Leya – the New York City duo of harpist Marilu Donovan and violinist/vocalist Adam Markiewicz – have collaborated with Julie Byrne for the new song ‘Glass Jaw’. Give it a listen below.
In a press release, Julie Byrne shared some words she wrote down the day the collaboration came together:
3.24.2021 Ridgewood
woke up to the sight of the room Long after becoming the sound
Spelling out the chord The moody afterglow The embers of the song
There are nights worth remembering
Leya issued their latest album, Flood Dream, in 2020. Later that year, they teamed up with Liturgy for the song ‘Antigone’. Julie Byrne’s most recent full-length was 2017’s Not Even Happiness.
The lineup for the 2022 Governors Ball Music Festival has been unveiled. Taking place from June 10-12 at Citi Field in Queens, New York, this year’s festival will include headliners J. Cole, Kid Cudi, and Halsey, as well as Flume, Playboi Carti, Migos, Jazmine Sullivan, 100 gecs, Japanese Breakfast, Kaytranada, Denzel Curry, Skepta, Clairo, Roddy Ricch, YG, Soccer Mommy, Dehd, J.I.D, Tove Lo, Glass Animals, and more. Tickets go on sale this Thursday, January 27 at 12:00 pm. Check out the full lineup below.
Flint, Michigan band Greet Death have released a new single called ‘Punishment Existence’. Following the recently shared standalone tracks ‘I Hate Everything’ and ‘Your Love Is Alcohol’, the group’s latest arrives with an accompanying video directed by David Beuthin. Check it out below.
Speaking about the new song, Greet Death’s Logan Gaval said in a press release:
This song was originally about my girlfriend’s uncle and his drawn-out battle with cancer. I couldn’t come up with a second verse, so I asked Sam to write one as well. I love his verse and the piano part we came up with.
I will never forget the night we finished tracking “Punishment Existence.” My mom texted me that my grandma had passed away. Connie was a matriarch and a very cool person who loved music. She would drink half a bud light and put the cap back on it and stow it away in her fridge. She would call you a “bitch” or a “shithead” if you beat her in poker. Heather’s uncle Kevin was one of the kindest people I’d ever met and built an orphanage in India among other things. Anyway, I think this song is about loss in general. Whether it’s time lost working our jobs during the pandemic, loved ones lost, loss of hope… Great people are taken from this earth, and we’re left with the dregs of humanity. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but that’s how I felt when I wrote this song and how I feel right now.
Tomberlin has returned with a new single titled ‘idkwntht’. Out now via Saddle Creek, the track features guest vocals from Told Slant’s Felix Walworth. Check it out below.
“‘idkwntht’ is a sonic altar of sorts,” Tomberlin said in a press release. “It’s about taking a moment for remembrance, clarity, and setting an intention for what is to come. Kind of like a song version of writing out your intentions on a full moon. Holding onto feelings, words, and past versions of ourselves and our behaviour only helps when we can examine experiences once we are outside of them. Then we have to let it out, let it go, and try again.”
‘idkwntht’ marks Tomberlin’s first new music since 2020’s Alex G-produced EP Projections, which landed on our best EPs of the year list.
The Swedish indie outfit Hater have announced their new album Sincere, which comes out May 6 via Fire Records. The LP was produced by longtime collaborator Joakim Lindberg and mixed and mastered by John Cornfield. To accompany the announcement, the band have today shared a new track called ‘Something’, alongside a video by Adèle Tornberg. Check it out and find the record’s cover artwork and tracklist below.
1. Something
2. I’m Yours Baby
3. Bad Luck
4. Proven Wrong
5. Brave Blood
6. Far From A Mind
7. Summer Turns to Heartburn
8. Renew, Reject
9. Hopes High
The Weather Station has announced a new album called How Is It That I Should Lookat the Stars. Billed as a companion piece to 2021’s Ignorance and co-produced with Jean Martin, the LP was recorded live in only three days just before the pandemic in March 2020 and features no percussion. It arrives March 4 via Fat Possum. Today’s announcement comes with the release of a new single, ‘Endless Time’. Check out a music video for it below.
“When I wrote Ignorance, it was a time of intense creativity, and I wrote more songs than I ever had in my life,” the Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman explained in a statement. “The songs destined to be on the album were clear from the beginning, but as I continued down my writing path, songs kept appearing that had no place on the album I envisioned. Songs that were simple, pure; almost naive. Songs that spoke to many of the same questions and realities as Ignorance, but in a more internal, thoughtful way. So I began to envision How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars, a quiet, strange album of ballads. I imagined it not as a follow-up to Ignorance, but rather as a companion piece; the moon to its sun.”
Commenting on the new track, she added:
In Toronto, I live in a world of overwhelming abundance; fruits and fresh vegetables flown in year round from Chile, California, Malaysia. Standing outside a neighbourhood fruit stand one day, I found myself wondering how I would look back on this time from the future; if I would someday remember it as a time of abundance and wealth I did not fully comprehend at the time, and I wondered how it would feel to stand at that threshold of change. I wondered too if we were not already there. The song was written long before the pandemic, but when we recorded it, on March 11, 2020, it began to feel eerily prescient. The day it was recorded truly was the end of an endless time, and as ever, I don’t know how the song knew.
Lindeman started working on the new album without notifying her label, taping everything live from the floor at Toronto’s Canterbury Music Studios. Her band features Christine Bougie on guitar and lap steel, Karen Ng on saxophone and clarinet, Ben Whiteley on upright bass, Ryan Driver on piano, flute and vocals, and Tania Gill on Wurlitzer, Rhodes and pianet.
How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars Cover Artwork:
How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars Tracklist:
1. Marsh
2. Endless Time
3. Taught
4. Ignorance
5. To Talk About
6. Stars
7. Song
8. Sway
9. Sleight of Hand
10. Loving You
ginla, the duo of Joe Manzoli and Jon Nellen, have released a new song called ‘Carousel’, featuring Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker. The single will appear on the forthcoming album Everything, which arrives on March 25 via their newly founded label No Content. The LP was mixed by Rusty Santos (Animal Collective, Panda Bear). Check out ‘Carousel’ below and scroll down for the album artwork (by Alessia Gunawan and Lara Hosking) and tracklist.
“This song was written at the top of quarantine,” Nellen explained in a statement. “I was dealing with the ideas of mortality, consumption, life-planning, destruction–all things we were forced to confront in some way during the beginning of the pandemic. The idea is that all of these are revolving and evolving elements in life, like a carousel spinning in circles. I didn’t plan on writing this but it sort of spilled out subconsciously in a couple days in early April.”
Everything Cover Artwork:
Everything Tracklist:
1. Bloodstream
2. Carousel
3. You
4. Take More
5. Moonlighting
6. JM
7. Decider
8. Finite
9. On Your Side
10. Earthquake
End of the Road Festival has announced the lineup for its 2022 edition, with Fleet Foxes, Bright Eyes, and Khruangbin joining Pixies as headliners. The Magnetic Fields, Aldous Harding, Perfume Genius, Kurt Vile & The Violators, The Weather Station, Lucy Dacus, Cassandra Jenkins, Circuit des Yeux, Moor Mother, and more are also set to perform at the festival, which takes place 1-4 September at the Larmer Tree Gardens in south Wiltshire, England. Tickets are on sale now here. Check out the full lineup below.
“I’m beyond excited about our 2022 lineup, which features artists we’ve been asking to play since 2006 and includes some of the greatest songwriters of all time in my opinion,” festival co-founder Simon Taffe said in a statement. “It really feels like this is the summer all festivals have been waiting for, a summer three years in the making for some. We have all been through a lot together and it feels good to be back, and to finally be able to dance with friends and artists from all over the world again.”
Earl Sweatshirt appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night (January 24) to perform ‘2010’, a track from his latest album SICK!. Watch it below.
‘2010’ is one of a few singles Earl Sweatshirt unveiled ahead of the album’s release earlier this month. SICK! also includes ‘Tabula Rasa’ and ‘Titanic’ and features collaborations with Armand Hammer, the Alchemist, Black Noi$e, and more.
Taylor Swift has responded to Damon Albarn regarding comments he made in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times. Speaking with Mikael Wood, Albarn said that Swift “doesn’t write her own songs.” Wood responded: “Of course she does. Co-writes some of them.” Albarn went on:
That doesn’t count. I know what co-writing is. Co-writing is very different to writing. I’m not hating on anybody, I’m just saying there’s a big difference between a songwriter and a songwriter who co-writes. Doesn’t mean that the outcome can’t be really great. And some of the greatest singers—I mean, Ella Fitzgerald never wrote a song in her life. When I sing, I have to close my eyes and just be in there. I suppose I’m a traditionalist in that sense. A really interesting songwriter is Billie Eilish and her brother [Finneas]. I’m more attracted to that than to Taylor Swift. It’s just darker—less endlessly upbeat. Way more minor and odd. I think she’s exceptional.
Swift replied to Albarn on Twitter, writing, “@DamonAlbarn I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this. I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really fucked up to try and discredit my writing. WOW.” She added: “PS I wrote this tweet all by myself in case you were wondering 😑.”
Swift’s frequent collaborator Jack Antonof weighed in, commenting: “I’ve never met Damon Albarn and he’s never been to my studio but apparently he knows more than the rest of us about all those songs Taylor writes… If you were there…cool…go off. If not…maybe…shut the fuck up?”
Aaron Dessner also commented on the disagreement: “Not sure why you
@Damonalbarn would try to discredit Taylor’s brilliant songwriting but as someone who has gotten to press record around her …your statements couldn’t be further from the truth…you’re obviously completely clueless as to her actual writing and work process.”
Following Swift’s response, Albarn tweeted: “I totally agree with you. i had a conversation about songwriting and sadly it was reduced to clickbait. I apologise unreservedly and unconditionally. The last thing I would want to do is discredit your songwriting. I hope you understand.”
I totally agree with you. i had a conversation about songwriting and sadly it was reduced to clickbait. I apologise unreservedly and unconditionally. The last thing I would want to do is discredit your songwriting. I hope you understand. – Damon
i’ve never met damon albarn and he’s never been to my studio but apparently he knows more than the rest of us about all those songs taylor writes and brings in. herb.
