ALTER.NATiON
weekly favtraX
12-03-2019
Snapped Ankles - Rechargeable
‘Rechargeable’ is the second single taken from the new Snapped Ankles album, Stunning Luxury - a call to harness the kinetic energy of dance to push against the rigid continuity of the daily routine.
Emerging from the undergrowth, music still ringing in their ears, the woodwose make their way home through the early morning commute. Walking among the shameless and spangled weekday ravers illuminated in a sea of corporate grey suited early risers heading to work in their enormous crystal towers.
Living Hour - Slow Shines from Softer Faces
What started as a quartet is now a quintet, though still led by the smoky, ethereal lead vocals of Sam Sarty (vocals, trombone, keyboard), who started singing in choirs at a young age. With her strong vocal backbone, musicians Gil Carroll (guitar), Adam Soloway (guitar, vocals), Alex Chochinov (drums, trumpet, organelle), and Brett Ticzon (bass, vocals) are able to shine. Three voices, guitar, trombone, brushed percussion, and boundless effects sees Living Hour pulling from many genres to create their own sonically diverse and unique vibe.
With a more collaborative songwriting focus and added maturity, Softer Faces boasts the band's best songwriting to date. With its lush sounds, healing energy and intricate instrumental and vocal melodies, it is a beautiful album that commands attention. The emotive vocals, glittering guitar interplay, and horn arrangements wash over you with an irresistible calm. Uplifting vocal harmonies contrast with melancholy lyrics. Living Hour finds strength in vulnerability, as they look inward, grappling with themes of self determination, independence, and isolation.
Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Pleasure
Across four albums, Frankie and the Witch Fingers have been sharing their lo-fi psych-rock to relatively small, but cultishly devoted audiences. They’ve secured a solid reputation as a band that offers an accessible route through a sometimes tricky genre. They go deeper into the freaky than other practitioners of this kind of sound, but they also retain a refreshing awareness of melody, and… er… pop.
So, here we are, and Frankie and the Witch Fingers have dropped a new single via Greenway Records. Underlining a particular approach to having fun is ‘Pleasure’. It struts from the gates with a fuzzed, grit-filled funk. It’s hard to pin where the charm originates – but the track personifies the charismatic host of an after-hours party. Everything goes.
DELICATE STEVE - Madness from Till I Burn Up
Embracing a self-produced experimental pop that favors both bold, inventive timbres and melodic hooks, guitarist Steve Marion has carved a whimsical niche for himself over the course of four albums as Delicate Steve. Just five months after delivering the holiday release The Christmas Album in November 2018, he continues to explore his growing collection of custom guitars, effects pedals, and synthesizers on his fifth long-player, Till I Burn Up... Combining spare drum samples, distorted rock tones, blippy '80s computer sounds, and murky synth voices like no one else in the 2010s, tracks like "Rubber Neck" and the post-punky "Madness" sometimes confuse sound origins...
Nots - Half-Painted House
Memphis-based trio NOTS are back today with “Half Painted House,” the lead single from their upcoming record, 3. We premiered their most recent release, 2017’s “Anxious Trend,” which blended synths and textured guitars to create a distinctly post-punk sound. It was aptly named too, as that combination proved nerve-inducing... Here’s NOTS multi-instrumentalist Natalie Hoffman with more details on the track: "[Half Painted House] is about being stuck in a haze of repetitive cycles while change proves to be both stubborn and elusive. The veneer of what it looks like to be “normally functioning” during these tumultuous times is peeling to reveal a mind struggling to keep from turning against itself."
Gurr - Zu Spät
Gurr are playing at our Stereogum Range Life 2019 party in Austin during SXSW next week. And a few weeks after that, the Berlin garage-pop duo are releasing a new EP called She Says. We’ve already heard the title track, and today they’ve shared another new song called “Zu Spät.”
Although Gurr are from Berlin, they mostly sing in English. As the title might indicate, that’s not the case on “Zu Spät,” which means “Too Late” in German. Other than that, I have no idea what they’re saying, but the song is a sparkling guitar-pop jam...
Laura Stevenson - Value Inn
Last month, Laura Stevenson announced her latest album, The Big Freeze, with “Living Room, NY,” a song that, like the rest of the tracks on The Big Freeze, was recorded in her childhood bedroom.
Her next single, “Value Inn,” also takes its name from a location, but rather than the comfort of something familiar, this one’s weighed down by uncertainty and unknown. “And in a Value Inn, I dig at my skin,” Stevenson sings as her guitar crashes behind her for a brief moment. “With a travel kit in the fluorescence/ Because I’m lumbering, ’cause I want to be gone.” The song is quiet, but it’s not still — it has all the intensity of a black storm cloud rolling in.
The National - You Had Your Soul with You
The National have announced a new album called I Am Easy To Find, the follow-up to 2017’s Sleep Well Beast. Today, they’re sharing its first single and first track, “You Had Your Soul With You.”
The album is one component of a collaboration with film director Mike Mills, who reached out to the band to see if they wanted to work together a couple of years ago, fresh off his last movie 20th Century Women. Mills directed a 24-minute short film staring Alicia Vikander called I Am Easy To Find, while the National’s album of the same name clocks in at 68 minutes... The album’s lead single features vocals from Davie Bowie bandmate Gail Ann Dorsey, and the rest of the album has guest spots from Sharon Van Etten, Lisa Hannigan, Mina Tindle, Kate Stables, and the Brooklyn Youth Choir.
Matt Berninger had this to say of the collaborations: “Yes, there are a lot of women singing on this, but it wasn’t because, ‘Oh, let’s have more women’s voices.’ It was more, ‘Let’s have more of a fabric of people’s identities.’ It would have been better to have had other male singers, but my ego wouldn’t let that happen.”
Malihini - Hopefully, Again from Hopefully, Again
After a chance meeting in 2015, Italian singer/songwriters Federica Caiozzo and Giampaolo Speziale turned their budding romance into the full-fledged musical project Malihini, capturing the intimacy and sensuality of their relationship on debut LP Hopefully, Again. Their vocal interplay creates a tension and warmth similar to the xx, all while transmitting an effortlessly languid coolness on each track. Produced by Richard Formby (Wild Beasts, Ghostpoet), Hopefully, Again also features drumming by Alberto Paone with the remaining instrumental duties provided by Caiozzo and Speziale themselves.... Released just two years after their debut EP, Hopefully, Again is worlds away in terms of artistic maturity, with focused delivery and tightened songcraft elevating each song. Languid and hazy, Hopefully, Again basks in its own luxuriant afterglow, an ideal soundtrack to the comedown.
The Coathangers - Stranger Danger from The Devil You Know
There have always been angry women in music, but these days, an album like The Devil You Know feels like dressing a wound on the battlefield—exactly what you need in order to carry on the fight. It is angry but never ugly, melodic without ever being syrupy, addressing gun violence, street harassment and more, all without ever becoming overbearing or preachy... Maybe there will be a day when we don’t need songs telling the NRA to “suck my dick.” But until then The Devil You Know masterfully walks the line between politically charged while remaining , perhaps tragically, timeless. But it’s also an immensely listenable album, a fully realized emerging of the band’s true power in crafting edgy, electric songs.
Xeno & Oaklander - Fire and Smoke from Hypnos
A decade after releasing their debut album, Sentinelle, Xeno & Oaklander return to their roots on Hypnos and continue the refinement of their sound that began on later albums such as Topiary. After spending several years working exclusively with mono synths, this time Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride reintroduce polyphonic synths to their music. The lusher, more intricate sounds of these instruments create heightened atmospheres on songs such as "Altamira," where sweeping chords and stair-stepping arpeggios add a frostbitten glamour to Xeno & Oaklander's 21st century continuation of coldwave. Thanks to the mix by the duo's live sound engineer Egan Frantz, the clarity of each element on Hypnos adds a hyperreal feel that befits the mythical influences behind its songs... Filled with surreal soundscapes and fantastical tone poems, Hypnos is a striking album from the duo who pioneered the coldwave renaissance of the 21st century and remain at its forefront.
Qasim Naqvi - No Tongue
...“No Tongue” serves as our introduction to Naqvi’s synth-teeming soundscapes. We are at first immersed deep amongst dark synthesizers and plucking, dissonant notes. It feels like being suspended, floating in space with help just out of reach. After a deliciously tense pause, we are rushed without warning down a stream of playful, unpredictable synth plops, in the vein of a more sinister Four Tet. Naqvi shows promise as a composer of marvelous opacity...
Snapped Ankles, Living Hour, Frankie and the Witch Fingers, DELICATE STEVE, Nots, Gurr, Laura Stevenson, The National, Malihini, The Coathangers, Xeno & Oaklander, Qasim Naqvi
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