Thanks to all who listened to my Deep Dive of The Beatles‘ Help! album and all the trivia around it. It was my last Deep Dive of the 2023 summer, and a lot of fun. Here’s the set list:
The Beatles – Help!
The Beatles – Help! intro
John Barry – The James Bond Theme
The Beatles – The Night Before (live)
The Beatles – You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
Ken Thorne – From Me to You Fantasy
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers – I Need You (live)
Dave Berry – The Crying Game
Paul McCartney – Another Girl (live)
The Beatles – You’re Going to Lose That Girl
The Ramones – You’re Gonna Kill That Girl
Ken Thorne – In the Tyrol
Vanilla Fudge – Ticket to Ride
Pink Floyd – Brain Damage / Eclipse
The Beatles – Act Naturally
Gary U.S. Bonds – It’s Only Love
Ken Thorne – Another Hard Day’s Night
The Beatles – You Like Me Too Much
The Beatles – Tell Me What You See
Elvis Presley – Trying to Get to You
Ken Thorne – The Bitter End / You Can’t Do That
Paul McCartney and Wings – I’ve Just Seen a Face (live)
Ray Charles – Yesterday
Frankie Lane – Answer Me, Lord Above
Ken Thorne – The Chase
Larry Williams – Dizzy Miss Lizzy
The Beatles – Wait
Thanks for all those who tuned in over the summer! The Deep Dive should return this winter!
Today NYC based band Lathe of Heaven share their new single “At Moment’s Edge“, which is taken from their upcoming debut album ‘Bound By Naked Skies’ out Sept 1st via Sacred Bones.
When writing “At Moment’s Edge”, Lathe of Heaven initially intended the song to be a one-off, poppy departure from the otherwise depressive and urgent atmosphere of their debut record ‘Bound by Naked Skies’. Once recording the track however, the band found it to contextualise perfectly, the dualistic nature of the record and the band as a whole, proving itself to be a prime candidate for the album’s second single. Laden with dreamy synths and enchanting vocal melodies, “At Moment’s Edge” invokes within the listener a current of visceral elusion, ebbing towards a total re-imagination of any prior notions they may have had about the band.
“Existing in the lyrics are themes of process, change and complexity on a very personal level,” remarks the band’s vocalist Gage Allison, “which we believe is indicative of the recurring themes represented in the album.”
The video accompanying the track was directed by Emma Penrose and Zach Shorrosh, who aptly cultivate the surreal and absurd atmosphere the song was meant to invoke. When asked to comment on the video Penrose stated “Gage reached out to us asking if we wanted to make a music video for Lathe of Heaven and showed us maybe the most thought-out mood board I’ve ever seen, referencing Man Ray, Caravaggio, Marcel Duchamp as well as classic and contemporary science fiction. Inspired by the monochromatic imagery, we shot At Moment’s Edge entirely on 16mm black & white film & print stock and developed it by hand ourselves. We processed the 900’ of film at Mono No Aware using an eco friendly developer consisting of coffee, beer & vitamin C powder. The results turned out exactly as we’d hoped.”
With little more under their belt than a relentless string of live performances, and a twice pressed (subsequently sold out) Self-Titled Demo, NYC based band Lathe of Heaven have proved themselves to be a potent and cohesive element amidst the torrent of hardcore punk and synth-driven pop revival currently proliferating throughout the U.S. underground. Formed in 2021, the band features members of noteworthy Brooklyn based projects such as People’s Temple, Porvenir Oscuro, Pawns, Android, Hustler and more.
Though this roster of past and alternate musical endeavors exposes a diverse range of genre and skill sets, Lathe of Heaven can only be understood as a departure from such influences, exploring a sound entirely of its own.
Now nearly two years later, LoH are finally prepared to unleash their debut Full Length Bound by Naked Skies. With careful consideration, this eleven track LP blends elements of British New-Wave and Finnish Post-Punk into a nuanced juxtaposition of 80s sonic mania. Incorporating themes of classic and contemporary Science-Fiction, Bound by Naked Skies indebts itself as much to its literary influences as it does to the music that informs its unique and deliberate sound. Paying powerful homage to the uncanny worlds of authors Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia Butler, Ken Liu and of course Ursula Le Guin (whose novel the band is named after), themes of cosmology (Ekpyrosis), simulation (Heralds of the Circuit-Born), mental illness (Moon-Driven Sea), and ontology (Entropy, The Spider.), weave implicitly throughout the arch of the record, providing a sense of insight into the minds of those plagued by the ambiguous nature of humankind’s terrifying and not-so-distant future.
Lathe of Heaven tour dates: 18th Aug – Union Pool (w/ Temple of Angels), Brooklyn,, NY (Tickets) 7th Sept – TV Eye (w/ Witness and Eyedrops), Brooklyn, NY (Tickets) 13th Sept – The Dirty Bird (w/ The Poisoning and The Exile), Santa Ana, CA 14th Sept – Knucklehead ( w/ The Exile and Shrouds), Los Angeles, CA 15th Sept – Zebulon (w/ Diode), Los Angeles, CA 16th Sept – Stork Club (w/ Vulture Feather and Vague Lanes), Oakland, CA 17th Sept – Enzyme, San Francisco, CA 18th Sept – Naked Lounge (w/ Vulture Feather and Exposure Therapy), Chico, CA 19th Sept – Coffin Club, Portland, OR 21st Sept – 23rd Sept – Varning Festival, Montreal, MTL (Tickets)
Hailing from Austin, Texas and playing sold-out shows before they even released any music, Club Coma (Geoff Earle – synth, bass, and vocals, Scott Martin – guitar and vocals, and Aaron Perez – drums) play a neat mix of experimental rock, dance rock, and shoegaze on their debut, self-titled album.
Opener “Give Me a Chance” sounds like something Thundercat might cook up, and I’m sure he’ll be jealous that he didn’t create something so funky when he hears it. “The Mirror” has a bit of a dance-punk sound to it, and “New Cruelty” even adds goth-synth touches. “I’m frightened of my TV screen. I’m scared of the things it’ll do to me. I’m scared of the phone in my pocket. I keep checking, and I don’t know how to stop it,” Martin sings on “TV Screen.” Seriously, dude, we’re all with you on this (and the addictive beats of the song only help the imagery).
“I went through that bad shit, and now I’m immune,” they sing on “Immune,” an empowering track that has Perez knocking out a steady beat perfect for your bicycling playlist, Earle getting his groovy synth groove groovin’, and Martin reminding us that we’ve come through a lot in the past few years, and we can, and should, think of ourselves as bad asses from this day forward.
Their cover of The James Gang‘s “Collage” is sharp. They turn it into a synthwave stunner. “It hit me hard like a lightning bolt,” they sing at the start of “Anesthesia,” a song that might be about addiction, or it might be about, finally, getting a rest after all the stuff mentioned in “Immune.” The looping string section in it takes the track up a few notches. It’s a wild touch. “Keep It Together” gets dreamy for the final song, making you feel like the gentleman on the cover, an image of a modern Icarus, falling into the arms of people who seem happy to see him. You’re falling, or perhaps floating, into a calmer state in that club where being in a coma for a little while might do you good.
Today, IAN SWEET — the project of songwriter and pop auteur Jilian Medford — announces her new album, SUCKER, out November 3rd on Polyvinyl, and presents lead single/video, “Your Spit.” Perfectly merging Medford’s pop sensibilities with the widescreen indie rock that she first made her name on, SUCKER is both sumptuous and fully realized. Medford’s musical voice has only become more unique amidst an ever-growing field, and SUCKER is proof positive that — even with a considerable discography in her arsenal — Medford is just getting started.
Lead single “Your Spit” swerves and sways with a distinctly pop gait. Produced by Alex Craig (Binki, Claud) and Strange Ranger’sIsaac Eiger, “Your Spit” begins with blown-out synths and Medford’s ever-incisive lyrics. “Why don’t you kiss me like you mean it // Kiss me like you’re leaving//Your spit tastes different,” Medford sings, her voice shapeshifting from nonchalant yearning to a full-blown scream-along chorus. Of “Your Spit,” Medford adds; “‘Your Spit’ is about the joy and fear that surrounds new relationships. The excitement that’s also accompanied by doubt. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say the song is just mostly about making out.”
The accompanying “Your Spit” video — helmed by Insufficent Funds and directed by Brittany Reeber — sees Medford surrounded by a theater full of kissing couples, and features cameos from Saturday Night Live cast members Sarah Sherman (aka Sarah Squirm) and Martin Herlihy. Of the video, Reeber adds: “Jillian and I got together one day and had a complete mind meld on what the videos would be for the first two singles. The concept for ‘Your Spit’ comes straight from the energy of the song. It felt right to get kind of literal and visceral! The couples brought a whole new dimension to the video that I wasn’t even expecting, it’s flirty, but it’s also really tender and sweet. Grateful to all the brave kissers! We also knew we wanted the two videos to speak to each other in some way so there is a nod to the next vid in this one if you can catch it.”
Work on SUCKER began in the fall of 2022; feeling newly untethered in the wake of a “COVID relationship” that had recently come to pass, Medford took a cross-country road trip from her L.A. home to an artist residency at The Outlier Inn. “I was feeling very stuck in L.A. and was trying to get comfortable with spending more time alone again,” she recalls about her hermetic confines, which included 24-hour studio access to create in an unfettered fashion. “I went there not knowing exactly what I wanted to do or make, but I knew I wanted to explore and get out of my comfort zone. I forced myself to make things on the spot, in the moment and not overthink it too much.”
Feeling inspired, Medford brought her demos to life with co-producers Craig and Eiger, along with mixing engineer Al Carlson (St. Vincent, Jessica Pratt), all of whom helped shape SUCKER into its current form —a record that reconciles Medford’s beginnings with where she’s landed at this current moment. “I revisited the reasons why I started playing music to begin with,” she explains. “I wanted to get more personal and showcase a more confident side musically and lyrically.”
SUCKER follows Medford’s 2021 breakthrough and Polyvinyl debut, Show Me How You Disappear, which chronicled her time spent in an intensive outpatient program that included six hours of group therapy a day. “Show Me How You Disappear was written during a really difficult period of my life after reckoning with a mental health crisis,” she explains. “I survived that very moment in my life through writing that record, and the extreme urgency to heal is reflected in the songwriting. With SUCKER, I felt more capable to take my time and experiment without being totally afraid of the outcome. It wasn’t life or death — it was just life, and I was lucky to be living it.”
SUCKER TRACKLIST 1. Bloody Knees 2. Smoking Again 3. Emergency Contact 4. Sucker 5. Comeback 6. Your Spit 7. Clean 8. FIGHT 9. Slowdance 10. Hard
IAN SWEET Tour Dates Fri. Aug. 11 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre # Sat. Aug. 12 – Denver, CO @ Paramount Theatre # Thu. Aug. 17 – Los Angeles, CA @ Skirball Cultural Center Tue. Aug. 22 – Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere – Rooftop $ Thu. Nov. 9 – London, UK @ Pitchfork Music Festival London
It was almost 30 years ago when Drop Nineteens disbanded. They had released their shoegaze masterpiece Delaware in 1992, and shared stages with bands like Radiohead, Hole, Blur, PJ Harvey and Smashing Pumpkins. They went from being teenagers in Boston to mid-twenty-somethings with videos on MTV, sessions on the BBC, world tours and numerous festival appearances under their belt. So when Drop Nineteens ceased to be, their lead singer and songwriter Greg Ackell felt content. He had the rest of his life in front of him to figure out what he wanted to do. Music was a closed chapter.
In the decades that followed, despite the band’s turn away from the spotlight, Drop Nineteens’ legacy grew. Delaware came to be considered a classic of the genre, landing on lists of the greatest shoegaze albums of all time, with Pitchfork saying that “Delawareset Drop Nineteens squarely in a league of their own” on their run down of the genre’s best albums. The band’s catalog also found a new life on streaming, where tracks like “Winona” and “Kick The Tragedy” have racked up millions of streams and reached a new audience, becoming a touchstone influence for the new wave of American shoegaze.
It was in this context that in 2021 a friend from the band’s early days got Ackell on the phone to suggest making some music together, just to see how it felt. Instead of shutting it down like he had been doing over the years, he decided to entertain the prospect. For the first time in nearly 30 years, he picked up a guitar with intent.
Today, Drop Nineteens are announcing their official return. The full original line up of Ackell, Steve Zimmerman, Paula Kelley, Motohiro Yasue, and Peter Koeplin has reunited to create a new album entitled Hard Light(out November 3rd on Wharf Cat Records), the band’s 3rd official LP and the spiritual successor to Delaware. To mark the announce the band are sharing the first single from the album, a track called “Scapa Flow”, and Ackell and Kelley have spoken to Stereogum about the band’s history, their unlikely reunion, and their comeback LP.
“The intent on Delaware was to reflect that time in our lives, which I think it did accurately,” says Ackell. “Having considered Delaware before embarking on Hard Light, we wanted to make an honest, reflective album representing who we are now, which is, well, older.
“I’ve been struggling to find an answer to the question ‘why now?’ What was the catalyst for getting back together after so long? The best answer I can come up with is this was the first moment in my life since stopping making music that I got curious to hear what Drop Nineteens might sound like now. And there was only one way to find out!”
In support of the new LP Drop Nineteens are announcing a series of fall tour dates in major US markets with support from Horse Jumper of Love, Greg Mendez and Winter.Full details can be found below.
Drop Nineteens Hard Light is available for preorder HERE
Keep your mind open.
[Drop your e-mail address in the subscription box while you’re here.]
Suicide Squeezecelebrates Chastity Belt with the latest in its split 7″ single series–a pair of covers by Friends of the Band and tourmates Courtney Barnettand Kurt Vile. For this release, Kurt and Courtney each recorded a song from the band’s third album, 2017’s I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone, in their signature styles. Today, you can listen to Side C for Courtney’s take on “Different Now,”where she pulls the song from its Pacific Northwest haze, leaves it out to dry in the middle of the desert, and wrings something almost joyous from the original’s ambiguity. Side K is Kurt’s version of“This Time of Night,” on which he lovingly recreates the anxious interplay of Julia Shapiro and Lydia Lund’s guitars, stretching each note of the song’s fraught vocal melody to its breaking point. “This Time of Night” / “Different Now” will be available October 27 on vinyl and digital platforms, with a one-time vinyl pressing limited to 1500 (250 pink, 250 black, 1000 blue) copies.
On the track Courtney Barnett offers:“This song is so special to me. I remember when the album came out and I listened to ‘different now’ over and over, I thought they were singing directly to me. It’s a perfect piece of songwriting, I showed it to Kurt and he would always sing it to me on tour. I love Chastity Belt. I’m pretty sure we met in 2014 at a record store in Seattle, then we toured together in 2015 and we’ve been friends ever since. I originally played it as a little folk acoustic version, then I asked Stella [Mozgawa] to program some drums and it turned into something a lot more fun. we tracked straight to the Tascam 388 and it was a real joy to make.”
Studio One Space-Age Dub Special is a fun collection of rare dub cuts from the legendary Studio One studio released between 1972 and 1981. Credited to “The Dub Specialist,” but chopped up and remixed by producer Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd and engineer Sylvan Morris, the rare cuts take on new life.
“Red Neck” is heavy on the horns and rouses you from a bit of a hangover from the afterparty you attended earlier that morning. “Marcus Dub” calms things down with its simple high-hat beats as you scrounge around some juice and toast and feed your pets. The thumping, yet subtle bass on “Accra” is the sound of your brain finally waking up and planning out your day, thankfully with a sense of optimism.
“A Lie Gal a Tell” recycles the horns and beats from “Red Neck” and includes vocals from DJ Lone Ranger and plenty of weird keyboard cuts to inspire you to dress sharp for the day (“This is a serious, serious matter,” Lone Ranger says with a grin.). There’s a bounce in your walk with “Squash Dub” in your earbuds. ‘Pick Up the Version” keeps you smiling as you head for the train station and the frantic crowds there. You’re in no hurry. Things will happen when they happen. The groovy, mellow beat of “Saucy Perila” will make the woman behind the counter handing you your pain au chocolat wonder if you’re high, happy, or horny.
“Roaring Reggae” doesn’t roar at all. It’s more like a lion stretching out its limbs to lounge in the sun. The background vocal sounds on “Still Water Version” give it a dreamy quality, and the reverb only increases that sense. “My Man Part 2” and “Disco Dub” are fun, little jaunts across the dance floor. “Tricky” isn’t a salute to the DJ of the same name, but I’m sure he’d love it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already sampled it in at least a couple tracks by now. The subdued bass in it is perfect for trip-hop, and Tricky could easily sing or rap over all of “Illiteracy Version.”
The title of “Wailing Sounds” is probably a reference to The Wailers, and not the sound of the track – which is peppy ska beats and mellow ska horns mixed with slightly up-tempo dub bass. “Juk’s, Inc.” could be the opening theme to the credits of a 1976 Jamaican crime film. “Barb Wire Version” has female vocals about finding a new man, but the vocals never tell the whole story. They’re chopped, looped, and reverbed into a weird puzzle. Perhaps it’s related to “Queen of the Rub?” I’m not sure. I mean, with that title… The collection ends with “I a See I,” which might be the trippiest song on the record. The vocals are layered with extra reverb, the hand percussion sounds like it was recorded in the back of a cave, and the organ notes almost sound random. It’s delightfully strange.
The entire collection is. Like any good dub record, it’s mysterious, funky, and just plain weird all at once.
Keep your mind open.
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