One Step Closer have shared a new single, ‘Giant’s Despair’, alongside an accompanying video. It follows the recently released ‘Leap Years’, which led the Wilkes-Barre hardcore band’s upcoming album All You Embrace. Check it out below.
All You Embrace, the follow-up to 2021’s This Place You Know and last year’s Songs for the Willow EP, arrives on May 17 via Run for Cover.
No Windows have released a new single called ‘Zodiac 13’. It’s set to appear on the duo’s upcoming Point Nemo EP, which arrives May 3 via Fat Possum, alongside the previously shared ‘Song 01’ and ‘Fibbs’. Check it out below.
“This song is written about the isolation I felt as the winter months started, it is about friendships ending and changing and coming to terms with their being a constant doubt when it comes to people near to you,” the band’s Verity Slangen said of ‘Zodiac 13’ in a statement. “Lyrically this is the oldest song on the EP, and I was much more unsure of my feelings back then, it’s nice to have something to look back on and see how my writing has changed.”
METZ have released ‘Light Your Way Home’, the latest preview and closing track of their upcoming LP Up on Gravity Hill. Following previous singles ’99’ and ‘Entwined (Street Light Buzz)’, the track features vocals from Amber Webber of Black Mountain. Check out director Colin Medley‘s video for it below.
“’Light Your Way Home’ is definitely one of our favorites from Up On Gravity Hill,” METZ frontman Alex Edkins explained in a statement. “I was listening to lots of Jesu and Low (as I do most winters) when writing this one. Lyrically, it’s about missing your loved ones to the point of losing your grip on reality. We distorted and added a mechanical slap back to the drums to create a wild and huge sound. I love how big we got the production on this one. It’s like nothing we’ve ever made before, sonically or lyrically. Amber Webber (Black Mountain, Lightning Dust) was so great to work with, and her voice just takes this song to another stratosphere. I think the video by Colin Medley perfectly captures the vibe and intent of the song.”
Up on Gravity Hill is due out April 12 via Sub Pop.
Lame-O Records has announced it will no be longer be releasing the new album from Portland power-pop musician Mo Troper, Svengali, after Troper’s ex-partner, Maya Stoner of Floating Room, accused him of abuse. “In light of recent information, we will no longer be releasing Mo Troper’s album Svengali,” Lame-O’s statement message reads. “Refunds will be available at point of purchase. We are sending healing thoughts to Maya and victims of abuse everywhere.”
Troper’s manager, Luke Phillips, has also dropped Troper as a client following the allegations. “Mo and Maya are both people I consider friends—I was briefly managing Floating Room and was even asked to officiate their wedding—and to read these tweets / see these videos has been overwhelming,” he said, adding:
Everything I knew about their relationship was from afar and. in light of all this, I don’t think I can go on working with Mo, and will give him space to make his own statements.
I believe Maya. I hope everyone involved can take the steps to heal and grow from this, and I hope that those blindsided by these allegations like I was can find space to support eachother through whatever they need going forward
Grandstand Media, the publicity company that had been working with Troper, is also no longer representing the musician, and Troper is no longer listed as a client on the firm’s website, as Stereogum points out.
Camp Trash, who were set to begin tracking their second album with Mo Troper this week, will not go ahead with the recording, the band’s Keegan Bradford said on X: “Abuse is always something to address and to take seriously. This news comes at the cusp of the members of Camp Trash arriving in Portland Saturday night and we were scheduled to begin recording our second LP with Mo Troper today. Upon hearing Maya’s story, myself and the band have made the decision not to move forward with recording our album with Mo, and we hope Maya can find comfort and healing.”
Since Friday, Stoner has shared several posts on her social media accounts accusing Troper of abuse, calling him “a straight up sick in the head violent and depraved person” and “a serial abuser.” In a video message shared on X, which she later clarified was about Troper, Stoner said, “This man abused me. I’m still fucking healing from it, and he’s just bragging about it. And he can brag about it because I’m just an autistic sex worker indigenous brown person, and he’s a popular white guy. Rich white guy.”
In another clip, Stoner added, “I didn’t want to participate in call-out culture, but if he’s going to fucking brag about it, well, he’s the one that is fucking bringing it up.” She attached excerpts from Svengali‘s press bio, which reads:
Before “Svengali” came to describe any vaguely megalomaniacal personality in the entertainment industry – from the genuinely evil Phil Spector and Colonel Tom Parker all the way to their Diet Rite equivalent Jack Antonoff – he was a literary character who was probably the prototypical megalomaniacal personality in the entertainment industry. The antagonist in the famously mid and otherwise unmemorable 19th century novel Trilby, Svengali is depicted as a machiavellian manipulator who transforms the guileless titular character into a famous singer. Mo Troper’s Svengali is a deeply psychological record with the throbbing heart of a fragile giant. It is a meditation on evil-ness. At certain points across Svengali’s 13 tracks, Troper relishes his own innate evil-ness; just as often he’s repulsed by it.
“he loves being evil and he was evil to me,” Stoner wrote. She also highlighted a passage from the bio that refers to “a toxic relationship where you can’t quite tell if you’re the manipulated or the manipulator.” Responding to the excerpt, she added, “he’s bragging about being an abuser in the album description. it wasn’t a ‘toxic’ relationship it was abusive.”
As of Sunday, Troper has deleted his social media accounts. Svengali was originally set for release on May 3, and, as of publication, is no longer available for purchase on the Lame-O Records website.
In light of recent information, we will no longer be releasing Mo Troper’s album Svengali. Refunds will be available at point of purchase. We are sending healing thoughts to Maya and victims of abuse everywhere.
— Lame-O Records (@LameORecords) March 18, 2024
I've made the decision to step away from being Mo’s manager. Mo and Maya are both people I consider friends—I was briefly managing Floating Room and was even asked to officiate their wedding—and to read these tweets / see these videos has been overwhelming. 2/
— Luke Phillips (@EldoonLDP) March 18, 2024
I believe Maya. I hope everyone involved can take the steps to heal and grow from this, and I hope that those blindsided by these allegations like I was can find space to support eachother through whatever they need going forward
— Luke Phillips (@EldoonLDP) March 18, 2024
he also told me he joked w his friends about shooting me in the head
— floating room (@floating_room) March 17, 2024
this is about mo troper https://t.co/4dMaoKrnEk
— floating room (@floating_room) March 17, 2024
he’s bragging about being an abuser in the album description. it wasn’t a “toxic” relationship it was abusive pic.twitter.com/0nrriNgDWg
— floating room (@floating_room) March 16, 2024
he loves being evil and he was evil to me
— floating room (@floating_room) March 16, 2024
i didn’t prepare an mla format call out note because i saw this description and immediately said something… this wasn’t a preplanned call out. this is me responding to him bragging about being an abuser
— floating room (@floating_room) March 17, 2024
Upon hearing Maya’s story, myself and the band have made the decision not to move forward with recording our album with Mo, and we hope Maya can find comfort and healing.
— keegan (@FranziaMom) March 18, 2024
If you or someone you know have been affected by domestic abuse, the following organizations may me able to help:
The National Domestic Abuse Helpline (UK)
The National Domestic Abuse Helpline (US)
Matthew Urango, the Oxnard, CA singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who released music as Cola Boyy, has died at the age of 34. “The one and only Cola Boyy a.k.a Matthew Urango passed peacefully last Sunday,” the artist’s label, Record Makers, wrote in a statement. “He was quite a soul, a man with no age, a childlike spirit with the musicality of an old legend. His lyrics, his melodies, the sound of his voice: every side of his music was unique and timeless.”
Urango, was born with spina bifida, scoliosis, and kyphosis, played bass for the band Sea Lions before he started releasing his own music in 2018. That year, he put out his debut EP, Black Boogie Neon, which featured the singles ‘Penny Girl’ and ‘Buggy Tip’. In 2020, he made a guest appearance alongside the Clash’s Mick Jones on the Avalanches’ ‘We Go On’ from We Will Always Love You. Cola Boyy’s debut LP Prosthetic Boombox came out in 2021, boasting collaborations with the Avalanches, MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden, Godin, John Carroll Kirby, and more. As a disability-rights activist and advocate for people of color, he worked with groups including Todo Poder Al Pueblo and APOC (Anarchist People Of Color).
“Anyone who knew Matthew knows he had a larger than life personality,” Cola Boyy’s manager, Jack Sills, said on Instagram. “He was always the life of the party and could chop it up with anyone. He was also one of the most talented and down to earth people I’ve ever met. His humor and natural charisma endeared him to whoever he met. Matthew cared enormously for his family, friends and community which he often expressed through his music. He had just finished his next album and was excited to start releasing new music this summer. I will continue to work with his family and @recordmakers to make sure this happens. Love you homie. Cola Boyy Forever!”
Alena Spanger, the Brooklyn singer-songwriter who used to lead the avant-rock band Tiny Hazard, has a new single out called ‘Steady Song’. It’s set to appear on her solo debut Fire Escape, which is out on Friday and includes the previously released tracks ‘All That I Wanted’, ‘Difficult People’, and ‘Agios’. Take a listen below.
“I wanted to write a song that was simply about being okay,” Spanger explained in a statement. “It’s about restoration and exploring new, quieter pleasure, not needing to always be obliterated by feeling.”
Rosie Tucker has unveiled ‘Big Fish/No Fun’, the final single ahead of the release of their new LP UTOPIA NOW! on Friday. It follows previous cuts ‘Unending Bliss’, ‘Paperclip Maximizer’, and ‘All My Exes Live in Vortexes’. Check it out below.
UTOPIA NOW! will follow 2021’s Sucker Supreme. Revisit our Artist Spotlight interview with Rosie Tucker.
“We look at the world once, in childhood,” Louise Glück wrote in her poem ‘Nostos’. “The rest is memory.” The quote springs to mind each time I listen to Adrianne Lenker’s new album, Bright Future, which might, as its title suggests, be looking out on the road ahead, but allows itself the treasure of remembering, the freedom to linger on memories that both fade and harden with the coming of age. Lenker – lead singer of Big Thief and one of today’s most acclaimed songwriters, recording her new album in a forest-hidden studio with frequent collaborator Philip Weinrobe and friends including Nick Hakim, Mat Davidson, and Josefin Runsteen – perhaps has little reason to introduce her new record by dredging up past trauma. But in these fortunate circumstances, she finds the clarity of her senses awakened as they were when running through the woods as a child – a child who happened to be born into a cult and lived in 14 different houses before she was eight, around the time she started writing her first songs. When writing, Lenker told The New York Times, “Sometimes, I feel I have to check: Is that 10-year-old still in me?”
Not only is she there, still looking at the world and now skilled at turning it into poetry – a child “humming into the clarity of black space where stars shine like tears on the night’s face” – but the 32-year-old musician treats its presence like a gift worth sharing. “We lay around for hours, talk about childhood pain/ Mom and dad and past lives too, I can tell you anything,” she sings on ‘Free Treasure’, which is both open-hearted and open-ended, alluding to different forms of love and reserving plenty for the listener. ‘Real House’ isn’t just about the first real house her parents bought, or the pain, or “trauma” – it follows a stream of emotion that leads Lenker to the heaviest and most precious of memories, that of seeing her mother cry for the first time after their dog died, crystallizing it: a family coming together to hold the body, the way her mother held her hand at the hospital when she was fourteen. The word “needle,” threading the two memories, strikes me as a potent metaphor for her own pen: a sharp and delicate tool that can hurt but also cut through the tissue of her life, and onto others. “Just when I thought I couldn’t feel more/ I feel a little more,” she sings on ‘Free Treasure’; song after song, Bright Future should invoke the same reaction.
Part of what makes ‘Real House’ so raw and heartwrenching is that it separates Lenker from the instrument she first picked up and that has naturally been described as an extension of her body. Hakim, whom she has known since 17, was playing the chords on piano, so she started singing along, and because the tape was always rolling, the pure magnetism of the performances is captured. It’s easy, when she sings, “I wanted so much for magic to be real,” swaying back through so, to feel her not only realizing but sharing the magic. The feeling is at the heart of ‘Sadness as a Gift’ (“You and I could see into the same eternity/ Every second brimming with a majesty”), a song that both complicates and lightens the grief documented on 2020’s masterful songs and instrumentals. In many of Lenker’s older songs, love was about the blood rushing, the endless tug-of-war, something to plunge headfirst into, bracing for the fall – and by throwing in a scrappy, raucous take on the Big Thief fan favourite ‘Vampire Empire’, she only underlines the album’s overall more serene yet still, naturally, revelatory and complex approach. Maturity tends love into the calm reverence exemplified by ‘No Machine’, but yearning remains wrought by contradictions, as in ‘Already Lost’: “Holding so near, standing so far/ How slow and how fast you are.”
‘Real House’ is one of three piano-driven songs that serve as the album’s emotional backbone. Closing Bright Future is ‘Ruined’, which might seem like a dour note to end on; but there’s strength, more than just resignation, in the relentless repetition of the title, the kind she feels without on the opener. In the middle is ‘Evol’, a mesmerizing song in which Lenker formalizes the theme of emotional mirrors by reversing words – “Teach, cheat/ Part, trap” – both warping and vivifying their meaning. It flows like a dream through which Lenker can ultimately see a brighter version of her truth: “You have my heart, I want it back.” It’s the present the album is always rooted in, and desire is always in it, but it bleeds into the past and future – a future that rarely looks hopeful. Lenker was seven years old when she saw the film Deep Impact, which made her think of “the whole world ending.” The thought doesn’t scare her anymore – she knows it is; that death, like a kind of magic, like a door, is no illusion, and we have little control over it. “Every person we ever love, we lose,” Lenker said in a recent interview. “We have to let go of everything, all along the way, until the very end, when you even let go of yourself and your body.” Bright Future shines because it remembers to hold and release, often in the same breath, as if it could sustain it for all eternity.
mui zyu has released ‘sparky’, the latest single off her sophomore album nothing or something to die for. Following ‘the mould’ and ‘everything to die for’, the track features lei, e (Emma Lee Moss, formerly known as Emmy the Great). Check it out via the accompanying visual, created by fellow Dama Scout member Danny Grant, below.
“sparky is a song about welcoming simple happinesses in to your world, even in the face of awfulness,” Eva Liu explained in a statement. “it also plays with different ideas of what ‘happiness’ is, and observes the strange pursuit of endlessly chasing it, often looking in the wrong places, often at your own physical and mental expense. the song is named after the dog ‘Sparky’ from the opening of David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’ who is the perfect image of joyfulness – biting water from a hose in front of their dead owner.”
nothing or something to die for arrives May 24 on Father/Daughter Records. Revisit our Artist Spotlight interview with mui zyu.
Today, we’re excited to present a highly acclaimed and award-winning artist hailing from China, Jiahan Fan, who presently lives in California. From a young age, Jiahan Fan’s world has been painted with the strokes of art history, beginning with a pivotal moment at 15 when she received “The Story of Art.” This book was not merely a collection of pages to her; it was a gateway to understanding the profound impact of art throughout history. Jiahan’s journey in art is deeply rooted in a blend of cultural heritage and modern influences, making her narrative a testament to the power of cross-cultural artistic exploration.
Born into a Chinese family, Jiahan’s earliest memories are tinted with the vibrant hues of traditional Chinese culture. Her fascination with color was evident from childhood, initially misleading her parents into thinking her interests lay in music, thanks to a colorful toy piano. However, it was her spontaneous wall doodles that truly revealed her passion for art. These early expressions were a precursor to a life dedicated to exploring the vast landscape of artistic creativity, nurtured by the inclusive and forward-thinking environment of her upbringing. As a member of the “post-90s” generation, Jiahan was introduced to the digital age early on, growing alongside the burgeoning internet and social media platforms, which later played a significant role in shaping her artistic perspectives.
Jiahan’s artistic philosophy underwent a significant transformation during her university years. Majoring in oil painting, she initially faced the traditional constraints of artistic expression. However, she quickly realized that true creativity knows no bounds. Her work began to challenge conventional norms, exploring themes beyond the typical still lifes and portraits, sometimes even forgoing the brush altogether. Her style became a celebration of freehand brushwork, emphasizing composition and the effective use of blank space to bring her vivid imagery to life. This approach reflects a deeper understanding that art transcends form, embodying the artist’s innermost thoughts and ideas.
The decision to further her studies at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco marked a turning point in Jiahan’s career. Immersing herself in the city’s dynamic art scene, she was particularly drawn to the allure of pop art, a genre that resonated with her nonconformist spirit. Her coursework in editorial illustration and conceptual construction allowed her to delve into the local culture, challenging her to adapt her creative expression to encompass cultural nuances. Through these experiences, Jiahan discovered the richness that comes from the fusion of different cultural elements, believing that the intersection of storytelling and aesthetics is where truly engaging art is born.
In 2021, Jiahan became an artist with Ehelp Company. She actively participates in exploring and innovating in the field of digital art, using vivid lines and the clever use of illustration techniques, combined with Chinese traditional culture, to create distinctive contemporary artworks. In 2022, Jiahan collaborated with YouTuber FatDuckPoker to design a personal logo brand. Undoubtedly, Jiahan has achieved many honors along the way. “Party Animals” was selected for publication in magazines such as “VoyageLA” in 2022, “Fantasy Peking Opera” won the gold award at the 2023 MUSE Creative Awards, “My Daily Life” received the 2023 C2A and 2023 Woman In Art honorary awards, and “The Last One” won the silver award at the VEGA Creative Awards. These achievements reflect her exploration and innovation in the field of digital art gaining international recognition. Jiahan expresses that her original intention was just to create a good painting or tell a good story. Receiving honors is a pleasant surprise for her, but she is also very happy that her works are loved. “This is recognition for this stage of my journey,” she says. “I hope in the next stage I will have new breakthroughs.”
Jiahan’s art is a dialogue between the past and the present, a journey through time and culture. As she continues to explore and innovate, her work serves as a bridge between Chinese traditions and Western modernity, offering audiences a glimpse into a world where art transcends boundaries. Jiahan Fan’s story is one of cultural synthesis, an artist who not only interprets contemporary society and culture but also envisions the future of art. In the coming year, the art world eagerly awaits the new horizons Jiahan will explore, promising more groundbreaking works that reflect her unique perspective as a cultural ambassador through art.
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