Philadelphia’s Sweet Pill have shared the second single from their forthcoming LP Where the Heart Is. Following lead track ‘Blood’, ‘High Hopes’ arrives with an accompanying video by MidVessel. Check it out below.
“The idea for shooting a music video at the bowling alley initially started as a joke as we and our friends get together on a weekly basis for bowling,” bassist Ryan Cullen explained in a press release. “Keeping our heads held high even though we are being sabotaged by the Gutter Goblins is how we feel connected to the theme of ‘High Hopes’.”
Guitarist Sean McCall added: “The Sweet Pins League was a long awaited dream. The collective goal of winning the bowling league trophy was all this band ever wanted, even before knowing it. Although we’re still at the bottom, Sweet Pill is on their way to retiring their music career and becoming full-time Sweet Pins champions.”
Pasadena-based artist Charlie Hickey has unveiled a new single, ‘Dandelions’, the second offering from his upcoming debut record Nervous at Night. “This is one of the most special songs to me on this album,” Hickey said in a statement. “It’s about a time in my life and in the world that felt very stagnant but at the same time full of rapid change.” Listen to it below.
Nervous at Night is set to arrive on May 20 via Saddest Factory Records. The album was produced by Marshall Vore and features contributions from Phoebe Bridgers, Harrison Whitford, Christian Lee Hutson, and Mason Stoops. Hickey previously shared the record’s title track.
Field Guides, the project led by Brooklyn-based artist Benedict Kupstas, has announced its third album. Ginkgo is out June 24 via Whatever’s Clever, and it features contributions from members of The War on Drugs, Adeline Hotel, Public Practice, and Stars Like Fleas, among others. Check out lead single ‘Salmon Skin’ below.
Kupstas shared the following statement on the new track:
“Salmon Skin” was mostly written while I was in Lebanon a few years ago, volunteering with an NGO in the Bekaa Valley. It was an intense time. I was corresponding with Alena Spanger (longtime collaborator), who was in California at the time, getting lost in coves. I was spending my breaks sitting in a sort of grotto on the grounds of a very old monastery, where a mangey feral cat would sit on my lap. The geographical and psychic displacements felt a bit surreal. And I found some sort of parallel correspondence between salmon and spiders. I had been in the process of moving to Switzerland, but feeling extremely conflicted about the prospect, and lots of things were unraveling, dizzying forks in the road. That’s what that song grew out of.
It was the first and only song we recorded with the full live band, before the pandemic and other disruptions forced a change in approach.
Ginkgo will follow 2014’s Boo, Forever and 2019’s This Is Just A Place.
Gingko Cover Artwork:
Gingko Tracklist:
1. Judee At The Delaware Water Gap (A Prelude)
2. Salmon Skin
3. Agios Sillas
4. Son Of The Tree That Owns Itself
5. Cicadas In The Lemon Trees
6. The City Is A Painting
7. Rain On My Parade
8. Condensate
9. The Petrichor Near Landwehr Canal
10. Margaret
11. When I Pulled Slivers From Your Feet
“I’ve always thought that my reckless side was both a gift and a curse, leading me to my best choices on stage but my worst choices in life,” vocalist and bassist Julia Cumming explained in a statement about the song. “I don’t have control sometimes is admission, acceptance, and almost celebration of the parts of yourself that are impulsive or maybe even insane.”
Headful of Sugar is set for release on May 6 via Lucky Number.
Sharon Van Etten has announced her new album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. The follow-up to 2019’s Remind Me Tomorrow will be released on May 6 via Jagjaguwar. Check out a trailer for the record below.
Van Etten’s recent singles ‘Porta’ and ‘Used To It’ do not appear on We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. In fact, there will be no advance tracks leading up to the release of the album. “I wanted to approach this release differently, to engage my fans in an intentional way, in an effort to present the album as a whole body of work,” Van Etten commented in a statement. “These 10 songs are designed to be listened to in order, at once, so that a much larger story of hope, loss, longing and resilience can be told.”
Daniel Knowles co-produced We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, which features Van Etten’s touring band of Jorge Balbi on drums, Devon Hoff on bass, and live musical director Charley Damski on synthesizers and guitars. According to a press release, the album “concerns itself with the questions we ask ourselves when we think the world – or at least, our world – might be ending. Have we loved as well as we could? Did we try hard enough? How do we protect the things most precious to us from destructive forces beyond our control? And how do we salvage something worthwhile when it seems all is lost?”
The cover art is intended to reflect Van Etten’s approach to these questions. “I wanted to convey that in an image with me walking away from it all,” she said, “not necessarily brave, not necessarily sad, not necessarily happy.”
Joan Shelley has announced her first album in three years. The follow-up to 2019’s Like the River Loves the Sea is called The Spur, and it’s due out June 24 via No Quarter Records. Today, Shelley is previewing the record with its lead single and title track. Check it out and find the album’s cover art (by Rob Carmichael and Amber Estes Thieneman) and tracklist below.
The 12-track LP was recorded in the spring of 2021 at Earthwave Farm in the Kentucky countryside. James Elkington produced the album, which includes collaborations with Bill Callahan, Meg Baird, and the British novelist Max Porter, as well as Nathan Salsburg, whom Shelley married in June of 2021. The songs on the record were written between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2020. At the time of recording, Shelley was seven months pregnant with her first child.
“The Spur is the result of a period of opposite extremes: of intellectual hyper-connection and physical isolation,” Shelley explained in a press release. “This album will forever be fused with the memory of our marriage, the birth of our child, and the intense joy despite the darkness.”
The Spur Cover Artwork:
The Spur Tracklist:
1. Forever Blues
2. The Spur
3. Home
4. Amberlit Morning
5. Like The Thunder
6. When The Light Is Dying
7. Breath For The Boy
8. Fawn
9. Why Not Live Here
10. Bolt
11. Between Rock & Sky
12. Completely
Nilüfer Yanya has shared a new music video for ‘the dealer’, which appears on her latest album PAINLESS. The clip is directed by Molly Daniel, who also helmed the video for ‘anotherlife’. Watch it below.
PAINLESS, Yanya’s third full-length, arrived last month. Following its release, the London singer-songwriter performed the single ‘midnight sun’ on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The US leg of her world tour in support of the album begins this month.
Black Country, New Road have announced their first tour dates since the departure of founding vocalist and guitarist Isaac Wood. “We’re incredibly pleased to announce our touring dates for 2022,” the band wrote on social media. “We’re looking forward to sharing what we’ve been working on with you. The six of us will be performing a set of brand new music.” Tickets go on sale on Thursday, April 7 at 10am BST here. Check out the list of dates below.
The band noted that they won’t be playing any music from their debut LP For the first time and the recently released Ants From Up There. “Although the majority of our performances will be at festivals, we’ve arranged a short run of smaller shows around the UK in May to debut and road-test this new material,” they added. “We hope to see as many of you as we can over the summer.”
Although the majority of our performances will be at festivals, we’ve arranged a short run of smaller shows around the UK in May to debut and road-test this new material. We hope to see as many of you as we can over the summer…………………………………
May 19 – Brighton, Patterns
May 20 – Manchester, YES (Pink Room)
May 21 – Bristol, Strange Brew
May 22 – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
May 23 – Glasgow, King Tut’s
May 26-28 – Germany, Immergut Festival
Jun 3 – France, Levitation Festival
Jun 4 – Barcelona, Primavera Sound
Jun 5 – Switzerland, Bad Bonn Kilbi
Jun 10-12 – Oxfordshire, Kite Festival
Jun 17-19 – Lithuania, 8 Festival
Jul 7-9 – Slovakia, Pohoda Festival
Jul 13-17 – Belgium, Dour Festival
Jul 16 – Latvia, Positivus Festival
Jul 23 – London, Visions Festival
Aug 5-6 – Czech Republic, Beseda U Bigbitu
Aug 11 – Sweden, Way Out West Festival
Aug 15 – Switzerland, Winterthurer MusikFestwochen
Aug 18-21 – Wales, Green Man Festival
Aug 28 – Scotland, Connect Festival
Sep 2-5 – Netherlands, Into The Great Wide Open Festival
Companion, the Fort Collins, CO-based duo of identical twin sisters Sophia and Jo Babb, have shared a new song called ‘Snowbank’. Following previous singles ’23rd Street’ and ‘How Could I Have Known’, the track is taken from their forthcoming debut LP. Check out a video for it below.
“In the snowy depths of a few Februarys ago, I found myself star-crossed with another, pining for something that would never come to be,” Jo Babb explained in a press release. “‘Snowbank’ was written the morning after a blustery night that left me confused, while certain at the same time. I was full of feelings and this song was born out of them in an instant. Writing it out was extremely cathartic and to this day, playing it feels like an outlet for displaced longing.”
Melody’s Echo Chamber has shared a new single, ‘Alma’, lifted from her upcoming third album Emotional Eternal. The track arrives with a music video directed by Hyoyon Paik (Chloë), who also helmed the visual for lead cut ‘Looking Backward’. Check it out below.
“To me this song is a butterfly,” Melody Prochet remarked in a statement. “It feels more like a little poem to life than a song; it was the first song to arise from the echoes of silence since Bon Voyage. I think I recorded the emotion of that kind of spiritual experience of the essential yet heart-breaking separation from the pure love bubble to the world of others.”
She continued: “We recorded ‘Alma’ in Swahn’s studio in Stockholm again; I remember we gave special attention to the groove, to give it a swing and emphasis on the light side, with a minor sound of danger in the veil of the mist somewhere. Johan Holmegaard played drums, Gustav Estjes played the piano and little velvet flute; Josephin Runsteen created transcending strings and noises directed by Reine and Swahn.”
Emotional Eternal is out April 29 via Domino. Along with ‘Alma’ and ‘Looking Backward’, it includes the previously released single ‘Personal Message’.
