video
SEE: No Age – ‘Smoothie Kings’: abstract shapes and lofi beauty
UNORTHODOX former Sub Pop noiseniks No Age have got through some virusy distribution teething troubles and finally their new album Goons Be Gone, their second for new housekeepers Drag City, is out in the world. And in celebration the duo, Randy Randall and Dean Allen Spunt, have released a rather lovely, abstract and colourful video …
SEE: the sweetness of Emma Kupa’s ‘Hey Love’
Former singer with Sheffield cult indie heroes Standard Fare, in collaboration with Hefner man Darren Hayman in the Hayman Kupa Band, and in indie fizzbomb purveyors Mammoth Penguins, Emma Kupa has been absent from our ears over the past few years in her solo incarnation. Thankfully that gap in our musical lives is about to …
SEE: Leron Thomas’s ‘Blind’ is a call to wake up from our routines
LERON THOMAS has been quietly making a stir in his native USA for a while with a conscious and deep brand of funk and jazz. More recently he has become known for his behind-the-desk work, overseeing Iggy Pop’s Free LP from last year, which he produced, wrote and toured in cahoots with the garage-punk legend …
TRACK: Emmy the Great’s ‘Dandelions/Liminal’ is intelligent and breezy
BELLA UNION’S Emmy the Great has had a major shift in consciousness and the place she calls home since her last album, Second Love, back in 2016. Born in Hong Kong, Emma Lee-Moss (for it is she) moved to London with her parents at the end of the city’s loaned colonial status; more recently she …
See: Wye Oak’s ‘AEIOU’ spells out the inadequacy of language
BALTIMORE’S Wye Oak are on a real creative roll. The stylistically free-grazing duo of Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack have released a video for “AEIOU”, a taster for their new EP for Merge, No Horizon, which is due out on July 31st. It’s composed of a beautiful animated line drawing to convey the lyrics, put …
SEE: Guided by Voices’ ‘Haircut Sphinx’
THERE’S every chance that by the time you’ve finished reading this sentence Guided By Voices will have recorded and released their next three albums, such is their legendary work ethic and productivity. I don’t recall reading a single feature on Robert Pollard which hasn’t focused on this incredible feat of industriousness (107 albums and counting); …
SEE: Ditz’s ‘Role Model’ is righteously noisy
BRIGHTON noiseniks Ditz have finally come down from the world of download-only and brought us five tracks of guitar-killin’ wax, in the shape of the 5 Songs EP. They’ve released a video for “Role Model”, taken from the EP, and it’s a very fine 129 seconds of towering guitar abuse. The track sneaks on a …
SEE: Martha – ‘Her Name’s December’: a singer to watch
UP AND coming British singer-songwriter Martha cut her musical teeth singing out from the depth of her heart in church, aged just 9. She began writing her own material at just 13 and, drawing on a love of acts such as Florence and the Machine and Aurora, brings the big-horizon emotion to her debut EP, …
SEE: Ganser’s ‘Emergency Equipment & Exits’ explores just walking away
ILLINOIS quartet Ganser have just released their second single of 2020, “Emergency Equipment & Exits”, an exploration of that universal human experience, the sudden, instinctual urge to just up and leave; and what would happen if you gave into that urge? The video to the song, beautifully self-directed by the band, finds the quartet in …
See: The Institutes release video for ‘Heal In Time’
If it wasn’t enough that The Institutes released one of the singles of the year so far – a jingle jangly hyper-delight of of a tune – they have added a suitably effervescent video for it. ‘Heal In Time’ (reviewed by me earlier this month) gets me feeling all nostalgic for a certain guitar-based buzz …