Angel Olsen is the latest musician to perform on NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert series. Sitting on the willow-draped porch of her new home in Asheville, N.C., the singer-songwriter performed the title track from her latest album Whole New Mess, as well as ‘Iota’, ‘What It Is (What It Is)’, and ‘Waving, Smiling’. Check out her performance below.
“This song is just about wishing that all the world could see something for what it is at the same time,” she said of ‘Iota’, which appeared on her 2014 album Burn Your Fire for No Witness.
Angel Olsen recently shared a cover of Bobby Vinton’s 1962 classic ‘Mr. Lonely’, which appears on the soundtrack for Miranda July’s upcoming film Kajillionaire. Whole New Mess came out in August. Recently, Tiny Desk hosted Bright Eyes, Phoebe Bridgers, Billie Eilish, and more.
After much teasing on social media, AC/DC have officially announced their new album POWER UP. The LP arrives November 13 via Columbia. They’ve also previewed the album with the lead single, ‘Shot in the Dark’. Check it out below, and scroll down for the record’s cover artwork and tracklist.
POWER UP reunites the band’s surviving classic lineup: Brian Johnson, Angus Young, Phil Rudd, and Cliff Williams. Stevie Young replaced the late Malcolm Young on rhythm guitar following his passing in 2017. The album marks the first album to feature the band’s classic lineup since 2008’s Black Ice, which was followed in 2014 with Rock or Bust. Though guitarist Malcolm Young did co-write the album, he did not appear on it due to his declining health. In 2015, Rudd left AC/DC following legal issues, and a year later, Johnson had to exit the band’s ‘Rock or Bust Tour’ due to hearing loss.
The album will be available in multiple formats, while a limited deluxe edition will include light-up box with built-in speakers that play a portion of ‘Shot In The Dark’, a 20-page booklet, and more.
1. Realize
2. Rejection
3. Shot In The Dark
4. Through The Mists Of Time
5. Kick You When You’re Down
6. Witch’s Spell
7. Demon Fire
8. Wild Reputation
9. No Man’s Land
10. Systems Down
11. Money Shot
12. Code Red
Johnny Nash, the American reggae and pop singer behind the hit single ‘I Can See Clearly Now’, has died at the age of 80. His son John Nash III told TMZ that he passed away at his home in Houston on Tuesday (October 7). No cause of death was disclosed.
Born in Houston in 1940, Nash grew up singing in the church choir and later as a teenager, performed R&B covers on the local variety show Matinee. Having signed to ABC-Paramount at just 17 years old, he made his major label debut with 1957’s ‘A Teenager Sings the Blues’ and scored his first hit a year later with a cover of Doris Day’s ‘A Very Special Love’. Following the success of his 1965 single, ‘Let’s Move and Groove Together’, which rose to the Top 5 of the Billboard R&B charts, Nash and manager Danny Sims moved to Jamaica, where he was introduced and became friends with Bob Marley & The Wailers.
In 1967, Nash, Arthur Jenkins, and Sims co-founded a label called JAD Records and began recording at Federal Records, Jamaica’s first recording studio. His 1968 single ‘Hold Me Tight’ became a a top-five hit in both the U.S. and UK, followed by his cover of Marley’s ‘Stir it Up’ in 1971. His most famed reggae-influenced single, ‘I Can See Clearly Now’, arrived in 1972. Though overlooked by the Grammys, the popular hit was later covered by artists including Ray Charles, Donny Osmond, Soul Asylum, and Jimmy Cliff. Nash retreated from the music scene in the late 1970s, returning briefly in 1986 with the album Here Again.
“I feel that music is universal,” Nash told Cameron Crowe, then writing for Zoo World Magazine, in 1973. “Music is for the ears and not the age. There are some people who say that they hate music. I’ve run into a few, but I’m not sure I believe them.”
Eddie Van Halen, the legendary guitarist and one of the namesakes behind the hard rock group Van Halen, has died following a long battle with throat cancer. He was 65 years old.
His death was confirmed by his son, Wolf Van Halen, via Twitter. “I can’t believe I’m having to write this,” he wrote, “but my father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, has lost his long and arduous battle with cancer this morning. He was the best father I could ever ask for. Every moment I’ve shared with him on and off stage was a gift.”
Edward Lodewjk Van Halen was born on January 26th, 1955, in Nijmegen, Netherlands. The son of classical musician Jan van Halen, he and his family moved to Pasadena, California, in 1962. Eddie started taking piano lessons at an early age before picking up the guitar, citing Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page as his biggest influences. He and his brother, Alex, formed their first rock band in the mid-1960s, changing multiple names before settling on Van Halen in 1972. By 1974, their lineup included Eddie on guitar, Alex on drums, frontman David Lee Roth as frontman, and bassist Michael Anthony.
After playing in West Hollywood clubs and making a demo produced by Kiss’ Gene Simmons, the band signed to Warner Bros. Records and released their self-titled debut album in 1978. Selling over 10 million copies, Van Halen included the classic track ‘Eruption’, a less-than-two minute instrumental that showcased Eddie’s impressive guitar chops and signature finger tapping guitar technique.
Van Halen became increasingly successful in the late ’70s and early ’80s, from their 1979 hit ‘Dance the Night Away’ to their best-selling sixth LP, 1984, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard albums chart and spawned the chart-topping single ‘Jump’ as well as ‘Panama’ and ‘Hot for Teacher’. At the No. 1 spot was Michael Jackson’s Thriller, whose iconic ‘Beat It’ featured a solo from none other than Eddie Van Halen.
David Lee Roth left the band shortly after to pursue a solo career, with the remaining members of Van Halen regrouping around Sammy Hagar, who fronted the band through the rest of the 1980s and most of the 1990s. Van Halen made one record with Extreme frontman Gary Cherone, 1998’s Van Halen III.
Though Van Halen never fully broke up, Eddie Van Halen’s various health issues occasionally forced the band into hiatus, including his hip-replacement surgery in 1999 and a bout with tongue cancer in the early 2000s. Around the same time, the band briefly got back together with Sammy Hagar before he left for the final time in 2005. David Lee Roth rejoined Van Halen shortly after, releasing their first album together in more than twenty years, A Different Kind of Truth, in 2012.
Eddie’s son, Wolf, joined Van Halen as a bassist after Michael Anthony left the group in 2006. A year later, Van Halen were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Carla J. Easton’s third album, WEIRDO, starts with a romantic proposition that will be familiar to any pop music fan: “Let me take you far away.” Formerly known as Ette, the Glasgow singer might not yet have been crowned the queen of literally everything, but the pulsating synths and soaring, breathy chorus of opener ‘Get Lost’ call right back to the pure pop escapism of Carly Rae Jepsen’s classic ‘Run Away with Me’. The follow-up to 2018’s critically acclaimed Impossible Stuff, WEIRDO carries with it that same euphoric feeling throughout, but Easton augments it with a touch of those darker influences that have yet to materialize in Jepsen’s music: the pounding drums on the otherwise sugary ‘Heart So Hard’, the wobbly synths on the entrancing ‘Beautiful Boy’, the distorted guitars on the thrilling, Honeyblood-featuring title track. But such inventive flourishes only make the bubblegum sweetness of ‘Never Knew You’ or the exuberant maximalism of ‘Over You’ all the more irresistible – at the end of the day, the strangest thing about WEIRDO is that not everyone in the entire world is listening to it. That’s fine; after all, this is an album that builds its own neon-lit cinematic universe, and Easton ensures that whoever is lucky enough to stumble upon it has one hell of a time. Because if you’ve ever enjoyed pop music, you’ll know how good it feels to get a little bit lost.
We caught up with Carla J. Easton for this edition of our Artist Spotlight series, where we showcase up-and-coming artists and give them a chance to talk about their music.
What’s your earliest musical memory?
It’s really hard for me to say. There was always music playing in our household courtesy of my big brother (10 years older than me). His bedroom walls were covered in so many posters that you couldn’t see the wall, and there was always Melody Makers and NMEs lying around. I have early memories of jumping up and down on my bed with a tennis racket guitar and being obsessed with the animated series Jem and The Holograms. When I was 5, my mum dressed me up as a ‘pop star’ for halloween. I had thick purple eye shadow and stars stuck on my face. She sprayed my hair in rainbow colours and I remember having a neon orange scalp for days afterwards at school. Fast forward to today and, usually after a show, I have remnants of glitter everywhere.
What are some influences that inform your music, and how have they evolved over the years?
My record collection is varied. My brother taught me to embrace all genres of music from a young age. Added to that I played saxophone in my school band and had classical piano lessons between the ages of 9 and 13. Playing in a band helped me learn the ways lots of different melodies and parts can fit together. I’ve always loved pop music – be that Teenage Fanclub or Kylie Minogue. I can switch from listening to Beethoven and BMX Bandits quite easily and am obsessed with the Brill Building songwriters. I love the immediacy of Northern Soul and the harmonies of Girl Groups, the synth sounds from dance and Italo and the drama of Spector productions. I guess it all feeds in to what I do in some way. I went to art school and it’s only with each album I make that I realise the influence of art school education on the way I produce music. My demos are sketches to take into the studio and they change into fully formed finished works that are then ‘exhibited’ via live performance. Venues are my galleries.
WEIRDO marks a clear sonic shift from 2018’s Impossible Stuff, leaning more towards the sound of your first record as Ette. What led you back to that path, and how was your approach different this time?
I like to look at the people around me making a record and create a sound specific to the studio environment I am in. With the Ette record, most of it was written whilst I was staying with my mum for a bit. I had a minimal set up that consisted of an old Casio MT keyboard and a Korg Minipops Drum Machine. When it came to recording it was just me and the producer Joe Kane playing all the instruments and recording the album in an old lock up converted into a rehearsal space. Impossible Stuff was recorded in Hotel2Tango in Montreal with Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire/ Leonard Cohen) and I had access to amazing musicians and instruments. That album was mostly recorded live off the floor – each song was captured at just the right point where, playing as a band, we had learned the song but couldn’t overthink our parts so it was spontaneous. I’d written most of those songs on the piano so it became the instrument that everything else fit around.
With WEIRDO – I guess it’s the sound of my having fun and exploring my synth more. Delving deeper into electronic drums. I co-wrote a lot of the tracks with Scott Paterson (Sons and Daughters) who had just come back from touring with The Kills as their synth player and my live band has 2 members of the electronic/dance band Sun Rose. Working with them meant I could push more into synth scapes and electronic drums and combine that with elements of Impossible Stuff. I never really know how a record is going to sound and for me that’s really exciting! Some tracks maybe only have 2 or 3 of us playing on it and some will have 5 – it’s never rehearsed before recoding because I like going into the studio to record with an open attitude. Everything is subject to change. I’ve been working with Producer Stephen Watkins since 2015 and over the last 5 years this is the method that suits us.
Could you talk us through the process of writing and recording WEIRDO? What was it like working with Scott Paterson?
I wrote and recorded the track ‘Thorns’ in 2017 before going to Montreal to record Impossible Stuff. As soon as Stephen sent me the final mix I knew it would be the closing track for the album after Impossible Stuff. I still think it’s one of the best collaborations me and Stephen have made together. It was then over a year before we would begin more tracks for WEIRDO as I was on the release and gig schedule for Impossible. In 2019 I performed a lot of gigs playing synths for The Vaselines (one of my all time favourite bands) which is how I met Scott Paterson who was playing bass for them. We played Belle and Sebastian’s Boaty Weekender and it was after that Scott said come to his studio and let’s co-write together. ‘Get Lost’ was the second song we wrote together and it was quickly followed by ‘Heart So Hard’, ‘Never Knew You’, and ‘Over You’.
Working together has been great as we both love writing and are good friends – I guess what I enjoy most about co-writing is the social aspect of it as writing can be quite isolating at times. The track ‘Weirdo’ was written quickly one afternoon when I was in my bedroom with nothing to do and frustrated about being labelled as ‘weird’ in a derogatory way. ‘Coming Up Daisies’ and ‘Beautiful Boy’ were written at the Banff Centre For Arts and Creativity in Canada where I was attending a writers’ residency in March 2019. I’d hiked up a mountain with songwriter Kim Richey and we were so high up I felt I could pick the sun out of the sky and swallow it down. It made me think about manmade monuments versus natural monuments. At the top of the mountain was an old shack where scientists had been studying cosmic rays and it was lined by old wooden fences that tourists had scrawled there names on, which made me remember a visit to Oscar Wilde’s grave in Paris and how it is now protected by perspex because it was starting to crumble with the weight of pilgrims kisses.
‘Catch Me If I Fall’, ‘Signing It In Blood’ and ‘Waves That Fall’ are all the results of walking around Glasgow and getting melodies in my head. I find that walking provides an ‘inner drumbeat’ and writing to drum machines has always been a tool for me.
How did the collaboration with Honeyblood come about, and what do you feel Stina Tweeddale brought to the track?
Me and Stina became friends after collaborating for a performance for the SAY Award longlist party in 2018. She’s not only become a great friend but also an ally and peer which is important. As a solo artist, it’s brilliant support to have someone you can trust and speak to about projects you are working on. Honeyblood were rehearsing in a studio not far from La Chunky Studio where I was recording with Stephen and my band. They came round to see how the session was going and it just happened off the cuff and very naturally. I think that’s what I love about this album – to me it’s a record made with friends! As soon as she sang the lines on ‘Weirdo’ I knew that would be the bit everyone would want to sing along to (myself included!). With a song like that, and a message of celebrating and embracing your weirdness, I think having Stina on it solidified that – come together, collaborate, create, have fun, be yourself – there’s a celebratory girl gang element that wouldn’t have existed without her involvement.
What do you hope listeners take away from the album?
Pop music can be interesting and fun and sad and happy and euphoric and intricate and clever. It can be lots of different things. It can be dirty as well as shiny. It’s OK to be weird. It’s OK to make mistakes in life and learn from them. You’ll fall in love and crash out of it but you’ll survive. The origins of the word weird originally meant ‘having the power to control destiny’. I like that. This record was therapeutic for me to write and record.
What are your plans for the future?
I hope that one day I can tour this album live and blast it out in sweatbox venues! Until then, I’m writing new music with plans to record shortly. The WEIRDO album has gone to repress and I am so excited to have collaborated with Jim Lambie on the artwork for it for the Wild Rose Jim Lambie Edition. There aren’t many left and the support from everyone has been incredible and means I can keep making music and that’s my favourite thing to do in life.
“UNBOUND came alive really fast,” the group wrote in a statement. “It’s about desire: the kind that oozes for the person you do want and the kind that evaporates for the person you don’t. We wanted to make something groovy and colorful, that could access nostalgia while also giving our listeners something new and danceable in a way we haven’t before.”
‘UNBOUND’ marks the band’s second single of the year, following ‘SUNRISE’, which came out in July. Since then, the track has been remixed by Leven Kali, Deem Spencer x the booyah! kids, and most recently, Arlo Parks.
Loma have previewed their upcoming album Don’t Shy Away with a new song called ‘Elliptical Days’. The track arrives with an accompanying music video directed and edited by the band’s Emily Cross and Dan Duzsynski in Dripping Springs, Texas. Check it out below.
“‘Elliptical Days’ was one of those songs that was pretty well fleshed out by Dan and Jonathan [Meiburg] by the time I heard it,” Cross said in a statement. “I loved how different it sounded from what we usually make together, but it was somehow still in the Loma realm—and the horn arrangement made it really special for me.”
Dan Duzsynski added: “I started ‘Elliptical Days’ as a sketch in Ableton- an exercise to learn the software and dig through some synth sounds. Jonathan heard me messing with it and walked into the control room asking, “Can we use this?” The song really came to life as he and our good friend (and touring member) Emily Lee started overdubbing piano and koto parts—and as usual, our collaboration transcended what any of us could do alone.”
New York rapper Junglepussy has announced a new album: Jp4, the follow-up to 2018’s Jp3, arrives on October 23 via Friends Of/Jagjaguwar. In addition to the announcement, Junglepussy – real name Shayna McHayle – has also released the lead single, ‘Main Attraction’, along with an accompanying music video. Check it out below, and scroll down for the album’s cover artwork and tracklist.
Jp4 features guest appearances from Gangsta Boo and Ian Isiah. “The number three is very powerful for manifestation,” McHayle said in a press release. “Number four though is really securing the foundation. From the genesis of Junglepussy, I struggled with my sound, because what I was doing at the time, I knew it wasn’t really, really, really what I wanted to do. But I just didn’t know how to get there. ‘Jp4’ really sounds like and feels like I got there.”
Junglepussy released her debut album, Pregnant with Success, in 2015.
Jp4 Cover Artwork:
Jp4 Tracklist:
1. Bad News
2. Main Attraction
3. Telepathy
4. Morning Rock
5. Out My Window [ft. Ian Isiah]
6. Spiders
7. What You Want
8. Arugula
9. Stamina [ft. Gangsta Boo]
10. No Band Aid
Holly Humberstone was among the musicians who performed at Guitar.com Live, the three-day virtual guitar show organised by media brand Guitar.com over the weekend. Standing in her back garden, the singer-songwriter played stripped-back renditions of the songs ‘Overkill’, ‘Vanilla’ and ‘Deep End’ from her debut EP, Falling Asleep At The Wheel. Check out her performance below.
Before ending her set with ‘Deep End’, she explained why the song is her favourite from the project. “I wrote it about one of my sisters, who when I wrote it at the time was going through a really difficult patch with her mental health,” she said. “I personally find conversations really tricky to have, especially uncomfortable ones about mental health. I just wanted her to know I was there for her, even if I couldn’t fully understand. Putting it into a song was easier than having a conversation with her about it, and so I wrote ‘Deep End’ for that reason.”
In addition to Humberstone, St. Vincent, Carlos Santana, Jason Isbell, Anderson .Paak’s backing band Free Nationals, and more also appeared at Guitar.com Live.
Netflix has unveiled the trailer for the upcoming BLACKPINK documentary, due out later this month. Announced in September, Blackpink: Light Up The Sky is directed by Caroline Suh and is described as “an all-access documentary about one of the world’s most popular groups”. Check it out below.
A statement on the documentary reads: “As Blackpink continues reaching new heights in their career — from headlining sold-out world tours to becoming the first female Korean group to perform at Coachella — each member reflects on the ups and downs of fame and the long, often challenging journey that brought them to worldwide success.”
In addition to releasing the trailer, Netflix has also shared a clip of the K-pop group reacting to it. Watch that below as well.
BLACKPINK’s debut studio album, The Album, came out last Friday (October 2). Light Up the Sky is set to premiere on October 14.
