Morpho – the Chicago-based project of guitarist Kristyn Chapman – has shared a new single from her debut EP, Morpho Season, which is out this Friday (November 15) via Hit the North Records. ‘Blue Light follows the previously unveiled tracks ‘Prism’ and ‘Half of Two’. Check out a video for it below.
“I’m a graphic designer and I spend a lot of time aligning to the center, left-aligning or grid-aligning things… Very exact with everything,” Chapman shared in a statement. “This song’s about being tired of that and wanting to be more free. It’s also about dependence on technology and phones… how digital our lives and memories have become.”
Long Island emo band Koyo have released a new song, ‘Mile a Minute’. It’s the title track off their new three-song EP, which is out today via Pure Noise Records. Check it out below.
“This is the first full band, full-send Koyo track after releasing our first record – for sure an intimidating prospect,” frontman Joey Chiaramonte explained in a statement. “We’ve been slowly but surely getting more music together, maybe keeping everything a little closer to our chests than usual. So we wanted to select one proper Koyo track to hold everyone down for a while. ‘Mile A Minute’ is a strong foot forward in this moment.”
After performing The Black Parade in full at When We Were Young this fall, My Chemical Romance have announced a summer stadium tour celebrating their seminal 2006 album. The band will play 10 North American shows across July, August, and September. Each show features support from a different artist: Violent Femmes, 100 Gecs, Wallows, Garbage, Death Cab for Cutie and Thursday (on the same show), Alice Cooper, Pixies, Devo, IDLES, and Evanescence. Check out the list of dates and a trailer for the tour below.
In a note to fans, MCR wrote:
It has been seventeen years since The Black Parade was sent to the MOAT. In that time, a great Dictator has risen to power, bringing about “THE CONCRETE AGE”; a glorious time of stability and abundance in the history of DRAAG. His Grand Immortal Dictator wishes to celebrate our rich and storied culture, fine foods, and musical entertainments by welcoming you to these great demonstrations of power and resolve. And lending voice and song for the first time in six thousand two hundred and forty six days, their work privilege ceremoniously reinstated, will be His Grand Immortal Dictator’s National Band… The Black Parade.
Jul 11 – Seattle, WA – T-Mobile Park (Special Guest: Violent Femmes)
Jul 19 – San Francisco, CA – Oracle Park (Special Guest: 100 Gecs)
Jul 26 – Los Angeles, CA – Dodger Stadium (Special Guest: Wallows)
Aug 2 – Arlington, TX – Globe Life Field (Special Guest: Garbage)
Aug 9 – East Rutherford, NJ – MetLife Stadium (Special Guests: Death Cab for Cutie and Thursday)
Aug 15 – Philadelphia, PA – Citizens Bank Park (Special Guest: Alice Cooper)
Aug 22 – Toronto, ON – Rogers Centre (Special Guest: Pixies)
Aug 29 – Chicago, IL – Soldier Field (Special Guest: Devo)
Sep 7 – Boston, MA – Fenway Park (Special Guest: IDLES)
Sep 13 – Tampa, FL – Raymond James Stadium (Special Guest: Evanescence)
Oakland-based artist Kathryn Mohr has announced her debut album, Waiting Room, arriving January 24 on The Flenser. The LP was written and self-recorded over a month in eastern Iceland. Listen to the first single ‘Driven’ below.
Mohr made the new album “within the walls of a disused fish factory surrounded by remote nature,” according to a press release. “Mohr spent hours immersed in the writing and recording of this album in a windowless concrete room lit with a string of multicolored light bulbs (which made their way into the album art), taking breaks to wander the factory or disappear up the shoreline—field recorder in hand. What came out of those recording hours are songs inspired by horror as extravagant as limb amputation by a faulty elevator and lyrics as maze-like and misguided as the torturous love and fears they depict.”
Mohr reflected: “Music takes me out of my body, immerses me in another world the way a film does. I begin and end in very different emotional states, doors open where there were no doors before– that is what I experienced making this record. If this inner movement is contagious, spreads to those who listen, then this was a record worth creating.”
Waiting Room Cover Artwork:
Waiting Room Tracklist:
1. Diver
2. Rated
3. Driven
4. Petrified
5. Take It
6. Elevator
7. Prove It
8. Horizonless
9. Cornered
10. Wheel
11. Waiting Room
Squid have announced their next album, Cowards, which will be out February 7 via Warp Records. The follow-up to 2023’s O Monolith is led by the single ‘Crispy Skin’, which arrives with a video directed by Takashi Ito. Check it out below.
“‘Crispy Skin’ was lyrically inspired by a dystopian novel Tender Is The Flesh I read where cannibalism becomes the societal norm and humans are manufactured and sold in supermarkets,” lead vocalist/drummer Ollie Judge said in a statement. “I think when most people read books like these they picture themselves as the sort of person that would take the moral high-ground within these narratives. The track was written about how the reality of having a moral-compass in these stories of desperation and horror would be extremely difficult.”
Judge added, “If I was actually in that world, I probably would be the coward in this instance.”
The music video serves as an adaptation of Ito’s award-winning experimental 1995 short film Zone. Ito offered the following description: “A film about a man without a face. His arms and legs bound with ropes, still without even a quiver in a white room. This man, enwrapped in wild delusions, is also a reconstruction of myself. A series of unusual scenes in this room that expresses what lies inside me. I tried to create a connection between memories, nightmares and violent images.”
Cowards features contributions from Danish experimental songwriter Clarissa Connelly, composer, pianist, and singer Tony Njoku, Rosa Brook of Pozi, percussionist Zands Duggan, and the Ruisi Quarte. Marta Salogni, Grace Banks, and Dan Carey helped produce the LP, which was mixed by Tortoise drummer John McEntire and mastered by Heba Kadry.
Cowards Cover Artwork:
Cowards Tracklist:
1. Crispy Skin
2. Building 650
3. Blood on the Boulders
4. Fieldworks I
5. Fieldworks II
6. Cro-Magnon Man
7. Cowards
8. Showtime!
9. Well Met (Fingers Through The Fence)
Minneapolis punk trio VIAL have announced Grow the Fuck Up, a re-recorded and reworked version of their debut project Grow Up. It’s set to arrive on November 29 via Get Better Records. They’ve also shared a video for the track ‘DIY or Die’. Watch it below.
“We rerecorded our debut EP Grow Up to look back on our progress as musicians and revisit some very nostalgic songs after 5 years of VIAL,” the band said in a statement. “It’s like a little love letter to our younger selves. When we first recorded Grow Up, we had very limited resources during the recording process and didn’t even use our own cables. We feel very lucky we’re able to revisit this EP now that we have access to the funds, skills, and equipment we’d always wanted to allocate towards these eight songs.”
American-born, London-based singer-songwriter Joni has announced her signing to Hand in Hive and Keeled Scales (in North America), marking the news with the single ‘Avalanches’. Check it out below.
Joni completed the new track with producer Luke Sital-Singh at his Los Angeles studio. “‘Avalanches’ is a song about the duality of love and heartbreak,” she shared in a statement. “And how you can’t really have one without the other. And despite all the pain, fear, exhilaration, risk, I’d do it all again and again and again…”
Clara Mann has announced her debut album: Rift is due for release on March 7 via state51. The London-based artist has also shared the new single ”Til I Come Around’, which follows last month’s ‘Stadiums’. Check it out below.
“‘Til I Come Around’ is about intimacy, in every sense,” Mann said in a statement. “Sometimes the flip side of beautiful, intense things is very dark- and once you know that, once you’ve lived it once, it’s hard to live the beautiful things without thinking about the heaviness. This is about trying to live with all those contradictions, about bitterness and loss, about love, about passion.”
Rift was primarily recorded at the 4AD Studios in London, with production and mixing by Fabian Prynn (Martha Skye Murphy, Ex:Re, Fabiana Palladino). It follows Mann’s 2022 EP Stay Open. Revisit our Artist Spotlight interview with Clara Mann.
Rift Tracklist:
1. It Only Hurts
2. ‘Til I Come Around
3. Driving Home The Long Way
4. Stadiums
5. Reasons
6. Remember Me (Train Song)
7. Doubled Over
8. Rift
9. Oranges
10. The Dream
Superheaven are back with ‘Long Gone’, their first new song in nine years. It arrives alongside the announcement that the alt-rock band has signed to Blue Grape Music (Gel, Spiritual Cramp, Code Orange), which will release the two-track single Long Gone / Numb To What Is Real on December 10. Check it out below.
“Hearing the demo back for the first time was really inspiring,” drummer Zack Robbins said of ‘Long Gone’ in a statement. “To hear us making something new, but to have it still really feel like our sound.”
The track was engineered by guitarist/vocalist Jake Clarke and Robbins, then mixed by Rich Costey. “We didn’t want to be told no,” Clarke remarked. “We got to try every pedal, try every amp, and have all the time we wanted to do it.”
Superheaven released their sophomore album, Ours Is Chrome, in 2015.
Angel Olsen has announced a new project called Cosmic Waves Volume 1, which will be out on December 6. Marking the second release on somethingscosmic, Olsen’s own Jagjaguwar imprint, the compilation is split into two halves: the first features original songs personally curated by Olsen from Poppy Jean Crawford, Coffin Prick, Sarah Grace White, Maxim Ludwig, and Camp Saint Helene, while Side B sees Olsen offering her take on songs from those artists. Today’s announcement comes with the release of ‘Glamorous’ by Los Angeles musician Poppy Jean Crawford, along with Olsen’s acoustic version of Crawford’s ‘The Takeover’. Take a listen below.
“As someone that emerged into the music scene through a small tape label, Iʼve wanted to continue the spirit of discovery and of my debut release, Strange Cacti, while supporting and collaborating with artists and friends whose music I have been moved by,” Olsen explained in a press release. “I feel there is something unique and special about covering another artist’s song. We all make it our own, or we try to, but I personally always learn something new about the process when Iʼm engaging someone elseʼs words and melodies in such a close way. Itʼs fun to write and make my own stuff, but listening to and putting myself into various different styles of songs can lead to new ways of thinking and creating…”
About Crawford’s music, Olsen said: “I remember speaking with my good friend Angela Ricciardi about Poppy starring in the film The Giver Gives to Give, and was immediately transfixed by her overall vibe and ‘30s era beauty. But it wasn’t until later when Angela shared one of Poppy’s early demo grunge songs with me that I was blown away. Poppy gives me hope that guitar music will come back. She has such a powerful voice made for pop while also having this edge to her that, for me, communicates the kind of rage I can always relate to.”
Cosmic Waves Volume 1 Cover Artwork:
Cosmic Waves Volume 1 Tracklist:
1. Glamorous – Poppy Jean Crawford
2. Blood – Coffin Prick
3. Ride – Sarah Grace White
4. Make Believe You Love Me – Maxim Ludwig
5. Wonder Now – Camp Saint Helene
6. The Takeover (Poppy Jean Crawford Cover) – Angel Olsen
7. Swimming (Coffin Prick Cover) – Angel Olsen
8. Sinkhole (Sarah Grace White Cover) – Angel Olsen
9. Born Too Blue (Maxim Ludwig Cover) – Angel Olsen
10. Farfisa Song (Camp Saint Helene Cover) – Angel Olsen
