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Artist Spotlight: MOURN

Konstantinos Pappis
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Artist Spotlight: MOURN

You can hardly call MOURN an “up-and-coming band”. The Catalonian quartet, consisting of vocalists Carla Pérez Fas and Jazz Rodríguez Bueno, bassist Leia Rodríguez, and drummer  Víctor Pelusa – released their self-titled debut all the way back in 2014, a darkly-tinged, ferocious punk album recorded with then-drummer Antonio Postius Echeverría when all four members were still in their teens. Boiling over with the raw emotional intensity you might expect coming from a group of social outcasts who weren’t afraid to name their enemies, the album also showcased the band’s propensity for dynamic arrangements and melodic hooks amidst all the chaos and unbridled frustration. Their stylistic progression is evident throughout 2016’s post-punkish Ha, Ha, He. and 2018’s confident Sorpresa Familia, which saw them fleshing out those qualities without abandoning the youthful energy of their debut. Now, they’re gearing up for the release of their fourth album, Self Worth, which is anchored by a series of driving singles: the raucous ‘This Feeling is Disgusting’ finds the band navigating the uncertainty of adult life, while the newly unveiled ‘Men’ – a sort of update on the 2014 bonus cut ‘Boys Are Cunts’ – pulsates with righteous indignation as it rails against the systems of patriarchy. Growing up might just mean having more things to be angry about, but this has only made MOURN’s music all the more defiant.

We caught up with MOURN for this edition of our Artist Spotlight series, where we showcase artists and give them a chance to talk about their music.

How did you form Mourn?

We formed Mourn back in 2014 while Jazz and I (Carla) were studying Arts together. We were always talking about music and messing around with our guitars playing covers so we ended up writing songs together and decided to save money to record them. Asked Leia and Antonio to be part of the band and recorded Mourn (our first album) on a weekend. 

You’ve had to face many obstacles since then. How has that affected your approach to making music?

Being a musician (especially being in a band nowadays) and living off your music isn’t easy. We’ve always reflected our diaries on our songs; we need to put our feelings out through words and sounds. So it has definitely affected our music in that regard but not in a negative way. Obstacles are in our way to step on them and keep going.

You’ve described the new album as “an album of empowerment”, saying that you read more about feminism while writing it. Were there any ideas that particularly inspired you?

This new album (Self Worth) is the result of a year of listening to what we needed as human beings and as members of the band. Suddenly, when you do what feels right and what liberates you from things you realised weren’t healthy behaviours, you feel empowered. Checking on your human relationships and deciding what you can’t accept anymore and changing them has been an idea that follows the album. 

I think many young people who can relate to the sentiments you express on ‘This Feeling is Disgusting’, especially when it comes to the uncertainties of navigating adult life. Did you have any discussions about your shared experiences while making the song?

We are constantly debating about how precarious our job is and how much we want it to work. We also share our struggles with money and insecurities on how we’re actually going to survive in the near future (especially with Covid-19 now). Jazz came up with the lyrics about this shared feeling of uncertainty.

Could you talk about the process of making the video for the track?

We wanted to work with Grulla Estudio for ‘Call You Back’’s music video but because we were quarantined we couldn’t do it. So once we could go outside we started working on the idea for ‘This Feeling Is Disgusting’. We had a long FaceTime call with Alex (Director) and Yai (Director of Photography) and shared our ideas. We felt super comfortable with them because they gave us freedom with our ideas. It was the chillest team and experience ever filming a music video and we can’t wait to work with them again on future projects!

What were some of the highs and lows of making the album as a whole?

The highs were definitely when Jazz and I went to Lalanne (South of France) for a week and improvised some riffs and wrote lyrics for the album. It was a bonding experience that we’ll never forget. Another high moment was the summer we spent in our rehearsal space playing, sweating like crazy, eating Cheerios and drinking beer. For this record I can’t think of a low moment, to be honest. Maybe when things get stressful because you want something to work and you are impatient as hell haha but I wouldn’t say that’s a low moment.

What do you hope listeners ultimately take away from Self Worth?

First of all, we hope that they like what they hear! And if they get deeper into it, we hope they can also feel empowered as we do while playing these songs.

Self-Worth arrives October 30 via Captured Tracks.

Bartees Strange Shares Video for New Song ‘Kelly Rowland’

Konstantinos Pappis
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0
Bartees Strange Shares Video for New Song ‘Kelly Rowland’

Bartees Strange has previewed his upcoming album Live Forever with a new single called ‘Kelly Rowland’. Following the previously released ‘Mustang’ and ‘Boomer’, the track is accompanied by a music video directed by Britain Weyant. Check it out below.

“Another song that will probably stick with me forever because I had the hugest crush on Kelly Rowland and I copied literally every stylistic move Nelly did as a high schooler. Band aid included,” Strange wrote on Twitter.

Speaking about the song in an interview with Stereogum, the singer-songwriter said: “‘Kelly Rowland’ is my peak hedonistic dream, if I had no rules. I was in Berlin, and I saw the most beautiful, talented, wealthy, amazing people, we partied all night and danced all night. And I was like, ‘I cannot believe people live every day like this.’ It’s this hyper-idealized vision of what I wish I could be, for a moment.”

Live Forever is out October 2nd via Memory Music. Check out our Artist Spotlight interview with Bartees Strange here.

 

Watch Taylor Swift Perform ‘betty’ at the ACMs

Konstantinos Pappis
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0
Watch Taylor Swift Perform ‘betty’ at the ACMs

Taylor Swift gave ‘betty’ its live debut last night (September 16) at the the 55th Academy of Country Music Awards. The singer performed the folklore single at Nashville’s legendary Grand Ole Opry House. Check it out below.

Though she’s garnered nine ACM Awards in the past, last night marked the first time Swift performed at the ceremony since 2013, when she joined Tim McGraw and Keith Urban for a performance of ‘Highway Don’t Care’.

folklore, Swift’s eighth studio album, was released in July, and became the top-selling album of 2020. It features contributions from the National’s Aaron Dessner, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Jack Antonoff, and more.

Faye Webster Releases Video for New Song ‘Better Distractions’

Konstantinos Pappis
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0
Faye Webster Releases Video for New Song ‘Better Distractions’

Faye Webster has released a new song titled ‘Better Distractions’. Recorded at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, Georgia and produced by the singer-songwriter’s frequent collaborator Drew Vandenberg, the single arrives with an accompanying music video directed by Matt Swinsky and Eat Humans. Watch it below.

“I wrote this song kinda without knowing I was writing it,” Webster said in a press release. “It’s a kind of free association, just thoughts running straight from my head onto paper untouched. I also think it’s best my band has ever sounded on record.”

Along with the new single, Webster has also announced a full band performance scheduled for October 6, to be streamed via Noonchorus.  Her last album was 2019’s Atlanta Millionaires Club. 

Angel Olsen Shares Cover of ‘Mr. Lonely’ for ‘Kajillionaire’ Soundtrack

Konstantinos Pappis
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0
Angel Olsen Shares Cover of ‘Mr. Lonely’ for ‘Kajillionaire’ Soundtrack

Angel Olsen has shared a cover of Bobby Vinton’s 1962 classic ‘Mr. Lonely’, which appears on the soundtrack for Miranda July’s upcoming film Kajillionaire. A snippet of the cover, which was recorded with the film’s composer Emile Mosseri, was originally featured on the film’s trailer, but has now been released in full. Listen to it below.

“Suddenly there she was,” Olsen said in a statement about her involvement in the film. “THE MIRANDA JULY in my text messages. She was working on songs with Emile for the upcoming film Kajillionaire, which at the time I knew nothing about. I just so happened to be in Los Angeles. So I met with them both, and we talked about cadence and we talked about life and we talked about the film.”

“Miranda directed me to sing the cover in the way she and Emile thought it would represent the feelings behind the film,” she added. “It was a lovely experience. Later, Miranda and I went outside for a little break and we did a little improv with each other. Just us.”

Both the film and its soundtrack are set for release on September 25. Olsen’s latest studio album, Whole New Mess, came out last month. The singer-songwriter also recently covered George Harrison’s ‘Beware of Darkness’.

Tim Heidecker and Weyes Blood Unveil New Collaboration ‘Property’

Konstantinos Pappis
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0
Tim Heidecker and Weyes Blood Unveil New Collaboration ‘Property’

Tim Heidecker and Weyes Blood‘s Natalie Mering have shared a new collaborative track from Heidecker’s upcoming album, Fear of Death. Check out ‘Property’ below.

The song marks the third single from the album following the title track and ‘Nothing’. Fear of Death, which also features contributions from the Lemon Twigs, Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, and more, arrives on September 25th via Spacebomb.

The new single comes shortly after the release of the trailer for a Showtime series called Moonbase 8, which stars Heidecker, Fred Armisen and John C. Reilly. It premieres on November 8th.

Listen to Thom Yorke’s Remix of Clark’s ‘Isolation Theme’

Konstantinos Pappis
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0
Listen to Thom Yorke’s Remix of Clark’s ‘Isolation Theme’

Thom Yorke has shared a remix of Clark’s ‘Isolation Theme’, from the electronic producer’s soundtrack to the 2019 thriller Daniel Isn’t Real. Listen to it below.

“I took Clark’s score of ‘Isolation Theme’ and simply made it feel like the moment we were entering; being told to stay indoors, entering a new type of silence,” Yorke said in a press release. “I guess I simplified it in a way, into waveforms that were being disrupted. I was surprised how frightening it became.”

Clark added: “I started working on Daniel Isn’t Real around the time I was asked to remix Thom’s track ‘Not The News’, so it has a neat circularity closing the expanded edition of the score with him remixing me. I was surprised how well the midi translated to his remix. He got such a good pure electronic tone out of it. It amazes me how simple note information, if it has a nice shape, can transmit to multiple voicings. This isn’t good news for genres. It’s good news for me though.”

The remix comes ahead of the expanded release of Clark’s score for the 2019 film, which is set to arrive on December 6 via Deutsche Grammophon.

Haviah Mighty Unveils Video for ‘Bag Up’

Modestas Mankus
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0
Haviah Mighty Unveils Video for ‘Bag Up’

Haviah Mighty, the beloved Toronto hip-hop artist, won the prestigious Polaris Music Prize, just over a year ago for her well-received album 13th floor. Now a year later, she published a music video for one of the biggest tracks of the album ‘Bag Up’.

Talking about the song Haviah added: “‘Bag Up’ is the last piece of content from the album,’13th Floor.’ It’s amazing that we’ve had over a year of fun with this project! We collaborated with Rack & Pinion on this visual, depicting a selection of resilient women on different paths, dealing with different life hindrances, but bonding over and connecting with the go-getter energy that lies in all of us. With playful lines like ‘I just wanna get my M’s up … mmm mmm I’m a smartie though” and more personal lines like ‘They wanna gentrify dreads, but I’m the creme de la creme,’ I focus on my specific hustle – being a musician – and how I will remain true to the craft while growing this empire.”

Album Review: The Flaming Lips, ‘American Head’

Konstantinos Pappis
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0
Album Review: The Flaming Lips, ‘American Head’

For a band entering the fifth decade of their career, American Head might sound like an obvious attempt at playing it safe. Eschewing the conceptual theatrics of last year’s King’s Mouth and the anti-pop experimentation that characterised much of their output in the 2010s, the Flaming Lips’ sixteenth studio album finds them pivoting back to the familiar mid-tempo balladry and grand orchestral swells that made much of their 90s material so iconic. Drawing shamelessly from the classic psych-rock playbook, they’ve come up with a record that has seemingly little in common with the Lips’ shapeshifting highlights even as it appears to be emulating them.

And yet, American Head is somewhat of a revelation. Frontman Wayne Coyne and company might be touching on the well-trodden themes of death, drugs, and the American dream against a backdrop of predictably beatific, 70s-inspired arrangements, but this grounded approach is a gateway to some of the band’s most personal songwriting to date. On the surface, the album might come off as a purely nostalgic affair as Coyne looks back on the formative years of his life as a kid growing up in Oklahoma, but it’s more of a sobering reflection on the dangers of romanticising a certain kind of lifestyle, and the ways in which that spark of youthful idealism fades with age.

Opener ‘Will You Return/ When You Come Down’ sets the stage by laying out a striking realization: “Now all your friends are dead/ And they’re ghosts floating around your bed,” Coyne sings pensively, accompanied by a chiming instrumental that taps into the haunting qualities of a lullaby. As epic introductions go, it feels like the band is signalling their slow descent back into Earth. Follow-up ‘Watching the Lightbulbs Glow’ channels Pink Floyd’s ‘A Great Gig in the Sky’ but seems to aim for the opposite effect; Kacey Musgraves’ vocals are plaintive rather than ecstatic, floating above the ether like a ghostly reminder of what’s been lost. Musgraves might seem like an unlikely choice for a feature on a Flaming Lips record, but unlike other pop stars who have found themselves into the band’s orbit, her dreamy cadence warmly complements the tenderness in Coyne’s delivery when it comes up on the elegiac ‘Flowers of Neptune 6’ and ‘God and the Policeman’.

American Head’s earthly, naturalistic tones seem to serve as a manifestation of the narrator’s change in perspective, a framing device that warns against the romanticism that governs the lives of the young characters that inhabit the album. The chorus of ‘Dinosaurs on the Mountain’ recaptures the innocence of childhood, but Coyne’s vocals turn into a distant croon as his older self paints a more unsettling picture of a memory that’s now riddled with fear and anxiety. On ‘At the Movies on Quaaludes’, Coyne recalls one experience of getting high as life-threateningly horrifying, even as he recounts it in the present tense: “We’re so high that we/ Forget that we’re alive/ As we destroy our brains/ ‘Til we believe we’re dead.” And on ‘Mother I’ve Taken LSD’, Coyne’s lyricism takes a devastating turn for the confessional: “I thought it would set me free/ But now I think it’s changed me,” he laments, adding, “Now I see the sadness in the world.”

It’s an eye-opening moment, but it’s not the last time that Coyne addresses his mother directly on the album. Where ‘Mother, I’ve Taken LSD’ is sung from the perspective of Coyne’s brother, ‘Mother Please Don’t Be Sad’, a sweeping piano ballad that arrives later in the tracklist, finds him opening up about his own near-death experience, laced with the kind of sentimentality that feels entirely earned and sincere. The song transitions seamlessly into the slow-percolating ‘When We Die When We’re High’, a stand-out instrumental that unfolds like the journey to the afterlife. More than a thin collection of melancholic ballads, there’s a clear narrative progression running throughout American Head, which makes it feel both purposeful and compelling.

The Flaming Lips lay down a ream of great songs on the front half of the album, each of which builds steadily upon the other. But the record falters somewhat towards the back end: ‘You n Me Selling Weed’ should work in theory, but it lacks the nuance to really bring out the more violent undertones of its doomed love story, as other songs on the album do; ‘Assassins of Youth’ is another weak spot that attempts to offer a glimpse of the bigger picture but ends up feeling devoid of any substance. But American Head closes off on a fittingly high note with ‘My Religion is You’, which wonderfully underscores what the album is really about: not death, or God, or magic forests, but giving yourself fully to the ones you love. This, Coyne seems to be saying, is the only kind of devotion that’s really worth it.

Angie McMahon Shares New Version of ‘Soon’, Covers Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The River’

Konstantinos Pappis
-
0
Angie McMahon Shares New Version of ‘Soon’, Covers Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The River’

Angie McMahon has shared an alternate version of her song ‘Soon’ as well as a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The River’. Both singles are set to appear on McMahon’s upcoming EP Piano Salt and arrive with accompanying music videos, which you can watch below.

For the ‘Soon’ montage, McMahon compiled footage of her home during lockdown as well as clips from various locations across the U.S., taken when she supported Hozier on their North American tour last year. “We were travelling around America, my sound engineer Jono and I, following the Hozier bus and having our own adventures every day,” she wrote in the video’s description. “I’m so grateful he kept the go pro on for that month, and that the audiences were so warm, and that I have a safe and comfortable home to slow down in now. Thank you to our friend Lewis Parsons who edited all of this together so flawlessly.”

About her decision to cover ‘The River’, she said: “I love the way [Bruce Springsteen] can tell a story as a writer, and I grew up listening to his music. I was going to learn the harmonica for this one, but I ran out of time, so I turned his harmonica solo into a whistle one. Sorry Dad.”

McMahon talked more about the origins of both stripped-backed recordings for an Origins feature at Consequence of Sound. “Like lots of Bruce songs, this is a song about longing and dreaming, and about injustice or being trapped, but there is so much strength and dignity in the voices,” she said of ‘The River’.

Piano Salt comes out on October 2nd. McMahon released her debut studio album, Salt, in July of 2019.

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