Cat's Cradle

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Back to Moon Beach (Verve Records) is an EP by no one’s definition but Kurt Vile’s. Clocking in at just shy of an hour, this would be a long full-length record by most any other artist’s yardstick, but for Kurt, the collection is an expression of just how deep his well of non-album material runs. Culled from various sessions over the last four years, and representing a wide swath of the inspirational musical community Kurt surrounds himself with, the core 4 songs of the record (tracks 1, 2, 3 and 6) were born in the fall of 2019 at Panoramic Studios in Stinson Beach, California alongside close musical partners Rob Laakso, Stella Mozgawa, Chris Cohen and with coproduction on tracks 1, 3 and 6 by Cate Le Bon. Later fleshed out with bandmate and producer / engineer Adam Langelotti, additional musical parts were played by “Farmer” Dave Scher and Mikel Patrick Avery.

Many other moments (including hella overdubs on the Stinson Beach material) are from intense sessions on planet Philly at Kurt’s studio: OKV Central. It’s been a heavy few years and plenty of excuses to get lost in outer space behind the microphones. Mant Sounds – KV’s go-to recording studio in Los Angeles – was a third and crucial launchpad to ram these sessions home… a familiar spaceship run by Rob Schnapf and often flown by Matt Schuessler as engineer.

EP opener “Another Good Year For The Roses” is a richly psychedelic piano-driven earworm with swirling lap steel and catchy blues-pop guitars, and a deeply meditative yet characteristically hooky bend. Written a full year before the pandemic – and recorded in October 2019 just shy of it – “Touched Somethin (Caught a Virus)” was originally intended for Vile’s 2022 full length (watch my moves), but was ultimately left off of that record out of concern that it would be interpreted too literally, given the state of the world that unfolded shortly after its recording.

Somberly, the Stinson Beach material in the collection are some of the final unreleased recordings with Kurt’s longtime creative partner Rob Laakso, prior to his passing in early 2023. The EP is rounded out with a few fan favorites — his covers of Wilco’s “Passenger Side” and Bob Dylan’s Christmas song “Must Be Santa,” (featuring vocals by Kurt’s daughters Awilda and Delphine Vile) which Kurt is excited to bring to a wider platform (“just in time for the holidays!”) after its Spotify-only release last year. The final track brings-it-all-back-home with a punched-up, radio-ready version of (watch my moves) standout “Cool Water” – originally recorded with the Violators in January 2020 by Rob Schnapf at Mant sounds and remixed by Rob Schnapf again in May 2023 for this release – and for the radio!

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1993, West Coast... Dr Dre vs Eazy-E, Snoop Doggy Dog on the rise with his debut album alongside the N.W.A don of production. Tupac with the summer release of ‘I Get Around’, but caught up in alleged gun fights and assault charges. G-funk the national conversation.

So when Souls Of Mischief came onto the scene with their funky outfits, slammin’ beats and breazy attitudes - backed with a lyrical dexterity far beyond their teenage years – a fresh hop to the bounce of the West Coast was born.

“Sometimes it gets a little hectic out there...”, Tajai exclaimed in the intro, “...But right now we gonna up you on how we just chill”.

The California quartet announced themselves with harmlessly refreshing confidence, on more of a Tribe tip with jazz-drips and groove-infused rhythms – yet lyrically more adventurous and weed-scented; more of a Pharcyde vibe with endlessly cool rhymes and multisyllabic wordplays - yet more intellectual, energetic and freestyle-ready. A funky introspection was clear to see. This was Oakland, California in 1993.

...Now, 30 years on, 93 to 23, still infinity. Still hectic out there. Time flies but Souls are still chillin. “Now you have younger generations who were born in ’93,” says Phesto. “They’re like, ‘ ’93 ’til infinity.’ It means so many different things to so many different people”

30 YEARS OF 93 ‘TIL INFINITY – AROUND THE WORLD IN 93 DATES
#23tilinfinity

From this February onward, Souls Of Mischief will go Around the World in 93 Dates bringing their effortlessly cool rhymes and rhythms to the world. It’s an anni worth celebrating. Full album renditions. Party feels. Dripping with Jazz. Flavoursome flows. Cali energy. Fresh garms (with limited runs for sale) and ripe freestyles.
‘This is 93 ‘til infinity, you know, so it’s markin’ the time but also movin’ beyond the time, you feel me?’ - Yasiin Bey (Mos Def)

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Punk rock might have been the force that brought Destroy Boys together, but it’s far from the only touchstone for their music. From their first record through the beginnings of their fourth, they have continued to write and sing about what they know. School drama and elitist cliques encountered in their teens have given way to the pain of relationships and the inherent feelings of misunderstanding and isolation that is all too common for young people navigating a hybrid of physical and digital worlds.

Started in Sacramento in 2015 by Alexia Roditis and Violet Mayugba while they were still in high-school, initially the band released acoustic demos on Bandcamp. Destroy Boys first proper record, Sorry, Mom remains a classic for the band’s fans, having spawned the underground hit I Threw Glass At My Friend’s Eyes and Now I’m On Probation. The follow up record, Make Room, recorded by Martin Cooke (Death Cab for Cutie, Of Monsters and Men) was tracked in just 4 days and yielded favorites such as Crybaby and Duck Eat Duck World (later featured on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater soundtrack.)

Adding drummer Narsai Malik to the fold in 2018, Destroy Boys began to tour in earnest, venturing as far as the UK, opening for numerous up-and-coming indie bands. As their own songs took off on Spotify and TikTok they signed with Los Angeles label Hopeless Records in 2020. Working with Philadelphia producer Will Yip (Turnstile, Circa Survive) their first Hopeless release was the snarling, one minute ripper, Muzzle. The eventual LP Open Mouth, Open Heart, released in late 2021 chronicled a band dealing with familiar pandemic-frustration and the rise of online gossip and bullying -  and they dealt with these head on with songs ranging from Escape to Locker Room Bully.  

Despite that year-long setback, the band returned to touring in summer 2021, suffering the obligatory headache of Covid-cancelled shows, re-booking and re-reroutings.   But their fanbase, which had been locked up as the band grew sevenfold online came out in droves. Headlining for the first time brought a succession of sold out shows and the reassurance that their connection with their audience was never stronger.

Rolling into 2022, the band toured the UK with Alkaline Trio and Taking Back Sunday before crisscrossing the US several times as they continued to support the LP. With lauded performances at Riot Fest, Dia De Los Deftones, and more, they have since begun work on their fourth album. Working with Carlos De La Garza (Bad Religion, Paramore, The Linda Lindas) the recordings dig further back to embrace everything from garage punk to 90’s college indie rock. 

2023 holds yet bigger experiences for Destroy Boys. Following appearances at Coachella they return to the UK and Ireland for Slam Dunk Fest, several headline shows and then multiple runs in Europe, taking in notable festivals including Roskilde, SBAM! And Sziget. Along the way fans can expect new music in advance of their as yet untitled fourth record.

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SOEN: 
Joel Ekelöf – Vocals
Martin Lopez – Drums
Lars Enok Åhlund – Keyboards and Guitar 
Cody Ford – Lead Guitar 
Oleksii “Zlatoyar” Kobel – Bass 

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 End of the World, the new album from acclaimed Austin songwriting duo Wild Child (Kelsey Wilson and Alexander Beggins) wasn’t supposed to happen. In 2018, Wilson joined the singer-songwriter super group Glorietta, and debuted her critically acclaimed genre-bending, Motown-influenced solo project Sir Woman. Meanwhile, Beggins unveiled his musical alter-ego, CoCo Zandi, with the release of his first solo album, As Simple as a Dream. Then in 2019, after more than a decade of non-stop touring, the indie band, which was unexpectedly conceived in the back seat of someone else's tour van, stopped booking or playing shows altogether.

Exploring different sonic directions, Wilson and Beggins didn't know if they would ever make another Wild Child record, until, well, what felt like the "end of the world" hit Austin, and brought them back together. Pandemic lockdowns closed stages and drained bank accounts. In Austin, the ‘Live Music Capital of the World,’ local bands took their shows online. Wild Child was no different. With an unexpected abundance of free time on their hands, Wilson and Beggins got together to practice for a series of online performances for devout fans. Within 30 minutes of rejoining forces, they’d written the first single for what would accidentally become Wild Child's fifth album.

"Photographs" is a soulful, brass-filled outing that “offers something familiar for Wild Child fans who have stuck with them over the years," Wilson says. “‘Photographs’ was inspired by a picture of my dad, Buddy Wilson, who passed away in February. And in a way, it's a tribute to old Wild Child songs. A bittersweet story, a ukulele and both of us singing. It's a special gift to Wild Child fans." Beggins adds, "It felt like our very first record, when the two of us wrote a bunch of songs while on tour for someone else. There wasn't any aim to do anything with those songs at the beginning. For the first time since then, that's how we started writing these songs. We didn't know if we would make another record. It just came together.”

And it couldn't have happened at a more difficult time. Take Day 3 of the 2021 Texas Big Freeze for instance, when 13 displaced Austin pals had taken refuge at Wilson's house. There was no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and no end in sight. When Wilson couldn't possibly take it anymore, one of the fateful 13, singer-songwriter John Calvin Abney, ripped a 90s-alternative riff on an acoustic guitar that would eventually turn into the album's title track. "I just started singing about things that were freaking me out. Wearing a mask for a year. Global warming. There's no heat, no water,” explains Wilson. “It was like a dirge to begin with. But by the end we were all screaming and laughing that, yes, this might be the end of the world, but we're all together right now, making music in my living room by candlelight. It's all okay."

The next morning during a lull in the storm, the Wild Child caravan — complete with drummer and guitarist Tom Meyers, guitarist Cody Ackors, and bassist and piano player Taylor Craft (Sir Woman) — braved icy roads to recording engineer Matt Pence's The Echo Lab studios outside Denton, Texas. They didn't even stop to shower before recording an unwashed rendition of "End of the World," flush with in-the-moment angst. "There's no ukulele. I'm singing differently than I ever have before. You can hear my voice crack, and all the energy behind everyone playing," Wilson said.

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"Cosmic Charlie really is a great band - these guys do this music the way it should be done: having the conversation in their own voices.”
            -David Gans, Grateful Dead archivist

Cosmic Charlie was born in the musical Mecca of Athens, Georgia. From its summer 1999 inception, the band swiftly cemented its reputation as a band that puts a unique and personal twist on the Grateful Dead catalogue. Cosmic Charlie is a Dead cover band for folks that are ambivalent about Dead cover bands.

Rather than mimicking the Dead exactly, Cosmic Charlie chooses to tap into the Dead’s energy and style as a foundation on which to build. The result is healthy balance of creativity and tradition, where both the band and its audience are taken to that familiar edge with the sense that, music is actually being MADE here tonight.

Moving and shaking even the most skeptical of Deadheads, Cosmic Charlie storms into a town and plays with an energy that eludes other bands, an energy that sometimes eluded the Dead themselves. Those precious moments during Dead jams when the synchronicity is there and all is right with the world -  these are the moments that Cosmic Charlie relishes and feverishly welcomes with open arms. Clearly, Cosmic Charlie’s audiences are also eager to partake in these moments, and together with the band, they have indulged in many memorable evenings.

Most nights, Cosmic Charlie walks onstage without a setlist, not even knowing what the first song will be. Any Dead tune can rear its head at any moment, and fan requests are always welcome. “INSPIRATON, MOVE ME BRIGHTLY" is Cosmic Charlie’s mantra, allowing the music to truly play the band.

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            -US News and World Report

 

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At this point, the Menzingers are an absolute institution. The Philadelphia punk legends’ multi-decade reputation as road warriors with an unbeatable catalog is cemented as hard truth—and their seventh album, Some Of It Was True, stands as their most immediate-sounding and energetic record to date. The follow-up to 2019’s sensational Hello Exile accomplishes the daunting task of capturing the Menzingers’ distinctive live energy in the confines of the studio, resulting in a sound that’s both rich, raw, and complementary to the group’s increasingly prismatic songwriting approach. More than 15 years in, the Menzingers are still holding their listeners square in the immediate present, and Some Of It Was True documents that power in thrilling fashion.

Some Of It Was True comes after the longest gap between Menzingers records to date—a gestational period brought on by the Hello Exile-era tour schedule’s delays due to the COVID-19 tour industry shutdown. “We weren’t really writing new music yet,” Greg Barnett explains. “We were talking about it, but we were honestly just happy to be out and touring again.” The acoustic reworks of 2020’s From Exile followed, as well as Barnett’s solo record Don’t Go Throwing Roses at My Grave from last year, which was when Some Of It Was True started to come together.

“We turned down any offers at that point because we needed the time to write,” Tom May explains while discussing the writing and recording process, which technically started while on the road and continued in intensive fashion while the boys were back home. “We’d go out on tour, come home, and be in the practice space writing our asses off five days a week,” Barnett says. We had to learn to trust our instincts, which is the hardest thing to do when you’ve been in a band like this for so long. You get caught in your ways! It took a while to trust ourselves, but when we did, it was an amazing feeling.”

Making the process easier: Grammy-nominated producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, the War on Drugs, Waxahatchee), who joined the Menzingers in El Paso’s legendary Sonic Ranch studios and lent his incredible ear for raw, immediate sound to help the band achieve Some Of It Was True’s in-the-room live feel. “The Menzingers are as real as it gets,” Cook says on his time in the studio with the band. I had an absolute blast working with these guys and was moved to tears many times. They are truly dedicated to artistic growth, and to each other, in ways I found both refreshing and beautiful. I am now a lifer.”

“Brad massively changed the way we were approaching the record,” May says. “We were able to bust out a ton of songs during the last part of the recording process as a result. We’d talk about music and develop a vocabulary about how to work together, and that made us embrace chasing the feeling instead worrying about locking in things immediately.” “We wanted to make a fun record and write songs that we wanted to play live, and that’s exactly what we did,” Barnett adds. “We’ve always said that we want every album to sound live, but we never recorded an album live before. This was the first time we committed to that idea. We wanted to sound like how our band sounds onstage.”

 

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Look to the East, Look to the West, the new album by Camera Obscura, is a revelation. The Tracyanne Campbell-led outfit, reuniting with producer Jari Haapalainen (Let’s Get Out of This Country, My Maudlin Career), have crafted an album that simultaneously recalls why longtime fans have ferociously loved them for decades while also being their most sophisticated effort to date.

It is also the most hard-fought album of Camera Obscura’s career. Following the 2015 passing of founding keyboardist and friend Carey Lander (to whom the penultimate track “Sugar Almond” is addressed), the band went into an extended hiatus. They remained in contact, but their status was uncertain until they announced their return, having been invited to perform as part of Belle & Sebastian’s 2019 Boaty Weekender cruise festival, along with a pair of sold-out warm-up shows in Glasgow. Donna Maciocia (keys and vocals) joined founding members Kenny McKeeve (guitar and vocals), Gavin Dunbar (bass), and Lee Thomson (drums and percussion) for those shows and has since become a regular songwriting partner of Campbell’s.

Recorded in the same room where Queen wrote “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Look to the East, Look to the West feels big, a widescreen reframing of Camera Obscura’s sound that, paradoxically, saw the band go back to basics—there are no string or brass arrangements, with more emphasis placed on piano, synthesizers, Hammond organ, and drum machines, and, perhaps most strikingly, the group have dropped the veil of reverb that characterized their previous albums. The tinges of country and soul that give Camera Obscura’s baroque take on pop music its bittersweet edge have never been more apparent—guitars shimmer into the distance, keys haunt, and Campbell’s voice searches for the heart, reflecting on love, loss, and the passage of time.

Lead single “Big Love” relishes in the space between country rock and prog, a pining break-up anthem featuring the soaring pedal steel of Tim Davidson. It’s a Nashville Sound heartbreaker, tackling the complexity of wanting to rekindle a bad relationship with Campbell’s uncanny ability to render the past: “It was a big love, she said / That’s why it took ten years to get her out of her head,” she begins.

“We’re Going to Make It in a Man’s World” was co-written with Maciocia for filmmaker Margaret Salmon’s 2021 film Icarus (After Amelia). (Salmon, in turn, shot Look to the East, Look to the West’s cover photography featuring Fiona Morrison, who was on the cover of Camera Obscura’s debut, Biggest Bluest Hi-Fi.). Ironic and sincere, the two navigate the reality of being women in the music industry, somehow floating over Davidson’s pedal steel and Maciocia’s keys. “The Light Nights” is a swooning song propelled by a western shuffle and killer guitar, striking a balance between a particularly good honky-tonk joint’s jukebox and a lost gem of California pop music waiting to be discovered in a 7-inch bin.

Camera Obscura’s uncanny dexterity in juxtaposing genres, moods, and emotions is most keenly felt in opener “Liberty Print,” an elegy that breaks itself open over a crushing synth line. It’s a daringly constructed song, showcasing Campbell’s command of lyrical narrative that allows space for grief within the structure of pop music.

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When creators f<ck with how we experience time and space, great fictions emerge: Clive Barker's Imajica, Andrei Tarkovsky's sci-fi classic Solaris, and Godard's Alphaville. But what happens to artists when the flow of time gets f^cked up IRL? When an hour stretches into eternity, and the voices in your head begin to echo through empty rooms?
If you’re Kevin Barnes, the creative visionary behind of Montreal, Freewave Lucifer f<ck f^ck f>ck happens.

Isolation and uncertainty loomed throughout the genesis of the band’s latest studio album. “The experience of just trying to keep my head above water and navigate through the last couple years played a huge role in this record,” says Barnes.

These expansive selections contrast markedly with the focused pop of 2020’s UR FUN, which was crafted for visceral thrills and the concert stage. As it was for countless musicians around the world, the inability to tour eliminated one of the linchpins of Barnes’ creative process. “I didn’t know if we’d ever tour again, so I didn’t consider that side of things.” Denied social interaction and diverse experiences, Barnes delved inward.

Barnes contemplated how time functions in music and experimented accordingly. These new songs, dense with ideas but short on repetition, feel epic in scope despite reasonable running times. Like the staircases of M.C. Escher’s Relativity, the discrete sections of “Marijuana’s A Working Woman” and “Blab Sabbath Lathe of Maiden” crisscross and pivot, confounding the senses yet commanding attention.

The imagery and sentiments that bubble forth from Barnes’ lyrical wordplay prove equally disorienting. “Is it important to say black chrome rodents?,” asks Barnes on “Après The Déclassé.” Phrases borne of free association took on new meaning when introduced into a song. “It’s like collaborating with my subconscious in a way. It feels deeply personal, even though I don’t necessarily understand it at that moment.”

“Marijuana’s A Working Woman'' juxtaposes oddball funk a la Zapp or Rick James with nods to Alice Anne Baily’s 19th century spiritualism. “Modern Art Bewilders” zigzags between baroque psychedelic idyll and synthpop tantrum, equal parts Sgt. Pepper’s and Gary Numan. Other influences woven throughout include realist painter Edward Hopper, fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin, cinéaste Pedro Almodovar, and erotic illustrator Toshio Saeki.

Barnes likens their compositional process to making collages from seemingly unrelated source materials, combining them in provocative ways to reveal new meanings. “I wasn’t working with specific themes that I wanted to try and stretch over a three-minute pop song. It was sewing together a lot of fragmented thoughts,” which ties in nicely to the ‘freewave’ aspect of the album title’s meaning. As Barnes explains, “Freewave is my term for wild and intractable artistic expression. Lucifer is the angel of enlightenment and elucidation. Fuck is something we say when things are going really well, or really badly.”

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For a decade, Nashville-based band The Greeting Committee has proven their knack for storytelling. Now, with the release of their third studio album “Everyone’s Gone and I Know I’m The Cause,” they have a lot to get off their chests.

Since garnering 100+ million global streams and a dedicated fanbase, the band, which now consists of founding members Addie Sartino and Pierce Turcotte, longtime member Noah Spencer, and newcomer Micah Ritchie has gone from strength to strength. They’ve opened for the likes of Bombay Bicycle Club and Hippocampus, while selling out headline shows across America and simultaneously releasing acclaimed albums, including 2018’s “This Is It” and 2022’s “Dandelion” which garnered support from Billboard, The Washington Post, NYLON and more.

With “Everyone’s Gone and I Know I’m The Cause,” an album born amid grief and loss, Sartino and Turcotte are meticulously balancing vulnerability and self- reflection — all wrapped up in 10 tracks that include the lead single “popmoneyhits.” “I was afraid if I didn’t hold tightly enough, if I didn’t struggle enough, if I didn’t sacrifice enough that I wouldn’t be enough,” says Sartino on the process of making of their third album. “And if I couldn’t be enough then how could I ever deserve this? But I promise you, the things and the people that are meant for you will always believe you are enough.”

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Tuareg nomads and cowboy drifters. Camel trains and mustang horses. The timeless horizon of the endless Sahara and the wild frontier of the Old West - and when the day is done, guitars around the campfire, singing songs of loss and longing and ‘home on the range’.

Several thousand miles of ocean may divide the desert blues of Tinariwen and the authentic country music of rural America but the links are as palpable as they are romantic.

On Amatssou, their ninth studio album, Tinariwen set out to explore these shared sensibilities as banjos, fiddles and pedal steel mix seamlessly with the Tuareg band’s trademark snaking guitar lines and hypnotic grooves.

In the two decades since Tinariwen emerged from their base in the African desert to tour the globe, they have got to know many renowned American country, folk, and rock musicians including Kurt Vile, Cass McCombs, Micah Nelson (son of Willie Nelson), Cat Power, Wilco, Bon Iver and Jack White - and the story of Amatssou begins in 2021 when White invited Tinariwen to record in Nashville at his private recording studio.

White is a long-time fan and lent Tinariwen his engineer Joshua Vance Smith to mix the group’s last album, 2019’s Amadjar. The plan this time was for Tinariwen to fly to America to record with local country musicians and Grammy-winning producer Daniel Lanois, whose production credits range from U2 and Bob Dylan to Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris.

Founder members Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, Touhami Ag Alhassane and Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni plus bassist Eyadou Ag Leche, percussionist Said Ag Ayad and guitarist Elaga Ag Hamid were all ready to make the trip until the global pandemic prevented them from travelling. Plans were hastily redrawn instead for Lanois and a handpicked group of American country musicians to travel to Africa and to work with the band in their natural surroundings of the desert.

Tinariwen’s last album was recorded at a camp in Mauritania under the stars.  This time the band decided to head for Djanet,  an oasis in the desert of southern Algeria located in the Tassili N’Ajjer National Park, a vast sandstone plateau  that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and famous for its 10,000 years old prehistoric cave art.

There among jagged rock outcrops and dramatic sandstone vistas, they set up a makeshift studio in a tent, with equipment borrowed from fellow Tuareg band Imarhan’s studio in Tamanrasset, a two day drive away and where the first iteration of Tinarwien formed some 40 years ago.

With Imarhan’s gear came the band’s guitarist Hicham Bouhasse to contribute to the recording but in the second blow dealt by the pandemic, Lanois then contracted Covid and the American contingent was forced to remain at home.

Happily, the integrity of the project remained intact via the wonders of modern technology, with Lanois adding deft touches from his studio in Los Angeles,  country musicians Fats Kaplin and Wes Corbett recording their parts in Nashville and Kabyle percussionist Amar Chaoui recording his in Paris.

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A limited number of single-night tickets are now available.

• A Giant Dog


• Fucked Up


• Redd Kross


• Mary Timony


• John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats

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