Kate Tempest has announced they will be changing their name to Kae Tempest. From now on, they will be using the pronouns they/them, the rapper and poet revealed on social media.
“It’s pronounced like the letter K,” Kae wrote. “It’s an old English word that means Jay bird. Jays are associated with communication, curiosity, adaptation to new situations and COURAGE which is the name of the game at the moment. It can also mean jackdaw brought the rain. Which I love. It has its roots in the Latin word for rejoice, be glad and take pleasure. And I hope to live more that way each day.”
Regarding the change of pronouns, they added: “I have tried to be what I thought others wanted me to be so as not to risk rejection. This hiding from myself has led to all kinds of difficulties in my life. And this is a first step towards knowing and respecting myself better.”
Read Kae’s full statement below. Their most recent album was 2019’s The Book of Traps and Lessons, which we named one of the best albums of the year.
Sam Lewis, aka SG Lewis, has released a new song featuring Robyn and Channel Tres titled ‘Impact’. It’s the second single from his upcoming full-length debut, following ‘Chemicals’. Check it out below.
“The chemistry between Channel and Robyn is so powerful, and creates something so unique,” SG Lewis said in a statement. “Channel is an artist I believe will go on to create a musical legacy as important as the one Robyn has already created, and to have the two of them on this record together is insane. I hope it provides some release and euphoria in a time where it’s hard to come by.”
Speaking about the inspiration behind the song, Channel Tres explained: “’Impact’ is about how someone can come into your life and completely change you either for better or worse. In this instance it was for the better and I’m going through the emotions of denying something that’s obviously good for me but the hurt I’ve been through in my past causes me to put up defense mechanisms. While I’m putting up the defenses, the person trying to love me pursues me consistently and this impacts my life in so many ways.”
Robyn added that Lewis “made this instant thing, it’s a special skill to make a song that hits you right away the way ‘Impact’ does. The track just gave me the feels and it wasn’t ́t hard to write a chorus to it, especially with Channels vocals on there already.”
SG Lewis started making waves with his trilogy of EPs, Dusk (2018), Dark (2018), and Dawn (2019), which led to collaborations with the likes of Khalid, Dua Lipa, and Clairo. Robyn is set to appear on Jonsí’s upcoming album, while Channel Tres will feature on Disclosure’s new album ENERGY.
Bon Iver have shared a new song titled ‘AUATC’, which stands for ‘Ate Up All Their Cake’, via Jagjaguwar. The track was co-written Phil Cook co-produced by Jim-E Stack and BJ Burton. It features appearances from the likes of lsa Jensen, Jenny Lewis, Bruce Springsteen, and Jenn Wasner. Check it out below, alongside an accompanying music video directed by Aaron Anderson and Eric Timothy Carlson and featuring dance and movement from Randall Riley.
The track is billed as the second “episode” of “Bon Iver Season Five,” following ‘PDLIF’ which stood for ‘Please Don’t Live In Fear’, released back in April. Justin Vernon recently collaborated with Taylor Swift on ‘exile’, from her new album folklore. He released his fourth studio album i,i in August of last year.
Filipino-British indie artist beabadoobee has revealed that her debut album Fake It Flowerswill arrive on October 16th through Dirty Hit. The 12-track LP will include the previously released single ‘Care’ and the newly unveiled ‘Sorry’, which comes with a brooding visual directed by longtime collaborators bedroom. Check it out below, and scroll for the album’s cover artwork and tracklist.
In a press release, beabadoobee explained that ‘Sorry’ is about “confessing [her] mistakes in a friendship and watching someone who [she loves] breakdown and fade away as a person. It’s the idea of dismissing something because it felt too close to home and a personal reminder to never take for granted what that person could have had.”
Fake It Flowers follows last year’s Space Cadet EP, which contained the song ‘I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus’, a tribute to the titular Pavement frontman. In addition to the new album, beabadoobee – real name Bea Kristi – recently told Beats 1 Radio that she’s working on a new EP produced by the 1975’s Matt Healy and George Daniel.
Fake It Flowers Cover Artwork:
Fake It Flowers Tracklist:
1. Care
2. Worth It
3. Dye It Red
4. Back To Mars
5. Charlie Brown
6. Emo Song
7. Sorry
8. Further Away
9. Horen Sarrison
10. How Was Your Day?
11. Together
12. Yoshimi, Forest, Magdalene
Phoebe Bridgers was the musical guest on the latest instalment of Live On KEXP At Home. The singer-songwriter performed three songs from her latest album, Punisher – ‘Chinese Satellite’, ‘Kyoto’, and ‘I See You’ – as well as a cover of Sinèad O’Connor’s ‘Black Boys On Mopeds’, from her 1990 LP, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. Bridgers was accompanied by her band for the first three songs, and performed her chilling rendition of ‘Black Boys On Mopeds’ solo. Check out her performance below.
Mush, a magnificent post-punk band out of Leeds, has released their latest song Dead Beat. The song comes after the release of their debut album 3D Routine, which was released earlier this year. The album included arguably their most successful song Revising My Fee.
Mush will also be following up with a five-track EP named Great Artisanal Formats which is due to be released on the 29th of August for Record Store Day 2020.
Expectations were high for Alanis Morissette‘s ninth album, Such Pretty Forks In the Road: not only because it marks her first album in eight years, but also because the shadow of her landmark LP, Jagged Little Pill, still looms large. With a musical version having debuted at Broadway last year and the 25th anniversary deluxe edition being unveiled earlier this year, Morissette was set to go on a Jagged Little Pill tour before the pandemic changed everything; it’s almost as if it wasn’t even worth comparing it to her most recent effort. After being repeatedly delayed due to COVID-19, it wouldn’t entirely be a surprise if Morissette decided to wait a couple more years to release the album.
Granted, Such Pretty Forks In The Road is no Jagged Little Pill, but it’s not trying to be; while that album was a landmark release for alternative rock thanks to its voraciously defiant expression of female angst, her latest finds her honing in her skills as an emotive songwriter, resting on the reliable musical territories of power balladry and soft rock while flaunting her powerhouse of a voice to unsurprisingly great effect. It’s certainly an improvement from her last album, 2012’s stultifying havoc and bright lights, which too often mistaked maturity as little more than self-indulgent psychobabble.
Rather than suffering from the same pitfalls, though, its follow-up sees her returning to the raw power of her confessional songwriting without repeating the same formula that brought her success. Instead, she infuses it with some of the theatricality that’s likely inspired by that Broadway production of Jagged Little Pill, which leads to some of the album’s brightest moments: ‘Reasons I Drink’ is undeniably the biggest highlight here, its jaunty piano line underlying some of Morissette’s most personal lyrics, which detail her struggles with addiction in a way that might not necessarily be revelatory but still stands out as strikingly potent. Of the many spare piano ballads on the album, ‘Diagnosis’ is the most compelling, tackling the subject of postpartum depression with dramatic instrumentation and lyrics that never feel contrived. “Call it what you want/ ‘Cause I don’t even care anymore,” she sings in desperation, “Call me what you need to/ To make yourself comfortable.”
Moments like these serve as much needed reminders that Morissette’s knack for writing powerfully direct songs hasn’t gone anywhere, and the album doesn’t dilute her signature approach as much as it sees her using it more sparingly, which makes stand-out tunes like the lilting ‘Sandbox Love’ hit that much harder. “Awkward as fuck/ Precious as fuck/ Scary as fuck,” she belts out on the track’s chorus, navigating what it means to have a healthy relationship with sex as a survivor of abuse. While both Morissette’s performances and her songwriting (here aided by Morrissey sideman Michael Farrell) are frequently riveting, they’re sometimes undercut by the less-than-dynamic, often thin instrumentation, which can make an otherwise promising track feel unremarkable. ‘Losing the Plot’ is driven by a kind of simmering tension that never really explodes, the distorted electric guitars losing their punch as they’re drowned out in the background. A track like opener ‘Smiling’, on the other hand, manages to evoke a much fuller sound without overshadowing Morissette’s singing, despite the fact that its chord progression and guitar tone are little too similar to Radiohead’s ‘My Iron Lung’.
Towards the end of the album comes ‘Nemesis’, which, with its imposing arrangement and propulsive rhythm section, achieves the kind of emotional release that’s exactly what this album needed. While some of the record’s most evocative moments are those where the stripped-back instrumentation acts as a backbone for Morissette’s stunningly expressive voice, like on the feminist ‘Her’, when the theatricality of the songwriting successfully matches her poetic brilliance, an entirely different kind of magic emerges. For many, Such Pretty Forks might be little more than a reaffirmation of Morissette’s many strengths, but despite its shortcomings, it also stands as a testament to her evolution as a songwriter. “When the glare of the lights grow dim/ And you’re left with a delicate real/When the bright lights clear, there’s just me sitting here,” she sings on the closing track, ‘Pedestal’. Wherever she decides to take her music next, that vulnerability is always going to be at its core; and though she wryly describes that exposed version of herself as “sometimes average, sometimes more”, when it manages to cut through, it really is a lot more.
Tim Heidecker has announced a new LP, Fear of Death, featuring contribution from Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering, the Lemon Twigs, Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, and more. The follow-up to 2019’s What the Brokenhearted Do… comes out September 25 via Spacebomb. The artist has also unveiled the album’s title track, along with a music video filmed at Valentine Studios in Los Angeles. Check it out below, and scroll for the cover artwork and tracklist.
“I didn’t know that this record was going to be so focused on death when I was writing it,” Heidecker said in statement. “It took a minute for me to stand back and look at what I was talking about to realize that, yes, I am now a middle-aged man and my subconscious is screaming at me: ‘You are getting old, dude! You are not going to live forever! Put down that cheeseburger!’”
He added: “This record is a dream come true for me. I got to work with some of the best, and nicest, musicians in town who helped me take some shabby, simple tunes and turn them into something I’m really proud of.”
Fear of Death Cover Artwork:
Fear of Death Tracklist:
1. Prelude to Feelings
2. Come Away With Me
3. Backwards
4. Fear of Death
5. Someone Who Can Handle You
6. Nothing
7. Say Yes
8. Property
9. Little Lamb
10. Let It Be (The Beatles cover)
11. Long as I’ve Got You
12. Oh How We Drift Away
Dua Lipa has announced she will be releasing the deluxe edition of her sophomore album Future Nostalgia on Friday, August 21. Titled Club Future Nostalgia: The Remix Album, the LP will feature remixes of every song from the record, including a remix of ‘Physical’ by Mark Ronson featuring Gwen Stefani, as well as a previously announced remix of ‘Levitating’ featuring Missy Elliott and Madonna, to be unveiled on August 14.
“CLUB FUTURE NOSTALGIA THE REMIX ALBUM W THE BLESSED MADONNA COMING AUGUST 21ST,” the pop singer wrote on social media. “LEVITATING AUGUST 14TH – FEATURING MISSY ELLIOTT & MADONNA – PHYSICAL FT. GWEN STEFANI REMIXED BY MARK RONSON +++ ALL FUTURE NOSTALGIA TRACKS N THEN SUM REMIXED BY UR FAVES.”
Replying to a comment by a fan regarding the previously teased Future Nostalgia B-sides album, Lipa wrote: “don’t worry I got that n then some coming your way. Hold tight i’ve got enough to hold you all the way through till 2022.”
CLUB FUTURE NOSTALGIA THE REMIX ALBUM W THE BLESSED MADONNA COMING AUGUST 21ST – LEVITATING AUGUST 14TH – FEATURING MISSY ELLIOTT & MADONNA – PHYSICAL FT. GWEN STEFANI REMIXED BY MARK RONSON +++ ALL FUTURE NOSTALGIA TRACKS N THEN SUM REMIXED BY UR FAVES pic.twitter.com/LOeK09peYB
The two Welsh artists first met in London while collaborating on one of Cale’s songs, and decided to record a song together for Inner Song. Cale sings in both English and Welsh over Owens’ droning electronics.
“I knew with this album I needed to connect with my roots and therefore having the Welsh language featured on the record felt very important to me,” Owens explained in a press release. “Once the music for the track was written and the sounds were formed, I sent the track straight to John and asked if he could perhaps delve into his Welsh heritage and tell the story of the land via spoken-word, poetry, and song. What he sent back was nothing short of phenomenal. The arrangement was done during the mixing process and once I’d finished the track, I cried — firstly feeling incredibly lucky to have collaborated with John and his eternal talent and secondly for both of us to have been able to connect to our homeland in this way.”
Cale added: “It’s not usually this immediate that a productive afternoon brings a satisfying conclusion to a task. Kelly sent me a track she’d written — an instrumental that was a gentle drift — something comfortably familiar to what I’d been working on myself. On the first listen, the lyrics came with ease and a chorus and melody grew out of it. Even the Welsh phrases seemed to develop from a place of reflective memory, which was a surprise since I hadn’t written in Welsh for decades. Once finished, I realized there existed a built-in thread we’d created together and apart — and her kind spirit pulled it all together and in quick order.”
Owens previously shared the tracks ‘On’, ‘Melt!’, and ‘Night’, from her forthcoming LP. Inner Song was initially scheduled for release in May, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
