of Montreal have dropped a new single, ‘Rude Girl on Rotation’, lifted off their new album Lady on the Cusp. It follows lead offering ‘Yung Hearts Bleed Free’. Check it out below.
“‘Rude Girl On Rotation’ was inspired, in part, by my impending move from Athens GA to our new home in Vermont,” Kevin Barnes shared in a statement. “I used an open tuning on guitar that Nick Drake used a lot on his jammers. The bass line chugs along in a late 60’s West Coast rocker style, influenced by Canned Heat’s ‘Poor Moon’. I wanted the song to sound loose and under-produced. It took the least amount of time to record, of all the songs on the album. I hope you like it!”
Ekko Astral have released a new song, ‘on brand’, lifted from their debut LP pink balloons. The album comes out in full tomorrow, April 17, and it includes the previously shared cuts ‘baethoven’ and ‘devorah’. Check out ‘on brand’ via the accompanying video below.
Lunar Vacation have offered their take on the Ramones’ ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’. Listen to it below.
“We enjoyed the process of reimagining ‘I Wanna Be Sedated,’ and only drove ourselves a lil crazy in the process,” the band shared in a statement. “I guess you could say the lyrics manifested themselves. This was a fun song to try to make our own ahead of making our new album.”
Slow Pulp have released a cover of Lifehouse’s 2000 hit ‘Hanging by A Moment’, which was previously available as a part of The FADER‘s transgender charity compilation. The band also recently performed the song during a live session for SiriusXMU. Take a listen below.
“’Hanging By A Moment’ is one of those songs that I really loved when I was a kid but hadn’t realize the way it had influenced me in my songwriting until much later on,” guitarist Henry Stoehr explained in a statement. “I feel like this song kind of lives somewhere in between alt rock and pop music, which is something we’re all pretty drawn to as a group. We wanted to try to provide a new take on the song, while also highlighting how cool the original song is.”
The Bird Calls, the project of singer-songwriter Sam Sodomsky, has announced a new album called Old Faithful. The follow-up to last year’s home-recorded Exodus All Over is due for release on May 31 via Ruination Record Co. Listen to the LP’s title track below.
Opening up about ‘Old Faithful’, Sodomsky said in a statement: “I was particularly inspired by the following quote from Nick Cave from his book with Sean O’Hagan, Faith, Hope and Carnage: ‘As I’ve gotten older, I have also come to see that maybe the search is the religious experience—the desire to believe and the longing for meaning, the moving toward the ineffable… Perhaps God is the search itself.’ I thought his logic could apply to both spiritual and romantic devotion, and that each requires a lot of patience and active attention. Today’s prayers are only good for today.”
Produced with Nico Hedley and Ian Wayne, the new album features contributions from Jason Burger (Scree, Twain, Big Thief), Winston Cook-Wilson (Office Culture, Winston C.W.), Katie Battistoni (Katy the Kyng), Andy Cush (Garcia Peoples, Domestic Drafts), and Shaughnessy Jones (Trash Girl).
Old Faithful Cover Artwork:
Old Faithful Tracklist:
1. Old Faithful
2. Old Folks
3. I Haven’t Been This Happy In A Long Time
4. Going Insane
5. Total Gunpowder
6. Daisy Chain
7. Pleasing Myself
8. Footprints
9. Home Advantage
10. Faith People
11. I Wish That We Could Fall In Love Again
12. Worst Trip
13. Metronome Song
Cassandra Jenkins has announced she has signed to Dead Oceans and will release a new album, My Light, My Destroyer, on July 12. The follow-up to 2021’s An Overview on Phenomenal Nature is led by the new single ‘Only One’, which arrives with a video directed by Lydia Fine and Tony Blahd. Check it out below.
“It’s about a Groundhog Day effect, finding yourself in the same situation over and over again, not knowing how to get out of that loop—and in some sense, an unwillingness to break a cycle because you’re blinded by your circumstances,” Jenkins said of the new song in a statement. The opening line, “seasick dawn,” was inspired by her friend Kristin Andreaasen and describes the “queasiness that comes with meeting a new day, dry eyed, in a string of sleepless nights.”
Speaking about An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, Jenkins added, “I was channeling what I knew in that moment– feeling lost. When that record came out, and people started to respond to what I had written, my plans to quit were foiled in the most unexpected, heartening, and generous way. Ready or not, it reinvigorated me.”
When it came to recording a follow-up, Jenkins explained, “I was coming from a place of burn out and depletion, and in the months following the session, I struggled to accept that I didn’t like the record I had just made. It felt uninspired, so I started over.” Working with producer Andrew Lappin, My Light, My Destroyer, she began reconstructing My Light, My Destroyer. “When we listened back in the control room that first day, I could see a space on my record shelf start to open up, because the songs were finding their home in real time. That spark informed the blueprint for the rest of the album, and its completion was propelled by a newfound momentum.”
The LP includes contributions from Palehound’s El Kempner, Hand Habits’ Meg Duffy, Isaac Eiger (formerly of Strange Ranger), Katie Von Schleicher, Zoë Brecher (Hushpuppy), Daniel McDowell (Amen Dunes), producer and instrumentalist Josh Kaufman, producer Stephanie Marziano (Hayley Williams, Bartees Strange), and Jenkins’ friend, director/actor/journalist Hailey Benton Gates (who inspired the An Overview‘s ‘Hailey’ and jokingly suggested the title of the new album’s closing track, ‘Hayley’).
“Awe is a function of nature that keeps us from losing connection,” Jenkins shared. “Staying in touch with awe, that light, is the best antidote to fear, and the powers that try to control us with fear. So in that sense, staying in touch with awe is to keep my light intact, and that is my greatest tool for destroying and dismantling the parts of myself and the world around me that have the potential to cause harm. Frankly, this is what keeps me from quitting—it serves as a reminder to pause and appreciate my time on earth, for all its chaos and its beauty.”
Belle and Sebastian have released a new single, ‘What Happened to You, Son?. It arrives ahead of North American tour, which kicks off April 23 in Atlanta. Listen below.
Discussing the new song, Stuart Murdoch said:
‘What Happened to You Son’ got pulled rather randomly from the last LP because the LP felt one track too long. Out it came.
The song is about my youth, and the funny hole I fell into in my late teens. I was failing at my university course, failing in almost everything I tried around then. I was obsessed with the music of the time, I used to hang so much on the lyrics and message and feeling of certain bands of the 80s era – it probably wasn’t healthy.
So although the theme of this song is a little accusatory, the fault is with the beholder. I could have switched off at any time. Instead I let the singers become my penpals and my deities.
The song tries to address what happens when the pop stars grow up, and change, and go a different way, and seem to betray the stance they held when you loved them the most.
The song finishes hopefully, however. There’s always a way forward, always a light to guide you if you look closely, if you give up part of yourself, if you let yourself flow and change.
Belle and Sebastian released their latest album, Late Developers, last year.
Strand of Oaks has released ‘Party at Monster Lake’, the second single from his upcoming album Miracle Focus. Arriving on the heels of ‘More You’, the track comes paired with a video from director Ruud Gielend. Check it out below.
“When Tim asks to embody having the best time of your life on video, there is only one way to go: do it while making memories with loved ones,” Gielend commented in a statement. “‘Party at Monster Lake’ feels like how we want to relive our memories. Golden sunsets, the best weather, no clock ticking and smiles for days.”
Menomena have returned with a surprise three-song EP called The Insulation. It marks the Portland art-rock band’s first new music since 2013’s ‘Toomer’, which was recorded during the same sessions as their 2012 album Moms. Each member takes lead vocals on a different track: Danny Seim sings the title track, Justin Harris sings ‘Copious’, and Brent Knopf handles ‘Caravan’. Take a listen below.
The Insulation is also Menomena’s first project with Knopf since 2010’s Mines. In 2011, Knopf left the band to focus on Ramona Falls and then the duo El Vy with the National’s Matt Berninger, and Danny Seim went on to collaborate with different member of the National, drummer Bryan Devendorf, in the band Pfarmers. Harris has been playing bass in Bloc Party from 2015-2023.
Loma have announced their third LP, How Will I Live Without A Body?. The follow-up to 2020’s Don’t Shy Away is due June 28 via Sub Pop. The first single, ‘How It Starts’, is out today alongside a video directed by and starring the band’s Emily Cross. Check it out and find the album cover (by Lisa Cline) and tracklist below.
To make the new album, the band regrouped in a tiny stone house in the UK, where Cross works as an end-of-life doula. “Sitting in our heavy coats around a little electric radiator, we realised how much we’d missed each other—and that just being together was precious,” Meiburg recalled.
How Will I Live Without A Body? was inspired by Laurie Anderson, who offered a chance to work with an AI trained on her work. Meiburg sent two photos, to which Anderson’s AI responded with two poems. “We used fragments of these poems in ‘How It Starts’ and ‘Affinity’,” he explained. “And then Dan noticed that one of AI-Laurie’s lines, ‘How will I live without a body?’ would be a perfect name for the album, since we’d nearly lost sight of each other in the recording process.”
How Will I Live Without A Body? Cover Artwork:
How Will I Live Without A Body? Tracklist:
1. Please, Come In
2. Arrhythmia
3. Unbraiding
4. I Swallowed a Stone
5. How It Starts
6. Dark Trio
7. A Steady Mind
8. Pink Sky
9. Broken Doorbell
10. Affinity
11. Turnaround
