ALTER.NATION #71
Chastity Belt, Loose Tooth, Gorillaz, Wild Nothing, Smoke Fairies, Son Little, Drive-By Truckers, Tinsley Ellis, The Psychedelic Furs, Against All Logic, Elon EDM Musk
weekly favtraX
"The Process"
Chastity Belt - The Process
Swept together from the ashes of your finest night on the tiles, Loose Tooth are a Melbourne three-piece who craft sweet guitar pop with frayed edges.
Loose Tooth - Lonely
Chastity Belt will soon head out on a tour of the Western US with Loose Tooth — the Loose Tooth from Melbourne, recently covered by Courtney Barnett, not the the Loose Tooth from Philadelphia who we haven’t heard from since 2017. Ahead of the upcoming dates, the two groups have released a digital split single today.
Chastity Belt’s “The Process” and Loose Tooth’s “Lonely” go well together in that both are powered by a gleaming churn of reverby guitars. The former taps into that drowsy yet propulsive post-Sonic Youth vibe Chastity Belt do so well. The latter is more of a jangly indie-pop track in keeping with the legacy of Loose Tooth’s native Oceania.
Gorillaz - Momentary Bliss feat. slowthai & Slaves
Two days ago, Gorillaz started teasing the first “season” of a new project called Song Machine. Yesterday, we found out what it actually is — a series of collaborative singles, aka “episodes,” that will be released throughout the year. And today, the first installment has already arrived. “Momentary Bliss” is a collaboration with the politically charged British rapper slowthai and the UK punk duo Slaves.
Wild Nothing - Laughing Gas / The World Is A Hungry Place
Somehow it’s been nearly 10 years since Jack Tatum of Wild Nothing shared his lo-fi dream-pop debut with the world. ‘Gemini’ arrived during a period of transition between late noughties chillwave and surf-rock indie... The songs on ‘Laughing Gas’ were originally written and recorded alongside last year’s ‘Indigo’ before Tatum isolated the songs for a separate release. It was a smart move; ‘Laughing Gas’ is a lush paean to ‘80s precision pop, all snaking funk basslines, synth claps and reverb-addled drums... Tatum rounds the record off with a meticulous, downbeat piece of yacht rock. ‘The World Is A Hungry Place’ sees him play with metaphors about the planet’s perils, ironically soundtracking the sense of doom with sensual sax notes and cocksure beats. It sounds like Tears For Fears – no bad thing.
Smoke Fairies - Darkness Brings the Wonders Home / On the Wing
"Dirty blues-rock" is about the last thing that comes to mind when thinking about Smoke Fairies, whose music is most strongly rooted in ethereal indie folk. But it seems someone in their circle has been listening to something featuring gritty guitar textures with a side of slide, since that's the unexpected yet prominent new flavor on Smoke Fairies' fifth album, 2020's Darkness Brings the Wonders Home. The opening track, "On the Wing," is built around a faintly ominous folky melody with the graceful harmonies of Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies hovering overhead, while in the middle distance there's a buzzy electric guitar playing bluesy licks and slide riffs...
Son Little - Aloha / that's the way
In the press materials for Son Little's third album, 2020's Aloha, Little (known to his mom and the tax people as Aaron Livingston) says he had written a big batch of songs for his next project and recorded elaborate demos working out the arrangements. Then the hard drive in his recording setup went wonky on him, and suddenly all that hard work vanished and Little had to rewrite the album from the ground up in a few weeks... It also marks the first time Little has worked with an outside producer, in this case Renaud Letang, and the record's approach suggests a compromise between the styles of his first two albums, combining the hip-hop-informed one-man-band recording techniques of his debut with the more open and organic tone of New Magic. At the same time, it's a quiet and introspective set, rarely working up to the heat of the vintage soul-funk grooves of the first two LPs. Little is in great voice here, as usual, but his arrangements (where he plays most of the instruments himself) are leaner and more efficient, with open space and atmosphere playing a larger role than before... The more subdued affect of Aloha makes it a less immediately satisfying listen than New Magic, but that does nothing to change that this is a rewarding effort from an exciting and engaging talent.
Drive-By Truckers - The Unraveling / Heroin Again
As Joe Strummer once told us, anger can be power, but what Joe didn't mention is that it tends to burn hot and fast. Once it's gone, what's left? At what point do you run out of productive rage and find yourself weighed down by the ashes of hopelessness and defeat? When the Drive-By Truckers wrote and recorded 2016's American Band, the United States was a nation ankle-deep in the rising waters of racism and division, with the presidential campaign of Donald Trump just a troubling roadside curiosity. In the truest sense, 2020's The Unraveling is the companion piece to American Band, an update where tragically little has gotten better four years on, and our national malaise is greater than ever...
Tinsley Ellis - Ice Cream in Hell / Your Love's Like Heroin
Eighteen albums into nearly a four-decade career finds blues-rocking guitar slinger Tinsley Ellis still growing as a recording artist, singer, and songwriter. In 2018 he returned home to Alligator Records after delivering four albums on his own Heartfixer label. The chart-topping set was met with Blues Music Association nominations for album of the year and artist of the year. Ice Cream in Hell was recorded in Nashville and co-produced by Ellis and longtime co-producer/keyboardist Kevin McKendree. .. The set closes with the most dramatic tune in the bunch: "Your Love Is Like Heroin." Its 12-bar tension is enabled with lyrical guitar fills that evoke the twin six-string spirits of both Green and Albert King. Ellis' vocal on this crawling seven-minute jam is arguably the most soulful of his career. His playing underscores the emotional depth in the lyrics. Ellis' meaty solo digs so deep it's party to the protagonist's revelation of grief and pain. Unlike most bluesmen, each of his recordings over the last seven decades or so is stronger, more confident, and unabashedly more musical than its predecessor. On Ice Cream in Hell, Ellis' songwriting and singing finally match the prowess in his playing, and we are all richer for it.
The Psychedelic Furs - Don’t Believe
...If lead single “Don’t Believe” is anything to go by, the answer is: They will sound like those 29 years didn’t even happen. This is a good thing! “Don’t Believe” is a churning, nocturnal track that harkens back to a kind of darker, heavier sound some of the ’80s greats adopted as they transitioned into the ’90s. More importantly, “Don’t Believe” is the kind of gratifying reintroduction that comes right from the Furs’ wheelhouse: gloomy guitar swirls, sax wails, Butler’s voice sounding like he hasn’t aged at all, a big desperate chorus...
Against All Logic - Alucinao feat. Estado Unido, FKA twigs
Nicolas Jaar’s Against All Logic project released a new album, 2012-2017, back in 2018... and he’s releasing two brand new songs.
The first, “Illusions … Of Shameless Abundance” features the avant-garde artist Lydia Lunch. (Jaar’s label Other People Records reissued her 1990 spoken word piece Conspiracy Of Women a few years ago.) And the second track is called “Alucinao” and features Jaar’s recent collaborator FKA twigs and Estado Unido...
Elon "EDM" Musk - Don't Doubt ur Vibe
...“Don’t Doubt Ur Vibe” definitely sounds like a song that a 48-year-old billionaire might make if he was dating Grimes. On Twitter, Musk has shared some truly ghastly photos of himself in the studio and claimed that he “wrote the lyrics & performed the vocals” himself. Those lyrics are: “Don’t doubt your vibe/ Because it’s true/ Don’t doubt your vibe/ Because it’s you.” He wrote that himself! The cover art is a Tesla Cybertruk orbiting Mars. Take a deep breath, steel yourself, and give it a listen...
Chastity Belt, Loose Tooth, Gorillaz, Wild Nothing, Smoke Fairies, Son Little, Drive-By Truckers, Tinsley Ellis, The Psychedelic Furs, Against All Logic, Elon EDM Musk
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