Horse Jumper of Love have announced a new mini-album called Heartbreak Rules. The collection features eight new songs, two reimagined tracks from the band’s third LP, last year’s Natural Part, and a cover of the Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Luna’. Listen to the lead single and title track below.
“When you pour a drink from one cup to another sometimes you spill a bunch on the table and you have less in the new cup,” vocalist/guitarist Dimitri Giannopoulos said in a statement about ‘Heartbreak Rules’. “I was thinking about the heart being like that in transitional times of life. You lose something from your past self. I was feeling a little heartbroken for the past and missing how things used to be.”
Ahead of the release of their new album Euphoric Recall on Friday, Braids have dropped one more single, ‘Lucky Star’. It follows previous cuts ‘Retriever’, ‘Evolution’, and ‘Apple’. Check it out below.
Discussing the new track, the band’s Raphaelle Standell-Preston said in a statement:
‘Lucky Star’ came together in pieces over a long span of time,” said the band’s guitarist, singer and lyricist, Raphaelle Standell-Preston. “Its inception began on a very cold winter night after having taken some months off from writing… it’s not the easiest to write music during Montreal’s unforgiving winter. We sat down in our studio, with the space heater on high, and plugged the mic in and turned the speakers on. Taylor showed me a beautiful synth loop he had been working on, the lyrics and melody poured out of me quickly, it was one of those first take moments, as are most of the takes on Euphoric Recall. I put the mic down and asked Taylor to close the project, I didn’t want to listen back. We packed up, satisfied that we had put something down on the page and walked through the snow back to our homes. When spring came we opened up the project again. The winter blues had come and gone, and Montreal was feeling electric with having survived another winter. ‘Lucky Star’ started in the dark and ended in the light. It reminds me of all the different moments we move through as individuals. Nothing is ever linear.
Four Tet has released a new single called ‘Three Drums’. It marks his first new music since headlining the main stage at Coachella with Skrillex and Fred again.. Listen to the eight-minute track below.
Last year, Kieran Hebden shared the Four Tet tracks ‘Mango Feedback’ and ‘Watersynth’. He recently shared ‘Baby again’, a collaborative single with Skrillex and Fred again.., and remixed Everything But the Girl’s ‘Nothing Left to Lose’.
Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit have released ‘Cast Iron Skillet’, the latest single from their forthcoming LP Weathervanes. It follows previous offerings ‘Death Wish’ and ‘Middle of the Morning’. “If we romanticize the past, we can’t really learn from it,” Isbell said of the track. Check it out below.
Weathervanes is due for release on June 9 via Southeastern Records/Thirty Tigers.
“Just remember: Pleasure is a right!” Jessie Ware shouts on the title track of her new album, which could just as well have served as the tagline for 2020’s revelatory What’s Your Pleasure? The “just remember” is as important as the declaration itself: That! Feels Good! is an emphatic reminder to hold onto the ethos she embraced on that album, part of a wave of pop records firmly rooted in the euphoric possibilities of dance music – a happy coincidence when people most needed it. When the album begins with a chorus of voices breathily intoning its title (including fellow divas Kylie Minogue and Róisín Murphy, who recorded her bit from an airport toilet), it sounds both like an exhilarating introduction and a reaffirmation. Joined by frequent collaborator James Ford as well as producer Stuart Price, whose résumé includes work with everyone from Madonna to Dua Lipa, Ware manages to inhabit that same space without it coming off as a retread. If there’s remembering to be done, she ensures that – like pleasure, and yearning, and movement – it all happens through the body rather than just in the mind.
There’s another declaration on ‘That! Feels Good!’ that Ware, as a celebrated singer-songwriter, is perhaps even more intent on channeling: “Freedom is a sound.” It’s fair to say that What’s Your Pleasure? resurrected her career, but it felt more like she was liberating rather than reinventing herself by returning to her early sound. If there was an element of risk to it, Ware avoids making its follow-up sound too safe by simultaneously doubling down and loosening things up. Part of the freshness comes from the fact that this time, she was able to feed off the energy of a live audience reacting breathlessly to her new songs, which I got to witness during her marvelous set at Primavera Sound 2022. Her decision to explore disco was, in her own words, “purely selfish,” and on That! Feels Good! she not only steps deeper into the dancefloor but a little further outside of herself. “You can come with all your friends, bring everyone,” she beckons on ‘Beautiful People’. You get the sense the party could be taking place anywhere, yet the infectious urgency is all but lost.
The grooves are so absurdly, impeccably good that they seem to warrant a frivolousness Ware is more than happy to deliver. Songs like ‘Free Yourself’ and ‘Pearls’ are the kind of pop gems that would make the trashiest album shine, and it’s true that That! Feels Good! is frontloaded with some of its catchiest singles. But rather than dipping in quality, it almost allows her to get more flirty and ridiculous as the album progresses. The giddy sensuality of ‘Freak Me Now’ is irresistible, as is the cheekily instructive ‘Shake the Bottle’, and the two songs complement each other perfectly even as they draw from different musical reference points. The record closes with ‘These Lips’, whose sultriness is smooth and suggestive in a way that’s more reminiscent of What’s Your Pleasure? There’s enough proof here that if Ware decides to combine more styles rather than commit to a single lane, she could keep pulling it off with confidence.
For the same reasons, it feels like Ware is able to tap into a kind of emotionality that was a bit more measured on What’s Your Pleasure? While the new record gives off the impression the singer is joyously living through others as well as herself, those intertwined needs – to escape and connect – now have deeper grounding. ‘Hello Love’ is a sumptuous ballad that spins a classic pop trope – “What you doing round here, I didn’t expect to see you/ I got both hands up, it feels so good to see you” – into more of a metaphor about getting back in touch with a part of yourself that’s been hidden away for some time. That! Feels Good! surprises and stretches itself out like that. “I work all night/ I do my thing/ Just killing time/ Need a friend,” she sings on the immaculate ‘Begin Again’, her voice reaching higher for the big questions: “Is this my life?/ Beginning or end?/ Can I start again?/ Can we start again?” It sounds more and more like an invitation than an existential conundrum, and with all that new light pouring in, you’d be a fool not to give it a chance.
Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist Gia Margaret has announced a new album called Romantic Piano. The follow-up to her 2020 self-titled LP will arrive on May 26 via the musician’s new label home, Jagjaguwar. Lead single ‘Hinoki Wood’ is accompanied by a stop motion video that features clay animation by Gaia Alari. Check it out and find the album artwork and tracklist below.
Speaking about the new track, Margaret said in a statement: “‘Hinoki Wood’ feels like it was made with colors I haven’t used. (And I happened to be burning Hinoki incense when I recorded it.) Hinoki aroma is known to reduce stress, tiredness and stimulate the brain. In a way, I wanted these songs to do the same for myself/for the person listening.”
“Romantic Piano was written with a beginner’s mind,” Margaret explained. “For this collection, I thought: ‘What if I could clear my head of all the things I have learned about the piano? What would those songs sound like?’” She added, “I wanted to make music that was useful.”
Romantic Piano Cover Artwork:
Romantic Piano Tracklist:
1. Hinoki Wood
2. Ways of Seeing
3. Cicadas
4. Juno
5. A Stretch
6. City Song
7. Sitting at the Piano
8. Guitar Piece
9. La langue de l’amitié [feat. David Bazan]
10. 2017
11. April to April
12. Cinnamon
13. A Hidden Track (vinyl only)
Protomartyr have dropped a new single, ‘Elimination Dances’, which will appear on their forthcoming album Formal Growth in the Desert. Following lead track ‘Make Way’, the track arrives with an accompanying video directed by Yoonha Park and featuring dancer Kota Yamazaki. Watch and listen below.
Named after a chapter from a 1950s teen dance manual, ‘Elimination Dances’ references a game where “you get tapped out when you lose the dance,” according to a press release, which felt like an apt metaphor for life. “You might as well keep dancing until the tap comes,” vocalist Joe Casey said.
“My dad once told me ‘Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end the faster it goes,’” Park commented. “That idea along with the lyrics led to the idea of a choreographic pattern that repeats as it grows outward in an expanding spiral. The choreography repeats with each cycle but has to be danced faster and faster to keep pace with the ‘pale youth’ until eventually devolving into chaos. I recently learned that the toilet paper quote was actually by Andy Rooney.”
“I think this song came at a time when I was feeling a real sense of calm and realisation,” Georgas said of ‘Beautiful View’ in a statement. “It’s about seeing the beauty in the things we can take for granted, from our health to those who care for us. It’s about having perspective and recognising the things we often overlook. It’s about enjoying the moment, even if it’s not a breathtaking high or grand achievement. Instead of sweating the small stuff I’m trying to be more present and thankful.”
PJ Harvey has announced her tenth studio album: I Inside the Old Year Dying is out July 7 via Partisan Records. The follow-up to 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project was produced by longtime collaborators Flood and John Parish. To accompany the news, Harvey has shared a new single, ‘A Child’s Question, August’, alongside a music video directed by Steve Gullick. Check it out below and scroll down for the LP’s cover artwork and tracklist.
The new songs, Harvey said in a press release, “all came out of me in about three weeks,” and are meant to offer “a resting space, a solace, a comfort, a balm – which feels timely for the times we’re in.” She added: “I think the album is about searching, looking – the intensity of first love, and seeking meaning. Not that there has to be a message, but the feeling I get from the record is one of love – it’s tinged with sadness and loss, but it’s loving. I think that’s what makes it feel so welcoming: so open.”
I Inside the Old Year Dying Cover Artwork:
I Inside the Old Year Dying Tracklist:
1. Prayer at the Gate
2. Autumn Term
3. Lwonesome Tonight
4. Seem an I
5. The Nether-edge
6. I Inside the Old Year Dying
7. All Souls
8. A Child’s Question, August
9. I Inside the Old I Dying
10. August
11. A Child’s Question, July
12. A Noiseless Noise
JOHN – the duo of drummer/lead singer John Newton and guitarist/backing vocalist Johnny Healey – have shared a new single, ‘Trauma Mosaic’. The track was recorded by Tom Hill at The Bookhouse in South London. Check out a video for it below, along with the band’s upcoming tour dates.
“We like to think the back catalogue really shows how the project has evolved and expanded over the many years/releases,” Newton said in a statement. “‘Trauma Mosaic’ feels like a real testament to the ongoing journey, proving that there’s plenty of exploration even within our inherent limitations as a duo. It’s actually become our strength – helping simplify the decision making process, whilst further defining what JOHN is – in a unique sense.”
JOHN 2023 Tour Dates:
May 5 – Oxford, UK – Jericho Tavern
May 6 – Exeter, UK – The Cavern
May 7 – Falmouth, UK – The Cornish Bank
May 24 – Bedford, UK – Esquires
May 26 – Overzande, NL – Klompop Festival
May 27 – Den Haag, NL – Sniester Festival
May 28 – Rotterdam, NL – Rotown
May 29 – Groningen, NL – VERA Downstage
Oct 3 – Phoenix, AZ – Linger Longer Lounge
Oct 4 – Los Angeles, CA – The Echo
Oct 5 – Santa Ana, CA – Constellation Room
Oct 7- San Francisco, CA – Brick and Mortar
Oct 10 – Seattle, WA – Sunset Tavern
Oct 11 – Portland, OR – Mission Theater
Oct 13 – Salt Lake City, UT – The DLC
Oct 14 – Denver, CO – Skylark Lounge
Oct 17 – St. Louis, MO – Off Broadway
Oct 18 – Chicago, IL – Schubas
Oct 20 – Toronto, ON – The Baby G
Oct 21 – Columbus, OH – The Basement
Oct 24 – Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie
Oct 25 – Washington, DC – DC9
Oct 26 – Brooklyn, NY – St. Vitus
