039 ALTER.NATION: weekly favtraX 07-06-2019

ALTER.NATION #39

The Soft Cavalry, Róisín Murphy, Bleached, Shannon Lay, Torche, Van Dale, Pixies, Lost Under Heaven, Girl Band, Dude York, Lana Del Rey, Tei Shi

weekly favtraX

07-06 - 2 0 1 9

ALTER.NATION #39 on deezer

Bella Union are thrilled to introduce The Soft Cavalry, a new project formed by the husband/wife duo of Steve Clarke and Rachel Goswell of Slowdive, whose self–titled debut album is due for release 5th July...
The Soft Cavalry - Dive
Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell's announcing a new band named the Soft Cavalry, which is a duo with her husband Steve Clarke, who she married last year. In July, they’ll release their self-titled debut album. “I’d always had ideas but never felt that anything I had to say was worthy of anyone’s attention, let alone my own,” Clarke said of the collaboration. “I wish that I could have done this fifteen years ago but, in reality, I simply couldn’t have. But I’m not one to overly wallow. I’d rather plough the various levels of confusion into songs.”

Former Moloko frontwoman who explored adventurous electronic pop in her solo career. During her time as the frontwoman of Moloko and throughout her solo career, Róisín Murphy made a name for herself as a purveyor of adventurous, omnivorous pop that blended influences as far-flung as disco and hot jazz. Born in Dublin...
Róisín Murphy - Incapable
...On “Incapable,” the Irish singer invokes a particularly loaded term, singing from the perspective of a woman estranged from the very ability to love... It’s a sneaky tune. At first, it sounds celebratory: “Never had a broken heart,” she admits, as her longtime accomplice Richard Barratt (aka Crooked Man) threads a hypnotic deep-house groove with slinky hints of disco. It sounds like a boast; her voice is somewhere between blasé and bulletproof. But as the song builds, and she contemplates her curious, almost inhuman remove, her tone turns searching, then desperate. With the chorus, she cuts to the chase: “Never had a broken heart/Am I incapable of love?/Never had a broken heart/Yet I’m unavailable for love.”... For a song about inner turmoil, “Incapable” is strikingly smooth. It glides on for more than eight minutes, disco riffs tracing delicate circles in the air as the synths rise higher and higher. Like the best dance music, it’s an invitation to get lost—only here, it seeks catharsis in the shadow of another’s emotional failure.

Serving up raffish punk-pop that sounds a little like a cheerier take on their former band Mika Miko, Bleached features sisters Jennifer and Jessica Clavin. After Mika Miko disbanded in 2009, Jennifer took a break from performing music, although she and Jessica continued to write songs together.
Bleached - Kiss You Goodbye
“Tell me everything’s OK/ Baby, we’re a hurricane,” they sing over a groove-inflected pop beat. “Kiss you goodbye for the last time.”... “We all saw ‘Kiss you Goodbye’ as an opportunity to pay homage to our roots in the valley,” Juliana Giraffe says in a statement. “Not only are we all sibling sisters coming together, but also all San Fernando valley girls at heart. What better way to celebrate that than a quick shout out to backyard bbqs, body builders and a little boogie nights on a Sunday in beautiful Woodland Hills.”

Transcendent folk-pop artist. “I always picture music as this river. Everyone’s throwing things into this river, it’s a place you can go to and feed off of that energy,” she says, “and feel nourished by the fact that so many people are feeling what you’re feeling. It’s this beautiful exchange.” 
Shannon Lay - Nowhere
Folk musician Shannon Lay revealed her Sub Pop signing with a Karen Dalton cover a few weeks ago, and today she’s announcing her first album for the label, August, which is fittingly out in August. Its proper lead single, “Nowhere,” is a gently lilting puzzle piece, Lay’s voice locking into place as she embraces confusion: “Nobody knows where I am going/ I just close my eyes and I find/ The place in my dreams,” she sings.

Revered Miami quartet that balances melody with crushing heaviness, creating a surprisingly uplifting and anthemic brand of doom metal. 
Torche - Slide
The great Miami band Torche have been around since 2004, when they rose from the ashes of hardcore monsters Floor. In that decade and a half, no other band has sounded like Torche. Torche have always made their home on the American metal underground, and they alone have found a way to combine the fuzz-bass rumble of doom with the adamantine hooks of stadium-sized ’90s alt-rock...  drummer Rick Smith says, “’Slide’ is one of the first songs Eric came to the table with, fully realized and arranged. Eric is a total beast of a songwriter. I suggested he use the first three Gary Numan records as inspiration and he came back at us with some melodically sound material that nailed the Torche vibe.”

Van Dale - Numbskul
Columbus fuzz-pop trio Van Dale have been kicking out classic indie guitar jams for the better part of a decade, and they’re about to serve up some more. Today the group announces their new album The Visitor... The nervy rocker “Numbskull” finds a hard-hitting sweet spot between Weezer and Nirvana, the band bashing away furiously while singer-guitarist Joe Camerlengo launches from his lower register into an aggressive wail. His refrain, “I don’t really think I’ve ever been away,” is joined to an intense rhythm that breaks loose into tension-relieving shouts of “YEAH!” The results are scrappy, dynamic, combustible, and just plain rad.

Indie icons who influenced countless artists by welding classic pop influences and jagged, roaring guitars to Black Francis' fragmented songwriting. 
Pixies - On Graveyard Hill
Indie legends Pixies have been sharing snippets of a new song the past few days. Today that song is here. “On Graveyard Hill” was cowritten by Black Francis and Paz Lenchantin, who memorably took over for founding bassist Kim Deal a few years back. It’s their first release since 2016 album Head Carrier, a spooky and characteristically rambunctious rocker marked by references to “the witching hour” and squalls of unmistakable Pixies guitar. They’ve been playing it live on tour this year, and the studio version is out now.

Lost Under Heaven - Teen Violence
Lost Under Heaven — the team-up between former WU LYFer Ellery James Roberts and Ebony Hoorn — put out their sophomore album, Love Hates What You Become, at the very beginning of the year... “‘Teen Violence’ is an allegorical tragedy about an Androgynous Prophet of the Divine Feminine who is brutally silenced by an aggressively ignorant society that is unable to comprehend his/her vision due to the paralysis of Cultural Immaturity,” Roberts said in a statement. “It is a song of our time: this formative moment in human history where we are faced with a plethora of crises that threaten the extinction of the species. Our Politics fail to make adequate response as the wider culture continues to fracture into increasingly oppositional individualist hysteria.”

Dublin four-piece noisemakers, taking influence from early Nirvana and Mclusky. 
Girl Band - Shoulderblades
...Girl Band are announcing The Talkies, a new album produced by Fox, and sharing lead single “Shoulderblades”... This one is a return to their all-consuming form, and its gnarly, acetic underbelly makes most other “indie” rock feel like child’s play. It’s noisy and pulsating — at times heavy on the psyche as there’s a palpable battle for space occupation. It opens with a vacillating atmosphere, and shrieking guitars seem go in and out of focus around the lyrics. As the drums kick in, lead singer Dara Kiely eerily screams, only adding to the push and pull felt with the lack of melodic consistency...

Seattle-based trio with a deep love of '90s alt-rock and the skills to re-create it quite nicely. The Pacific Northwestern trio Dude York formed in the early 2010s when college buddies guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Peter Richards, drummer Andrew Hall, and bassist Alex Cassidy began bashing out punky, poppy guitar rock.
Dude York - Box
Last month, the Seattle trio Dude York announced their new album, Falling... they’re back with “Box,” a riffy and bright track about the prospect of being alone forever that sounds like it could be blasting out of a stereo. “I’ll never love again/ No, not me/ I’ll never love again indefinitely,” Peter Richards sings.
It pairs nicely with their last single, an alternate point of view with a love that didn’t come as easy...

Vocalist who makes atmospheric orchestral pop showcasing her torchy image and sensuously husky singing style. Lana Del Rey envisioned a Southern California dream world constructed out of sad girls and bad boys, manufactured melancholy and genuine glamour, and then she came to embody this fantasy. At first, her stylized noir-pop garnered skeptical sneers...
Lana Del Rey - Doin' Time
...Lana Del Rey shared a snippet of a cover of Sublime's "Doin' Time." The song was a single on the O.G. frat-reggae band's multiplatinum self-titled third album, released in 1996. Lana writes in the Instagram caption that the song is "Coming soon," and according to the future single releases listed on All Access, her cover of "Doin' Time" will hit radio on May 20.
The new snippet comes as Lana Del Rey prepares her upcoming album Norman Fucking Rockwell, which has yet to receive a release date...

Valerie Teicher (born Buenos Aires, Argentina), best known by her stage name Tei Shi, is a singer-

songwriter and producer currently based in Brooklyn. Incorporating the genres of shoegaze, indie pop, and R&B, she released her first singles and music videos in 2013, also performing live for the first time at CMJ.
Tei Shi - A Kiss Goodbye
Tei Shi, aka Colombian-Canadian musician Valerie Teicher, is preparing to drop the follow-up to 2017’s tremendous Crawl Space. We don’t have details on the new LP just yet, but today she’s sharing its lead single, “A Kiss Goodbye.” The track is a breathy retro Brazilian pop exercise transposed into languid modern production. “So I lead with my body/ Follow with my head,” Tei Shi sings. “If you got what you wanted/ Let me walk away.”...

The Soft Cavalry, Róisín Murphy, Bleached, Shannon Lay, Torche, Van Dale, Pixies, Lost Under Heaven, Girl Band, Dude York, Lana Del Rey, Tei Shi

038 ALTER.NATION: weekly favtraX 03-06-2019

ALTER.NATION #38

Pip Blom, Sacred Paws, Frank Iero and the Future Violents, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Gnoomes, Apex Manor, The Gotobeds, Agent Blå, The Warlocks, Beak>, Cosmo Gold, Sleater-Kinney

weekly favtraX 

03 - 0 6 - 2 0 1 9

ALTER.NATION #38 on deezer

Dutch indie pop quartet whose sound recalls the dynamic guitar music of '90s alt-rock and Brit-pop. The Amsterdam group Pip Blom began as the solo project of the band's namesake, making intimate bedroom pop inspired by the lo-fi indie rock of the '90s. When she expanded the band to become a quartet, their sound grew more assured without losing that home-cooked feel.
Pip Blom - Don't Make It Difficult from Boat
The Dutch quartet Pip Blom spent a couple years releasing home-recorded songs, mid-fi EPs, and the occasional single, all the while refining and honing their '90s indie rock-loving sound into something sleek, sharp, and powerful. When they went into the studio to record their first album, they were ready for their closeup, and the result is something special. Boat has all the hallmarks of classic indie rock -- loud/quiet dynamics, crashing cymbals, guitar overload, yearningly off-kilter vocals, and hooks that cut flesh while breaking hearts -- while never sounding like the youngsters in the band were doing a homework assignment for music class. It never feels calculated or cynical; they invest their tried-and-true approach with vigorous energy and dedication. They also have a great asset in chief songwriter and vocalist Pip Blom herself. When she sings, she twists the melodies around like she's examining each word before reluctantly letting them go; it's a disarming approach that's instantly arresting... "Don't Make It Difficult" is an upbeat post-punk rambler...

Former Golden Grrrls members who went on to form Sacred Paws, producing sunny, polyrhythmic pop. Sacred Paws are built around the Afro-pop-inspired guitar playing of Rachel Aggs and the fluid drumming of Eilidh Rodgers, as well as their nimble dual vocals.
Sacred Paws - The Conversation
On the opening song from their second album Run Around the Sun, Glasgow indie-pop duo Sacred Paws recreate the experience of talking past each other. Though it begins with a sharp blast of feedback, “The Conversation” is a sunny, carefree jaunt, allowing Rachel Aggs’ guitar to bounce in loose curls around Eilidh Rodgers’ bubbly drums. Mimicking the back-and-forth nature of dialogue, the pair’s voices slip over one another, alternating flustered confusion and mellow concession as they try to remember exactly why they were arguing. “I’m taking the temperature/When I’m quiet I hear it more/It’s that simple,” Aggs admits as Rodgers murmurs in the background. Sacred Paws never find resolution to “The Conversation,” but they seem content to let it fade away.

American singer/songwriter Frank Iero is best known as the rhythm guitarist of early-2000s emo-punk band My Chemical Romance. Following that band's split, he began a solo career defined by bleeding lyrics, a passionate delivery, and consistent name changes, shifting from 2014's Frnkiero & the Cellabration to 2016's Frank Iero & the Patience and then Frank Iero & the Future Violents in 2019.
Frank Iero and the Future Violents - Fever Dream from Barriers
...Engineered and mixed by Steve Albini (Nirvana, Pixies, Helmet), the set recalls Iero's early-2000s emo/hardcore heyday, corroded with some grit and grime from the '90s alt scene. Following 2016's bloody Parachutes and heavily informed by Iero's near-death car crash from that same year, Barriers not only builds upon a sound palette that he's been developing for half a decade but also exercises restraint. The result is a totally enjoyable and satisfying experience, even considering the amount of aches and pains within. Iero is joined by guitarist Evan Nestor, bassist Matt Armstrong (Murder by Death), drummer Tucker Rule (Thursday), and Kayleigh Goldsworthy (keys, violin, vocals) -- his self-described "dream band" -- who join forces to help bring the singer/songwriter's vulnerable confessionals to life with as much power and humanity as possible...

An eccentric figure who stands as one of reggae's greatest producers, as well as the pioneer of dub music. 
Lee "Scratch" Perry - Let It Rain from Rainford
Since the late '80s, Jamaican dub innovator Lee "Scratch" Perry has sporadically collaborated with British producer Adrian Sherwood, whose truly jarring, rule-breaking sound is a clear descendent of Perry's. Rainford (Perry's legal birth name) follows sometimes underacknowledged albums such as From the Secret Laboratory, in addition to Perry's guest appearances on records by Dub Syndicate and Sherwood's collaborations with dubstep pioneer Pinch. Both artists are in fine form on Rainford, with Perry delivering his inimitable brand of playful, free-associative verse and Sherwood twisting trippy rhythms around him... More dramatic and lushly orchestrated is the stepping dancehall blues of "Let It Rain," where Perry wishes to "wipe out Babylon and drown Satan" over stirring cellos and swirling, choppy beats...

Contemporary guitarist from the Deep South who gained rare fame for a bluesman despite his interests, which vary from acoustic to rock. 
Kenny Wayne Shepherd - Woman Like You from The Traveler
Kenny Wayne Shepherd arrived on the scene as a blues guitar hero at 18 to an overload of media hoopla and pressure. At 40, he has evolved from the blues-guitar-slinger ghetto and become a mature musician whose wide-angle vision embraces American roots music -- blues, rock, country, and soul/R&B -- as an inseparable whole.
While it's true that most of his albums have charted, his last two, Goin’ Home and Lay It on Down, have done better than all the others, placing well inside the Top 40. The Traveler is a direct aesthetic follow-up to Lay It on Down. Co-produced once more with Marshall Altman, it utilizes the same band (including uber-drummer Chris Layton and singer Noah Hunt). Recorded in Los Angeles over ten days, it offers eight new originals and two excellent covers.
Shepherd takes a classic rock approach to blues, gritty old-school Southern funk and R&B, country and Americana. Opener "Woman Like You" is introduced by screaming organ, guitars, and horns. Hunt's vocal digs into gritty Southern funk in the vamp while the horns, arranged straight from the Muscle Shoals fakebook, soar to announce the choruses...

Russian group combining elements of Krautrock, shoegaze, and techno, referring to their sound as "stargaze." The band formed in Perm in 2014, consisting of vocalist/bassist Sasha Piankov, drummer Pavel Fedoseev, and guitarist Dmitriy Konyushevich, all of whom play synthesizers. 
Gnoomes - Sword In the Stone from MU!
Over two full-lengths and a scattering of EPs, Russian outfit Gnoomes have refined their self-described "stargaze" sound, which uses a platform of Krautrock, shoegaze, and techno as its launchpad for deeper explorations... With their third album, Mu!, Gnoomes have headed in the other direction and engaged more deeply with their organic impulses. The addition of a fourth band member, Masha Piankova, on keyboards, allowed singer/bassist Sasha Piankov to switch to guitar, pushing them toward a more guitar-driven approach that seemed to better reflect the intensity of their live shows. The resulting album still relies heavily on the pulsing Krautrock rhythms and spacy experimentation they've used in the past, but with a more spontaneous feel...

Potent but tuneful indie pop from songwriter and guitarist Ross Flournoy, formerly of the Broken West. 
Apex Manor - Asked & Answered
Apex Manor, aka vocalist and guitarist Ross Flournoy, is making his commanding return with a new single titled “Asked & Answered,” the opening track from his first new album in eight years, Heartbreak City, out May 31 from Merge.
Flournoy says of the forthcoming album, “Conceptually, the record really explores variations on the theme of rejection and the different ways people react to it, especially the isolation—either by choice or by circumstance—that can sometimes follow.”
Flournoy, joined by drummer Dan Allaire of The Brian Jonestown Massacre and bassist Rob Barbato, spent less than two weeks in the studio before completing the new album through live-in-studio recordings.

Raw, energetic Pittsburgh indie/post-punk quartet in the vein of Pavement, the Fall, and Wire, but with a garagey aftertaste. 
The Gotobeds - Calquer the Hound (with Evan Richards of The City Buses and Rob Henry of Kim Phuc) from Debt Begins at 30
Having talented friends is very rarely a drawback, and while the Gotobeds don't need much help in order to make a good album, that doesn't mean it's not good to have some likeminded pals drop by. The Gotobeds' third album, 2019's Debt Begins at 30, has a broader and more diverse sound than their previous LPs, and at least in part, that has to do with the many guests who stopped by for these sessions... On their first two albums, the band sounded like an inspired amalgam of the Fall, Pavement, and early Sonic Youth filtered through the perspective of a smart but utterly unpretentious garage band, and here they've added a few more ambitious angles without spoiling the formula or losing sight of their strengths. Eli Kasan and Tom Payne are still a strapping guitar team, sharp and complementary whether there's a third player on deck or not, and bassist Gavin Jensen and drummer Cary Belback hit hard but generate a groove rather than just clamor...

Swedish band combining post-punk and dream pop into a sound they call "death pop." 
Agent Blå - Colors of the Dark from Morning Thoughts
On their debut album, Agent Blue, Agent Blå often pitted the two halves of their self-described "death-pop" -- a mix of doomy intensity borrowed from post-punk and the sweet melodies of indie pop and shoegaze -- against each other. Though the results were frequently thrilling, the band reap richer rewards by putting both sides in harmony on Morning Thoughts. It's an approach that hints at Agent Blå's increasing maturity: Most of the band's members were still barely in their twenties when they recorded these songs, but their growing control and finesse allow them to capture the way they teeter between young adulthood and being fully grown in richer and more fascinating ways...

Los Angeles-based band who retrofit Nuggets-style garage rock, British shoegaze, and Velvet Underground-inspired art-rock into a contemporary frame. 
The Warlocks - Tribute to Hawkwind from Mean Machine Music
The highly experimental new album from L.A.'s spellbinding psych rock masters, The Warlocks!
Inspired by everything from Stereolab to Krautrock to Death Rock, this album presents 5 new compositions and then revisits those songs for instrumental reprises that reveal deep layers of melody and atmosphere!
Engineered by Phillip Haut (Ariel Pink, Centimeters)!
Follows on the heels 2016's extremely well-received Songs From The Pale Eclipse as well as the band's first ever official live album Vevey released in 2017!

Cosmo Gold is an LA-based four piece pop-rock outfit formerly known as Velvet. The group began in 2017 as a solo project from singer Emily Gold, daughter of the late Andrew Gold, best known for his 1977 top 10 hit “Lonely Boy.”
Cosmo Gold - Drown The Fly
With a name change for the act earlier this year and the addition of new bandmates, the foursome is now releasing their first EP under this new moniker... Quick-tempo high hats kick off the track, which give way to a funky bass line. “I am so scared to die/ Like when they first broke it down as a child,” goes the lead lyric. The addition of a spunky chord progression on a Telecaster lays the groundwork for synthesis of Motown percussion with pop-conscious rock n’ roll. Following a rather sick guitar solo, some dainty synth keys add an undeniable sweetness...

Arguably the most important punk band of the 1990s and 2000s, with feminist songwriting matched by taut melodicism and jaw-dropping sonic complexity. 
Sleater-Kinney - Hurry On Home
Sleater-Kinney are back! Earlier this year, the legendary trio announced that they would have a new album out this year and that it was being produced by St. Vincent, and they’ve followed through. Their new album is called The Center Won’t Hold, as we found out last week, and it’ll be out later this year via Mom + Pop Records... In a press release, Carrie Brownstein says: “We’re always mixing the personal and the political but on this record, despite obviously thinking so much about politics, we were really thinking about the person — ourselves or versions of ourselves or iterations of depression or loneliness — in the middle of the chaos.”

New Sleater-Kinney Album, Produced By St. Vincent

Pip Blom, Sacred Paws, Frank Iero and the Future Violents, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Gnoomes, Apex Manor, The Gotobeds, Agent Blå, The Warlocks, Beak>, Cosmo Gold, Sleater-Kinney

01-06-2019 FAVTRAX:MiX ~ 33 FAVOURiTE tracks 1987-1982

Suzanne Vega

01-06-2019 FAVTRAX:MiX ~ 33 FAVOURiTE tracks 1987-1982  >>Suzanne Vega, Melvins, Peter Gabriel, David Sylvian, Talking Heads, Greg Sage, Felt, Redd Kross, Sonic Youth, Bauhaus, X<<

M U S I C

favtraxmix label The player always plays the latest playlist tracks. / A lejátszó mindig a legújabb playlist számait játssza.   

LISTEN THE PLAYLIST ON DEEZER.COM

1987-1982

Her literate, artful, and intellectual brand of troubadourism rescued the singer/songwriter tradition from the clutches of sentimentality. 
Suzanne Vega
Tom's Diner (Suzanne Vega) 2:11
Luka (Suzanne Vega) 3:51
Ironbound/Fancy Poultry 6:20
from Solitude Standing 1987
The songs on Solitude Standing, Suzanne Vega's second album, had years listed beside them on the lyric sheet, so you could see that some of them dated back to 1978. But that bold admission heralded the album's triumph -- its diversity was what made it so good... On Solitude Standing, however, they became part of an album of story songs set in a variety of musical contexts; many had band arrangements, and in fact, members of Vega's touring band often were credited as co-writers. Additionally, Vega had developed more as a singer without losing the focused intonation that had made her debut -- one of many compelling elements which helped make "Luka," a character song about domestic abuse, a fluke hit.

Pacific Northwest doom-grunge gods who were legendarily Kurt Cobain's favorite band.  The Melvins weren't the first band to acknowledge the heavy metal influences that most left-of-center bands had been trying to shake off since punk rock broke in 1977 (that honor would go to Black Flag on their polarizing 1984 album, My War)...
Melvins
Eye Flys (Buzz Osborne) 6:16
Heater Moves and Eyes (Buzz Osborne) 3:52
Happy Grey or Black (Melvins) 2:01
from Gluey Porch Treatments 1987
The second and last album done with Lukin keeps the Melvins' freak flag flying. Starting with the slow-as-hell "Eye Flys," which, if nothing else, shows off Osbourne's skill at monster soloing while Crover and Lukin play a rhythm that would be too slow even for funerals, Gluey Porch Treatments is, to a large extent, more of the same. Then again, with the possible exception of St. Vitus, not many other bands out there were embracing the love of sludge metal monstrosities as the threesome was (just compare it what Ozzy Osbourne himself was doing at the time)...

Theatrical leader of '70s-era Genesis and a bona fide pop star by the '80s despite his experimental, often exotic, material. As the leader of Genesis in the early '70s, Peter Gabriel helped move progressive rock to new levels of theatricality. He was no less ambitious as a solo artist, but he was more subtle in his methods. With his first eponymous solo album in 1977, he began exploring darker, more cerebral territory, incorporating avant-garde, electronic, and worldbeat influences into his music.
Peter Gabriel 
Red Rain (Peter Gabriel) 5:40
Don't Give Up (Peter Gabriel) 6:34
Sledgehammer  (Peter Gabriel) 5:13
from So 1986
Peter Gabriel introduced his fifth studio album, So, with "Sledgehammer," an Otis Redding-inspired soul-pop raver that was easily his catchiest, happiest single to date. Needless to say, it was also his most accessible, and, in that sense it was a good introduction to So, the catchiest, happiest record he ever cut. "Sledgehammer" propelled the record toward blockbuster status, and Gabriel had enough songs with single potential to keep it there...  Even so, those songs are so strong, finding Gabriel in a newfound confidence and accessibility, that it's hard not to be won over by them, even if So doesn't develop the unity of its two predecessors.