ALTER.NATION #76
Gladie, Anna Calvi, Courtney Barnett, Islet, Stephen Malkmus, Jonathan Wilson, The James Hunter Six, Daniel Davies, Phantogram, Cornershop, Wasted Shirt, DISQ, Chromatics
Introspective and sometimes experimental indie rock outfit led by former Cayetana leader Augusta Koch.
Gladie -
Safe Sins /
Cosmic Joke
Augusta Koch made her name in the middle part of the 2010s as the frontwoman for Cayetana, a raucous all-female punk trio from Philadelphia whose unfussy songs took cues from classic '90s riot grrrl and lo-fi indie while taking on stigmatic issues of mental health and self-image. Even before parting ways with her bandmates in 2019, she had begun to shift toward a more personal and varied approach, playing a series of solo acoustic shows and teaming up with multi-instrumentalist Matt Schimelfenig to record under the name Gladie.
British singer/songwriter with influences ranging from Nick Cave's post-punk to Django Reinhardt's flamenco. Hailed as "the best thing since Patti Smith" by Brian Eno, as well as being included in the BBC's Sound of 2011 list, the hype surrounding London-born Anna Calvi came to a crescendo in late 2010.
Anna Calvi - Hunted / Don't Beat the Girl out of My Boy [Hunted Version] feat. Courtney Barnett
Early in her career, the full force of Anna Calvi's vocal and guitar virtuosity was so formidable that she sounded virtually immortal. With time, however, her work has become more open and vulnerable, and on 2018's Hunter, she explored strength, fragility, masculinity, and femininity in ways that let the humanity of her music shine through. Calvi takes another step in this direction with Hunted, a collection of Hunter demos that she revisits with the help of some talented friends. Letting her audience hear these songs being born -- or in this case, reborn -- is an intimate act in itself...
Welsh indie quartet Islet that built a cult following through the 21st century with a blend of psychedelic, folk-driven pop.
Islet - Eyelet / Good Gref
For more than a decade, Islet seemed happy to be completely independent, releasing their free-flowing experimental pop on their own label whenever the mood struck them. On Eyelet, however, the Welsh trio celebrate the power of connection. This is Islet's first album for Fire Records, one of many significant changes for the band since 2016's Liquid Half Moon EP. During that time, Alex Williams lost his mother and moved in with Emma and Mark Daman Thomas, who were expecting their second child while making Eyelet. This feeling of togetherness extends to the album's sound, which is more cohesive than any of Islet's previous work. It still feels like anything is possible in their music, but this time the trio leave fewer loose ends in their songs...
The former Pavement frontman's solo career has a broader musical palette, evoking British folk, '70s prog, psychedelia, and blazing guitar rock.
Stephen Malkmus - Traditional Techniques / ShadowBanned
Set aside the title Traditional Techniques, which appears to be a veiled riposte to Groove Denied, the happily modern, vaguely electronic album Stephen Malkmus released in 2019. The name accentuates the gulf between the two records, but Traditional Techniques is the album Malkmus has been threatening to make for nearly a quarter-century: an amiably trippy and decisively mellow psych-folk adventure, steeped in the obscure sounds of the British and American underground from the twilight of the hippies. A strain of this style has run through his music since at least Pavement's sprawling 1995 double-LP Wowee Zowee, but Traditional Techniques benefits from Malkmus' relaxed middle age...
Jonathan Wilson is a musical polymath. In addition to being a highly regarded songwriter and guitarist, he is a noted producer and guitarist. Deeply influenced by late-'60s West Coast psychedelia and the Laurel Canyon singer/songwriter scene of the '70s, he could easily be mistaken for a SoCal native (he's from North Carolina).
Jonathan Wilson - Dixie Blur / Just for Love
After Jonathan Wilson released 2018's wonderful Rare Birds, he realized he'd taken his third album of Topanga Canyon psychedelia-drenched singer/songwriter sound to its zenith, and needed a new direction. He found it inadvertently while appearing on NPR's eTown with Steve Earle. The elder songwriter advised him to travel to Nashville and take advantage of its top-notch studio aces. Wilson was more than intrigued. He headed East and enlisted Wilco's Pat Sansone as co-producer. The next call was to the iconic fiddler Mark O'Connor. Growing up in North Carolina, Wilson recalled with excitement the fiddle's place in country, mountain, and bluegrass music. O'Connor hadn't been a session musician since the '90s, but Wilson pleaded and cajoled convincingly and he agreed to participate. He and Sansone hired an illustrious cast of sidemen: guitarist Kenny Vaughn, bassist Dennis Crouch, pedal steel player Russ Pahl, Jim Hoke on woodwinds and harmonica, drummer Jon Radford, and keyboardist Drew Erickson. They all holed up at Cowboy Jack Clement's Sound Emporium Studio for six days and cut the album live from the studio floor; there are precious few overdubs...
The gritty, passionate, longstanding backing band of British soulman, songwriter, and guitarist James Hunter.
The James Hunter Six - Nick of Time / Missing in Action
Since the 1980s, exemplary British R&B singer, songwriter, and guitarist James Hunter has been plying his trade with his own bands, first with Howlin' Wilf and the Vee-Jays and then with the James Hunter Six. He's also accompanied some of his very famous friends like Van Morrison (you can hear Hunter on Days Like This and A Night in San Francisco). Nick of Time mark's the artist's fourth collaboration with Daptone producer Bosco Mann (Gabriel Roth), and his third full-length for the label. As ever, his music remains rooted in historic rhythm and blues, doo wop, and soul, but Hunter expands his range here to include cha cha, rhumba, and swing rhythms. He also hired a new cast of American players to be the second edition of the James Hunter Six...
Guitarist, singer, and composer known for fronting hard rock band Year Long Disaster and working with his godfather, horror legend John Carpenter.
Daniel Davies -
Signals /
Phantom Waltz
Daniel Davies' first solo album for Sacred Bones isn't a film soundtrack, real or imaginary, but it was composed with the visual art of Jesse Draxler in mind. His work is featured in the album's liner notes, and the pieces consist of dark, grainy landscapes with strange sculptural shapes superimposed onto them. They look obviously unnatural and pasted on, even to the point of seeming like an interruption, yet there's something about them that commands you to think that their presence is normal and expected. Davies' music attempts to work similar contrasts, forcing different moods and tones to coexist and somehow sound made for each other. It's not as jarring or discordant as that sounds -- there's lighter and darker elements, and there always seems like a balance between them... "Phantom Waltz" is spooky and also a bit playful, with staccato vocals dancing around harpsichords and circular guitar flickerings, anchored by steady waltz-time drums...
New York duo who lovingly re-create the sounds of classic trip-hop. The deeply emotional electronic pop of Phantogram revolves around Sarah Barthel's powerful vocals, which tower over their insistent, hip-hop-inspired left-field pop sound that's built on booming beats, washes of synths, and the occasional jagged guitar riff.
Phantogram -
Ceremony /
Mister Impossible
...“We’re always conscious of how to string together our songs,” Carter said. “And we are well aware in this day and age, a lot of people don’t really listen to albums… I’m guilty of checking out bands who I’ve never heard and just see what they sound like. I’ll just click on a song. ‘Oh if it’s not for me,’ then I’m like ‘alright,’ which sucks. I don’t like that about myself. It’s definitely a different time we’re living in.”...
Indian-influenced indie band led by Tjinder Singh, who mix dance, reggae, dub, hip-hop, and rock.
Cornershop - England Is a Garden / No Rock: Save In Roll
Cornershop may have taken an eight-year break from releasing albums between 2012's Urban Turban: The Singhles Club and 2020's England Is a Garden, but they certainly weren't idle. Between running their label Ample Play, supporting political causes, and issuing an easy listening version of their 1993 record Hold On It Hurts (titled Hold On It's Easy), the duo of Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres definitely had a lot going on. Amidst this whirl of activity, they also spent a great deal of time and effort writing and recording songs; right around 40 in the end. After narrowing it down to the best of the batch and giving them a polish, they titled the sparkling result England Is a Garden. It's their most cohesive and powerful record yet, full of songs that have a hearty punch to go along with their typically sharp hooks. Alternating between tracks that have a driving, T. Rex-ian beat and rollicking mid-tempo groovers, the record is a blast of joyous rock & roll from start to finish.
All-out experimental noise rock assault created by garage punk hero Ty Segall and Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale.
Wasted Shirt -
Fungus II /
Four Strangers Enter the Cement at Dusk
One of the first rules of rock & roll is: you need a good drummer. The whole charmingly inept thing may work for a singer or guitarist, but if the drummer can't keep it together, the center will not hold and we all know how that plays out. So if one-man garage punk industry Ty Segall (not a bad drummer himself) was going to launch yet another project, joining forces with Brian Chippendale shows sound judgment on his part. Chippendale is the drummer and co-founder of Lightning Bolt, and whatever one might think about their assaultive style, his work has always been a remarkable example of precision in support of chaos, his tight yet frantic bursts of rhythm bounding all over the place but also giving the noise around him a unexpectedly stable framework. Chippendale is a good man to have around if you want to get noisy, and that's what Segall had in mind when he and Chippendale formed Wasted Shirt, who make their debut with 2020's Fungus II....
Wisconsin indie rock band Disq was formed by childhood friends when they were still teenagers, bringing their young obsessions with power pop and classic songwriters to a more tightly wound indie style. The band drew on elements of post-punk, psych folk, and melodic pop for their 2020 Saddle Creek debut, Collector.
Disq - Collector / Gentle
Wisconsin band Disq make a grand entrance with their debut album, Collector, a knotty bouquet of chugging indie rock, offbeat power pop, and psych-marinated post-punk. Formed around the creative partnership of lifelong friends Raina Bock (bass, vocals) and Isaac de Broux-Slone (guitar, vocals), the project grew into a highly collaborative five-piece populated with like-minded explorers Shannon Connor (guitar, keys, vocals), Logan Severson (guitar, vocals), and Brendan Manley (drums), who were also active in Madison's indie scene. A well-earned reputation as a fierce live act and a handful of small indie releases later, Disq joined the Saddle Creek roster and hit the studio with producer Rob Schnapf (Kurt Vile, Joyce Manor) to record their first full-length outing...
Beginning as a no wave band with an equally volatile lineup and sound, Chromatics evolved into one of the most influential electro-pop acts of the 2000s and 2010s. On albums such as Night Drive and Kill for Love, the group's evocative mix of Italo-disco, post-punk, and '80s pop was glamorous, heartbroken, and utterly distinctive.
Chromatics - Famous Monsters
Chromatics have shared a
futuristic new single, ‘Famous Monsters.’ You can listen to the new song below.
‘Famous Monsters’ is the second new song from the band this year, following on from ‘TOY’ which was released back in February. The single came in three different versions: ‘TOY,’ ‘TOY (On Film),’ and ‘TOY (Instrumental).’
Describing that song, Chromatics wrote: “It’s a song about trying to forget someone you’re still in love with even though they treat you like an object. I’m not your TOY.”
Gladie, Anna Calvi, Courtney Barnett, Islet, Stephen Malkmus, Jonathan Wilson, The James Hunter Six, Daniel Davies, Phantogram, Cornershop, Wasted Shirt, DISQ, Chromatics
