Gladie – the Philadelphia band led by former Cayetana vocalist Augusta Koch and featuring members of Spirit of the Beehive, Tigers Jaw, and Witching – have announced a new LP. Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out will arrive on November 18 via Plum Records, and its lead single, ‘Nothing’, is out now. Check it out below.
Discussing the new album in a statement on Bandcamp, Koch said:
I’m so excited to share this first song and announce our new record Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out. We’ve been working on this record for a while now and to finally get to share a song from it feels exhilarating.
This first song “nothing” came from a thought experiment based on what ended up being the chorus of the song “What would it feel like to want Nothing?” Basically, in all aspects of life, whether it’s relationships, consumerism, or any other constant desire, there is always this push from external and internal forces telling you, “More, More, More” but is that really a healthy way to live? Maybe it’s more fruitful to actually want less to make you appreciate that what you do possess is greater than it seems.
The full record comes out November 18th via Plum Records. (The label I started with my soul mates Kelly Olsen and Allegra Anka.) The vinyl should ship out in early spring due to all the supply chain issues (fingers crossed it will show up at my house sooner) but you can pre-order it now and get the digital release as soon as the album comes out.
Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out was recorded at The Bunk in early 2022 with Matt Schimelfenig (guitar, keyboard, vocals), Pat Conaboy (guitar), Dennis Mishko (bass), and Miles Ziskind (drums) and Me, Gus (vocals and guitar). Matt also recorded and mixed the record, while Ryan Schwabe mastered. Mark Glick (cello), Mike Park (saxophone), and Brian Lockerm (trumpet) guest across four tracks on the album.
When I sent the record to my best friend she said “I can hear your roots and your branches” which quite honestly is the greatest compliment I could hope for. I hope as long as I share music I can grow some new branches. We all deserve to grow. I really hope you guys enjoy it and from the bottom of my heart thank you for listening to our music. <3 Augusta
Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out Cover Artwork:
Don’t Know What You’re In Until You’re Out Tracklist:
1. Purple Year
2. Born Yesterday
3. Mud
4. Hit the Ground Running
5. Nothing
6. Soda
7. Heaven, Someday
8. Fixer
9. Smoking
10. For a Friend
11. Something Fragile
Caroline Polachek has shared an aria written for Oliver Leith’s opera Last Days, a new Royal House Opera stage adaptation of Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film dramatizing Kurt Cobain’s death. It’s titled ‘Non Voglio Mai Vedere Il Sole Tramontare’, which is Italian for ‘I Never Want to See the Sun Go Down’. Polachek recorded it with frequent collaborator Danny L Harle. Listen to it below.
Earlier this week, Polachek revealed that she will be releasing a new song called ‘Sunset’ on October 17. She recently covered Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’ for the Jack Antonoff-helmed soundtrack to Minions: The Rise of Gru.
This time last year, I recommended five horror films for your Halloween line-up. Suffice to say, I’m at it again. For 2022, I’m pulling from television as well as cinema to mix up the list and to provide some perhaps unfamiliar monster gems. So, from ghostly adaptations to backwoods cryptids, here are five more horrors for Halloween.
Not of this Earth (1957)
Paul Birch plays a man who is…Not of this Earth.
In March 1957, Allied Artists released a Roger Corman double bill: Attack of the Crab Monsters and Not of this Earth. The former is a wildly entertaining creature feature in which irradiated crabs eat people to consume their consciousness. The latter is our focus, an intriguing alien visitor narrative that uses its budgetary constraints to great effect.
Paul Birch plays an alien whose race is afflicted with a fatal disease, victims of a terrible atomic war. He’s on Earth seeking human blood, hoping to cure his people. Under the guise of a “Mr. Johnson”, he hires a nurse (Beverly Garland) to look after him while goes about his mission. Immediately, there are some similarities with Toho’s The Mysterians (1957), which also sees aliens exploiting humanity following a nuclear war that’s ravaged their biology. But whereas Toho’s film has the benefit of colour, high production values, spectacular special effects, and an international scope, Not of this Earth makes do with a smaller, domestic sphere. Yes, it’s often flatly composed and there’s little in the way of action, but the ideas are framed well by the setting.
There’s a particular moment in which another of Johnson’s race meets him. The pair discuss their planet’s grim situation while flicking through pages at a magazine stand. The fate of an entire species, an entire planet, communicated in such a trivial setting. It’s fascinating.
Of course, I’d be a fool not to mention the marvellous Beverly Garland. Genre fans will recognise her from another Roger Corman science fiction picture, It Conquered the World (1956), as well as the cinemascope creature feature, The Alligator People (1959). Unsurprisingly, she’s wonderful and sells the story.
The Screaming Skull (1958)
The Screaming Skull is a motion picture that reaches its climax in shocking horror.
The sad state of this film on home video – and its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000 – has severely hurt its reputation. Released by American International Pictures in 1958, The Screaming Skull is an entertaining ghost story that’s much better than what you may have heard.
Eric (John Hudson) and Jenni (Peggy Webber) are newlyweds arriving to their new home – the home where Eric lived with his now-deceased former wife, Marion. The house – a monster of a building – oozes menace and discomfort, and it’s not long before Jenni believes she’s haunted by Marion. However, Eric’s past is far from spotless, and what initially seems to be a faked haunting designed to drive a poor woman to her death becomes something much more sinister.
From its fabulous poster art to its terrific title, The Screaming Skull is a picture that truly reaches its climax in shocking horror – as promised by its sensational opening narration. Several scenes of Jenni all alone in the house are very effective; Peggy Webber’s frightened look sells the horror as she listens to footsteps outside her door. If you can, track down Scream Factory’s recent blu-ray release to see the film in the best picture quality possible. Leave the MST3K quips behind and sink into what is often a very atmospheric and unsettling ghost story.
The film also features Mozart’s famous Dies Irae melody, oft associated with horror cinema thanks to Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind’s unforgettable rendition for The Shining (1980). Along with The Return of Dracula (also 1958), The Screaming Skull effectively uses the piece to set the right tone for its ghastly delights. Mention should also be given to cinematographer Floyd Crosby, whose photography of the film’s house serves as a forerunner to his work on the gothic mansions in several of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe adaptations.
The Outer Limits – The Zanti Misfits (1963)
Criminal creatures from another planet.
And now we turn to television. The Outer Limits (1963-1965) needs no introduction. Like Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), The Outer Limits is one of the most influential science fiction television shows of all time, tantalising viewers with stories of the unusual and the frightening. While Serling’s series showcased greater variety in its delivery of science fiction, The Outer Limits leaned into monsters, aliens, and weird beings.
One of its most memorable episodes is undoubtedly The Zanti Misfits. In the middle of a deserted town, the US military awaits the arrival of a spacecraft. Inside it are the titular Zanti misfits, criminals of an alien species sent to their new penal colony: Earth. Meanwhile, Bruce Dern and Olive Deering play two bank robbers who’ve unknowingly driven into the landing site. When the pair find and disturb the Zanti spaceship, the Zanti misfits are soon loose and on the rampage.
The episode raises questions about carceral justice. As its opening narration asks, “what is society to do with those members who are a threat to society, those malcontents and misfits whose behaviour undermines and destroys the foundations of civilization?”. But just what is “civilisation”? Whose definition are we following? The US military will gladly receive the Zanti misfits in exchange for Zanti technology, and is therefore embroiled in perpetuating carceral systems on an interplanetary scale – and all for technological advantage.
Of course, the real stars are the Zantis themselves. Their design is brilliantly horrifying: ant-like creatures with horrible humanoid faces, their expressions contorted into revolting grins. Their image has unsurprisingly become one of the series’ most enduring. So, sit back, ask yourself some difficult questions, and enjoy one of The Outer Limits’ best episodes.
The Ash Tree (1975)
Barbara Ewing gives a quietly startling performance as Mrs. Mothersole.
The ghost stories of M.R. James are some of the most haunting ever written; Lawrence Gordon Clark’s BBC adaptations are some of the best put to film. Though broadcast at Christmas in keeping with the oral tradition of ghost stories for the season, I’m recommending one for Halloween.
In all honesty, there are too many Clark adaptations to suggest – A Warning to the Curious (1972), Lost Hearts (1973), The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974), etc. Almost all are masterclasses in the macabre, perfectly capturing James’ written language and imagining it for a new medium. However, for its sheer unpleasantness and deliciously grotesque ideas, I must recommend The Ash Tree.
Sir Richard (Edward Petherbridge) inherits his deceased uncle’s manor in the country. In its grounds stands an ash tree; its hollow interior hides the cruel past of Sir Richard’s uncle, Sir Mathew (also played by Petherbridge). In his time, Sir Mathew was a sheriff, and had sentenced a woman, Mrs. Mothersole (Barbara Ewing), to death for witchcraft. She, however, ensured that something of hers survived. “Mine shall inherit”, she cries before her execution. And from this promise, something crawls in through Sir Mathew’s bedroom window – or rather, some things. Small creatures with many legs, that wail like babies, whose withered faces are distinctly human. Much like the grim-faced monstrosities of The Zanti Misfits, the children of The Ash Tree are wonderfully frightening. They prompt revulsion and sorrow in equal measure, the terrible offspring of a doomed woman and an awful act of cruelty.
Though it loses some of the more disturbing details of James’ original tale (including an unnerving moment in which a cat falls into the tree), Clark’s adaptation captures its horror with precision. In particular, the few but significant interactions between Sir Mathew and Mrs. Mothersole are skin-crawlingly effective. Petherbridge’s effete, aristocratic portrayal sells the hideousness of the witch trials superbly – a profoundly unserious man wielding deadly serious power. Barbara Ewing is marvellous as the convicted Mothersole, her silence and burning stare saying more than words ever could.
Check your windows before heading to bed.
Creature from Black Lake (1976)
A bipedal primate stalks the swamps of Louisiana.
Released four years after what is arguably the best Bigfoot movie ever made (1972’s The Legend of Boggy Creek), Creature from Black Lake captures much of the same charm and appeal of its predecessor. When I was a child, I caught bits and pieces of this film on the Horror Channel. Despite the poor-quality pan-and-scan print that was used, the few scenes I saw stuck with me.
Rives (John David Carson) and Pahoo (Dennis Fimble) are two anthropology students who’ve travelled from Chicago to the backwoods of Louisiana to find a Bigfoot-like creature. Most locals seem hesitant to discuss their encounters until Rives and Pahoo meet a family who’ve been repeatedly terrorised by the monster. This brings me to the scene I remember most from my childhood. In a chilling flashback, we learn how the family encountered the creature when changing a tire on a lonely stretch of road. The youngest of them, a toddler, wanders off into the brush and comes face-to-face with the titular creature – seldom seen on screen but felt with effective use of point-of-view shots.
The film has a leisurely pace but never loses its appeal thanks to the charisma of its leads. It’s fun spending time with them and their believable friendship. Of course, this makes it all the more frightening when the monster appears, and the climactic encounter is unrelenting. The film also showcases the Louisiana swamps with a similar visual flare to Boggy Creek (thanks to master cinematographer, Dean Cundey), inspiring wonder and unease in equal measure.
And so, my friends, that concludes my suggestions for your Halloween viewing. I hope they’ll make your own line-ups more fun, exciting, and frightening. I think they will thrill you. They may shock you; they might even horrify you. So, if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now is your chance to…well, I warned you…
Indigo Sparke’s 2021 debut, Echo, was a minimalist yet evocative collection of folk songs that resonated for its intimacy as much as its intensity, each vibration captured deftly by the simmering production from Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker. The Australian singer-songwriter’s poetic songwriting already seemed to edge toward a vast infinity, but on her sophomore full-length, Hysteria, Sparke has broadened horizons, fleshing out and expanding her sound with help from the National’s Aaron Dessner, who brought a similar warmth and fullness to Taylor Swift’s latest records. Far from abandoning the elemental, cosmic pull of her earlier work, Sparke stretches her muscles, tapping into a raw fury that allows her to untangle a complex web of emotions that feel at once deeply personal and ancient. The result is a sweeping 14-track effort that reclaims familial and patriarchal histories while reflecting on the nature of love, following waves of feeling and crashing, rather unexpectedly, into a kind of spiritual transcendence. Hysteria is an album that extends beyond the self, that reaches for the ocean but always finds its way back to shore, holding enough fuel to keep a fire through the night and fall back into dreams.
We caught up with Indigo Sparke to talk about the story behind every song on Hysteria, which is out today. Read the track-by-track interview and listen to the album below.
1. Blue
In the bio, it’s mentioned that your mother pointed out how often you use the word “blue” on the record, which is funny because “Blue is the name my mother gave me” is literally our introduction to this journey and yourself as a character. Was that motif already obvious to you?
I didn’t maybe realize that I had it all the way through in different bits. I can’t even remember off the top of my head now, but it is woven through three or four songs, I think. And that was totally unintentional, although I think I kept using it as a reference point for myself. And I love that you said the character of me, that is so cool. I really love that because I definitely felt that more in this in some ways than I did in the last record. But I also felt like I was really fully inhabiting myself more than I ever had in this period of my life, in the time that I was writing the songs and recording. In some ways, it was like a reclamation of myself so that I could free myself from past history and stories and trauma that I’d felt bound by, and I think my name was one of those things that I had felt bound by in some way. Because I felt like I had a been through such a journey with my mental health and sensitivity in the world, and to have the frequency of people calling me Blue or Indigo my whole life, was like: This is the shade of my soul in some capacity. On a frequency and energetic level, vibrationally, this is what I’m getting called all the time. And I felt like there was a heaviness in that.
I never, until this year, ever in my whole entire life – I never wore the colour blue. I really didn’t like it, I had massive resistance to it. I mean, I’d wear blue denim or whatever, but never blue clothing. And I don’t know what happened, but I think reclaiming that part of my name and my history and everything associated with blue or indigo became this really beautiful, joyful thing. And now I’m wearing blue all the time. I’m loving blue, everything blue at the moment. [laughs] I know it’s quite esoteric, but I think I’ve just been healing, and this is a part of my strange and nonlinear healing journey.
To me, the phrase that sums up the song is “the sound of standing up to you.” Even though it’s the longest song on the album, the decision to keep it stripped back feels like a way of centering your own voice and that confidence.
Yeah, absolutely, I feel that. We tried it different ways, but it needed to be sparse, it needed to be almost skeletal, because it was the backbone of so much of the story and the history – this is like my version of The Odyssey in some way. And I think that sometimes, history and trauma and love needs to be totally exposed in a really vulnerable and real way for it to be not only accessible and felt, but for it to be witnessed so it can be transmuted into something else. That’s kind of why it was so stripped back. It just didn’t require anything else. And I felt like it really needed to start the record. Aaron and I had conversations about that and sequencing, but eventually I was like, “No, this needs to be the start.”
2. Hysteria
Maybe it’s the way you sing “watch my soul unravel,” but for me, this is where the world of the album starts to open up and the light is coming in.
Yeah, I definitely feel that. I really wanted for the record to be this journey, and I think that song is where I reemerge from the underground or the underworld or something, coming out. Even though there’s a lot of similar themes in the lyrics of history and trauma and love, it’s paired with these major chords, which gives it this really strange – it’s always felt like my Neil Young song in some way. You get that pang and that hit of nostalgia and expansive existential beauty and melancholy and just life, and it feels good, it feels open and you feel the light, and somehow you also simultaneously feel the ache of what it is to live and love and long for things.
There’s this deep warmth and lightness in the song musically, but lyrically, there’s a darkness to it, too. I’m curious if, musically, leaning more on the hopeful side of it was an intentional decision.
It wasn’t cerebrally intentional. But I think on a feeling level, I’ve been wanting to find more lightness and space inside of myself. And I guess on some level, I was aware in my mind that a lot of my songs have a tendency to stay in this melancholic, dark, sad place. But I didn’t ever sit down with this song and think, I’m going to try and write this with a sense of hope, or lighthearted, major chords – this song just came out in one go really easily.
But I wrote it, actually, when I wasat my dad’s house, he lives in this really small town five hours outside of Sydney in New South Wales in Australia. And it’s beautiful; it’s kind of upstate, there’s lots of rivers and a lot of nature. My dad was always playing Neil Young, always singing Neil Young, so I think that the spirit of my dad and Neil Young kind of seeped into me because I wrote this song there with him. It’s funny how you absorb your environment in a certain way.
3. Pressure in My Chest
You finished writing the songs for the album after moving to New York in the spring of 2021, right?
Yeah, so I had done my first recording session with Aaron in summer, and then went back in the fall for the next session. And then someone in the circle got COVID, so we all isolated and that session didn’t happen. And when we came out of isolation, he was like, “Just go home and keep writing.” Even though we already had more than enough songs – we had too many songs, actually. But I went back to New Mexico, I was living in Taos at the time, and I just kept writing and writing and writing. And ‘Pressure in My Chest’ was one of the songs that I wrote living in New Mexico in Taos. So when I went back for the next session, which was middle of winter. And it was really funny because writing the song, it was another one of those ones that just kind of sprouted out of nowhere and came through. I was recording it on a voice memo and I was like, “Aaron’s gonna love this song, this is going to be Aaron’s favourite song.” I just had a feeling, I don’t know what it was. And then I went and I played it for him. I had a bunch of new songs, which most of them ended up making it onto the album. But that’s where that song came from. And in the end, he was like, “I love this song so much.”
It reminded me of something you said in our conversation last year – you said that finding music felt like you had found your breath. So I see this as your love letter to music, in a way.
Oh, that’s beautiful, I love that. That’s so nice. I guess it is in some way, actually. Originally, it was called ‘Little Red Heart’. I mean, the lyrics are really self-explanatory. “I’ve made it to the wasteland/ Of my forgotten screams,” I was out in this massive desert land. I found my breath and refound myself in total isolation without any attachment to anything. And all I had was music, you know. This last year and a half has been the year of me fully stepping into myself in my music, and it’s felt amazing. It’s felt really, really amazing.
4. God Is a Woman’s Name
This is the first song that really expands musically, and it makes sense because it depicts something else that we had talked about, which is this moment of connection with something greater.
It’s an interesting one, because I wrote this song initially about a woman – I thought I was writing it about a woman that I had been in a relationship with. And there was a period of time when I was living in Minneapolis, and there was a lot of emotional chaos unfurling in the space between us. It was actually quite magnificent and beautiful – how things unravel themselves in love is so stunning in some ways, and terrifying in other ways.
But I remember standing out on the street in Minneapolis, and it was the dead of winter, and I had this moment where I felt like, in the extreme grief that I was in that particular moment, something cracked open inside of me. And it was like I felt totally enlightened into some transcendental space. It was so bizarre. It was like everything went into slow motion. I just remember looking at the snow, and it was huge – the snowflakes were so massive, and it was falling in slow motion. And I remember just looking around, like, Wow, I am literally in the river of life right now. Everything made sense in some way, despite all the dysfunction and difficult feelings. It was like I merged with life and life merged with me, and reason and purpose was there and not there. I know – [laughs] it was a really wild experience. And I wrote a poem, actually. I didn’t write this song, and then later this song came from the piece of writing that I had written, and it was quite a long chunk of a poem.
Anyway, I wrote this song at the time. It was inspired by the woman that I was with and deeply, deeply in love with, but then I came to realize, this is actually about me – and all of us, in some way. We are the physical embodiment of prayer, that’s what we are. It’s so unique and so special, and it just happened that at that in that point, I was like, “God is a woman’s name.” Because this person that I was in love with was a woman and identify as a woman. In some way, I was like, this is cool, breaking the construct of, what is God? What is it to pray? What is it to be alive? What is it to feel all of these things – it’s really hard to put such a big concept or philosophical rumination of spirituality and religion into something really, again, esoteric and existential. It’s hard to put it into words, but definitely, the feeling is expansive.
5. Why Do You Lie
I love the instrumentation on this song. It’s kind of tangled up but lovely and gorgeous at the same time.
I really like your perception of things, it’s really beautiful and nuanced. It is tangled up, this song is tangled up. It’s tangled up emotionally, too. I love this song. It’s one of my favourite songs to play live. And it’s really inked in my heart, this song. I wrote it slightly differently, with a different strumming pattern, and then Aaron started thinking of finger-picking it and I was like, “Wow.” And then he just kept layering guitars on and I was like, “This is perfect for the emotional narrative of this song.” I think this one, again, is about love and mental health. Actually, not so much my mental health in this song, but another person’s mental health, and how as humans we do tangle and we weave together in these really complicated ways. I don’t know quite how to put it into words either, this song, but it feels kind of like falling rain or something.
6. Pluto
Aaron Dessner’s piano comes to the forefront for the first time in a really beautiful way on this song. And in lining up with the emotional narrative, it sounds like you’re kind of guiding it, or it’s guiding you.
He had been really like, “I’m not gonna play piano on this album because it’s such a staple of mine.” But then I played this song and he started playing it and we were just like, “Oh, damn, this is beautiful.” It was really different. Again, I feel like probably the emotional content leading first. It was the first time in a long time that I had started to feel love again with someone and for someone and I’d just kind of given up. It was all very fleeting and beautiful and felt kind of nostalgic. We were listening to a lot of Jeff Buckley, and that was infused in this song. But it kind of followed itself into something new and morphed with Aaron’s production on it. I wasn’t sure at first. I was kind of like, it’s just too emotional ballad or something. And Aaron’s like, “No, it’s one of my favourites, it’s stunning.” And then I listened to it a few more times after taking a little bit of space from it, and I was like, “Oh, I love this song, this is so beautiful the way it turned out.”
There’s this moment where you sing “I’m alone but not lonely,” which is a pretty universal sentiment, but I feel like you’re making it yours by saying “Holding a flame that’s blue.”
It definitely felt more like a universal thing, especially in the times that we were in, you know, like we were all alone but in this thing together. And I love that there are certain ritualistic things that we can do separately, but that unite us together. Like, lighting a candle is such a simple, beautiful thing that you can do and can immediately have some connection. I love that I could be here and you could be there and it’s like, “Okay, at nine o’clock we’re gonna light a candle together separately.” And then there’s an immediate kind of psychic and emotional connection of just acknowledging each other’s presence in the world, and you can do that at any time. That was kind of why I made those – I went on a bit of a rampage recently where I started making candles for merch.
7. Infinity Honey
This song is quite dense and sharp – those guitars in the background are almost spiky – and it keeps growing. How does the arrangement fit into the idea of infinity that you’re diving into lyrically and vocally?
This song felt so circular to me, in its lyrical world and its production, everything. It was totally born out of a re-cycle of relationship that I’d had years prior that I had entered into again, which was really, really bizarre. There’s so many layers to this song, and a bit of mythology in it too. I was thinking a lot about the Oracle of Delphi in Greek mythology, and I was thinking a lot about consciousness and how children come through with this innocence, without the layers of fear and judgement and history that we accumulate as we get older. And I went down this whole daydream, imagining this story of a woman falling pregnant with a child that was born of the seed of a cypress and held all the wisdom of the knowledge in the universe and was this oracle. And then I was thinking about myself falling pregnant and having a child and feeling simultaneously many things: the grief of not having done that chapter of my life yet, and then the excitement of potentially getting to do that chapter of my life, and then this idea that I had already done it in some kind of alternate timeline. Which had me thinking about infinity – this infinity cycle, or how we’re often retracing our own steps in some way through random timelines, through eternity, learning and growing. And then musically, the melodies have this spiraling down and up in some way. And it is kind of dense and intense. It’s definitely got this drive and intensity to it.
8. Golden Ribbons
I want to focus on three verbs that you circle around, and I think the first and last ones are maybe the most important words on the album: “holding,” “folding,” “melting,” and “falling.” What trajectory does that represent for you?
I think that’s been my life, really: a constant cycle of navigating those themes inside of myself. And not finding the balance at times in those things – being in one of them more so than the other, you know, has nearly killed me. Like, holding, holding, holding, holding – it’s so intense in my body. And then falling, falling, falling: falling in love, falling through, falling, so many different iterations and metaphors in that. Melting… Yeah, I don’t even really need to fully go into that. I can leave that open for interpretation, everyone has their own understanding of that. I love this song, it might be one of my favourites on the album. Not that I should have favourites, but I just love this song so much.
What do you love about it?
I love the time that it represented. Probably I have an attachment to what it’s about and that time, very much reminds me of a specific time living in New York City for the first time. I love that it doesn’t change. Again, it’s kind of spherical, and in its form it just goes along. But it’s dynamic, even in its verse-verse-verse-verse-type thing. And I love the production of it. It kind of feels a bit more grungy and edgy, and I think it really captures this particular essence of me that I felt hadn’t been fully captured in my music yet, that wasn’t just ethereal and beautiful and poetic and lyrical. It has this gravity and grit and edge and raw, kind of unfiltered thing.
9. Real
This is a lonely, yearning song, and it made me wonder how you go about capturing the feeling of waiting in a song.
It is about waiting, it is very much a longing song. It was one of the earlier ones that I had written in COVID, and has deep yearning and grief. I think the changing time signature, slowing down definitely helped create a sense of space or a break. It starts off in that faster finger-picking thing in some way, and then everything slows down. But it wasn’t intentional at all. I didn’t sit down and think, I’m going to try and create this sense of waiting or space, although that is in there for sure. I think sticking with the repetitive chords, which I do in a lot of my songs anyway, but specifically with this, it’s back and forth on those two chords the whole way through, so that helps give a sense of a repetitive waiting.
In terms of what we were talking about holding, falling, melting, folding – if those were types of songs, this is definitely a holding song.
Definitely. I really love how you pulled those words out. It’s almost like, yeah, every song could go into the category or theme of one of those things. That’s exactly what this album is, a series of holding, falling, waiting, melting.
10. Sad Is Love
There’s a similar sentiment here with lines like “Waiting for the wave to come and take it all away,” but it’s leaning more towards poetic and cosmic language as opposed to physical or human.
Yeah, for sure. It’s definitely a bit more of a meta song, writing about a similar timeframe to ‘God Is a Woman’s Name’. It nearly didn’t make it on the album, and then and then we revisited it and we’re like, “This has to be in there.”
What made you decide to include it?
I think Aaron and I just kept listening to it and we were like, “This is so good.” There’s some other songs that didn’t make the album, which will come out on a B-sides soon. I guess it also ended up coming down to sequencing, trying to navigate which songs flowed together more as a world or as a family for the record. It was really hard, but it just ended up being one of the ones that we were like, “This has got to stay on there.”
11. Set Your Fire on Me
Maybe a melting song?
Yeah, or falling maybe, a little bit of falling. I feel like my rage came through in this song more so than any of the others, my sense of strength, like wielding a sword.
I think this is a good point to talk about the theme of fire and burning on the album. I’m curious if that represents rage for you.
I think so, because I was definitely having the experience of feeling rage in my body as something that was so intense in my solar plexus that felt like fire. It felt like I was being burned alive from the inside, and I was like, “How the fuck do I process this emotion?” And it felt so ancient, so old. It felt like it was just getting triggered in present-day situations, but it wasn’t actually to do with those situations. It was something that was so old inside of me. And I even began to wonder if a lot of it was not just ancestral trauma or age, but what it is to be a woman in the world living in a very patriarchal society that’s built on a lot of constructs that’s very limiting for women. I talk a little bit about that, “your father’s name,” “the church’s game.” What is it to feel that level of oppression? I guess the idea of being a witch and you get burned alive at the stake – if you’re in touch with some kind of untainted, feminine consciousness or something, then you’re demonized.
A lot of this was about what it was like to feel eyes on us, me and my partner at the time, who was a woman – what it was like to be two women together. I even remember we had a trip to Italy, south of Italy, and it’s really old school there, like Catholic vibes. Walking around with her and us holding hands and feeling the gaze of men looking at two women was so incredibly uncomfortable. As it’s like, wow, we’re still living in the olden days, where being a woman in the world, whether you’re with another woman or not, you can feel totally suffocated. And I think that’s where that rage came from. So it wasn’t necessarily a personal rage, although it came out in a personal narrative.
12. Hold On
I wanted to ask you about the vocals on this song, because I feel like a lot of its power rests on your voice. What are your memories of recording or mapping it out?
It was definitely hard to sing this one. [laughs] Just goes straight into it and so high and pretty full-on. I had a form for this song, Aaron and I wrote the bridge. It was another one that was nearly ditched but I felt really attached to it. I was holding on, I guess. [laughs] Another holding song. But yeah, I don’t totally remember more than that, apart from that it was really intense to sing.
13. Time Gets Eaten
Another intense vocal performance.
Super intense.
One of the most memorable lines to me is “Love is a lie,” because I feel like that’s a theme that the album has been revolving around, from ‘Why Do You Lie’ to ‘Infinity Honey’. Why do you think we find it so enticing and almost romantic, that aspect of love?
I think we get obsessed with figuring things out. We get obsessed with figuring ourselves out through other people. We’re trying to understand ourselves, and it can be easy to do that through being in an intimate relationship with someone else. You know, if you can figure them out, you can somehow understand yourself more in some capacity. But I think also in that way, as we’re trying to unravel and uncover things in relationships and in love, we’re also simultaneously sometimes putting so much armour on to protect ourselves. And you find yourself sometimes in these bizarre situations tangled in lies or versions of yourself that you’re presenting to someone else to stay safe, but that’s not who you actually are. And so, you find yourself “in love,” but it’s all just a lie. You’re further away from yourself and you’re further from that person. It’s not love at all, you’re so far from love. But that’s why I was alternating that line in ‘Time Gets Eaten’, “Love is still alive/ Love is a lie.” They both exist, and it’s like, which do you occupy? And how do you navigate it? How do you feel the difference, reconcile it?
14. Burn
There’s a dreamlike atmosphere throughout the entire album, and ‘Burn’ seems to return to the autobiographical focus of ‘Blue’. Those songs bookend the album, and the rest is kind of like a fever dream.
Fever dream, that’s a really good way of putting it. It did in my mind feel like the perfect bookend to the album. Also, like you said, really autobiographical. Even just the last lines, “Please don’t wake me up/ Just tell me it’s okay to dream.” I remember putting it at the end thinking it’s kind of funny because I’ve just gone through this huge wave of expressing this whole range of emotion, this very vast weather pattern, and then at the end I’m just like, “I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to talk about it.” I wrote this song actually in Minneapolis as well, this is another Minneapolis song. It’s been written for a while, actually. I played this song on my Tiny Desk, it was the last song, and at that point, it didn’t even have a name.
Those lines – “Please don’t wake me up/ Just tell me it’s okay to dream” – I kind of imagined it from the point of view of that 17-year-old girl, but at the same time, it sounds like something you’re holding on to as an adult.
Definitely, from the viewpoint of me, the 17-year-old girl who was – I mean, the song is so much about abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse. And I think oftentimes, we bury things, or we process things so far deep down in our subconscious, and a safe place to do that is in sleep, in dream. I definitely still hold on to that because my dream space is so [laughs] – it’s so layered and full and I process so much there. A lot of my creative ideas come in waking dreams, just to have that sacred space that’s uninterrupted. I think you can dismantle a lot and also create a lot in those spaces. It’s like, protecting that, and protecting the 17-year-old version of myself inside of myself that’s still alive and still needs to be protected, so she can dream and process in that space. And now, being older, I’m like, “No, I’ve got you. This space is just your space. You’re safe in here.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Fiona Apple has a new song out today. ‘Where the Shadows Lie’ is taken from The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power soundtrack and will appear on the season finale of Amazon Studios’ series, which airs next week. The Amazon Music-exclusive was inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘One Ring’ poem, while the music was written in collaboration with series composer Bear McCreary. Listen to it below.
Since the release of Fetch the Bolt Cutters in 2020, Apple has shared a cover of Sharon Van Etten’s ‘Love More’ for the 10th-anniversary reissue of Van Etten’s second album, Epic. She also joined Watkins Family Hour on their rendition of ‘(Remember Me) I’m the One Who Loves You’. and contributed a song to Apple’s animated series Central Park.
Good Music to Ensure Safe Abortion Access to All, a new compilation benefitting nonprofits working to facilitate abortion access, is available for just 24 hours exclusively on Bandcamp today, which is a Bandcamp Friday. Kim Gordon provided the cover art for the album, which features new songs, covers, remixes, live recordings, and demos from: Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell, Animal Collective, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros, Cat Power, Daniel Rossen, David Byrne and Devo, Death Cab For Cutie, Dirty Projectors, Disq, Fleet Foxes, Gia Margaret, Grouplove, Hand Habits, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Mac DeMarco, Mary Lattimore, Maya Hawke, Overcoats, Pearl Jam, PUP, The Regrettes, R.E.M., Sleater-Kinney, Soccer Mommy, Tegan And Sara, Thao x Tune-Yards, Ty Segall, Wet Leg, and more. The 49-track compilation is available to purchase here. Check out the full tracklist below.
“Every person faced with the choice to keep a pregnancy or not should have access to a safe and legal abortion should they choose one,” Tegan and Sara said in a statement. “Their body, their choice.”
1. Wet Leg – Loving You (Demo)
2. Sleater-Kinney – Free Time
3. The Regrettes – Seashore (Live at Lollapalooza)
4. Mac DeMarco – Chamber of Reflection 2
5. Hand Habits – Ignorance (Weather Report Cover)
6. Cat Power – Song to Bobby (Live 2021)
7. My Morning Jacket – Rainbow Power (Timmy Thomas Cover)
8. David Byrne and Devo – Empire
9. Soccer Mommy – Shotgun (Demo)
10. Jayla Kai – Parking Lot (Rough Mix)
11. R.E.M. – Walk Unafraid (Live)
12. Caroline Spence, Erin Rae, Michaela Anne, Tristen – This Woman’s Work (Kate Bush Cover)
13. Pluralone – One Voice
14. Thao & The Get Down Stay Down – Meticulous Bird (Tune-Yards Remix)
15. Tenacious D – Woman Time (Remix)
16. STS9 – Balancing [feat. Armanni Reign]
17. The Album Leaf – Falling From the Sun (Live)
18. Mary Lattimore – Lake Like a Mirror
19. Daniel Rossen – Message Outside
20. Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell – The Problem (Live from Red Rocks)
21. Maya Hawke – Rose and Thorn
22. Emma Bradley – Mother, Father, You (Demo)
23. Sunflower Bean – Otherside (Demo)
24. Fleet Foxes – The Kiss (Live on Boston Harbor)
25. Dirty Projectors – Parking Structure
26. Animal Collective – Peacebone (Demo)
27. Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros – Black-Throated Wind (Live At Radio City Music Hall, New York, NY, April 3, 2022)
28. Pearl Jam – Porch (Live)
29. She & Him – The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise (Mary Ford and Les Paul Cover)”
30. Andrew Bird – “Pulaski at Night (Live from Chicago)
31. Death Cab for Cutie – Here to Forever (Demo)
32. Tegan and Sara – Under My Control
33. Disq – Mtn Dew
34. Annie DiRusso – Judgements From The World’s Greatest Band (Reimagined)
35. Gia Margaret – Solid Heart (Demo)
36. Bully – Labor of Love
37. Ty Segall – Glowing
38. Grouplove – Shout
39. Overcoats – Clingy
40. Water From Your Eyes – Jane Says (Jane’s Addiction Cover)
41. Dilversun Pickups – Songbirds (Live from The Orange Peel)
42. Foals – Looking High (Demo)
43. PUP – Scorpion Hill (Live in Toronto/ 2022)
44. Squirrel Flower – Flames and Flat Tires (Demo)
45. Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes – Little One (Acoustic)
46. Charlie Hickey – Gold Line (Demo)
47. Kills Birds – Married
48. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Ice V (Demo)
49. The Neverly Boys – Other Side Of Anywhere
Jazmine Sullivan has released a new song, ‘Stand Up’, which is taken from Chinonye Chukwu’s new film Till. Listen to the track, which was written entirely by Sullivan and produced by D’Mile, below.
“We will never forget Emmett Till and his story,” Sullivan said in a statement. “I’m honored to be able to contribute to such a powerful film about such a historic and tragic moment in American history. I believe that part of my purpose is to give space for stories that are often ignored and silenced; the Black experience in particular.”
Chinonye Chukwu added: “It was a genuine dream come true to have Jazmine Sullivan pen and perform ‘Stand Up’ as the end credit song of Till. A passionate artist and activist, Jazmine delivers an anthem for justice and hope; one that ignites a fire to rise up for all people whose lives have been senselessly cut short because of America’s deep rooted and white supremacy.”
Jazmine Sullivan’s most recent album was 2021’s Heaux Tales.
One might be obsessed with a TV show — for example, I am a Survivor superfan — but to be absorbed is a totally different thing. For Bonnie Lincoln, the narrator of Ashley Hutson’s debut novel One’s Company, absorption is the point, and she’ll do whatever it takes to get herself there.
After recently winning the lottery, Bonnie uses every cent of the grandiose sum to move out of her rickety house with a small porch into an exact replica of the set of the 70’s sitcom Three’s Company, down to the minutest detail, planning to live out the rest of her life pretending to be the show’s characters. She tells a select few about her win, including a lawyer to handle her money and several caseworkers, responsible for bringing her food and ensuring she’s sealed away about her fictional-turned-real world.
Bonnie’s reason for escaping isn’t pure fun, though; after a family trauma that left her scarred, she’s desperate to be anyone besides herself. A complex character in her own right, “Solitude is never loneliness when you have your subject,” she says. “You’re forever living in it, or going toward it.”
Our Culture spoke with Ashley Hutson about her new book, multiple internal selves, and the psychology behind Bonnie’s demeanor.
Congratulations on your debut novel! You’re a prolific short story writer, but how does it feel to have this longer form of work out?
Well, I’m not so prolific these days, in the short story arena. But no, it feels good to have a book out. It doesn’t really affect my day-to-day life, but I’m proud of it and I’m happy it’s out there.
Bonnie Lincoln, our narrator, is not too great of a person — she frequently has intense, even murderous urge, mostly towards her supposed best friend Krystal. How did it feel to inhabit this kind of character’s mind?
Well, it’s interesting you phrase it like that — I don’t see her as a bad person, necessarily, I just see her as a person who has endured some pretty bad things and she’s just kind of coping the only way she knows how. But to inhabit her mind, I think something a lot of writers don’t talk about a lot is that it’s fun. There’s all this talk about unreliable or unlikeable narrators, and it’s just fun to write that kind of person.
I see a narrative online where it’s like, ‘If this narrator is doing bad things, this is a problematic book,’ but it’s just not real. I love unreliable narrators who behave badly. Maybe she’s not a bad person, but I always found that her internal monologue always says things most people would never admit to. If some tiny thing goes wrong, she’s, like, ‘Where’s my hammer?’ We all have these moments of flaring up, but with her, you heard about it every single time.
Right, yeah. And I don’t know, I mean, if you spend all day everyday maintaining civility and having to be nice — and you might even enjoy being nice! — but when you sit down to write, I guess nice people just don’t interest me.
So the first thing we know about Bonnie is that she wins the lottery, and she then uses the money to create this replica of the set of Three’s Company, a TV show from the 70s she’s obsessed with, and uses as a means to make herself feel better. I’m curious if the inspiration behind this idea came from real life, because I personally latch onto shows, books, and music easily and sometimes I don’t let go for a while.
Well, yes, you are correct! [Laughs] I love Three’s Company. Honestly, writing this book, I know Bonnie is sort of the ‘troubled’ character, but the actual reareating of a fictional world, that was always my personal dream. I kind of have an obsessive mind, so writing it was sort of exorcizing this obsession. Because I ain’t winning the lottery, you know, I don’t have a lot of money. Might as well just imagine it. I wanted to take it to the complete, ultimate, extreme. And I’m surprised that hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it has and we’ve just never heard about it yet. It just seems like such a wild and exciting undertaking.
I’ve seen the book be labeled as ‘absurdist fiction,’ which kind of puts a name on what I was feeling. I think it was so clever to have this mechanism of the lottery being an end-all be-all explanation for why Bonnie has the power to do everything she wants to do. It was almost like a cheat code for you as the author to really play around and go deep into details that, amongst other circumstances, wouldn’t work.
Yeah, I mean, God, could you imagine trying to do that now? Like, with inflation? It feels like it costs so much money to be alive, let alone go on these exciting, imaginary adventures. The money — I mean, money does cure everything. I’m sorry! A lot is left up to your personality and life circumstances or whatever, but it is the answer to a lot of stuff! We’re living in this capitalistic society, you almost need that cheat code to even have any verisimilitude at all in this kind of story.
I also thought it was interesting that she used the money entirely for herself — that’s probably people’s first thought, to just go insane, but if they actually win it, they might save or donate. But Bonnie’s like, ‘I won. I’m using all of it.’
Right! I mean, why not? It’s mine! You might as well use it.
As her predicament goes on, Bonnie starts to become delusional and at some points believes herself to be one or even some of the characters on the show. What made you interested in writing about this part of the human psyche?
I’ve found that in a lot of my writing, especially in the last few years, which has not been published, I’ve been really concerned with issues of identity and the idea that there are multiple people living within each of us at all times. And everyone walks around and we don’t really talk about it. We don’t really talk about our wish to live another life or be someone else. I mean, maybe we talk about it, but we do it in terms of jealousy or maybe longing. We don’t talk about it in terms of a sense of creativity. I think a lot of people long for a different existence. I feel like that urge comes from an urge to create something, to be different, to imagine a different way of being. And to actually do that, it is kind of absurd to think of it happening the way it does in the book. In Bonnie’s case, specifically, she had a lot of things she wanted to get away from. She wants to be other people. But I feel like that’s sort of an oversimplification, like, ‘Oh, she’s traumatized, so she wants to be somebody else.’ Of course, that’s part of it, but I think there is a deep creative impulse in Bonnie. Winning the lottery and sort of having nothing to hold her back mentally, because she lost so much, there’s nothing impeding her now to just do whatever she wants to do.
I think part of the reason I liked the book so much is that I’m working on my own stuff that concerns delusion and wanting to be someone so much that you don’t notice the reality that’s in front of you. I like the idea of multiple selves in you, even if it’s a future version of yourself.
I really do feel like people live different lives throughout our life. I don’t know if that’s just an unhealthy way of dealing with my life, I don’t know, but sometimes I look back and I just think, ‘Who was that person? Who wrote this?’ I totally subscribe to that belief that we are different people as we move through life, for sure.
Your writing is so powerful and confident, especially in the character of Bonnie Lincoln, that I didn’t realize Three’s Company was a real show at first, and thought all these details had come from your brain. Where do you think you get your writing style from, and did it differ when it came to the book as opposed to previous stories?
Well, first of all, I hope you check out Three’s Company! Give it a chance. It’s totally dated, you have to brace yourself for some dated humor. But I’m not sure where my style comes from. I don’t know how this gets done. I really don’t. I can’t believe I wrote a book, Sam. It’s shocking to me. I think it’s different from my short stories, but it wasn’t a conscious choice.
Did you always want to be a writer?
I always wanted to write, but I never thought being a writer was even a possibility for someone like me. I grew up in a small town where the arts were not very celebrated, you know, it wasn’t considered a real endeavor. I didn’t start writing and publishing until I was — maybe in the past seven years? I’ve always written stuff, but I don’t know, being a writer just seems so unreal and bizarre. When I hear other people say, ‘Oh, yes, I knew I was going to be a writer,’ I don’t get that. But that’s great! That sets up a person for earlier success, for sure, probably, maybe, I don’t know.
After a few years in her experiment, things go off the rails after an unpredictable storm — tension is inevitable, but why did you want her story to change in this specific way?
Once she got into the whole experience, she kind of started to realize there were parts she hadn’t planned for or hadn’t expected that sort of took her out of that fantasy. She needed to meet someone else who was completely outside of her own experience to shake things up a little bit, and maybe shift her perspective.
I felt a little bad for her — she planned for so much, then this random weather event shook everything.
And that’s just the horror of life — it’s so unpredictable. You can plan and plan and plan… That’s the beauty of fantasy, you can just skip over those little parts and just go straight to what you want.
Now that the book is out, are you working on anything now? Do you have another novel idea in your mind or other short stories?
I am working on my next book, hopefully. I generally try not to share anything about it [laughs], to not give anything away, but I am. Fingers crossed it’s not another ten years!
Alvvays are back with their third album, Blue Rev, out now via Polyvinyl/Transgressive. Spanning 14 tracks, the follow-up to 2017’s Antisocialites was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Shawn Everett (the War On Drugs, Kacey Musgraves) and includes the advance singles ‘Easy On Your Own?’, ‘Pharmacist’, ‘Belinda Says’, ‘Very Online Guy’, and ‘After the Earthquake’. “Every song on the album has gone on such a journey,” vocalist Molly Rankin told NME, “and it was so satisfying going through each demo that I was in love with and listened to for years, and then comparing them with the new versions and really feeling like we’ve transcended them.” Read our review of Blue Rev.
Indigo Sparke has released her second album, Hysteria, via Sacred Bones. Produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner, it follows the Australian singer-songwriter’s 2021 debut Echo and was preceded by the songs ‘Blue’, ‘Pressure in My Chest’, and the title track. “Aaron is such an incredible person, to feel his generosity and to feel him in my corner is a true gift,” Sparke said in press materials. “It definitely took a moment for me to get used to a different way of working and hand my trust and heart over to him and his vision but it also felt so natural and we became close friends in the process.” Dessner added: “It feels cohesive and timeless and inspired to me in a way that I know I will keep coming back to. I think the chemistry is right.”
Sorry have returned with their sophomore full-length, Anywhere But Here, out now via Domino. The North London group – Louis O’Bryen, Asha Lorenz, and Ali Chant – recorded the follow-up to their 2020 debut 925 and last year’s Twixtustwain EP in collaboration with Portishead’s Adrian Utley in Bristol, drawing inspiration from 1970s songwriters such as Randy Newman and Carly Simon. “If our first version of London in 925 was innocent and fresh-faced, then this is rougher around the edges,” O’Bryen said in a press statement. “It’s a much more haggard place.” The songs ‘There’s So Many People That Want to Be Loved’, ‘Let the Lights On’, ‘Key to the City’, and ‘Closer’ offered a taste of the LP.
NNAMDÏ has put out his latest album and Secretly Canadian debut, Please Have a Seat. Written, performed, and produced entirely by the Chicago multi-instrumentalist, the LP was previewed with the singles ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Famous’, ‘Anti’, and ‘Dedication’. In our interview, NNAMDÏ cited stand-up comedy, Steven Universe, and long walks as some of the inspirations behind the LP, saying that it’s mostly “about being able to reflect on moments and not just be continuously moving, to have those moments where you can sit down and be like, ‘Oh, this is where I was at this time, this is how I was feeling. Wherever I was is where I was supposed to be.'”
Loraine James’ new album, Building Something Beautiful for Me, pays homage to the American composer Julius Eastman by reimagining and responding to his works. Out now via Phantom Limb, the project began when the UK label provided James with a drive of Eastman originals (courtesy of Gerry Eastman), Renee Levine-Packer and Mary Jane Leach’s 2015 biography Gay Guerilla, and transcribed MIDI stems from Phantom Limb founder and A&R James Vella. James then crafted the album using samples, motifs, and imagery from Eastman’s catalog. ‘Maybe If I (Stay On It)’ and ‘Choose to be Gay (Femenine)’ arrived ahead of the record’s release. Read our review of Building Something.
Out today via ATO Records, Nothing Special is the debut solo album by Okkervil River leader Will Sheff, who recorded the LP with his Okkervil River bandmates Will Graefe and Benjamin Lazar Davis, along with singer-songwriter Christian Lee Hutson, Dawes drummer Griffin Goldsmith, Death Cab For Cutie pianist Zac Ra, and guest vocalists Cassandra Jenkins and Eric D. Johnson. John Congleton, Matt Linesch, and Marshall Vore engineered the album, which Sheff began writing after moving to Los Angeles and quitting drugs and alcohol. “Working as Will Sheff, there was no back catalog, no history, no tradition,” he explained in press materials. “There was only freedom and possibility.”
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard,Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have unveiled the first of three albums they’re dropping this month. Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava includes the early tracks ‘Ice V’ and ‘Iron Lung’. The band’s Stu Mackenzie said of the LP in a statement: “All we had prepared as we walked into the studio were these seven song titles. I have a list on my phone of hundreds of possible song titles. I’ll never use most of them, but they’re words and phrases I feel could be digested into King Gizzard-world.” Laminated Denim will follow on October 12, and Changes on October 28.
Open Mike Eagle,Component System With the Auto Reverse
Open Mike Eagle’s new record, Component System With the Auto Reverse, is out now. It features guest appearances by Armand Hammer, R.A.P. Ferreira, Aesop Rock, Serengeti, Diamond D, and more, as well as production from Madlib, Quelle Chris, Child Actor, Kuest1, and Illingsworth. “When I was in high school I used to stay up late to tape the hip-hop shows on college radio station WHPK on the south side of Chicago,” the rapper explained in a statement. “I named each tape. I named one Component System. This album was made in the spirit of that tape but with new music from me. Some of the people on the original tape appear on this album, I’m so proud of that that it brings me close to tears.”
Johanna Warren has issuedLessons for Mutants, her sixth LP and second for Wax Nine/Carpark, which includes the early singles ‘I’d Be Orange’, ‘Piscean Lover’, and ‘Tooth for a Tooth’. Warren began recording Lessons for Mutants in New York in tandem with the sessions for 2020’s Chaotic Good, but didn’t complete the album until she started quarantining in rural Wales. “There’s this unspoken rule in modern music – modern life, really – that everything needs to be Auto-Tuned and ‘on the grid,’” Warren said of the album, which was recorded live to tape. “This record is an act of resistance against that. There’s beauty and power in our aberrations, if we can embrace them.” Read our review of Lessons for Mutants.
Caribou’s Dan Snaith has released the latest album under his Daphni moniker, Cherry, via own Jiaolong label. “There isn’t anything obvious that unifies it or makes it hang together,” Snaith said of the LP in press materials. “I think it was good that it was made without worrying about any of that. I just made it.” The follow-up to 2017’s Joli Mai features the previously released singles ‘Cherry’, ‘Cloudy’, ‘Clavicle’, ‘Mania’, and ‘Arrow’.
Broken Bells – the project of Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) and James Mercer of The Shins – have come out with a new record, Into the Blue, today via AWAL. Arriving eight years after their last collaborative album, After the Disco, the 9-track effort was preceded by the singles ‘Love on the Run’, ‘We’re Not In Orbit Yet…’, and ‘Saturdays’. The duo’s influences on the new album – their first to feature samples alongside organic instrumentation and vocals – range from ‘60s psychedelia to 1970s rock, ‘80s new wave to ‘90s trip-hop.
Courtney Marie Andrews’ latest album, Loose Future, has arrived via Fat Possum. The Arizona singer-songwriter recorded and co-produced the follow-up to 2020’s Old Flowers with Sam Evian at his Flying Cloud Recordings studio in the Catskill Mountains. The LP features the advance singles ‘Satellite’, the title track, ‘These Are the Good Old Days’, and ‘Thinkin’ on You’, as well as additional contributions from Grizzly Bear’s Chris Bear on drums and Josh Kaufman of Bonnie Light Horseman on various instruments.
Other albums out today:
Gilla Band, Most Normal; Bonny Light Horseman, Rolling Golden Holy; Dungen, En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig; Willow, <COPINGMECHANISM>; Peel Dream Magazine, Pad; Dayglow, People in Motion; Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka, Languoria; Chloe Moriondo, Suckerpunch; Sun Ra Arkestra, Living Sky; Jessica Moss, Galaxy Heart; The Cult, Under the Midnight Sun; Ekin Fil, Dora Agora; Lamb of God, Omens; Macula Dog, Orange 2; Quavo & Takeoff, Only Built for Infinity Links; Gillian Carter, Salvation Through Misery; Keiji Haino & Sumac, Into this Juvenile Apocalypse our Golden Blood to Pour Let Us Never; Charlie Puth, Charlie; Heith, X, wheel; The Orielles, Tableau; Counterparts, A Eulogy for Those Still Here; Bush, The Art of Survival; Maxine Funke, Pieces of Driftwood; Ultraflex, Infinite Wellness; Isabella Lovestory, Amor Hardcore; Wunderhorse, Cub; Surf Curse, Magic Hour; FLOHIO, Out of Heart; Small Sur, Attic Room; Sunbeam Sound Machine, Possum; Bruno Bavota & Chantal Acda, A Closer Distance.
Carly Rae Jepsen has teamed up with Rufus Wainwright for her latest single, ‘The Loneliest Time’, the title track from her forthcoming album. Following previous cuts ‘Talking to Yourself’, ‘Beach House’, ‘Western Wind’, the track was produced by Kyle Shearer and co-written with Jepsen, Shearer, and Nate Cyphert. Check it out below.
The Loneliest Time, the follow-up to 2019’s Dedicated, is set to land on October 21.
Alvvays are back with their third album, 
Indigo Sparke has released her second album, 
Sorry have returned with their sophomore full-length, 
NNAMDÏ has put out his latest album and 
Loraine James’ new album, 
Out today via 
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have unveiled the first of three albums they’re dropping this month. Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava includes the early tracks 
Open Mike Eagle’s new record, Component System With the Auto Reverse, is out now. It features guest appearances by Armand Hammer, R.A.P. Ferreira, Aesop Rock, Serengeti, Diamond D, and more, as well as production from Madlib, Quelle Chris, Child Actor, Kuest1, and Illingsworth. “When I was in high school I used to stay up late to tape the hip-hop shows on college radio station WHPK on the south side of Chicago,” the rapper explained in a statement. “I named each tape. I named one Component System. This album was made in the spirit of that tape but with new music from me. Some of the people on the original tape appear on this album, I’m so proud of that that it brings me close to tears.”
Johanna Warren has issued 
Disq have dropped their sophomore full-length, 
Caribou’s Dan Snaith has released the latest album under his Daphni moniker, 
Broken Bells – the project of Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) and James Mercer of The Shins – have come out with a new record, Into the Blue, today via 
Courtney Marie Andrews’ latest album, 
