Flowers Must Die have been on the psych scene a while now. Just over 10 years in fact.
But, last year marked something of a new chapter for the Swedish band. They added a new member (Lisa Ekeland, on vocals and theremin) and signed up with Rocket Recordings (home to Goat and Josefin Öhrn + The Liberation) to put out an EP, ‘Sista Valsen’.
Now, they’re release their first album through the label. ‘Kompost’ will come out on 28 April.
As you can see Flowers Must Die aren’t really too bothered about the normal band dynamic (bandmembers’ ages range from 28 to 63).
They’re sharing their new track/video ‘Hit’ along with the news.
We know The Moonlandingz can do provocative (scrawling “leave” across their face at a recent European festival showcase). We know they can do weird (mashing a loaf of bread up turning it into a set of on stage jewellery along with some ham and some hummus). Here’s a bit of a curveball though, they can also write a creeping, Velvet Underground-esque ’60’s noir-pop ballad. They’ve followed up their last single ‘Black Hanz’, with this new track ‘The Strangle Of Anna’. It features Slow Club’s Rebecca Taylor duetting with Johnny Rocket (aka Lias from Fat White Family).
They get extra points too, for their new band press photograph (above).
Their debut album is out on 24 March via Transgressive.
Even when Savages are in full touring mode the band’s members are well-known for occupying their every spare moment with intriguing projects.
But now the London band are taking a short break (Jehnny Beth told Loud And Quiet she’s preparing some solo collaborations this year) there’s room for some of those projects to be shared.
One of the most exciting is KITE BASE, who’ve announced they’ll put out their debut album ‘Latent Whispers’ in May.
The band is Ayse Hassan (Savages’ bass player) and Kendra Frost who’ve been performing for a while.
The duo, who often both play bass in the band, have announced it with a new track, ‘Transition’ which you can watch the new video for below.
It’s a live clip, recorded when they played London’s Electrowerkz at the end of 2016, but with some innovative camera-work going on.
After almost 70 years of popular music history one of the best things is just how inventive bands have to be now most of the decent names have gone. Take for example, Unqualified Nurse Band.
After releasing their debut album, ‘Debasement Tapes’ last year, the trio, from Derby, have a new 7″ coming out via the Pure Pure Singles Club on 24 March, but you can listen to one of the tracks here first.
It’s called ‘Death Surf A52’.
It follows releases from Too Pure Singles Club this year by Family Scraps and Bruising/Personal Best.
Unqualified Nurse Band’s next gig is at The Hairy Dog in Derby on 10 February.
In the time between Deadwall albums, keys player Christopher Duffin made a record with Hookworms’ Matthew Benn under the name XAM Duo.
Truth be told, that was our my route into Deadwall. Now, Christopher and his bandmates have turned their attention back to their band as they prepare to release their second album ‘The Zero Cliff’, the follow-up to 2014’s ‘Bukimi no Tani’.
They’ve announced the news by sharing a new track ‘Heartlands’ – a propulsive, cosmic indie-rock number.
Deadwall say the new album is inspired by a number of books: God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein, The Cloudspotter’s Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. They say as a whole, it tackles the theme of “change” and all the facets of life that encompasses. That means, lyrically the album visits topics like “religion, climate change, neo-liberalist economics, the oil & gas industry, death and rebirth.”
‘The Zero Cliff’ will be released on Hatch Records on March 24th.
‘Room 29’, the title of Jarvis Cocker and Chilly Gonzalez’s collaborative album, already sounds a bit mythical.
The pair – whose friendship goes back 15 years or more, and cemented when they both lived in Paris – have made a “21st century song cycle”.
Not ones to slump into conventional album making, they had been searching for the right project for a while.
Until Jarvis, on tour with Pulp, checked into legendary Chateux Marmont hotel in California. It was busy, so his room was upgraded. In the corner of his suite was a baby grand piano. The instrument, and the “stories it could tell” about the room’s previous inhabitants, all those famous Hollywood spirits, were to become the centre of this set of piano ballads.
Listen to a pair of new tracks below. ‘Tearjerker’ is particularly great, where Jarvis gets away with rhyming “tearjerker” with the line “you are such a jerk, yeah”.
What’s it like being a woman in rock music? It’s been the subject of many a think-piece and music industry conference panel. Fair point, but last time out Jennifer Clavin from LA band Bleached got fed up with the reductive line of questioning. The album she was promoting, ‘Welcome the Worms’, was a record about a previous abusive relationship and her reliance on drugs and alcohol as a result.
Now, Bleached have a new EP on the way. Calvin’s put together a longer statement to put it all in context but has also announced that the release will be accompanied with a zine featuring a number of brilliant guest contributors, as follows…
Mecca Vazie Andrews (Sex Stains) Julien Baker Alicia Bognanno of Bully Sadie Dupuis (Speedy Ortiz) EMA Alice Glass Laura Jane Grace Micayla Grace (Bleached) Allie Hanlon (Peach Kelli Pop) Hinds Ali Koehler (Upset, Vivian Girls) Sara Landeau (the Julie Ruin) Staz Lindes (The Paranoyds) Lizzo Dani Miller (Surfbort) Kate Nash Liz Phair Jane Weidlin (The Go Go’s) Allison Wolfe (Sex Stains, Bratmobile) Tegan Quinn (Tegan and Sara) Patty Schemel (Upset, Hole) Kim Schifino (Matt and Kim) Mish Way (White Lung) Hayley Williams (Paramore)
Listen to the first track from the EP, ‘Can You Deal?’ below. Here’s Jennifer Clavin’s full comment on the matter.
“I create music and art because I need to. To express, to bond, to reconcile, and to connect. And to use my voice. To have it received with such a generic labeling as “girl band” and consistently referenced as “female fronted” is insulting and reductive. The title track to this EP, “Can You Deal?” is about this experience. Last year we released a deeply personal full length album titled Welcome The Worms. It was a record about being in an emotionally abusive relationship. It was a record about getting spun out on drugs and alcohol. It was a record about totally losing myself in order to find myself. It was also our most ambitious body of work yet, with guitar work and guitar sounds and production we had only dreamed of until then. And yet to this day I am still fielding interview questions that have more to do with my gender than with the art I am creating. Somehow the conversation usually derails into some variation of the following question: “What is it like to be a girl in a rock band?”. And the ensuing story will define us based on our sex. Why is gender pointed out in nearly all coverage of our band? Labeling me as a woman in a band just puts me in a box, and doesn’t allow everything else I am to be seen and heard. It’s 2017, Can You Deal with women playing rock and roll yet?”
As much as it was fun tracking the progress of Future Islands’ side-projects the last 18 months, particularly The Snails, where Gerrit Welmers and Will Cashion, we’re actually wearing snails on their heads in the photos of the band, it’s nice to have Future Islands back properly.
They spent 2016 writing material, road-testing it under a bunch of fake name shows before recording in Los Angeles.
‘The Far Field’ is their first one to feature a live drummer. But if you listen to first single ‘Ran’ that doesn’t change the feel of things. There’s also a track on the album, out on April 7, that has Blondie’s Debbie Harry guest on it. It’s called ‘Shadows’.
An album that was as thrilling as it was concerning, thought-provoking as it was banging, last year Anohni’s ‘Hopelessness’ was unignorable. The limited live performances which accompanied it were also powerful moments where the album’s themes were brought into stark realisation. You can read our cover feature interview with her from April.
So, good news, there’s more of it. Anohni’s announced a companion EP, coming out on Rough Trade on 17 March. The release features new material – some of which she debuted on stage in 2016.
Anohni’s delivered the news with a new track, ‘Paradise’ and an explanatory post which you can read in full.
