Country Westerns have released a new song, ‘Money on the Table’. Produced by Matt Sweeney, the track arrives with an accompanying video directed by Miranda Zipse. Check it out below.
“‘No money left on the table’ was Matt Sweeney’s mantra while making our new record,” vocalist Joseph Plunket said of the song in a statement. “Instead of crass commercialism or economic concerns, I took it to mean every song needed to be perfectly minted and we tried to comply. We came in with a lot of material ready to record but I still spent a lot of sleepless nights writing and rewriting between sessions. ‘Money on the Table’ is an ancient riff I’ve been kicking around for a decade-plus but never quite nailed it down.
“After a long day in the studio, I felt something was missing from the record as a whole and I went home, tackled the riff and wrote the lyrics in one sitting,” he continued. “We recorded the next morning in two takes. Even Sweeney agreed there was nothing left on the table.”
Iggy Pop has announced his new album, Every Loser. It’s scheduled for release on January 6 via Atlantic Records and producer Andrew Watt’s Gold Tooth Records. The follow-up to 2019’s Free will feature the previously shared single ‘Frenzy’, as well as contributions from the late Taylor Hawkins, Blink-182’s Travis Barker, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith, Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan, Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard, Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro and Eric Avery, and more. Check out the album’s tracklist and artwork by Raymond Pettibon below.
“I’m the guy with no shirt who rocks; Andrew and Gold Tooth get that, and we made a record together the old-fashioned way,” Iggy Pop said in a press release. “The players are guys I’ve known since they were kids and the music will beat the shit out of you.”
Andrew Watt added: “Iggy Pop is a fucking icon. A true original. The guy invented the stage dive…. I still can’t believe he let me make a record with him. I am honored. It doesn’t get cooler. This album was created to be played as loud as your stereo will go…. Turn it up and hold on…”
Every Loser Cover Artwork:
Every Loser Tracklist:
1. Frenzy
2. Strung Out Johnny
3. New Atlantis
4. Modern Day Rip Off
5. Morning Show
6. The News for Andy
7. Neo Punk
8. All the Way Down
9. Comments
10. My Animus Interlude
11. The Regency
Our love for films may be eternal, but that doesn’t mean they’re always easy to appreciate. The older we get, the more patterns become obvious, and more cliches and inaccuracies stick in our minds.
If this gets to us, there can be moments where lines or actions can drag us out of the experience, and make us laugh or scoff. As a remedy, we need to suspend our disbelief, but this always isn’t easy.
What is Suspension of Disbelief?
For anyone not aware of the term, suspension of disbelief refers to how we overlook parts of the media that are obviously wrong in favour of continuing to enjoy the plot.
Sometimes these moments involve components only an expert in a specific field could pick out, but other times they revolve around contradictions directly stated earlier in the movie. The varied nature of these deliberate or accidental oversights can be completely ignorable or frustrating, depending on the viewer.
The Good and Bad
Lucy, released in 2014, started with a great example of a terrible plot point. One of the film’s key lines claims that ‘most people only use around 10% of their brain’. To anyone who has even a passing understanding of the brain, we know that this is hilariously wrong. For psychologists, students, and people who paid attention to biology, this could make the entire following film eye-rolling terrible, as based on a widespread misconception.
Better examples where we can suspend disbelief centre around the main character having unusual levels of high luck. Consider when a character goes to a casino to play something like craps, for example. The odds of the player continuously winning on a 3 or 11 or 2 or 12 bet are low, but they’re still within the realm of realism. These are just odds, and odds can be beaten, so we tend to have an easier time accepting this scenario.
How do we Address a Suspension of Disbelief?
This is the question many of us face in the age of comic book films, where spectacle takes a front seat and science and good decisions are left behind. Ultimately, if something silly affects you deeply on a level, it’s impossible to overlook. There is a straightforward trick, however, that can help. In fan culture, this is called a headcanon, but the term can apply to all other viewers too.
A headcanon is the way you can add your own details into a world that explains what the writers or filmmakers overlooked or didn’t care about. For something like an entry in the MCU, for example, we can get by by thinking of their universe as one where the laws of physics are fundamentally different. In martial arts films, we can see their worlds as ones where the human body tires ten times slower than it does in real life, and so on. It might require relegating every film to a kind of science fiction in this way, but if it helps, it helps.
Margo Price has shared a new single, ‘Lydia’, taken from her upcoming album Strays. The track follows earlier offerings ‘Been to the Mountain’ and ‘Change of Heart’. Check it out below, along with a live performance video.
Discussing the new song, Price explained in a press release:
I wrote ‘Lydia’ in one sitting in a tiny hotel room after walking around the city of Vancouver one day. I was jet lagged and feeling really depressed, hopeless, but instead of taking a nap, I picked up the guitar and the words just flowed out all in one quick moment. I hit record on my phone to make a demo and sort of blacked out or went into this meditative state, and boom – eight minutes later, I had this song. It’s one of the only songs I’ve ever written that doesn’t have any real melody or even rhyme, but somehow it still works. Songs like that are rare and don’t come often.
It was inspired by a cacophony of things. There was a women’s health clinic and a methadone clinic with a needle exchange right outside of our venue. I was looking into the eyes of the people I passed and thinking about their stories and really being a conduit for pain.
The song feels like a premonition now, with women’s rights being stripped and all the abortion bans happening. When I listen back, I hear what might go through a woman’s mind when she has a difficult decision to make about her body, her choices and her future.
Fever Ray has announced Radical Romantics, their first new album in over five years. The 10-track LP is set to arrive on March 10 via Rabid Records. It will include the previously released single ‘What They Call Us’, which we named a Song of the Week, as well as a new track called ‘Carbon Dioxide’, co-produced by Vessel. Check it out below and scroll down for the LP’s cover art and tracklist.
Karin Dreijer started working on the follow-up to 2017’s Plunge in the fall of 2019 with their brother and former bandmate in the Knife, Olof Dreijer. Other co-producers and performers include Nine Inch Nails’rent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Johannes Berglund, Peder Mannerfelt, and Pär Grindvik. Longtime collaborator Martin Falck assisted Dreijer in constructing the visual world for the project.
Radical Romantics Cover Artwork:
Radical Romantics Tracklist:
1. What They Call Us
2. Shiver
3 New Utensils
4. Kandy
5. Even It Out
6. Looking for a Ghost
7. Carbon Dioxide
8. North
9. Tapping Fingers
10. Bottom of the Ocean
The Arcs have shared ‘Heaven Is a Place’, the second offering from their forthcoming album Electrophonic Chronic. Following lead track ‘Keep On Dreamin’, it arrives with an accompanying visual from director Robert “Roboshobo” Schober. Check it out below.
Electrophonic Chronic is the follow-up to the Dan Auerbach-led group’s 2015 debut Yours, Dreamily, and their first album since the passing of bandmate Richard Swift. It’s set for release on January 27 via Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound.
A Los Angeles judge has dismissed a $3.8 million defamation lawsuit filed against Phoebe Bridgers by Chris Nelson, a producer and recording studio owner who claimed the singer-songwriter made false and defamatory statements on social media “in order to destroy his reputation.”
In February, Bridgers’ legal team filed an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) motion to strike Nelson’s complaint on the basis that the lawsuit is “seeking to chill” her allegations of abusive conduct, violating her right to free speech. California’s anti-SLAPP statute aims to prevent people from using courts and potential lawsuits to intimidate and silence people from exercising their First Amendment rights.
Judge Curtis A. Kin has now granted Bridgers’ dismissal request. “We feel vindicated that the Court recognized this lawsuit as frivolous and without merit,” a spokesperson for Phoebe Bridgers wrote in a statement. “It was not grounded in law, or facts, but was filed with the sole intention of causing harm to our client’s reputation and career. This victory is important not just for our client but for all those she was seeking to protect by using her platform.”
Responding to Nelson’s lawsuit, which was filed in September 2021, Bridgers wrote in a sworn declaration on February 14: “I believe that the statements I made in my Instagram story are true. My statements were made based on my personal knowledge, including statements I personally heard Mr. Nelson make, as well as my own observations. I continue to believe the statements that I made were true.”
In her initial post, Bridgers directed her followers to a thread written by her friend Emily Bannon on Instagram. “I witnessed and can personally verify much of the abuse (grooming, stealing, violence) perpetuated by Chris Nelson, owner of a studio called Sound Space,” it read. “For anyone who knows [Nelson], is considering working with him, or wants to know more, there is an articulate and mind-blowing account on @emilybannon’s page as a highlight. TRIGGER WARNING for basically everything triggering.”
At an August court hearing, Judge Curtis Kin hinted that he was “leaning” toward granting Bridgers’ motion to strike. “It would seem to me that the posting by Ms. Bridgers is one that is a matter of public interest,” he said (via Rolling Stone). “It seems to me that her statements on Instagram are statements that concern a person who’s in the public eye, as well as statements that could directly affect a large number of persons beyond Mr. Nelson and Ms. Bridgers.”
Nelson previously lost a separate defamation case against singer-songwriter Noël Wells, after he claimed Wells had made “false, defamatory, and misleading” comments when she allegedly warned Big Thief against working with him in July 2020. Los Angeles County Judge Gregory W. Alarcon ruled that Wells’ comments, made “in the advancement or assistance of the creation of music,” were protected under free speech rights.
East London-based soul singer Yazmin Lacey has announced her debut album, Voice Notes, which arrives March 3, 2023 via Own Your Own Records/Believe. Executive produced by Dave Okumu, the LP was written over the course of two years. Check out the new single ‘Bad Company’ below.
According to Lacey, ‘Bad Company’ is about her relationship with her inner demon. “I like to call her Priscilla, we have a love hate relationship but over the years I’ve started to make peace with her/me,” she explained in a statement. “We often want to ignore those ugly parts of ourselves, but there’s something powerful and humbling in acknowledging it, after all she ain’t going anywhere!”
M(h)aol – the UK five-piece composed of Róisín Nic Ghearailt, Constance Keane, Jamie Hyland, Zoë Greenway, and Sean Nolan – have announced their debut album. Attachment Styles lands on February 3, 2023 via TULLE Collective. Today, they’ve shared its lead single, ‘Asking for It’, alongside a video directed by Greenway. Check it out and find the album cover and tracklist below.
“I wrote it initially in 2016 then revisited it in 2020,” Ghearailt said of ‘Asking for It’ in a statement. “I was shocked by how much internalised victim blaming there was in the lyrics. I rewrote it, then we recorded it and it was released to raise money for Women’s Aid in 2021. The album version is a lot angrier than the 2021 one and almost satirical insofar as it’s highlighting how ludicrous the notion of anyone ‘asking for it’ is.”
“This has been the most difficult video I’ve made for M(h)aol to date,” Greenway commented on the visual. “There’s so much power and emotion in Róisín’s lyrics and performance, so we worked really hard to create a responsible and sensitive portrayal of this experience she’s conveying, do it justice and make people care.”
She continued: “I hope watching the video inspires compassion and empathy in people. I think it’s important to open channels of communication around sexual assault in a way that validates a victims traumatic experience and shows a path towards a more hopeful and supportive healing journey. I think empathy is paramount in trying to build a better world.”
“I think lots of media and cultural depictions of r*pe can be retraumatising,” Ghearailt added. “We wanted the video to be cathartic rather than traumatising. We both wanted to offer resources and highlight services that are available to survivors. The quotes in the video highlight the change in the song too, over the years it became a much more hopeful one.”
Attachment Styles Cover Artwork:
Attachment Styles Tracklist:
1. Asking For It
2. Bored Of Men
3. Noone Ever Talks To Us
4. Bisexual Anxiety
5. Therapy
6. Nice Guys
7. Kim Is A Punk Type Of Dog
8. Cowboy Honey
9. FEMME
10. Period Sex
Manchester Orchestra have released a new single, ‘No Rule’. Lifted from the recording sessions of their 2021 album The Million Masks of God, the track was produced by the band’s lead songwriting duo of Andy Hull and Robert McDow, along with Catherine Marks and Ethan Gruska. Check it out below.
“We are very proud to release our new song ‘No Rule’ into the world,” Hull said in a press release. “Written and worked on during the Million Masks sessions, this brave soul took a little longer to cook than the rest. We hope you enjoy. All Love. M.O.”
