Danny Elfman has enlisted Trent Reznor for a new version of his single ‘True’, which originally appeared on Elfman’s recently released album Big Mess. The track arrives with an accompanying Aron Johnson-directed visual that incorporates elements of Sarah Sitkin’s original video for the song. Check it out below.
“This is the first duet/collaboration I’ve ever done in my life, so to do it with Trent was a real surprise and a treat,” Elfman said in a press release. “He’s always been a big inspiration to me, not to mention he has one of my all-time favorite singing voices.”
Big Red Machine, the project of the National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night to perform their recent single ‘Phoenix’. They also debuted a new track called ‘New Auburn’ for a web exclusive. Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, Anaïs Mitchell, The Westerlies, The National’s Scott Devendorf, drummer JT Bates, and keyboardist Nick Lloyd joined the duo for both performances, which you can watch below.
Big Red Machine are set to release their new album How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?, which follows their self-titled 2018 debut, on August 27. The record features collaborations with Taylor Swift, Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, Sharon Van Etten, and more.
Molly Payton has announced a new mini-album titled Slack. It’s out October 1, and the new single ‘You Cut Me So Much Slack’ is out today alongside an accompanying Taylor Mansfield-directed video, following on from the previously released ‘Honey’ (which was our Song of the Week). Check it out below.
“‘You Cut Me So Much Slack’ is a song I wrote initially for my EP Porcupine, but decided just before it came out that it fit better in this project,” Payton explained in a press release. “In Porcupine when I wrote about friendships and relationships I was placing a lot of blame on other people, whereas my coming project Slack is more self-reflective and centres around taking responsibility for your own faults in order to grow. My anxiety used to make it almost impossible to communicate and express my feelings to someone, and when I tried it would never come out the way I wanted it to. That’s what this song is driven by, that frustration and desperation of wanting someone but not being able to tell them.”
spill tab has teamed up with Canadian rapper Tommy Genesis for a new song called ‘Indecisive’. It’s set to appear on the singer-songwriter’s upcoming second EP, set for release this Autumn via Arista Records. Check it out below.
“My producer and I wanted to make something with dummy fast drums and we sort of just went from there,” spill tab explained in a statement. “We had all the sections we wanted but were missing a verse and I just really wanted someone to rap over it and go hard and I also didn’t want it to be me. I think my team sent the song over to Tommy’s camp and she loved it and was down to hop on it, and I’ve been a phat fan of her stuff and her new song too, so it was a divine match made in heaven.”
“It can’t get much worse than this,” Conor Murphy croons on ‘At Least We Found the Floor’, an acoustic highlight off Foxing’s new album, Draw Down the Moon. The record takes its name from Margot Adler’s book about contemporary Paganism, but you don’t need to be interested in spirituality, relate to Murphy’s past reflections on Catholicism, or have played Dungeons & Dragons a single time to enjoy what the band has to offer on their latest LP, whose rollout included encouraging fans to partake in a series of online rituals. You don’t even need to be acquainted with emo’s complicated history or know that much about the band’s unique trajectory to get some of the metacommentary on the album, though digging through Foxing’s discography – from their celebrated 2013 debut The Albatross to their phenomenal 2018 LP Nearer My God – will only enhance the experience. When both the musical arrangements and the lyrical sentiments are as strikingly immediate as they are resonant, it feels like you’ve come across something that simultaneously exists in its own universe yet feels connected to everything that came before it.
For an album featuring 10 variations on the theme of “cosmic significance,” it’s remarkable that Draw Down the Moon never veers into conceptual vagueness or self-indulgence. As a whole, it’s less of a stylistic shift than a refinement of the qualities that arguably made Nearer My God their most accessible effort to date; by toning down some of the chaotic density of that record and delivering one stadium-sized hook after another, they’ve managed to make its populist framing feel convoluted by comparison. But the new album is still a sprawling, ambitious collection of songs, one whose genre-eschewing boldness is always in service to something bigger than artistic validation and whose infectiousness is more than just a bid for mainstream success. Foxing seem all too aware that these metrics have little bearing in today’s music economy for them to care about anything other than their own creative instincts.
And once again, those instincts help them reach thrilling heights. Produced by the band’s guitarist Eric Hudson and completed with John Congleton and Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull, the album’s soaring melodies, indie disco grooves, and manic breakdowns come together to provide a vessel for Murphy’s existential concerns. Rather than belying its own complexity, the album’s reliance on the repetition of pop aligns with the inescapable nature of Murphy’s thoughts, addressing, through different lenses, the same desperate need for connection in the face of the vastness of the cosmos. Even the songs that felt baffling as singles shine through in the context of the album: on the danceable ‘Where the Lightning Strikes Twice’, Murphy sings, “With everything we gave it/ It’s hard not to be devastated,” but the track keeps chugging along, propelled by a sense of electrifying ambition. ‘Beacons’ is an equally driving piece of synth-rock that begins by suggesting the other side of that coin (“I was floating there for so long/ King of nothing”) before hitting with the force of a euphoric revelation: “For the first time I felt alive/I thought I couldn’t move my feet/ But I’m running with you now, we’re a stampede.” Murphy’s voice is impassioned and raw, as if energized by the song’s forward momentum.
In reality, the album feels more like a downward spiral. “If you should fall, I’ll follow behind/ We’ll go down there together,” Murphy sings on the Passion Pit-esque ‘Go Down Together’, one of many attempts to soften the weight of emptiness by finding strength in unity. Throughout the album, “down” remains an undefined place as well as the only direction, but it doesn’t matter so long as you’re running with someone. ‘Bialystok’ – named after the largest city in Poland and apparently the farthest the band has been from their home of St. Louis – meanders for the first minute or so before Murphy is struck by the realization that “Without you, I feel so homesick everywhere I go,” any hint of melancholy quickly overshadowed by the love that fills the “fiery core of why.” It’s the wonderful detail Murphy includes halfway through that colours the whole song: “I was just thinking about arguing in the kitchen/ Just to be the one that you argue with/ Is a miracle in itself/ Sacred insignificance/ Steeped in cosmic bliss.”
Given all this, one might be slightly taken aback by the cynical tone of ‘At Least We Found the Floor’ – have the band really done everything in their power to capture the lowest of lows, or do they keep swerving away? But even at its most direct and optimistic, Murphy’s unhinged performances are enough to suggest that everything could fall apart at any moment. Besides, there’s something refreshing about the band’s attempt at turning emo’s nihilistic tendencies into a source of not just catharsis, but comfort. ‘At Least We Found the Floor’ calls back to the album’s magnificent opening track, ‘737’, but instead of building to an explosive climax, it retains a quiet composure, even with the acceptance that, yeah, it actually can get a hell of a lot worse. As far as the music goes, at least, it can only get so much better than this – though as always with Foxing, you never really know what might come next.
Chastity Belts’ Julia Shapiro has announced her sophomore album, Zorked. The follow-up to 2019’s Perfect Version is out October 15 via Suicide Squeeze Records. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the new single, ‘Come With Me’, alongside a music video directed by Ertugrul Yaka. Check it out below and scroll down for the record’s cover art and tracklist.
Shapiro said of the new song in a statement:
Last September I went on a backpacking trip with my cousins, up in the mountains of Colorado, and one of the days we were out there we did mushrooms. I ended up having a pretty insane trip, but I had the worst time when I was coming up on them. I kept seeing evil faces in the mountains. This song was partially inspired by that experience, but it’s really about anytime I’m stuck in a negative headspace and spiraling out of control. It’s about giving in and letting your mind take you to the darkest places. The song itself is really evil sounding, with super dissonant chords, which inspired the darker lyrics. I’ve never written a song that sounds like this. This might be my favorite drumbeat on the album… it just gives the song a nice groove. Melina Duterte (who recorded/mixed the album) had the idea to add some staccato synth throughout the whole track, which adds another dimension to it.
Of the video, Ertugrul Yaka added: “Julia found me on one of the freelancer sites. It came as a surprise to me because I’ve been listening to Chastity Belt since 2016. So I know her from the Chastity Belt. It was a great experience for me. The video is about the war between good trips and bad trips. When you’re looking for joy, two kinds of feelings are always chasing you at the end. When you reach joy, a piece from your inside breaks off; I mean, it’s giving you something and taking another thing from your inside. I made this video based on my own experience.”
Zorked Cover Artwork:
Zorked Tracklist:
1. Death (XIII)
2. Come With Me
3. Wrong Time
4. Someone
5. Reptile! Reptile!
6. Pure Bliss
7. Hellscape
8. Do Nothing About It
9. Zorked
10. Hall of Mirrors
Three members of Chromatics have announced the band’s breakup. Vocalist Ruth Radelet, guitarist Adam Miller, and drummer Nat Walker have all signed a statement that was shared on Radalet and Miller’s Instagram accounts.
“After a long period of reflection, the three of us have made the difficult decision to end Chromatics,” their joint statement reads. “We would like to thank all of our fans and the friends we have made along the way – we are eternally grateful for your love and support. This has been a truly unforgettable chapter in our lives, and we couldn’t have done it without you. We are very excited for the future, and look forward to sharing our new projects with you soon.”
Johnny Jewel, who has toured with the group, produced several of their recordings, and owns Chromatics’ longtime record label, Italians Do It Better, is notably not mentioned in the announcement. In a statement to Stereogum, a representative for Jewel said, “Johnny is extremely proud of his work with the project over the years and he’ll continue making music and supporting great art and artists through his label Italians Do It Better.”
Chromatics formed in Portland, Oregon in 2001, releasing their debut album Chrome Rats vs Basement Rutz in 2003. Their most recent album, Closer To Grey, came out in 2019. Though the band shared a few new singles last year, their much-anticipated record Dear Tommy, which was first announced in 2014, has yet to be released.
Julien Baker has announced a new EP called Little Oblivions Remixes. Out on September 1 via Matador, it features reworkings of songs from her most recent album Little Oblivions from artists like Half Waif, Gordi, Jesu, and Thao. Below, check out the full tracklist and listen to Helios’ remix of ‘Bloodshot’.
Of his remix, Helios said in a statement:
I was excited when Julien Baker reached out about doing a remix, because I respect her work and it was an interesting challenge to do a remix of singer/songwriter material in the context of my approach which is more in the electronic/ambient world. I wanted to keep the integrity of the original composition, which was great, but also wanted to create enough of a spin to give it a distinctly new quality. My approach to remixes is to use as much of the original material as possible, but to use those elements as a base to create a variety of new textures. So I took a lot of the guitar and percussion elements and ran them through some old tape recorders to give it a rough “handmade” quality, reversed them, chopped them up or manipulated them with reverbs and delays to create ambient soundscapes. I treated Julien’s vocals to match the rougher, more lo-fi quality I used with the instrumental elements. Harmonically, I changed up the chord changes to give the vocal melody a slightly new framework and arrangement on which to sit and create some new twists and turns and builds in the composition. It was one of the most fun remixes I’ve done to date, with such strong original material it gave me a lot to play around with.
Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine have previewed their upcoming collaborative LP A Beginner’s Guide with new two new songs. ‘Back to Oz’, which arrives with a video directed by Alex Horan of Straight To Tell and animated by Clara Murray, was inspired by the 1985 film Return To Oz, while ‘Fictional California’ was inspired by Bring It On Again. Check them out below.
“This was a song that I had written mostly at home in California,” De Augustine said of ‘Back to Oz’ in a press release. “We finished its lyrics after watching Return to Oz. The words reference an erosion of a central character’s internal reality. A loss of innocence is the impetus for a journey to find inner truth. In the film, Dorothy returns to the world of Oz to find its landscape in ruins and its citizens frozen in stone. Only she can find the ruby slippers and return peace to Oz. Only we can save ourselves, but we first have to remember who we truly are.”
“Angelo is mostly known for his intimate home recordings; his music is quiet and confessional,” Stevens added. “So for ‘Back To Oz’ we decided to go for something flashier. The song has a fun guitar groove, so we gave it some bass and drums, and Angelo even recorded his first electric guitar solo. It’s a sad song—being mostly about disillusionment—but it has a great party vibe too.”
Big Thief have shared two new tracks, ‘Little Things’ and ‘Sparrow’. The songs mark the band’s first new material since 2019’s Two Hands. Both tracks were produced by Big Thief drummer James Krivchenia; ‘Little Things’ was recorded with Shawn Everrett at Five Star Studios in Topanga, California, in October 2020, while ‘Sparrow’ was recorded in the Catskills last summer. Check them out below.
“It’s in this sort of evolving free time signature where the beat is always changing, so Max [Oleartchik] and I were just flowing with it and guessing where the downbeats were — which gives the groove a really cool light feeling,” Krivchenia said of ‘Little Things’ in a statement.
Of ‘Sparrow’, he added, “We all just scattered about the room without headphones, focused and in the music — you could feel that something special was happening. It was a funny instrumentation that had a really cool natural arrangement chemistry — Max on piano, Buck [Meek] providing this dark ambience, me on floor tom and snare and Adrianne in the middle of it with the acoustic and singing.”
