Half Waif has today released a new EP called Portraits, which features piano and voice arrangements of two songs from each of Nandi Rose’s ANTI- albums: 2020’s The Caretaker and 2021’s Mythopoetics. Arriving ahead of the musician’s forthcoming live dates, the release is accompanied by videos of stripped-back performances of each track. Watch and listen below.
“I came to music and to songwriting when I was a kid, singing at a piano,” Rose explained in a statement. ”Over the years, I learned to build layered arrangements around the songs, which at times felt like a kind of armor. Returning to these voice and piano arrangements feels particularly vulnerable for me. There’s nothing to hide behind. But it also feels like a homecoming, a nod to where I came from. In this form, I saw the songs from a new angle – it was like we were meeting again after we’ve both done some growing up. Sometimes we can say more with so much less.”
Gorillaz and Thundercat have joined forces on a new song called ‘Cracker Island’. Greg Kurstin, Gorillaz, and Remi Kabaka Jr. produced the track, which the band has been playing live on their ongoing world tour – including during their headlining set at Primavera 2022. Listen to it below.
The virtual group is also inviting fans to join ‘The Last Cult’, of which Murdoc is the “self-appointed Great Leader.” In a press release, 2D said, “It’s nice to be back, I’m well into our new tune, it brings back weird and scary memories of stuff that hasn’t happened yet.”
When Bartees Strange sings, “I don’t believe in the bullshit/ Of wondering when we die,” you’re inclined to trust him. It’s one of the many declarations he throws our way on Farm to Table, his sophomore LP and first for 4AD, delivered with the kind of self-assurance that made his 2019 album Live Forever such an exhilarating debut. The song, titled ‘Mulholland Dr.’ and drawing from his time in California, is both overwhelming in its beauty and more than a little suspicious of what lies beneath the surface – it would be foolish to think that the musician born Bartees Cox Jr., who spent most of his childhood in Oklahoma, is simply relaying a hedonistic worldview without a whiff of irony. But the earnest confidence that shines through the track is enough to make you ignore the pool of existential dread it might inadvertently stir up. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that ‘Mulholland Dr.’ boasts a chorus big enough for a stadium full of people to shout along to. In a setting where dozens of strangers briefly come together as a sort of family, how can you say those words ironically?
For now, though, moments like that are imbued with a note of ambivalence. ‘Mulholland Dr.’ is only the second track on Farm to Table, too early for Cox to have established his current philosophy on life even if he wanted to. His lyrics are incisive but far from impersonal – like his take on genre, the stream of thoughts and emotions that glide through his music can be sharply defined or intentionally blurry. Even if you go into Farm to Table with no idea as to where Bartees Strange stands or what his music sounds like, however, opener ‘Heavy Heart’ does a lot of that work. By opening the record with its most revealing and memorable song, Cox ensures we tag along for the rest of the ride with zero reservations whatsoever. He levels with us, and then he lifts off. One of the songs recorded when Cox and his bandmates entered the studio just after the release of Live Forever, ‘Heavy Heart’ finds him laying out many of the emotional themes that recur throughout the album: the relationships he wants to heal, the places he wants to go, the person he wants to avoid becoming.
It carries the weight it’s supposed to, but the release is even more impactful: the horns that erupt halfway through remind me of Oceanator’s ‘Bad Brain Daze’, a highlight off an album Cox co-produced, and the exuberant catharsis it brings before the record’s inevitable comedown. But if the rapping on the first track isn’t enough to prepare you for a less than conventional sonic journey, it’s clear that Farm to Table follows a different trajectory than most rock albums, foregoing the trusted rise-and-fall structure. I’ll admit that on the first few listens, it was hard to get around the fact that the record is frontloaded in the sequencing. ‘Wretched’, the third song, is an explosive dance cut that catches you off guard no matter how many times you’ve heard Live Forever’s ‘Flagey God’. Then we get ‘Cosigns’, a bold but fitting choice for a lead single in which he shouts out peers like Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Courtney Barnett before bragging about FaceTiming with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. The cheekiness alone would be enough to grab anyone’s attention, but he still makes space to wrestle with the complexity of his feelings: “How to be full, it’s the hardest to know/ I keep consuming/ I can’t give it up/ Hungry as ever, it’s never enough.”
With ‘Hold the Line’ as its closer, Farm to Table would make for a slick, near-faultless EP. It’s not the only ballad on the album – the poignant ‘Tours’ precedes it – but considering the nuanced subtlety with which Cox usually touches on politics, the rawness of ‘Hold the Line’, which was inspired by George Floyd’s daughter Gianna, is unmatched in its power. There’s several more tracks left, though, and the more you listen, the easier it is to view this final stretch as an essential part of the record. He relaxes into different modes of songwriting, teasing out a musical experiment with ‘We Were Close for Like Two Weeks’ and getting reflective on the gorgeous ‘Black Gold’. On ‘Escape This Circus’, right when you think Cox is just allowing himself to groove out, he hits us with his most furious crescendo. “I’m the only one who can write that song,” he told the album’s co-producer, Chris Connors, referring to ‘Cosigns’. But you could say the same about the record as a whole. If Live Forever proved that Bartees Strange is capable of doing anything, Farm to Table asserts that no one can do everything quite like Bartees Strange.
Bright Eyes appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden last night (June 21), where they delivered a performance of ‘Falling Out of Love at This Volume’. Conor Oberst wrote the song in his teenage years and released it as part of the first Bright Eyes album, A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997. Watch the performance below.
Earlier this year, Bright Eyes announced reissues of three of their early albums, also including Letting Off the Happiness and Fevers and Mirrors. Arriving on May 27 via Dead Oceans, the reissues will each be accompanied by a “companion” EP featuring reworkings of the original songs with guests including Waxahatchee, Phoebe Bridgers, and others.
Bright Eyes are currently touring North America. Last month, it was reported that frontman Conor Oberst walked off stage after two songs during their concert in Houston, leaving the band to attempt “Bright Eyes karaoke” with audience members until the show had to be canceled.
Launder has shared a new single, ‘Intake’, lifted from the upcoming debut LP Happening. The track follows previous cuts ‘Unwound’, ‘Chipper’, and ‘Become’ featuring Soko. Check out a visual for ‘Intake’ below.
“‘Intake’ carries the rhythm of someone and something new, anticipating all the best and all the worst,” Launder’s John Cudlip explained in a statement. “These themes inspired a faster tempo and ascending chords. I let this track be indulgent in all the best ways and really leaned into all of the cleaner guitar sounds and single note guitar interplay similar to the early Launder songs. For those reasons, this track is a total joy for me and was a lot of fun to rehearse and record.”
Kate Bush has given a rare radio interview about her 1985 track ‘Running Up That Hill’, which recently topped the UK singles chart and reached the US top 10 for the first time. Her chat with Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour follows a series of statements expressing her excitement about the song’s resurgence thanks to its prominent inclusion in the fourth season of Stranger Things.
“It’s such a great series, I thought that the track would get some attention,” Bush said. “But I just never imagined that it would be anything like this. It’s so exciting. But it’s quite shocking really, isn’t it? I mean, the whole world’s gone mad.”
“What’s really wonderful, I think, is this is a whole new audience who, in a lot of cases, have never heard of me and I love that,” she added. “The thought of all these really young people hearing the song for the first time and discovering it is… well, I think it’s very special.”
Discussing the meaning of the song, which was originally titled ‘A Deal With God’, Bush told Barnett: “I really like people to hear a song and take from it what they want. But originally it was written as the idea of a man and a woman swapping with each other. Just to feel what it was like, from the other side.”
Commenting on the song’s placement in the series, Bush said: “I think they’ve put it in a really special place. I was already familiar with the series. And I thought, what a lovely way for the song to be used in such a positive way. You know, as a kind of Talisman for Max. I think it’s very touching.”
Asked whether she revisits her older material, Bush responded: “I never listen to my old stuff. But then, when things like this come along, I’m normally involved in something like maybe doing an edit or revisiting the track for some kind of other reason, I’m working on it. So yeah, I hadn’t heard it for a really long time.”
Mura Masa has recruited Channel Tres and Shygirl for the new song ‘hollaback bitch’, the latest single from his upcoming album demon time. Give it a listen below.
demon time is due for release on September 16. It features the previously shared tracks ‘blessing me’, ‘2gether’, and ‘bbycakes’ as well as guest appearances from Lil Yachty, slowthai, Erika de Casier, Pa Salieu, Leyla, and more.
Roger Waters was the musical guest on last night’s episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where he played a medley of ‘The Happiest Days of Our Lives’ and ‘Another Brick in the Wall Pts. 2 & 3’. Watch the performance below.
Roger Waters will return to North America this summer for his This Is Not a Drill tour, which kicks off on July 6 in Pittsburgh, PA.
Kiwi Jr. have shared the new song ‘Unspeakable Things’, which is taken from their upcoming album Chopper. The track arrives with an accompanying music video directed by Morgan Waters. Check it out below.
Vocalist/guitarist Jeremy Gaudet commented on the song and video in a statement:
People are always trying to sign into my email. What do they think they’re gonna find? The public appetite for dirty laundry is wild. Having moved the world online has not helped. Dan Boeckner had the idea to use the Moog sound for the hook, which was originally on guitar, and that sound brings the song into a sort of new-wave territory that was fun and different for us. We kept referencing the vibe of Michael Mann movies when recording the album, and then Morgan heard this and came up with the idea of making the video look like the movie Heat. Somehow TSN’s Jay Onrait, Jonah from Fucked Up, and comedians Tom Henry and Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll were convinced to cameo in it. We also were wearing these hockey masks filming all day next to a busy road getting a lot of car honks and didn’t realize until much later that we filmed on an actual Friday the 13th.
Chopper is set to drop on Night Vision August 12 via Sub Pop. Kiwi Jr. previously shared the album’s title track.
Amanda Shires has released ‘Take It Like a Man’, the title track from her forthcoming album – out July 29 on ATO Records. The track was co-written by Shires and producer Lawrence Rothman and features her husband Jason Isbell on guitar. Check out a live video for it below.
“I wrote that last line, ‘take it like a man,’ but then I changed it.” Shires said in a statement. “I realized you can try and do what they say and take it like a man and show that you can withstand anything. But truly you can only take it like yourself.”
