Los Angeles-based musician Anna St. Louis has released a new single called ‘Better Days’. It’s lifted from her forthcoming LP In the Air, which was announced in April with the track ‘Phone’. Listen to both songs below.
“While ‘Better Days’ may have tones of sadness it’s really about hope,” Anna St. Louis explained in a statement. “It’s about making do with what you have, even when that’s just a little optimism that this too shall pass and better days are always ahead.”
In the Air, the follow-up to 2018’s If Only There Was a River, comes out June 9 on Woodsist/Mare.
Sacred Bones labelmates Boris and Uniform have announced new collaborative album, Bright New Disease. It drops June 16. To accompany the announcement, they’ve shared the lead single ‘You Are the Beginning’, which was written by Boris. Listen to it and check out the LP’s cover art and tracklist below.
”You Are the Beginning’ took shape on the first day of the bands’ studio sessions in July 2020. “At that time, we didn’t know when we would be able to resume concerts,” Boris’ Atsuo recalled in a press release. “And our wish became the song directly.”
“On tour, we learned more about the depth of their musicality, which we felt was compatible with our own expression,” Atsuo said, while Takeshi added of Uniform: “They are a band that can be described in many ways — punk, metal, industrial — but they truly excel because they are not locked into any style. They are always experimenting and innovating.”
Uniform vocalist Michael Berdan commented: “Uniform have been longtime fans and admirers of Boris. Supporting them on tour was a dream come true.” Guitarist and producer Ben Greenberg added: “Wata is one of my favorite guitar players ever, so I’m very stoked we got two dueling solo tracks on this record.”
“In the end, it sounds like the crystalized essence of both bands at the heights of their creative abilities,” Berdan continued. “It is a testament of friendship and hope in the face of a world on fire.”
Bright New Disease Cover Artwork:
Bright New Disease Tracklist:
1. You Are the Beginning
2. Weaponized Grief
3. No
4. The Look Is a Flame
5. The Sinners of Hell (Jigoku)
6. Narcotic Shadow
7. A Man from the Earth
8. Endless Death Agony
9. Not Surprised
Sweeping Promises have announced their sophomore full-length: Good Living Is Coming for You will be out June 30 via Sub Pop. ‘Eraser’ leads the follow-up to 2020’s Hunger for A Way Out, and you can check it out along with the album artwork and tracklist below.
According to the band’s Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug, ‘Eraser’ is “a malevolent creep – an overly ambitious, shadowy force who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. She watches your every move, mirrors your motions, and ultimately uses your voice against you without you ever noticing what she’s done. She’s unchecked ambition, a paranoid girl Friday, an overriding impulse to reflect rather than project. She must be stopped at all costs.”
Back in 2021, Sweeping Promises released ‘Pain Without a Touch’, their first single for Sub Pop.
Good Living Is Coming For You Cover Artwork:
Good Living Is Coming For You Tracklist:
1. Eraser
2. Shadow Me
3. Good Living Is Coming for You
4. Connoisseur of Salt
5. Walk in Place
6. You Shatter
7. Petit Four
8. Can’t Hide It
9. Throw of the Dice
10. Ideal No
Shirley Collins has released a new single, ‘Hares on the Mountain’. It’s set to appear on her upcoming album Archangel Hill along with the previously shared ‘High and Away’. Give it a listen below.
“I’ve recorded this twice before: once a rather trivial version collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams; the second time I rewrote the melody and recorded it with Davy Graham in 1965,” Collins explained in a statement. “This time I was looking to bring out the mysterious and wry quality that lies underneath.”
Archangel Hill is due for release on May 26 via Domino.
Claud has announced their sophomore album, Supermodels, which arrives July 14 via Saddest Factory Records. The follow-up to 2021’s Super Monster is led by the single ‘Every Fucking Time’, which comes paired with a music video. Check it out and find Supermodels‘ details below.
“I wrote ‘Every Fucking Time’ two summers ago,” Claud shared in a statement. “It was hot and sticky in New York, so naturally I was spending a lot of time at home, overthinking everything… and this song was born. Even as I was writing ‘Every Fucking Time’ I had flashes of what I wanted the music video to look like. The songs details and specificity came straight from me, so it only felt natural to write and direct the music video too. This was my first time directing, which was scary, but came easily because my vision for this song was so strong.”
“The video wouldn’t have been the same without my co-star, Grace Kuhlenschmidt,” they continued. “We met on the internet early in the pandemic. I was a big fan of her comedy, and I watched every single video she posted. We quickly became friends and have been wanting to collaborate for a while, and I wrote this video concept with her in mind. Being on set with Grace was a dream come true because I got to work with my favorite comedian and a good friend all at once.”
Supermodels Cover Artwork:
Supermodels Tracklist:
1. Crumbs
2. Dirt
3. Every Fucking Time
4. Wet
5. Glass Wall
6. It’s Not About You
7. Paul Rudd
8. The Moving On
9. Climbing Trees
10. Spare Tire
11. All Over
12. Screwdriver
NYC-via-Philly quartet Strange Ranger have announced a new album: Pure Music lands July 21 via Fire Talk. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the new single ‘She’s on Fire’, which follows March’s ‘Rain So Hard’. Check a video for it and scroll down for the LP’s cover art and tracklist.
Discussing the inspiration behind the new song, the band’s Isaac Eiger explained in a press release: “When you’re young, it feels like life has a kind of arc to it and up ahead in the future, there’s some point where all your experiences converge and this fog of confusion will lift and you will have arrived. This is definitely not true and increasingly, music is the steadying hand I lean on when looking for meaning. It provides a spiritualism that feels absent from much of life and I want to be as close to that feeling as possible.”
The new record will follow Strange Ranger’s 2021 mixtape No Light in Heaven. “Music makes us transcend the feeling of being alienated from or trapped by the world,” vocalist and synth player Fiona Woodman said. “I want the experience of listening to Pure Music to be euphoric.”
Pure Music Cover Artwork:
Pure Music Tracklist:
1. Rain So Hard
2. She’s on Fire
3. Dream
4. Way Out
5. Blue Shade
6. Blush
7. Wide Awake
8. Ask Me About My Love Life
9. Fantasy
10. Dazed in the Shallows
Hand Habits has shared a new single from their forthcoming mini-album Sugar the Bruise. ‘Private Life’, which follows previous offering ‘Something Wrong’, arrives alongside an Otium-directed video. Check it out below.
Sugar the Bruise will be released on June 16 via Fat Possum. Meg Duffy’s most recent Hand Habits LP, Fun House, came out in 2021.
Westerman has released ‘A Lens Turning’, the latest single from his upcoming album An Inbuilt Fault. Following previous cuts ‘Take’, ‘CSI: Petralona’, and ‘Idol: RE-run’, the track arrives with an accompanying video directed and animated by Edwin Burdis. Watch and listen below.
An Inbuilt Fault, the follow-up to Westerman’s 2020 debut Your Hero Is Not Dead, comes out this Friday, May 5 via Partisan/Play It Again Sam.
Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian folk and country legend, has died at the age of 84. His longtime publicist, Victoria Lord, confirmed the news via CBC. No cause of death was provided.
Born in Orillia, Ontario, in 1938, Lightfoot started performing as a child, singing in church and appearing on local radio shows. As a teenager, he learned piano and taught himself to play guitar and drums. In 1958, he moved to California to study jazz composition at Hollywood’s Westlake College of Music and supported himself by writing commercial jingles and singing on demo recordings. Having grown homesick, he returned to Toronto in 1960 and joined the Singin’ Swingin’ Eight, a vocal group featured on CBC TV’s Country Hoedown. He also formed a duo with Terry Whalen called the Two Tones, which recorded the live album Two Tones at the Village Corner 1962. The following year, he served as the host on the BBC-TV series The Country & Western Show.
After discovering Bob Dylan in 1963, Lightfoot’s approach to songwriting shifted. “I started to get a point of view, and that’s when I started to improve,” he said. He went on to sign with Albert Grossman, who was also the manager of Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary. Around this time, Peter, Paul, and Mary and country artists like Marty Robbins also began recording some of Lightfoot’s earlier material. After signing a recording contract with United Artists Records in 1966, he released his debut LP, Lightfoot! Following three more studio albums for the label, Lightfoot found commercial success after switching to Warner Bros./Reprise in 1970. He scored his first US hit with ‘If You Could Read My Mind’, which originally appeared on the album Sit Down Young Stranger, while 1976’s Summertime Dream boasted the hit ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’.
Although his output slowed down in the ’80s, Lightfoot experienced a career revival in the ’90s, when he issued 1993’s Waiting For You and 1998’s A Painter Passing Through. In 2002, he suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm and spent six weeks in a coma. Following his recovery, he released the album Harmony in 2004. His final LP was 2020’s Solo, an acoustic collection of demos and unreleased tracks written between 2001 and 2002.
Lightfoot was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1986. He was elected to the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001 and received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 2022.
“We have lost one of our greatest singer-songwriters,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted. “Gordon Lightfoot captured our country’s spirit in his music – and in doing so, he helped shape Canada’s soundscape. May his music continue to inspire future generations, and may his legacy live on forever. To his family, friends, and many fans across the country and around the world: I’m keeping you in my thoughts at this difficult time.”
Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo has returned with a new song under his given name, a collaboration with Mac DeMarco called ‘Nudista Mundial ’89’. The track, which was recorded at DeMarco’s studio, comes paired with a music video inspired by the ’80s adult video game Leisure Suit Larry and animated by Johnny Woods. Check it out below.
“While working on a few tunes, I was trying to get a hold of this certain piano,” Palomo shared in a statement in a statement. “My keyboard player told me Mac had one at his studio so I hit him up. And on one breezy day in May, we sang a duet about two guys going to a nude beach together in Ibiza.”
‘Nudista Mundial ’89’ marks Palomo’s first release since 2019’s ‘Toyota Man’, which he released as Neon Indian.
