Lala Lala has released a new single called ‘Memory’. Co-produced by Andrew Broder, the track arrives ahead of Lillie West’s US tour in support of her latest album, I Want the Door to Open. Give it a listen below.
“‘Memory’ is about ‘euphoric recall’ and letting go of fantasy,” West explained in a statement. “Is it magic or a meaningful coincidence or are you just obsessed?”
I Want the Door to Open came out last year via Hardly Art. Check out our Artist Spotlight interview with Lala Lala.
Bright Eyes have shared a cover of Elliott Smith’s ‘St. Ides Heaven’, taken from Smith’s self-titled 1995 album. The rework features vocals from Conor Oberst’s Better Oblivion Community Center bandmate Phoebe Bridgers. Take a listen below.
Bright Eyes’ cover of ‘St. Ides Heaven’ will appear on the band’s Letting Off the Happiness: A Companion EP, which is set to arrive on May 27 via Dead Oceans. Their last album, Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was, came out in 2020.
Hatchie has unveiled another single from her upcoming full-length Giving the World Away, which is out April 22 via Secretly Canadian. It’s called ‘Lights On’, and it follows previous entries ‘Quicksand’, ‘This Enchanted’, and the title track. Check out a music video for it below.
Hatchie wrote ‘Lights On’ with the album’s producer, Jorge Elbrecht, during a session in LA in 2020. She explained in a press release:
It started with a drum beat inspired by Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ‘Kiss Them For Me’, which we had been chatting about the night before when we met up to discuss references for the record. The song is about a tumultuous, secret relationship that is coming to a crossroads. Feeling completely and utterly spellbound by one another, but realising it might not work out despite the fact that no one else has ever made you feel as good as they do. I feel the biggest emotional attachment to this song because it was like a lightbulb moment after feeling unsure of my writing abilities and what direction I wanted to take the album in. I avoided co-writing with anyone other than Joe (Agius) for years because I didn’t think I would thrive in that setting but the two days we worked with Jorge completely changed my mind.
black midi have today released their Calacovers EP, which features their take on songs by Taylor Swift, King Crimson, and Captain Beefheart. The tracks were previously available on bonus flexi-discs for fans who pre-ordered the band’s 2021 album Cavalcade. Take a listen below.
black midi’s rendition of King Crimson’s ’21st Century Schizoid Man’ marks the first time all three members of the group – bassist Cameron Picton, guitarist Geordie Greep, and drummer Morgan Simpson – are featured on vocals. Their cover of Captain Beefheart’s ‘Moonlight On Vermont’ also sees Simpson taking on lead vocals for the first time on a black midi release. Picton sings on their version of Swift’s ‘Love Story’; a press release notes that black midi are “longtime fans of Swift’s work.”
Mykki Blanco has teamed up with R.E.M.’s Michale Stipe for a new track called ‘Family Ties’, which comes paired with a music video directed by Kit Monteith. Marking Blanco’s first new music since last year’s Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep, the song was written in Lisbon and New York City and was produced by Falty DL. Check it out below.
“’Family Ties’ is the first song where I sonically found my voice and I mean that in a very literal way,” Blanco explained in a press release. “It’s the first song in my entire career where I am singing, I don’t rap. I wrote this song about the relationship between my ex-boyfriend and his father that has had bouts of mental illness. When the person you love is going through a situation that you can’t alter in any way, or help or be active in trying to correct it not only hurts them but it hurts you. I think the core meaning of this song is compassion in the face of helplessness.”
Of their collaboration with Stipe, Blanco said: “Falty DL and I took a shot at the moon – I sent him the song because it felt as if in some alternate universe Michael Stipe had already created it. His willingness to perform and be a part of this meant the world to me. I hope to just keep making good art and attracting meaningful circumstances and people that make this life and making music worthwhile. This on so many levels was one of those moments.”
Stipe added: “Mykki has a gorgeous voice, resolute and strong. I’m thrilled to have worked on ‘family ties’— I love how the song turned out.”
Shearwater have announced The Great Awakening, their first album in six years. The follow-up to 2016’s Jet Plane and Oxbow is due out June 10 via the band’s Polyborus label in partnership with Secretly Distribution. Lead single ‘Xenarthran’ arrives with an accompanying video directed by Emily Cross; check it out and find the album’s cover artwork and tracklist below.
“Xenarthrans are the ‘strange-jointed’ mammals, which mostly live in South America: armadillos, anteaters, and sloths,” Jonathan Meiburg explained in a statement. “Only one species of armadillo has wandered up to the southern U.S., and while we were recording The Great Awakening in Texas, I often saw them scurrying dimly through fields at dusk or snuffling in the mud after a rainstorm, and I couldn’t help admiring them. They’d walked thousands of miles on their wispy little feet, long noses to the ground, trundling into alien landscapes filled with unfamiliar danger. This song, and Emily’s eerie video, aren’t about armadillos, exactly—but they are about making your way through the dark spaces of a menacing but still very beautiful world. The roaring sounds near the end are howler monkeys I recorded in Guyana.”
The Great Awakening Cover Artwork:
The Great Awakening Tracklist:
1. Highgate
2. No Reason
3. Xenarthran
4. Laguna Seca
5. Everyone You Touch
6. Empty Orchestra
7. Milkweed
8. Detritivore
9. Aqaba
10. There Goes The Sun
11. Wind Is Love
Karima Walker has announced a new EP called demos, which collects sketches and outtakes from her 2021 LP Waking the Dreaming Body. It’s out April 1 via Keeled Scales/Orindal Records, and today Walker is sharing a new track from it titled ‘how it falls apart’. Listen to it below, and scroll down for Walker’s upcoming tour dates with Advance Base.
“I was a long distance runner in high school, and would go whole miles spelling this word: e-s-t-c-e-q-u-e,” Walker said of ‘how it falls apart’ in a statement. “A French word that means something like ‘does’ or ‘is it such that?’ Something about the rhythm of this word just kinda fit with how my body was moving. I still think about this when I run. The patterns of my breath, notating or mapping a landscape. For this piece I wanted to see what would happen if I looped this pattern and sang over it. The lyrics pull from this same time period in my life, when I was on the edge of doubt, questioning the stories and beliefs I took for granted up until that point.”
The demos EP includes demo versions of the songs ‘Softer’, ‘Window I’, and ‘Reconstellated’, featuring alternate lyrics and stripped-back arrangements. Walker explained:
I first notice how vulnerable it feels, to hear certain lyrics sticking out, different from
the words that finally stuck. But I do like returning to these songs, remembering why
words shifted and settled as the songs took shape, and remembering that so many of
these did not appear as immediately apparent and whole.
They’re a lot more like my everyday life, revealing itself in time, while I try to let things register in my body… Then I go back in and push things around and figure out what I’m doing… Others are knit together from other projects, pieces and fragments that inspired the emotional timbre of the record, and in some cases were woven directly into it. Some here did appear complete and whole, but I either forgot about them, lost them or saw them as outliers. Either way, I like how the pieces hang together as a simpler account of the time from which the record finally came, and I hope you do too.
Read our Artist Spotlight interview with Karima Walker.
Karima Walker 2022 UK Tour Dates:
7 Apr – Hull – New Adelphi Club
8 Apr – London – The Lexington
9 April – London – St John on Bethnal Green (Daylight Music)
10 April – Hastings – The Piper
12 Apr – Brighton – The Prince Albert
13 Apr – Bristol – Cube Cinema
14 Apr – Oxford – Port Mahon
16 Apr – Edinburgh – Sneaky Pete’s
17 Apr – Glasgow – Hug & Pint
18 Apr – Manchester – Gulliver’s
19 Apr – Wakefield – Chantry Chapel
Soft Cell and Pet Shop Boys have joined forces for the new song ‘Purple Zone’. It’s taken from Soft Cell’s upcoming album *Happiness Not Included, which is set for release on May 6. Check it out below.
According to a press release, the original plan was for Pet Shop Boys to remix ‘Purple Zone’ after watching Soft Cell perform the track on tour last year, but the session turned into a full collaboration. “Working with the Pet Shop Boys was a pleasure, and this track is the perfect combination of us and them,” Soft Cell’s Marc Almond said in a statement.
Pet Shop Boys added: “We are thrilled to collaborate with such an inspirational duo as Soft Cell on this gorgeous song.”
Devo will be donating their licensing revenue from their song catalog for the entire month of April to support the Ukrainian people and refugees, Billboard reports. The money will go to Music Saves UA and World Central Kitchen, and the group is asking others in the industry to join them in the effort.
“Vladimir Putin’s rape of a sovereign nation, Ukraine, whose citizens are committed to democratic rule of law should not and cannot stand in the 21st Century,” Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale said in a statement. “To help the victims of Putin’s unprovoked war, Devo will be donating these revenues from the licenses of our song catalog throughout the month of April. We invite our rights holder partners in masters and publishing matters to join us in doing the same. Further we encourage all successful recording artists to do something similar to help make this gesture reach critical mass.”
Music Save UA representative Vlad Yaremchuk commented: “The whole team at Music Saves UA is incredibly grateful for all the donations and constant help and support from the world of music and culture. Our incredible team and dozens of volunteers who joined our cause are working 24/7 to provide supplies and aid via our humanitarian HQ in Kyiv. Every penny that reaches us is put to good use immediately, especially as we work to establish new centers on the Moldovian and Romanian borders for those fleeing. Every act of support is invaluable for us and we deeply appreciate it.”
Devo are nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year.
Weezer appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night (March 21) to deliver a performance of their new single ‘A Little Bit of Love’. The group turned the late-night show stage into a forest, with a rabbit playing mandolin and frontman Rivers Cuomo donning an elf costume. Watch it below.
‘A Little Bit of Love’ is the lead track from the band’s new EP SZNZ: Spring, which arrived last Sunday to coincide with the spring equinox. It’s the first of four seasonally-themed EPs Weezer are set to release this year, each interpolating a movement from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.
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