054 ALTER.NATION weekly favtraX / stereogum's new music 21-09-2019

selection from stereogum's new music
ALTER.NATION #54

Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra feat.: Sharon Van Etten, Julien Chang, DIIV, Wished Bone, Corridor, Lisa Prank, Teebs, Field Music, that dog, Soccer Mommy, Blue Hawaii, M83

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"Let’s Face The Music And Dance"

ALTER.NATION #54 on DEEZER

A gifted and much celebrated actor, Jeff Goldblum has also distinguished himself away from the big screen as a sophisticated jazz pianist.
Although she was born and raised in suburban New Jersey, Sharon Van Etten's folk music evokes the open landscapes of a more expansive America.
Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra feat.: Sharon Van Etten - Let’s Face The Music And Dance
When he’s not busy being an intensely charismatic actor, Jeff Goldblum also dabbles in music. He has a project with the jazz band the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, and they have a regular residency at the Los Angeles club Rockwell...
During that performance, he brought out none other than Sharon Van Etten — fresh off her own new album, Remind Me Tomorrow — to sing Irving Berlin’s 1936 standard “Let’s Face The Music And Dance.”

Julien Chang is an 18 year-old singer, composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from Baltimore, Maryland. His music draws on jazz, indie-pop, classical, psychedelic rock, funk, and electronic music.
Julien Chang - Memory Loss
Julien Chang is on to something. The 19-year-old multi-hyphenate is releasing his debut album Jules next month on Transgressive, and man have the early singles been good... Today’s new track “Memory Loss” continues that trajectory. A punchy keyboard riff, some chillwave-worthy synth chords, and harmonious high-register “la la la” vocals carry this one along quite beautifully. As he tells Billboard, it’s about the fear of losing your memory and the thrill of not quite remembering why you feel some type of way...

The project of singer/songwriter/guitarist Zachary Cole Smith, DIIV makes music that combines shoegaze bliss with grunge catharsis.
DIIV - Blankenship
The new DIIV album, Deceiver, is suddenly imminent. The revved-up NYC shoegazers will release the follow-up to 2016’s Is The Is Are in two weeks... The most exciting song they’ve unveiled so far, though, is today’s offering, “Blankenship.” With a motorik pulse and some of the crispest production of their career, the song surges forward into all manner of noise-pop theatrics, including lots of rad string-bending guitar riffs. Has it instantly become my favorite DIIV song? Maybe?...

Wished Bone is the DIY-folk project of Ohio-based songwriter, Ashley Rhodus. Constructing music in her basements with, “borrowed instruments and broken tape machines”, Ashley’s songwriting creates a deeply human world of warm-afternoon sunshine and having nowhere to rush to, the sound of the small moments that make a life well led. 
Wished Bone - Hold Me
Ashley Rhodus has been making idiosyncratic folk songs as Wished Bone for a little while now... In November, Wished Bone are putting out a new album, Sap Season, and today they’re sharing its lead single, “Hold Me.” It sounds airy and pastoral, but it’s also densely layered within that lilting sway. It’s about a balancing act that never feels like you have enough time. “Deck of cards in my pocket/ How long will I deal before I blow it?” Rhodus sings on it, before affirming: “Deck of cards in my pocket/ I’ll keep dealing til I blow it.”

Corridor are a group from Montreal and their Sub Pop debut, Junior, was made just yesterday. The rock'n'roll band had barely inked their record deal when they surfed into studio, racing against time to make the most dazzling, immediate and inventive album of their young career
Corridor - Domino
Corridor are releasing their third album, Junior, next month... “People are often glorifying what being an artist or a musician can mean. Art doesn’t necessarily make you a better person. There can be angst, stress and so on,” the band’s Jonathan Robert said in a statement. “It can have a negative, direct impact on the people closest to you. ‘Domino’ is about navigating just that. It is the first song out of Junior that we’ve composed and we’ve played it live quite a few times already.”

Lisa Prank is the lo-fi pop-punk solo project of Seattle-based singer/songwriter Robin Edwards. Following the breakup of her previous band, Lust-Cats of the Gutters, Edwards began experimenting with a solo setup that involved playing guitar live along with a Roland MC-505 drum machine.
Lisa Prank - Rodeo
...The album’s lead single, “Rodeo,” is chiming and assured, and Lisa Prank’s one-woman show is solidified into a full band that helps hammer home the song’s catchy resignation. Edwards is singing about not falling for the same love mishaps twice, learning from past mistakes and trying to not make them again. “By now I know, this isn’t my first rodeo/ By now I know, nobody wants to take it slow,” she sings. “And you don’t wanna be in love/ Means you don’t wanna be in love with me.”

Part of the Brainfeeder collective that counts Flying Lotus and Samiyam among its members, Los Angeles' Teebs crafts a more atmospheric version of the beat music exemplified by the label. Born Mtendere Mandowa to parents from Malawi and Barbados, Teebs and his family hopped from the Bronx to Georgia and Hartford, Connecticut before landing in Chino Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles.
Teebs - Studie (Feat. Panda Bear)
Teebs is back! After a five year hiatus, Teebs, aka Mtendere Mandowa, is announcing a new album called Annica. The word is a Buddhist step towards enlightenment used to describe the impermanence of all being, and that everything is one... Today, he’s sharing the lead single from Annica, titled “Studie,” which sees Teebs teaming up with Panda Bear. This track is wafting and luscious, with a Mellotron M4000D synthesizer charting the atmosphere, as melodies seem to fall by the wayside. It creates this feeling that I can only equate to the physical sensation of when the clouds part after a rainy day, and you’re able to feel the sunshine on your skin...

Hailing from Sunderland, England, indie/art rockers Field Music were formed in the early 2000s by siblings Peter and David Brewis. Their colorful and hyper-musical blend of tricky Beach Boys melodies filtered through a post-rock-meets-prog-rock-meets-soft-rock aesthetic has drawn comparisons to the New Pornographers and the Futureheads, but ultimately they sound unique.
Field Music - Only In A Man’s World
The English rock band Field Music are releasing a new album, Making A New World, at the beginning of next year, the follow-up to 2018’s Open Here. It’s a concept album after the aftereffects of World War I, inspired by a trip to the Imperial War Museum in London, specifically the display of a document that showed soundwaves from munitions at the very start of the war... For the album’s lead single, “Only In A Man’s World,” the band applies their funky, squelching aesthetic to menstrual pads and their origin from the war...

That Dog was a 1990s Los Angeles-based alternative-rock group fronted by Anna Waronker. The lineup of the Los Angeles-based indie pop quartet that dog. represented the flowering of a second generation of musical luminaries: singer/guitarist Anna Waronker was the daughter of famed producer and Warner Bros. head Lenny Waronker, while bassist Rachel Haden and her violinist sister, Petra, were two of the triplet daughters born to jazz titan Charlie Haden. 
that dog. - If You Just Didn’t Do It
Back in 2016, that dog. began crowdfunding for their first new album in 22 years. And this October, their efforts will finally pay off. The guitar pop trio are gearing up to release Old LP, the follow-up to 1997’s Retreat From The Sun. Today, they pick up right where they left off with the forthcoming album’s lead single.
“If You Just Didn’t Do It” is a poppy anthem about grappling with someone’s mistakes, wanting to forgive that person but also feeling the need to hold them accountable. It boasts the interlocking melodies and sweet, catchy hooks that the band is known for.

Introspective guitar-centric tunes from singer/songwriter Sophie Allison. Soccer Mommy is the home-recorded solo project of singer/songwriter Sophie Allison. The Nashville native started uploading her introspective guitar pop songs to music-sharing site Bandcamp as a high-school student in the mid-2010s.
Soccer Mommy - lucy
Soccer Mommy released one of the very best albums of 2018 with Clean, and it looks like they might be back already to take 2020 by storm. Today, the Sophie Allison-led project is releasing a new song, “lucy”... “lucy” is an arresting character sketch with a seductive, devilish gleam. “lucy,” a cute pet name for Lucifer, really leans into that, guitar lines descending like falling into the pits of hell. “His mind a fortress, you can’t fight your way inside/ His body’s a temple, made up of brimstone and fire,” Allison sings, trying but unable to resist the temptation of being ensnared by evil. “You cannot resist him, when you look in his shiny eyes/ The face of an angel, with the heart of something less nice.”

Part of Montreal's fertile electronic pop scene in the 2010s, Blue Hawaii is the work of Raphaelle Standell-Preston (also of the dream pop band Braids) and Alex "Agor" Cowan, aka Agor.
Blue Hawaii - All That Blue
Blue Hawaii — the Canadian synth-pop duo comprising Raphaelle ‘Ra’ Standell of Braids and Alexander ‘Agor’ Kerby — have been making music together for almost a decade. We last heard from them in 2017 when they released Tenderness. And they’ve just announced their fourth record, Open Reduction Internal Fixation, and shared its lead single. On “All That Blue,” soulful vocals and saxophone interludes play atop a pulsing four-on-the-floor beat...

The lush, nostalgic, synth pop-meets-shoegaze project of Frenchman Anthony Gonzalez.
M83 - Feelings
French studio wizard Anthony Gonzalez does not seem to be in any hurry to follow up his last proper studio album, 2016’s Junk. But this week, M83 will release a new instrumental LP called DSVII... The slow-building “Feelings” is probably closer to Gonzalez’s soundtrack work than it is to what you’ll find on most M83 records. It calls to mind the hazy synth-glimmers of ’80s Tangerine Dream film scores. But it also has a satisfying arc to it, with a climactic burst of melody and a drawn-out denouement.

Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra feat.: Sharon Van Etten, Julien Chang, DIIV, Wished Bone, Corridor, Lisa Prank, Teebs, Field Music, that dog, Soccer Mommy, Blue Hawaii, M83