At the end of last year, Julia Holter signed to Domino who re-released her somophore album Ekstasis. Its follow up and also her first proper album release on the label, Loud City Song, has just been announced.
According to the press release, Collette’s 1944 novella Gigi, the work of Joni Mitchell and the poetry of Frank O’Hara have inspired her upcoming record. Loud City Song is described as “both a continuation and a furthering of the fiercely singular and focused vision displayed by its predecessors, taking as it does Holter’s rare gift for merging high concept, compositional prowess and experimentation with pop sensibility and applying it to a set of even more daringly beautiful arrangements and emotionally resonant songs”.
The album is due out on August 19th but ahead of it, she is seducing our ears with the opening track ‘World’ and an accompanying video directed by Rick Bahto.
People of the North, the side project of Oneida’s Kid Millions and Bobby Matador, have announced the release of their third album. Sub Contra, which also features fellow Oneida members Shahin Motia and Barry London, is due out on June 11th via Thrill Jockey.
The duo’s forthcoming album “is a work that fully embraces tumult and darkness in startling and dramatic ways” as the press release states.
Ahead of the release, People of the North have shared the opening track ‘Drama Class’, described as “a combative slice of improvised psychedelia, with Matador’s distorted organ tones providing an understructure for Kid Millions to weave complex drum patterns throughout.” Listen to it below.
Here’s a treat from Liars, in anticipation of their European tour. They are offering two brand new tracks, ‘I Saw You From The Lifeboat’ and ‘Perfume Tear’, as a free download in exchange for an email.
Singer and guitarist Angus Andrew explains how these new cuts came about:
“After releasing WIXIW and returning home from touring there was a palpable sense of creative relief and release. We relished in the opportunity to make stuff under no real directive and began almost immediately to produce all kinds of unrelated works. It’s a great position to be in creatively so we decided to share a small portion of the results with you today. Both of these songs happened almost instantly, and, in sharp contrast to the music we produced for WIXIW, were not labored over or scrutinized. It’s been great for us to recall the immediacy and excitement of creating music on the fly – unrestricted by subject matter and void of preoccupations about how it should ‘work’ in the greater context of things.”
Liars have also made a video for ‘I Saw You From The Lifeboat’, featuring an amalgamation of footage documenting their past few years. Watch it now.
I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us is the magical and outstanding debut album from Saltland, the new project led by Montreal based cellist Rebecca Foon, who is best known as a founding member of Esmerine and a former member of Thee Silver Mt. Zion and Set Fire To Flames.
The album was co-produced and mixed by Mark Lawson in Foon’s home studio in Montreal and it features a stellar cast of contributors, including Colin Stetson, Laurel Sprengelmeyer and Jess Robertson (Little Scream), Sarah Neufeld and Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire) and Mishka Stein (Patrick Watson), amongst others.
According to the press release, “Foon sings of childhood innocence lost, of tender utopic reveries and downcast dystopic horizons, and the search for soft, stoic strength in a darkening, devolving world”.
I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us came out earlier this week via Constellation Records, and to celebrate the release, Saltland is offering the beautiful ‘Treehouse Schemes’ as a free download. Here it is.
Julianna Barwick has recently signed to Dead Oceans who are releasing her third full-length album entitled Nepenthe. The album was recorded in Reykjavík, Iceland, following an invitation from Alex Somers (Sigur Rós, Jónsi, Jónsi & Alex) who produced and engineered the effort. Nepenthe also features contributions from other Icelandic musicians, including string ensemble Amiina, múm’s guitarist Róbert Sturla Reynisson and a choir of teenage girls.
In ancient Greek literature, and as the press release describes, “nepenthe was a magic drug of forgetfulness used to wipe out grief and sorrow.” It adds that “the title suggested itself to Julianna, who experienced a death in her own family in the middle of making the record, but it also refers to the music consoling her during the isolation she was going through – on her own, in a foreign country with a terrible internet connection – during the sessions.”
Other than Julianna’s personal emotional influence, the Icelandic surroundings and “its vibrant music scene and stunningly alien landscapes with their lingering magic” had the biggest influence on Nepenthe. She explains:
“I had never had anyone play on any record before, so this was a 180 turn. I also was inspired just by being there, and the gorgeousness of that place. Your eyes can’t believe what they’re seeing. I walked home one night and got totally lost in Reykjavík. I ended up walking alongside the ocean – and it was glowing blue. It looked like it had a lamp underneath it. This is a completely different experience than recording myself in my Brooklyn bedroom.”
Julianna has just unveiled an album teaser in the form of a video directed by Derrick Belcham, and featuring the magnificent track ‘Forever’. Be sure to watch it below and watch out for the album release on August 20th.
