Ahead of its release on Friday (September 2), Kero Kero Bonito’s Sarah Midori Perry has shared the final single from her debut EP as Cryalot, Icarus. ‘Labyrinth’ follows the previously unveiled tracks ‘Touch the Sun’ and ‘Hell Is Here’, and you can watch its accompanying video below.
“’Labyrinth’ is a song about hope and our ability to dream even when we are trapped in our own reality,” Perry explained in a statement. “The track draws parallels between the myth of Icarus and the confines of our own emotional landscapes.”
Cryalot is the latest subject of our Artist Spotlight series. Check out the interview here.
Gorillaz have announced a brand new album: Cracker Island is out February 24 via Parlophone. The record will include the previously shared title track (featuring Thundercat), as well as a new song called ‘New Gold’, a collaboration with Tame Impala and Bootie Brown. Check it out below and scroll down for the album artwork and tracklist.
“Cracker Island is the sound of change and the chorus of the collective,” guitarist Noodle said of the new album. Russel Hobbs added, “When the reckoning comes, gotta be ready to step through the gateway. Cracker Island’s got the entry codes…”
”The path to Cracker Island isn’t easy to find ‘cos it’s underwater,” 2D remarked. And Murdoc Niccals commented: “The hallowed tones of Cracker Island will soundtrack our collective ascension into the new dimension! JOIN ME!”
Cracker Island, Gorillaz’s eighth studio LP, also features guest appearances from Stevie Nicks, Adeleye Omotayo, Bad Bunny, and Beck. It was recorded in London and LA earlier this year with producers Greg Kurstin and Remi Kabaka Jr.
Gorillaz are in the midst of a world tour that kicked off in South America earlier in the year and included a stop at Primavera Sound. A run of shows North American shows will follow in September and October, starting in Vancouver on September 11.
Cracker Island Cover Artwork:
Cracker Island Tracklist:
1. Cracker Island [feat. Thundercat]
2. Oil [feat. Stevie Nicks]
3. The Tired Influencer
4. Tarantula
5. Silent Running [feat. Adeleye Omotayo]
6. New Gold [feat. Tame Impala and Bootie Brown]
7. Baby Queen
8. Tormenta [feat. Bad Bunny]
9. Skinny Ape
10. Possession Island [feat. Beck]
Joseph Stevens has shared a new single from his third album as Peel Dream Magazine, Pad – out October 7 via Slumberland/Tough Love. Following the previously released title track, ‘Pictionary’ arrives with an accompanying video, which you can check out below.
Talking about the clip, Stevens said in a statement:
I co-directed this video with my talented friend Clayton McCracken, a prominent video artist in LA specializing in live visuals. We filmed the entire thing in his living room, although it feels more like an elaborate stage when you watch it. The song is a baroque ode to “play” in all forms. In it, a set of characters experience a mysterious, orgiastic cataclysm while playing a game of Pictionary. The rest is open to interpretation. According to the story of the album, I’ve been exiled from Peel Dream Magazine. Scenes alternate between me playing the board game, and laboring over a composition. I’m weaving my own reality, and perhaps the very song itself, in the style of this isolated “tortured artist”. I wanted to channel Herman Melville’s Pierre, which tells this gothic 19th century story of an author who drives himself mad while working on his magnum opus – the true story of his own life. I love that kind of stuff. It’s also supposed to be a play on the baroque pop element of the new record, which features harpsichord and chamber strings. I ended up wearing a bunch of Clayton’s clothes that felt very Laurel Canyon 60s LA to me. Oh and look for the missing chunk of the feather pen – it went up in flames from one of the candles during the first take we filmed.
Khruangbin and guitarist Vieux Farka Touré have shared ‘Tongo Barra’, the latest preview of their upcoming collaborative album Ali, which honours Vieux’s late father, the veteran bluesman Ali Farka Touré. Listen to it below.
Ali is slated for release on September 23 via Dead Oceans. ‘Tongo Barra’ follows the previously released single ‘Savanne’.
Pink Siifu and Los Angeles producer Real Bad Man have announced a new collaborative album, Real Bad Flights, which drops on September 16. Along with the announcement, they’ve shared a new single called ‘Looking for Water’, which features Boldy James, who teamed up with Real Bad Man for 2020’s Real Bad Boldy and this year’s Killing Nothing. Check it out and find the album’s cover artwork and tracklist below.
In addition to Boldy James, Real Bad Fights features guest appearances from Armand Hammer, Kari Faux, and Chuck Strangers. “‘Looking for Water’ is just about somebody looking for a way out or a way to get what he need from tha morning to tha night, but from my perspective,” Siifu said in a statement to The FADER. “Risk and rewards and tha other bull shit that comes w tha day to day. Floatin but grinding at tha same time.”
“This was one of the first songs Siffu recorded for the project,” Real Bad Man commented. “He sent it back and it was just the first verse and chorus, and it faded out. I really wanted it to go on longer, it was fire. I had it looping on my speakers. At some point we talked and was like ‘I can hear Boldy on this track’, and Siffu was with it.”
1. Real Negro Life [feat. Pier GKFAM]
2. Looking For Water [feat. Boldy James]
3. Tokyo Blunts [feat. Armand Hammer & Conquest Tony Phillips]
4. Astro Russian [feat. Amani]
5. View Of France [feat. Ahwlee]
6. Off The Pane [feat Kari Faux & EZ]
7. Pour The Wine [feat. Chuck Strangers & Peso Gordon]
8. Po Drama [feat. Lojii]
9. Real Bad Gospel
OFF! have dropped a new single, ‘Kill to Be Heard’, the second offering from their forthcoming album Free LSD. Give it a listen below.
Free LSD, the band’s first full-length album in eight years, will be released on September 30 via Fat Possum. The album was announced last month with the single ‘War Above Los Angeles’.
Quicksand have returned with a new single called ‘Giving It Away’. It arrives ahead of a tour with Clutch and Helmet in support of their 2021 album Distant Populations, their second LP since reuniting in 2017. Listen to it below.
“The working title for this song was ‘Greatest Quicksand Song Ever’ so you can imagine it was a very tough call leaving this song off Distant Populations,” the band explained in a statement. “The only reason we could agree on to leave it off was that we wanted to have some really strong material in reserve for later in the year. Ultimately the title came from the most prominent line in the song which is an embrace of the present which is very in line with our thinking with Distant Populations, we’re super proud of this one and are very psyched to share it with the world.”
Having just completed a run of shows in North America and Europe, Bauhaus have canceled their remaining tour dates. “It is with the utmost regret that the Bauhaus performances in North America have been canceled for the remainder of the year,” the band’s representative said in a statement. “Following a string of critically-hailed reunion shows across continents, Peter Murphy will be entering a rehabilitation facility to attend to his health and well-being.”
Earlier this year, Bauhaus released ‘Drink the New Wine’, their first new song in 14 years.
Titus Andronicus have shared another preview of their upcoming album The Will to Live. ‘An Anomaly’, which follows previous cuts ‘Give Me Grief’ and ‘(I’m) Screwed’, features a guitar solo delivered by Josée Caron of the Canadian band Partner. It comes with an accompanying video directed by the band’s Patrick Stickles and shot on the streets of France during his honeymoon. “It’s been clear for many years now that, in Paris, Titus Andronicus can’t get arrested,” Stickles remarked. Check it out below.
“The titular ‘anomaly’ refers to the perversion of certain ‘natural’ impulses that have occurred within us humans upon taking ourselves out of the food chain, and the natural world in general,” Stickles explained in a statement. “A lion killing and eating a wildebeest is not an act of evil, or even malice. Such imperatives are programmed into the very core of the wild animal. This drive exists within us also, but we have gone astray in not only holding on to this primal thirst for violence beyond the point of its utility, but expanding upon and fortifying it by way of our ever-more terrible technological advances, up to and including the invention of the atom bomb. If you want to know the true nature of that which we call ‘the Devil,’ that is where I would start.”
The Will to Live is set to drop on September 30 release via Merge.
Melbourne singer-songwriter Alex Lahey is back with a new single, ‘Congratulations’, alongside an accompanying video she co-directed with Jon Danovic. Watch and listen below.
Of the track, Lahey said in a statement: “Two of my exes got engaged within an improbably short space of time of one another. What are the odds? Couldn’t not write a song inspired by it.”
She also described the video as “deeply unhinged,” elaborating: “It felt like the perfect time to execute a long standing concept I had of making out with myself on camera. Now both the song and the video feel like a message about choosing yourself over anyone else.”
Last year, Lahey shared the songs ‘Spike the Punch’ and ‘On My Way’, the latter of which was the theme song for the animated film The Mitchells vs The Machines.
