ‘you are the part of me that don’t feel good; you, you are a part of me but i don’t feel good’,” heka explained in a statement. “To be so intertwined with someone that they feel like a part of you and at the same time realising that that’s the part that hurts.”
ME REX have shared a new single, ‘Giant Giant Giant’, lifted from their forthcoming debut album Giant Elk. Due out October 20 via Big Scary Monsters, the LP includes the previously released track ‘Eutherians (Ultramarine)’. ‘Giant Giant Giant’ comes with an accompanying video made by the band’s Myles McCabe, and you can check it out below.
“When it came to making a video for ‘Giant Giant Giant’ I knew we didn’t have a lot to spend but I wanted to create something that was visually engaging that could help expand the world surrounding ME REX,” McCabe explained in a press release. “I love all things fantasy so there was never really any question that the visual aesthetics would take cues from the Lord of the Rings, The Dark Crystal, Adventure Time and Dungeons and Dragons. I also wanted to shoot for the balance of creepiness, deep lore and fun you find in Steven Universe, The Midnight Gospel and Over the Garden Wall.”
“I developed stories for Phoebe [Cross] and Rich [Mandell] that each used simple imagery to tell familiar stories. Phoebe comes across a vicious snake, is presented with a sword and slays the monster. Rich sees a meteor crash to earth and goes on a journey to find it, he is knocked off course by a wave but ends up reaching his destination and finds the meteorite is a crown. Eventually I decided that it was enough for my character to sit on a mushroom, read a book and sing the song.”
Molly Burch has shared ‘Tattoo’, the latest single from her upcoming album Daydreamer. The track is dedicated to her late best friend, Lena, and features harp and backup vocals from Hannah Kim (aka Luna Li). Check out the video for it below.
“I wrote this song for my best friend Lena who passed away when we were 19,” Burch explained in a statement. “She was truly the most special person I’ve ever known. It’s hard to describe her. She was the most fearless, daring person who did anything for a laugh. For example, on our senior year scavenger hunt she got a teacher’s name tattoo’d on her ass. That isn’t the tattoo I’m referring to on this song, though. Before she passed she got a symbol on her breast bone that meant ‘no fear.’ After she passed I decided to get the same tattoo in the same place so I would always have her close to my heart and remember to not be afraid. I wrote this song for her because Daydreamer is about my relationship to music and she was the first person I played music with. I hope it does her justice.”
“For the music video, I collaborated with Lena’s sister Mia – who I am deeply close with,” Burch added. “We wanted to show footage of Lena and paint a picture of what she was like. We added in public domain footage of nature and visuals that reminded us of her. The line in the song ‘I wanna tell you it’s okay, even though it’s crazy, you wouldn’t believe it, I think you would hate it’ refers to how much she’s missed since she’s passed. Social media, climate disasters — as much as I wish she was here today, I think she would have had a really hard time with modern life. She had a severely sensitive soul. I added footage of wildfires, earthquakes, and water pollution to represent what I was saying with this line. I hope this song reaches people who have experienced great loss and can be a comfort to them. I share this with love.”
Tudor Black Bay 36 might be one of the best entry-luxury watches on the market. No, I’m not kidding. It ticks all the boxes regarding value for money, with a charming bracelet, an elegant dial, and a decent movement. So, before we steer away, let’s dive into why I adore this piece by Tudor and why it deserves a spot on Watch Spotlight.
Design
This specific version of the Black Bay comes in a steel case with a polished and satin finish for that smooth look that whispers class. The watch size, 36mm, suits the modern-day watch collector and certainly blends into the fashionista’s wardrobe with its all-around style. It fits lovely and certainly does well to be noticed while being smaller than alternative brand “normalised” timepieces. *cough cough* Rolex Datejust 41.
The dial itself is anthracite and has a lovely vintage feel, which, in all likelihood, can be an acquired taste. However, this look genuinely hits the mark when it comes to the versatility of the watch. The smooth bezel is also likeable and aids in elevating the bracelet, adding grace to the watch and making it suitable for classier events such as a black-tie soirée or a gala fundraiser.
Lastly, the crystal of the piece is a flat sapphire crystal, making it durable and suitable for daily wear. Yes, the Tudor suits everyday wear (as most watches should). Nevertheless, it all depends on how you see a £3,260 watch fitting in your wardrobe.
Movement
The movement for the Black Bay 36 is an in-house movement by Tudor named MT5400, which is used among the Black Bay and Pelagos ranges. It is a self-winding mechanical movement with a bidirectional rotor system and is COSC-certified. For those in the dark, COSC is a Swiss organisation responsible for keeping Swiss watches certified in accuracy and precision. Thus, if you’re buying a COSC-approved watch, you’re getting true Swiss quality.
Conclusion
Although Tudor will always be compared to Rolex and will be seen as the “baby brother” of the prevailing brand, it will always have a place in the world of horology. This is evident by the Tudor Black Bay 36, a seriously good-for-value timepiece that hits the mark regarding design, weight, and accuracy. It’s a delightful watch that does not boast but shines with unpretentiousness and dignity.
Lilts, the project of Wild Pink’s John Ross and singer-songwriter Laura Wolf, have released a new track, ‘Waiting Around’. It’s the title track from their upcoming debut EP, which includes the previously shared song ‘Dodge Street’. Check it out below.
“I had this scene in my head of being a wallflower at a party,” Wolf explained in a statement. “Dizzy with relief of being on the outskirts but also craving and being disappointed by the lack of connection. As the lyrics grew, the story became much more about self-worth in the face of setbacks and feeling small.”
In a statement about ‘Engine’, the band’s Jake Ewald explained:
This song keeps changing for me. First, I didn’t think it was about anything. Then I thought it was about the van. Then I thought it was about [Slaughter Beach, Dog bassist] Ian [Farmer], and I couldn’t figure out why the guitar solo kept making me cry. Outside the Sinclair in January, I saw a flyer for a house show and remembered how long we’ve been doing this. Then my heart was in my shoes. Ten years of thinking a different life was right around the corner, selling off all this heavy machinery and making spreadsheets for somebody, futzing with chickenwire, everything more simple.
Lately this song feels like. a eulogy for the change that never came. Ten years gone and I’m still squirming under freedom’s thumb, too easily forgetting rock’n’roll, my great hulking vessel, a framework to swing from, a history to make home inside of. Forms to learn, rules to break, comrades to find, mysteries turned over ad infinitum, inexplicable monsoons of the heart. I’m still finding myself inside this song, still learning to accept that I lived it. Some of it spooks me. I can hear it in the pain of belonging – standing in one place long enough to not take leaving lightly. Staying put when the outlaws arrive at night. Saying very quietly to no one, this is where I live.
Another Michael have unveiled a new single, ‘Common Ground’, which will appear on their upcoming LP Wishes to Fulfill. It follows previous cuts ‘Angel’ and ‘Candle’. Listen to it below.
“’Common Ground’ sorta paints a vintage picture of America and that ‘dream’ that is promised to be served alongside it,” vocalist/guitarist Michael Doherty explained in a statement. “The tune itself was organically born out of free time in the studio, with it being initially worked out live as band during some downtime. We demoed it as a distorted rock song, but sat on it for a bit before re-recording the track at a later date to imbue the tune with the easy breezy, lighter energy we felt it called for. It’s a critical adventure across the land, observing oneself and others as everyone tries to get along and make it through the day, week, month, and year.”
Wishes to Fulfill arrives September 22 via Run For Cover. Its sibling record, Pick Me Up,Turn Me Upside Down, is scheduled for release in early 2024.
