On Monday, Lydia Night of The Regrettes accused SWMRS drummer Joey Armstrong – son of Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong – of emotional abuse and sexual misconduct in a lengthy Instagram post. This is part of a wave of allegations that surfaced over the weekend against artists and employees of the California label Burger Records, which recently announced it would be shutting down entirely. “For so long I viewed [our relationship] as toxic and not something valid enough to share, but now I know that what I actually experienced was emotional abuse and sexual coercion by someone in a position of power over me,” she wrote.
The post, which details multiple instances of sexual coercion when Night was 16 and 17 years old and Armstrong was 22, was made in response to a statement by the band in support of Burger Records’ alleged victims, which she called “unbelievably hypocritical”. “The band’s delusional positioning of themselves as woke feminists is not only triggering for me as a victim, but is complete bullshit and needs to be called out,” she added.
The post includes descriptions of Armstrong pressuring, shaming, and gaslighting Night into sexual situations after he invited the Regrettes on tour. “From the beginning, he would constantly make ‘jokes’ on tour about how we would have to follow his rules on tour because he was the headliner,” she wrote. “The professional power dynamic had made its way into all aspects of our relationship.”
Yesterday (July 21), Armstrong responded to the accusations in a statement posted on SWMRS’s Instagram account. “I want to address Lydia’s Instagram post about our relationship,” he wrote. “While I don’t agree with some of the things she said about me, it’s important that she be allowed to say them and that she be supported for speaking out. I respect her immensely and fully accept that I failed her as a partner.”
He added: “I was selfish and didn’t treat her the way she deserves to have been treated both during our relationship and in the two years since we broke up. I have apologized to her privately and I hope she can forgive me, if and when she is ready to do so. I own my mistakes and will work hard to regain the trust that I lost.”
Yesterday, California garage rock label and record store Burger Records announced that it would undergo “major structural changes” in order to address a “culture of toxic masculinity” following a series of anonymous sexual misconduct allegations targeted at both artists and employees that surfaced over the weekend. Co-founder and president Lee Rickard resigned, while co-founder Sean Bohrman had moved into a “transitional” role.
Despite plans to rebrand itself as BRGR RECS and launch an all-woman imprint, BRGRRRL, however, Bohrman announced last night that the company would shut down completely, Pitchfork reports. “My plan was to quickly begin assessing and evaluating if anything about the label could perhaps be salvaged and made into something better, then eventually hand off a functioning label to a future administration unrelated to the label’s founders,” interim president Jessa Zapor-Gray said in a statement. “Or if I found that rebuilding was not possible, instead to organize and prepare the label for closure.”
She continued: “When I was asked to take over in this capacity, I expected some blowback for my decision to accept but I believed that the opportunity to have a role in effecting real and lasting positive change within the Burger and indie music scenes was worth the risk. Upon further review, I have informed Burger Records that I no longer believe I will be able to achieve my intended goals in assuming the leadership role at Burger in the current climate. Therefore, I have decided to step away from the label entirely to focus on my other projects.”
When approached by Pitchfork, Bohrman confirmed the company’s decision to fold the label entirely, and that any plans to rebrand to BRGR RCRDS would not materialize. He also said that Burger Records’ releases would be removed from all streaming platforms, but that artists own all their music and so are free to reissue their records if they wish. “I hate dealing with lawyers so we never signed contracts with bands,” he explained.
Yesterday, Total Trash Productions – the promoters behind Oakland’s annual Burger Boogaloo festival – announced they had distanced themselves from the label and planned to change the festival’s name in order to “express our heartfelt support for the brave women who have come forward to share their stories”.
Last week, it was announced that Manchester music venues The Deaf Institute and Gorilla, both own by the company Mission Mars, would be closing their doors permanently due to financial complications caused by the coronavirus crisis. “We would encourage any industry and music entrepreneurs who might be interested in this as an opportunity to please get in touch,” Mission Mars CEO and founder Roy Ellis had told Manchester Evening News.
Now, both venues have been bought by venue group Tokyo Industries and consequently saved from closure, the BBC reports. According to a statement, staff at both The Deaf Institute and Gorilla will be able to keep their jobs, while the venues will continue to operate “in much the same way as they have done in the past”.
Tokyo Industries founder, Aaron Mellor, added that it is “vital venues like Gorilla and The Deaf Institute are kept alive, [as] the cultural fabric of our city centres depends venues like these”. He said that he had “put together some great ideas” along with event promoters SSD Concerts and the Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess to help “save both venues and their existing operating style in a post-Covid world.”
Sampa The Great, a Zambian-born, Botswana-raised and now Melbourne-based artist, has released a music video for her song Time’s Up from the 2019 album, The Return. The song was released to shed a light on the struggles that young African people and to make sure African youth can access culturally safe, appropriate and responsive mental health care.
Talking about the song Sampa stated “Time’s up is a track that was made to reflect a conversation between two young African artists working in the Australian music industry… an industry that has often been careless in protecting the wellbeing of Black Artists. The labour put on marginalised people to have to address systemic racism every day means more trauma and pressure on our mental health and emotional state.”
“I’m partnering with Pola Psychology a Naarm (Melbourne) based therapy practice to make sure African youth/musicians can access culturally appropriate mental health care in their own community, by their own community. At a time like this, it’s important to let my friends and the wider African community know that this support exists and our health matters.”
It’s been five years since Soko’s last album, My Dreams Dictate My Reality, a release that traded the fragile qualities of her revelatory 2012 debut I Thought I Was an Alien for a more defiant, post-punk attitude and conventional verse-chorus-verse structures. “My first album was from the perspective of being a victim of all my emotions, and this second album is like, ‘I want to take control!’,” she said in an interview back in 2015. For her third studio album, the French singer-songwriter and actress – real name Stéphanie Sokolinski – once again started off with a clean slate. She began working on the album right after a week-long workshop at the Hoffman Institute, where she underwent a process known as ‘psychological deconditioning’, which focuses on removing all distractions, from drugs to exercise, in order to live only with your thoughts.
The result is sort of a return to form for Soko, as the aptly titled Feel Feelings sees her reverting back to the free-flowing vibe and trademark vulnerability of her debut. But despite teeming with the same kind of emotional honesty and spare, dreamy arrangements, her latest finds her less a “victim” to her own emotions than a keen observer of them, displaying a newfound sense of clarity and self-awareness that renders it her most emotionally direct and cathartic effort yet. Compared to the take-back-control narrative of My Dreams Dictate My Reality, Feel Feelings is less nervy and tense, seeking a deeper sense of comfort within her own self.
But drawing from the lessons Soko learned at the Hoffman Institute, the LP is more interested in simply understanding her own emotional state than it is in any kind of resolution, which has the effect of sharpening the raw, confessional nature of her songwriting. “All the needless suffering I put up on myself/ I am responsible for it,” she admits on ‘Being Sad is Not a Crime’, “I can’t live up to the fantasy/ That you made up of part of me.” The melody of the track and Soko’s throaty delivery are reminiscent of her debut, but the rough intimacy of the recording has been replaced by a more polished, carefree instrumental indicating a shift in tone. The theme of recognizing her illusory perception of a past relationship resurfaces on the evocative ‘Now What?’, where she sings: “You were a dream, I made you up/ None of that’s real, none of it’s real”.
Elsewhere, she opens up about depression without looking for any specific answers, and it feels like listening to the confessions of a close friend. On highlight ‘Replaceable Heads’, she describes how her messy state of mind prevents her from letting anyone close, then asks a painfully real question: “I have never been anyone’s favorite person/ Have you? How does it feel?”. It might appear strange that this is followed by the lines “I get addicted to skin and smell/ But I know it’s just cheap lust”, but it makes sense when you consider that Soko committed to 18 months of celibacy while making the album following her time at the Hoffman Institute. As a result, desire becomes another recurring theme on the album, serving as a sort of escape from the traumas explored throughout, like on the ethereal ‘Looking for Love’ or the wonderful celebration of queerness on ‘Oh, to Be a Rainbow’. But it comes trough most powerfully on the melodic ‘Let Me Adore You’, where she lays everything bare: “Nude/ Is how I like you best/ Undress/ Undress.”
It’s worth noting that the defiance that characterized her previous outing – the kind that also made ‘Treat Your Woman Right’ such a potent highlight from I Thought I Was an Alien – is not entirely gone on Feel Feelings. She takes on misogyny on the biting ‘Don’t Tell Me to Smile’, which features an entrancing vocal melody and one of Soko’s most expressive performances, while on ‘Quiet Storm’, she tackles the subject of domestic abuse, calmly asking for the other person to “make amends before my very eyes.” The artist is at her best when she pulls off that complicated mix of strength and vulnerability, which makes Feel Feelings as emotionally revealing as her debut, and in some ways even more rewarding. It’s a flawed album – a few tracks could have been cut off to make for a more cohesive listening experience – but it marks a unique point in Soko’s artistic progression, raising the stakes for whatever comes next. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take another five years.
Fenne Lily has shared a new single called ‘Berlin’. Following lead single ‘Alapathy’, it’s taken from her upcoming album, BREACH, out on September 18 via Dead Oceans. Check it out below, alongside a lyric video animated by Henry Dunbar.
The track draws inspiration from “the classic combo of Patti Smith, Berhgain and being alone,” according to a tweet from the singer-songwriter’s label. Lily quote retweeted the post, writing: “Goes to Berlin once writes a song about it.”
Recorded with producer Brian Deck at Chicago’s Narwhal Studios, with further work at Electrical Audio alongside Steve Albini, BREACH was written during a period of self-enforced isolation before COVID-19 actually hit. According to Lily, it deals largely with “loneliness, and trying to work out the difference between being alone and being lonely.”
Next Wednesday (July 29), Fenne Lily will be performing a virtual set for Capital One City Parks Foundation’s #SummerstageAnywhere. For decades, SummerStage has been one of New York City’s biggest summer festivals, but has gone fully digital due to the coronavirus pandemic. Find more information here.
Drake has teamed up with Headie One for a new track called ‘Only You Freestyle’. Produced by M1 on the Beat, the song is a standalone single that sees each artist freestyling for two minutes against a moody beat. Below, listen to the track and check out the music video, directed by Nathan James Tettey and Theo Skudra.
“I had to go hard, especially on a track with one of the best drill artists in the world,” Drake said in a statement. “Scratch that — the best drill artist in the world.”
Last week, Drake joined forces with megaproducer DJ Khaled for the new singles ‘POPSTAR’ and ‘GREECE’. Back in May, he put out the Dark Lane Demo Tapes. Earlier this year, Headie One also dropped his most recent mixtape with producer Fred again… titled GANG.
Lenny Kravitz is the latest musician to perform on NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert series. Accompanied by longtime collaborator Craig Ross and mentee Yianni Giannakopoulous, the singer-songwriter tuned in virtually from his home in the Bahamas for a three-song set. Watch it below.
The setlist started off with a moving rendition of ‘Thinking of You’, a 1998 track written about his late mother, which he also dedicated to George Floyd, in reference to his last words being “Mama, mama”.
Before going on to play ‘What Did I Do With My Life?’, Kravitz said: “In the midst of all that has transpiring on our planet right now, it is a blessed time for introspection. More importantly, action. What side of history are you standing on?”
The set ended with a performance of ‘We Can Get It All Together’, from his most recent LP, 2018’s Raise Vibration.
Last week, Kanye Westtweeted out and then deleted the details of his upcoming album, including its title, tracklist, and release date. He announced that it would arrive this Friday, July 24, and would feature 20 songs, including the recently released ‘Wash Us in the Blood’ featuring Travis Scott and ‘Donda’, a tribute to his late mother. Now, the rapper and US presidential candidate has once again taken to social media to announce his new album Donda, this time with a different tracklist. Check out the tweet below.
Containing 12 tracks, the new tracklist still includes the aforementioned tracks, as well as one track called ‘God’s Country’ and another called ‘In God’s Country’. It also includes ‘New Body’, a track originally set to appear on Jesus Is King featuring Nicki Minaj and Ty Dolla $ign. Other tracks appear to have been either cut off or retitled, and the order has been altered, with ‘Lord I Need You’ serving as the closer. Both the title and release date seem to have remained the same.
DONDA will be the follow-up to Kanye’s 2019 studio album Jesus Is King. Last Christmas, Kanye put out its companion LP, Jesus Is Born, a collection of recordings made by his Sunday Service Choir.
Gorillaz have shared a new single featuring ScHoolboy Q called ‘PAC-MAN’. Co-produced by Gorillaz alongside Prince Paul and Remi Kabaka Jr., the track marks the fifth instalment in the cartoon band’s Song Machine series. Check it out below.
The release comes with an accompanying video showing 2-D, aka Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn, getting sucked into the arcade classic of the same name, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in May. The clip also features other band members Noodle, Russel and Murdoc as well as ScHoolboy Q delivering his verse from home.
At the end of the clip, a message appears revealing that the next episode of Song Machine will arrive in September.
Previously in the Song Machine series, Gorillaz released ‘Momentary Bliss’ feat. slowthai and Slaves, followed by ‘Désolé’, ‘Aries’, and ‘Friday 13th’. Back in May, they announced The Gorillaz Almanac, featuring original art from over the years, as well as games, puzzles, and previously unreleased artwork.
