Closebye – the New York City band featuring recent Artist Spotlight interviewee Margaux on bass – have shared a new single called ‘Two Knocks’. It’s taken from their upcoming LP Hammer of My Own, which comes out August 23. Check out a video for it below.
“’Two Knocks’ is a song about ghosts–and lack thereof,” the band’s Jonah Paul Smith said in a statement. “The lyrics were inspired by a phone conversation with a loved one who was experiencing this crippling fear that a ghost was in their house. As I was struggling to comfort them, my first inclination might have been to say something along the lines of; ‘ghosts aren’t real, you are safe and it’s all in your head.’ But then it occurred to me that whether or not ghosts are real, it doesn’t make this experience any less scary for this person. If the ghosts are all in “in your head” isn’t that more terrifying? Maybe the psychological horrors that are self-generated are worse than the external, amorphous ghost. There’s no getting away from ourselves.”
Pixies have announced a new album, The Night the Zombies Came. The follow-up to 2022’s Doggerel is set to arrive on October 25 via BMG. It includes the previously released single ‘You’re So Impatient’, as well as a new song, ‘Chicken’. Check it out and find the album cover and tracklist.
The sessions behind The Night The Zombies Came saw the band teaming up with producer Tom Dalgety and welcoming new bass player Emma Richardson, the first British band member to join the Pixies. “Fragments that are related and juxtaposed with other fragments in other songs,” frontman Black Francis said in a press release. “And in a collection of songs in a so-called LP, you end up making a kind of movie.”
The Night the Zombies Came Cover Artwork:
The Night the Zombies Came Tracklist:
1. Primrose
2. You’re So Impatient
3. Jane (The Night the Zombies Came)
4. Chicken
5. Hypnotised
6. Johnny Good Man
7. Motoroller
8. I Hear You Mary
9. Oyster Beds
10. Mercy Me
11. Ernest Evans
12. Kings of the Prairie
13. The Vegas Suite
Jane’s Addiction have released a new single, ‘Imminent Redemption’, marking the first new music from the outfit’s original lineup in 34 years. Vocalist Perry Farrell, guitarist Dave Navarro, drummer Stephen Perkins, and bassist Eric Avery debuted the track live two months ago, when they performed together in London for the first time since 2010. Listen to the studio version below.
“It is different this time,” the band said in a press release. “To have everyone back together, releasing new music. It’s time. Welcome to the next chapter of Jane’s Addiction. ‘Imminent Redemption’ is only the beginning.”
Slark Moan – the project of New York musician Mark Sloan, who plays pedal steel in S.G. Goodman’s band – has shared a new single, ‘Dollhouse Heart’. Featuring Nashville artist Meg Elsier, the track accompanies the announcement of a new EP titled The Return of Guitar Music, which also includes guest appearances from Torres, Liz Cooper, and OK Cowgirl. Take a listen below.
“‘Dollhouse Heart’ is about feeling small amidst the enormity of life, and the overwhelming sadness and beauty of living an ephemeral existence within an infinite universe,” Sloan explained in a statement. “For the first time, I’ve been feeling like I’m not necessarily young anymore, and side-by-side with that feeling I recognize that I’ve gained an unabashed realism, creative empowerment, and gratitude that my younger self just couldn’t access. Being in love now feels like tapping into something so much bigger than me, something I can’t possibly contain, and that will outlive my finite body or perception of self.”
Sloan continued: “I like the image of my heart being a dollhouse, because sometimes my emotions feel like miniaturized versions of the cosmic consciousness, and only in moments of altered perception can I see the magnitude of being a soul entangled with another soul. In those moments, I don’t feel like I have the right-sized infrastructure to house my emotions, but rather I’m a life sized human trying to fit into a dollhouse.”
The Return of Guitar Music arrives on October 25.
The Return of Guitar Music Cover Artwork:
The Return of Guitar Music Tracklist:
1. Nervous Breakdown [feat. Torres]
2. Dollhouse Heart [feat. Meg Elsier]
3. Stinger [feat. Liz Cooper]
4. Demon Brain
5. Green Grass [feat. OK Cowgirl]
GIFT have unveiled a new track, ‘Light Runner’, lifted from their forthcoming record Illuminator. Following previous entries ‘Wish Me Away’, ‘Going in Circles’, and ‘Later’, the track arrives with a music video directed by the band’s vocalist and guitarist TJ Freda. Watch and listen below.
“The album and song ‘Ray of Light’ by Madonna was a massive inspiration while recording Illuminator — I wanted to pay homage to the brilliant music video directed by one of my favorite directors Jonas Åkerlund,” Freda shared in a statement. “‘Light Runner’ celebrates the triumph of emerging from a dark time while acknowledging the transformative power of overcoming it. It’s a testament to the euphoria of personal achievement. In 2023, during our first European tour, we were enthralled by the origins of 90s UK bands like Primal Scream, Massive Attack, and Oasis. Following a show in Glasgow, the promoters treated us to an underground Jungle/DnB rave, blowing our minds wide open.”
NYC industrial rock band Uniform have released a new single, ‘Permanent Embrace’, taken from their upcoming LP American Standard. It comes paired with a video directed by Sean Stout. Check it out below.
“It touches on a facet of the disease that I’m incredibly wary of facing,” the band’s Michael Berdan said of ‘Permanent Embrace’ in a statement. “Built on a narrative foundation laid out by author and lyrical collaborator Maggie Siebert, the song revolves around the idea of a person holding a loved one as an emotional hostage. Seeing perverse beauty in a story about a car crash, the narrator relates the analogy of two automobiles twisted together to that of his last standing relationship. As he has broken down over time, so has the one who continues to stand by him. The object of his manipulative guilt trips remains locked in a hopeless situation, terrified of what he may do to himself if they were to finally leave”.
Berdan continued: “The music reflects the psychic violence of the lyrics, as riffs and rhythms that wouldn’t feel out of place in the Unsane catalog careen into giant synth melodies before collapsing into itself. This is kind of our misguided interpretation of what Faith No More were doing on ‘Angel Dust’, and we hope that our tip of the hat to those masters of madness can hold a candle to their horrific splendor.”
Of the visual, Stout commented: “Without sounding trite, when we first read Mike’s lyrics to the record our reaction was extremely visceral. They are brutally introspective and beautiful at times and we wanted to try visually to convey that range of emotion in a sequence of single images that unfold narratively and potentially shift their own meaning over time. Our concept was to intertwine images of an outer world-overgrown, rusting and moving on in its decay-with an inter-world that is largely going through the same process as a result, but is markedly separate as well. We never see one observe or interact with the other, yet they are the same and of the same world.”
American Standard will be released on August 23 via Sacred Bones. It was led by the single ‘This Is Not a Prayer’.
The first official teaser trailer for the upcoming Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown has arrived. The film stars Timothée Chalamet alongside Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Buzt and Scoot McNairy. In the trailer, Chalamet can be heard singing Dylan’s ’60s classic ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’. Watch it below.
Directed by James Mangold, A Complete Unknown is set to hit theaters in December in the US, and January 2025 in the UK and Ireland. A synopsis for the film reads” “Set in the influential New York music scene of the early 60s, A Complete Unknown follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician Bob Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts – his songs and mystique becoming a worldwide sensation – culminating in his groundbreaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.”
Being Dead – the Austin-based project of multi-instrumentalists Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy — have shared ‘Van Goes’, the second single and video from their upcoming album EELS. It follows lead single ‘Firefighters’. Check it out below.
Commenting on the clip, the band said: “Our goal is simple. When you die and your life flashes before your eyes we’d like this video to be included in the reel. (Or at least lay a blueprint for how yours might be). Fast and furious is one’s life when betrayed. And in a flash, your whole life before you: everyone you’ve ever known, everything you’ve been brave enough to feel – extinguished in a twinkle of clarity.”
“‘Wish You Well’ is a song about the animality that we are all hardwird with, and how it can bring out the worst in us,” the project’s Joe Stevens explained in a statement. “Instinct drives some people to be ruthlessly competitive, Rose Main Reading Room deals a lot with this juncture of the civilized and natural world. I wrote this song as a statement, like, freeing myself from the influence of people who’ve pushed me around at different points in my life. In the music video, Olivia and I are portraying people who secretly try to undermine others. Everyone’s behavior is juxtaposed with these brutally violent scenes from nature, as well as all of this DNA and celluar imagery to establish this idea that its completely elemental. We shot this video with an awesome filmmaker who goes by Otium, and got to play around with all these different performance setups in front of a cyclorama wall in downtown LA.”
Written and recorded between London, Toronto, and Los Angeles, Pomegranate was made with close collaborator Ruari Meehan, who took on production duties and co-mixed the album with Grammy-nominated engineer Mikko Gordon.
“In November 2020, Ruari was in London and I was in Toronto and he sent me the music for ‘Koalas’,” Parks explained in a press release. “At this point, we hadn’t seen each other in over a year. It would be another year before we saw each other again. I was suffering from severe PTSD at this point in my life, and to be honest, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to the song properly until early February. When I finally did – it was one of those moments when you hear a song and you know it’s going to be one of your favourite, most cherished songs for your whole life. It’s the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.”
She added: “Ruari sending me this song instigated the making of this album – a daily back and forth correspondence where he would send me music and I would sing some words over it and then he would sing other ideas back to me. It was a true lifeline at what felt like the end of the world. I don’t know who I would be without these songs, this song particularly, and waking up everyday looking forward to what he was going to send me next.”
Discussing the album, Parks said:
Look – there’s so much tragedy happening in the world right now. It’s so easy to feel helpless. It feels self-indulgent to be someone singing at all from their own perspective. But if anything, this album is a gift of love, our contribution to the world of something beautiful that we made amongst so much pain. It’s our message of empowerment to keep going even when life feels unliveable and unjust – having faith that this moment will pass if you can find a way to just breathe into the next moment. Believing that the future could possibly be really bright… knowing that sharing your light really does have a butterfly effect, even in a small way within your community and your family and friends, you are capable of making a greater impact than you understand.
I went through a long period of feeling like I never wanted to make music again. What is the point of singing? Everything is pointless. I was taking refuge making paintings, sitting in silence for hours. There was a lot of processing to do. I am so grateful that I was given the encouragement to continue creating with sound, and that’s what Ruari has done for me. It seems only right to give back that encouragement to others.
Pomegranate Cover Artwork:
Pomegranate Tracklist:
1. Bagpipe Blues
2. California’s Dreaming
3. Koalas
4. Lemon Poppy
5. Charlie Potato
6. Crown Shy
7. Running Home To Sing
8. Sunnyside
9. Surround