Talking about the track, vocalist and guitarist Daniel O’Kelly commented in a press release:
For most of the pandemic I lived with my sister who is a healthcare worker and was working in the designated Covid hospital in St James’ Dublin. Unfortunately, I was far less heroic, writing copy for a car insurance company.
This song is about feeling embarrassed about how different our lives were at this time. When it comes to telling my grandchildren what all this was like, I’ll be telling them about my sisters who have more important stories to share.
Spiritualized are back with a new single, ‘Crazy’, the second offering from their forthcoming album. The track, which features backing vocals from Nikki Lane, arrives with an accompanying video directed by frontman Jason Pierce (aka J Spaceman) and partly inspired by Andy Warhol’s Kiss. Check it out below.
Marissa Nadler has announced a new EP, The Wrath of the Clouds, which will be out on February 4 via Bella Union and Sacred Bones. Following her 2021 full-length The Path of the Clouds, the EP features two covers and three previously unreleased songs written during the sessions for the album – ‘Guns on the Sundeck’, ‘All the Eclipses’, and ‘Some Secret Existence’. Today, Nadler has shared her cover ‘Seabird’ by the Alessi Brothers. Listen to it below.
For Nadler, rediscovering the unreleased songs she had written for the LP felt “like uncovering lost gems that I had forgotten about,” she explains in a press release. “Once I had finished the album, these two covers were on the top of my list. These were a really nice capping off to the season of this writing.”
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this best new music segment.
Let’s Eat Grandma’s Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth gave us the perfect way to start off the year with ‘Happy New Year’, an uplifting and poignant synthpop tune that reflects on the duo’s lifelong friendship. Also on this week’s list, we have the frenetic debut single from The Smile, the new trio comprised of Radiohead members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood plus Sons Of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner; the latest offering from SASAMI’s upcoming album, the industrial-leaning and virulent ‘Say It’; Father John Misty’s lyrically and musically enchanting new single ‘Funny Girl’, whose luxurious arrangement has more than a hint of Old Hollywood; Yard Act’s fun and cheeky new track ‘Rich’, taken from their imminent debut LP The Overload; and ‘Soundings’, the gorgeous debut single from York songwriter Elanor Moss.
Kae Tempest has announced their fourth studio album, The Line Is a Curve, which is set for release on April 8 via Fiction Records. The follow-up to 2019’s The Book of Traps and Lessons is led by the new single ‘More Pressure’, which features Kevin Abstract of BROCKHAMPTON. Check it out and find the album’s cover artwork (shot by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans) below.
In addition to Abstract, Fontaines DC’s Grian Chatten, Lianne La Havas, ássia, and Confucius MC contributed to the new LP, which was produced by longtime collaborator Dan Carey. “The Line Is A Curve is about letting go,” Tempest explained in a press release. “Of shame, anxiety, isolation and falling instead into surrender. Embracing the cyclical nature of time, growth, love.” They continued:
This letting go can hopefully be felt across the record. In the musicality, the instrumentation, the lyricism, the delivery, the cover art. In the way it ends where it begins and begins where it ends.I knew I wanted my face on the sleeve. Throughout the duration of my creative life, I have been hungry for the spotlight and desperately uncomfortable in it. For the last couple of records I wanted to disappear completely from the album covers, the videos, the front-facing aspects of this industry. A lot of that was about my shame but I masked it behind a genuine desire for my work to speak for itself, without me up front, commodifying what felt so rare to me and sacred. I was, at times, annoyed that in order to put the work out, I had to put myself out. But this time around, I understand it differently. I want people to feel welcomed into this record, by me, the person who made it, and I have let go of some of my airier concerns. I feel more grounded in what I’m trying to do, who I am as an artist and as a person and what I have to offer. I feel less shame in my body because I am not hiding from the world anymore. I wanted to show my face and I dreamed of it being Wolfgang Tillmans who took the portrait.
James Mtume, the percussionist, songwriter, and producer who performed with jazz greats before leading his own eponymous group, has died at the age of 75. The news was confirmed by his son to Pitchfork, among other sources. No cause of death was revealed.
The daughter of Mtume’s late creative partner Reggie Lucas, Lisa Lucas, wrote on Twitter: “So much loss. So much grief. Rest in power to Uncle Mtume. My late father’s partner-in-crime[.] The co-creator of the songs of my life (and about my birth!). He was [an] essential part of the life of the man who made me, therefore me too. Gone now. He will be dearly, eternally missed.”
Born James Heath Jr. in Philadelphia, Mtume was the son of jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath. He was raised by his mother Bertha Forman and his stepfather, Philadelphia jazz pianist James “Hen Gates” Forman, and grew up in a musical environment. In addition to learning to play piano and percussion, he was also a star swimmer. After moving to California to attend Pasadena City College on an athletic scholarship, Mtume joined the U.S. Organization, a Black empowerment group, and would receive his new name, Mtume, which means “messenger” in Swahili. His first recording, 1970’s Kawaida, was led by his uncle Albert Heath and featured Herbie Hancock, Don Cherry, and Buster Williams; Mtume contributed percussion and was credited for four of its five compositions. In 1972, he released an album with his group Mtume Umoja Ensemble titled Land of the Blacks.
Following his return from the West Coast, Mtume moved to New York and contributed to records by McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, and Lonnie Liston Smith, among many others. Between 1971 and 1975, he spent much of his time performing and recording with Miles Davis, including on releases such as On the Corner, Agharta, and Pangaea. Over the next few years, he worked with a number of high-profile R&B artists, penning hits for the likes of Phyllis Hyman and Stephanie Mills. In 1978, he formed his self-named “sophistifunk” R&B-jazz group with Lucas and vocalist Tawatha Agee, which released its debut album, Kiss This World Goodbye, that same year. They followed it with 1980’s In Search of the RainbowSeekers and 1983’s Juicy Fruit – whose title track became their biggest hit and was famously sampled on the Notorious B.I.G.’s ‘Juicy’ – before putting out two more albums, 1984’s You, Me and He and 1986’s Theater of the Mind. In 1986, Mtume also provided the soundtrack for the drama Native Son.
Mtume went on to write and produce material for artists such as Mary J. Blige, K-Ci & JoJo, and Bilal. He also became a radio personality at New York City’s KISS 98.7 FM and continued his work as an activist. “Music is a unique art form,” Mtume said during his 2019 TEDTalk, ‘Our Common Ground in Music’. “It’s the only art form I know that can touch you, but you can’t touch it. What do I mean by that? I can touch a sculpture, I can touch a painting, I can touch a book of poetry. How do you touch a note? How do you touch sound? It runs through your body.”
Billie Eilish and Finneas’ James Bond theme song ‘No Time to Die’ won Best Original Song, Motion Picture at the 2022 Golden Globe Awards. They beat out songs by Beyoncé (‘Be Alive’ from King Richard), Lin-Manuel Miranda (‘Dos Oruguitas’ from Encanto), Van Morrison (‘Down to Joy’ from Belfast), and Carole King and Jennifer Hudson (‘Here I Am’ from Respect).
Hans Zimmer won Best Original Score for his work on Dune, which was nominated alongside Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood (Power of the Dog), Alexandre Desplat (The French Dispatch), Germaine Franco (Encanto), and Alberto Iglesias (Parallel Mothers). Alana Haim was nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, but lost to West Side Story star Rachel Zegler. Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake also won Best Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy over Licorice Pizza.
This year’s Golden Globes were a non-televised event, and awards were announced publicly through Twitter and on the official Globes website. NBC declined to air the show this year following allegations of ethical and financial lapses and a lack of diversity, first detailed in a Los Angeles Times exposé last year. The HFPA has since made attempts to diversify its membership by adding Black members and hiring its first chief diversity officer.
Michael Lang, the co-creator and organizer of the 1969 music festival Woodstock, has died at the age of 77, Variety reports. He passed away on Saturday at Sloan Kettering in New York City. The cause of death was a rare form of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to family spokesperson Michael Pagnotta.
Born in Brooklyn in 1944, Lang attended college in New York City and got his start in concert promotion in the Miami area. He co-produced the 1968 Miami Pop festival, which featured Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and John Lee Hooker, before co-creating the legendary Woodstock Music and Art Fair the following year alongside fellow co-founders Artie Kornfeld, John P. Roberts, and Joel Rosenman.
Lang would go on to start his own production and management company, and helped helm subsequent iterations of the festival in 1994 and 1999 – the latter of which was recently the subject of an HBO documentary. Lang’s attempts to put on a 50th anniversary concert in 2019 suffered multiple setbacks before being eventually cancelled.
Lang is survived by his wife Tamara, their sons, Harry and Laszlo, and his daughters, LariAnn, Shala and Molly.
Calvin Simon, a founding member of Parliament-Funkadelic, died on Thursday. “We lost another Original member of Parliament/Funkadelic,” former P-Funk bassist Bootsy Collins wrote in a statement on Twitter. “A friend, bandmate & a cool classic guy, Mr. Calvin Simon was a former member of Parliament/Funkadelic. He’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 with fifteen members of P-Funk!” P-Funk leader George Clinton added on Facebook, “Rest in peace to my P-Funk brother Mr. Calvin Simon. Longtime Parliament-Funkadelic vocalist. Fly on Calvin!”
Born in Beckley, West Virginia in 1942, Simon grew up singing in his church’s choir. After his family moved to New Jersey, he joined the Parliaments, a doo-wop barbershop quintet led by George Clinton, in the late 1950s. In 1966, Simon was drafted into the US Army and served in Vietnam. “The thing that means the most to me is how I handled the PTSD from my service in the Vietnam War,” he once said. “I was able to keep the genie in the bottle, so to speak, and did not allow the evil thoughts to break through and manifest into actions.”
Upon his return, Simon continued working with the collective through its various iterations, including Parliament and Funkadelic. He ultimately left the group, alongside original Parliaments members Fuzzy Haskins and Grady Thomas, in 1977 following financial and management disputes. They formed their own band, releasing the album Connections and Disconnections under the Funkadelic name in 1981 before issuing 1998’s What Dat Shakin’ and 2001’s Original P Introducing the Westbound Souljaz under the Original P moniker. In 1997, Simon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside many other members of P-Funk.
Simon also pursued a solo career, turning his attention to gospel music and releasing his debut album Share the News in 2004 on his own label, Simon Sayz. He followed it up with 2016’s It’s Not Too Late and 2018’s I Believe. “I want to go around the country singing these songs, with this music, this message, this band,” he told the Tampa Bay Times in 2017. “This is what I want to do with the rest of my life. I hope somebody along the way will find something in the music and it will bring them to Jesus as well.”
Genesis Owusu was the musical guest on last night’s episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where he was accompanied by his band for a performance of ‘Gold Chains’. Watch it below.
‘Gold Chains’ is taken from Owusu’s debut album Smiling With No Teeth, which came out in March 2021. The track made Barack Obama’s list of the standout songs of the year.
