Category Archives: New Release Section

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rock & Roll Hall of Famers The Zombies have released a brand new track and animated lyric video, “Dropped Reeling & Stupid” on streaming services ahead of a full album CD, vinyl and digital release March 31st worldwide on UK indie label Cooking Vinyl Records. In support of the release, and a forthcoming feature documentary, the band will resume their “Life Is A Merry-Go-Round” Tour in 2023 with appearances at Austin’s famed music & film festival, South by SouthWest (SXSW), new concerts announced in Texas and New Orleans, followed by a full UK run in the Spring, and more extensive touring planned this year.

The Zombies began work on the album, title Different Game, after their 2019 induction into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and a USA tour with Beach Boys auteur Brian Wilson. The band, which features founding keyboardist Rod Argent and lead singer Colin Blunstone, along with drummer Steve Rodford, guitarist Tom Toomey, and bassist Søren Koch, hoped to finish writing and recording the follow-up to their Billboard-charting 2015 album Still Got That Hunger during a busy 2020 touring schedule, but COVID-19 had other plans for them.

As primary songwriter and producer Rod Argent relates, the band was not content to record remotely: “Making this album has been a joy from start to finish. Post-lockdown, we were absolutely determined to come together and record in as “live” a way as we could—to capture the magical, fleeting quality of energy and immediacy of performance… “Dropped Reeling & Stupid” is our first streamed release… Can’t wait for you to hear it!”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Sunny War will release her New West Records debut Anarchist Gospel on February 3rd, 2023. The 14-song set was produced by Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray for the Riff Raff) and features appearances by Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Allison Russell, David Rawlings, Jack Lawrence of the Raconteurs, Micah Nelson, John James Tourville of The Deslondes, Kyshona Armstrong, Dennis Crouch, and more.

All songs were written by Sunny War with the exception of “Baby Bitch” (Ween) and “Hopeless” (Van Hunt). With Anarchist Gospel, Sunny has crafted an eclectic set of songs that draw on a range of ideas and styles: ecstatic gospel, dusty country blues, thoughtful folk, rip-roaring rock and roll, even avant garde studio experiments. She melds them together into a powerful statement of survival, revealing a probing songwriter who indulges no comforting platitudes.

“I feel like there are two sides of me,” says the singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso. “One of them is very self-destructive, and the other is trying to work with that other half to keep things balanced.” That’s the central conflict on Anarchist Gospel, which documents a time when it looked like the self-destructive side might win out. Sunny says, “Everybody is a beast just trying their hardest to be good. That’s what it is to be human. You’re not really good or bad. You’re just trying to stay in the middle of those two things all the time, and you’re probably doing a shitty job of it. That’s ok, because we’re all just monsters.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Returning with their first studio album for seven years, Stereo Mind Game is a new chapter for Daughter. Released on April 7 on Glassnote Records, the group’s third record follows Not to Disappear (2016) and soundtrack Music from Before the Storm (2017). After more than a decade spent depicting the darkest emotions, the trio of Elena Tonra, Igor Haefeli, and Remi Aguilella present their most optimistic record yet.

The album’s lead single, “Be On Your Way” is accompanied by a video created by Tiff Pritchett. The track is a longing but resilient song about an enduring connection that is also indefinable. The romantic figure Tonra addresses in the song is someone she met in California while writing the record. They shared a significant connection but she knew the Atlantic lay between them. The video for “Be on Your Way” evokes a collection of memories, with footage of Tonra superimposed with images of beautiful passing moments—the flight of a bird, a field of flowers. “Be On Your Way” is not a loss of hope but a confidence in and acceptance of the passage of time.

Connection and disconnection permeate Stereo Mind Game’s twelve songs literally and figuratively. In the intervening years since the Ivor Novello-nominated Music from Before the Storm (2017), the band has moved away from their initial London base—Aguilella relocated to Portland, Oregon, Haefeli to Bristol, England—and spent time on their own projects (including Tonra’s debut solo album under the moniker Ex:Re in 2018). However, despite the physical distance—further exacerbated by the pandemic—Daughter continued to meet and write together. Produced by Haefeli and Tonra, Stereo Mind Game was written and recorded in various locations including Devon, Bristol and London, England, San Diego, California, and Vancouver, Washington.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Presenting their unique pop music that defies categorization, Death And Vanilla today release new single “Looking Glass” from their new album Flicker set for release on 17th March on Fire Records.

New track “Looking Glass” unzips with a slow paced intro, it’s organic, a grower that goes modal and multi-layered behind Marleen Nilsson’s evocative vocals; like a fevered Fleetwood Mac dream, lingering in the sub conscious with luscious melodies from the post-future.

Housed in a beautifully austere post-ironic de-constructed sleeve, “Flicker” is a modern reflection on these difficult times. World crises and lockdowns notwithstanding, Death And Vanilla return reborn, re-arranged and revitalised after assimilating dub reggae, the motorik spirals of Can, the modal meander of Philip Glass and The Cure’s dreamier pop sounds; plus the twice removed symphonic ambience of Spiritualized and Talking Heads under heavy manners from Brian Eno.

By osmosis their period of transition since 2019’s much darker Are You A Dreamer? has hatched new eclectic electronica anthems riddled with melody lines, and layered for lush love.

It’s been ten years since Death And Vanilla formed in Malmö, Sweden, Marleen Nilsson and Anders Hansson and Magnus Bodin—fashioned by the city’s austere industrial past and flat pack present, all in the shadow of the Oresund Bridge that links their dreamworld to mainland Europe and a darker reality. Death And Vanilla at once sound like everything is possible; but nothing else at all. There is a flicker of hope for everyone.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | It’s been seven strange years since The Veils’ last studio album Total Depravity, and Finn Andrews has a new double LP to show for it. …And Out Of The Void Came Love is the result of this tumultuous period of injury, isolation and new life… “Time is a tempest tearing you apart / Time has a well-known distrust of the heart.”

Following the release of Total Depravity, Andrews released a solo album and began a worldwide tour. One night, while lashing out at a particularly intense moment on piano, he broke his wrist on stage. “It sounds wild and Jerry Lee Lewis-esque, but it was an absolute fucking nightmare,” Andrews says. He played on and finished the rest of the tour, but it wasn’t until he got it examined much later that he realized what a bad move that was. “The scaphoid bone in my wrist had died, which I didn’t know was possible. My sister said that at least it was a really ‘on brand’ injury for me.”

Finn’s convalescence meant a lengthy hiatus from touring, so he did what he does best and stayed at home and wrote songs. “I was in a cast and couldn’t use my right hand. I sang the melody lines, then recorded the right hand piano part, then the left hand part. It might have been an interesting, avant-garde process if it wasn’t also just profoundly annoying.”

Just when his hand had healed sufficiently for him to play again, The Veils found themselves in need of a new record label but Finn set about starting to make a new record regardless. Producer Tom Healy invited Finn to his small studio underneath the old Crystal Palace ballroom in Mount Eden, and they listened through the legions of songs he had amassed throughout the previous year.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | The Lemon Twigs release “Corner Of My Eye,” a poignant, ’60s-tinged rock song and their first single for the esteemed Brooklyn based independent label Captured Tracks. The release marks their first new music in two years, following the 2020 album Songs For The General Public. “Corner Of My Eye” is a warm, guitar-led ode to a new love interest, written and produced entirely by The Lemon Twigs.

On the release, The Lemon Twigs say, “We recorded this track winter of 2021 in our old rehearsal studio in Midtown, NYC. Apart from the vibraphone, the instrumental track was recorded live with Andres Valbuena on drums and Daryl Johns on upright bass. We laid down the vocals late that night once the traffic outside had died down. We’ve had the song for a while now, so we’re excited to share it with fans who may have heard it live over the years!” “Corner Of My Eye” is accompanied by a wistful video set in a cemetery, directed by Hilla Eden and Brian D’Addario.

The prodigiously-talented duo first emerged as The Lemon Twigs in 2016 with their debut LP Do Hollywood, whose showstopping melodies are mined from every era of rock quickly earned fans in Elton John, Questlove, and Jack Antonoff. Go To School, the ambitious 15-track coming-of-age opus, followed in 2018 and solidified the band’s reputation for building grand walls of sound around an audacious concept. 2020’s Songs For The General Public earned critical praise from NPR, Vice, Teen Vogue, Stereogum, and more.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Ahead of the release of his forthcoming solo album Turn The Car Around, due January 13th 2023 via Hot Fruit Recordings / Virgin Music, Gaz Coombes has released his latest new single “Long Live The Strange” and accompanying music video.

Recently Gaz announced a UK/EU headline tour for 2023 and also debuted music from the new album to a packed audience at London’s intimate Lafayette, a first taste of the masterfully written and recorded songs contained within, and a timely reminder of why Coombes remains one of the UK’s most enduring and gifted songwriters.

Gaz explains “This song was written as a celebration of the weird and wonderful and as a reminder to embrace that at all times.” The single stands as an ode to how music has the power to bring people together. He wrote it after taking his daughter Tiger to see Cavetown in Oxford in 2020. “The show had a big impact on me,” he recalls.

“It was what live performance is all about, connecting with an audience that consists of anybody and everybody who wants to be part of it, it’s fully inclusive and I found that quite powerful.” It was heartening to Coombes to discover, 30 years after he listened to Inspiral Carpets and Pixies and The Wedding Present and felt like he was part of a gang, there was still a place where the strange ones go. “It’s obviously strange in the nicest sense of the word,” he adds.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Today, Matthew Sweet is releasing his version of Kate Bush’s landmark 1978 single, “Wuthering Heights,” on all digital platforms. This is the first new recording from Sweet since his January 2021 album Catspaw, which was recorded pre-covid. Sweet, known for his collaborations with hotshot guitarists over the years, plays the searing guitar solo on the track as well as all the additional instruments save for the drums, played by longtime Sweet sideman Ric Menck.

“As the latest season of Stranger Things (Netflix) came and went this year, it was hard not to notice the resurgence of Kate Bush’s song “Running Up That Hill” in this covid recovering world of 2022.

I do love that song, but this got me thinking about a piano and vocal demo I once made of “Wuthering Heights,” the 1978 hit that first brought the 19 year-old Kate to the attention of the world of music. Like Kate herself, I have a strong amount of Irish blood in me, as my mother, like hers, was 100% Irish. In fact, I have dual citizenship between Ireland and America. Maybe this helps account for my always feeling a mystic kinship with Kate, despite our music being worlds apart in so many ways.

Regardless, my wife recently urged me to dig up that demo of mine, and although I couldn’t find a multitrack of it, I did locate a rough of the song I had bounced down many years ago. And so it is I came to overdub some guitars and other instruments and produce this single track for release in tribute to Kate. In this streaming world we live in, there is nothing to stop me from doing so.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Nina Hagen, the beautiful and strident hell-raiser to toe the line between punk and pop, East and West and outta space that Germany has ever produced is finally back. With her first single release “16 Tons,” Nina Hagen has taken on a heavy burden: “You load 16 tons, what do you get? / Another day older and deeper in debt.”

The song is her version of the 1947 country-folk classic by country singer Merle Travis, about Kentucky miners whose lives consisted of working themselves to the bone and overcoming constant hardships. Nina sings of the inescapable desperation of daily life—“muscle and blood and skin and bones”—in her deep, commanding and ominously vibrating voice. It features country twang updated for the year 2022 and recorded with plenty of erratic reverb, unwaveringly forward-moving groove and bone-dry electric guitars. This song has been waiting for Nina Hagen, an artist who has always celebrated the political power of music.

There are many Ninas—so many iterations and incarnations; so many images, moments, voices and songs; so many faces with mouth ripped open, an array of faces that now spans five decades. The same is true in the video for her new single “16 Tons.” Nina Hagen is a legend—“the Godmother of punk rock,” activist, fictional character, performer, extraterrestrial emissary and Brecht connoisseur. She breaks down walls and begins again, keeps on and never stands still.

Unity is Nina’s first album since Volksbeat in 2011. Unity plays with a multifaceted mélange of textures, samples and everyday sounds. Amidst this rich foliage of sounds and themes there is, of course, that voice; in the wink of an eye it transitions from operatic to demonic, hitting insane high notes then plummeting to awe-inspiring deep bellows, as if she is trying to interfuse the sexes. Nina Hagen screams and hisses, belts out lyrics and performs recitatives, rasps and reverberates in electronic distortions. She launches into musical dialogues and soliloquys. It is as if her voice is echoing into our time from another world.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | A Certain Ratio today share “Waiting on a Train,” the first track to be taken from their forthcoming studio album, 1982, scheduled for release on March 31 via Mute.

A Certain Ratio’s greatest strength has always been their unpredictability. “That’s what people like about us, they don’t know what’s coming next!” explains Jez Kerr. This new track ushers that in via the slick and charismatic presence of Mancunian rapper Chunky. Chunky trades bars with the vocals of one of Manchester’s fastest-rising neo-soul musicians Ellen Beth Abdi, who you’ll recognize from the ACR live lineup in recent years. The result is a track unlike anything the band have made to date.

Watch the video for “Waiting on a Train”—directed by Rollcam Directors, produced by Joe Vickers with Jan Koblanski as director of photography above. Pre-order 1982 on limited edition smoke grey vinyl, orange vinyl, CD, cassette, and digital platforms here.

“Waiting on a Train” began life as a lo-fi hip hop jam in the studio. It made perfect sense to bring in both Chunky and Ellen—already good friends outside of A Certain Ratio. “It worked really well, there’s great chemistry between them,” Martin Moscrop continues. “It’s got the right amount of pop, the right amount of surrealism, the right amount of moodiness. It just works.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Half man, half melody Ron Sexsmith will release a new album entitled The Vivian Line on 17th February ’23. The first single “What I Had In Mind” is available at all reputable digital thingys today and you can order it (or even pre-order it!) and pre-save it now for when it’s finally available in all its glory here. The animated video for “What I Had In Mind” was made by C.J. Wallis at Fortyfps Films in Vancouver. The Vivian Line is Ron Sexsmith’s 17th album. It features 12 new songs written and performed by Ron.

The who, what, where, why and how of the record are best explained by Ron himself: “The Vivian Line is a rural route right near where we live in Stratford (Ontario). Whenever we have to get out of the city we jump on The Vivian Line and it dumps us out onto the highway. I wondered about the name when we first moved there and thought it was intriguing… it sort of represents escaping from our old life in Toronto to this new phase we’re in. And it’s also like a portal to my old life when I have to get back there. I recorded it (The Vivian Line) with Brad Jones in Nashville. (Brad played bass on 3 of my earlier records Other Songs, Whereabouts, and Blue Boy) and it’s a very lush sounding almost baroque pop record. (A distant cousin of Whereabouts.) The songs were mostly inspired by this stage in life that I find myself in and trying to figure it all out.”

Ron Sexsmith is one of Canada’s most accomplished singer-songwriters. Born and bred in St Catherine’s near Niagara Falls and currently resident in Stratford, Ontario, he has released 16 albums to date—Grand Opera Lane (1991), Ron Sexsmith (1995), Other Songs (1997), Whereabouts (1999), Blue Boy (2001), Cobblestone Runway (2002), Rarities (2003), Retriever (2004), Destination Unknown (2005, with Don Kerr, released as Sexsmith & Kerr), Time Being (2006), Exit Strategy Of The Soul (2008), Long Player Late Bloomer (2011), Forever Endeavour (2013), Carousel One (2015), The Last Rider (2017) and Hermitage (2020).

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Dunedin’s finest, The Chills, follow their acclaimed seventh studio album Scatterbrain with a special US tour exclusive 7″ “Scatterbrain-Storms: Outtakes.” Released digitally on 27th September for the world to hear, this special EP features three brand new tracks “The Dragon with the Sapphire Eyes,” “No One Knows Better Than Me,” and “Nowhere,” A 7″ will then be exclusively available to fans at shows on their upcoming US tour with Jane Weaver who will be bringing her full live experience with her band to the US for the very first time.

“We felt these were too good not to be released and were actually the first three songs we wrote for Scatterbrain before its lyrical tone and musical direction became established. It was important to us to offer fans something special on the tour.”
—Martin Phillipps

A thought provoking and evocative stock take from a man who has lived through good times and bad. But now, the world is a different place and optimism is in short supply. Viewed from the perspective of a man understanding his age and indeed his own mortality, Scatterbrain is underpinned, as ever, with catchy melodies and an incisive turn of phrase; it takes a mature look at matters arising with a side order of perspective.

Scatterbrain is a life passing before your ears as uncertainty increases and fake news rumbles on; during which aliens invade, Phillipps scales the walls beyond abandon as he probes the minutiae of worlds within worlds and the hourglass fills. Scatterbrain is a landmark album from one of the great modern song writers, it’s pure pop music for the new normal and we can’t wait to see how it ends.

Recorded at Port Chalmers Recordings Services, “Scatterbrain-Storms: Outtakes” was produced by Tom Healy with assistance from Tom Bell. The Chills are Martin Phillipps, Oli Wilson, Erica Scally, Callum Hampton, and Todd Knudson.

VIA PRESS RELEASE | Fresh from topping the charts with their first UK number one album, Fix Yourself, Not The World, playing their biggest ever global headline tour which included sold-out shows in NYC and Los Angeles, and a slot at Chicago’s Lollapalooza last month, and hitting 1 million subscribers on Spotify, indie legends The Wombats today continue their remarkable return with the announcement of their new EP “Is This What It Feels Like To Feel Like This?”—available to pre-order now here. The six track collection will be released on November 18 digitally and on vinyl.

Recorded shortly after completing their acclaimed fifth studio album, “Is This What It Feels Like To Feel Like This?” is The Wombats rawest material yet, trading polished synths for spiky guitar riffs and heavy choruses. Bassist Tord Øverland Knudsen took the files back to his homeland of Norway, producing and mixing the EP himself in his home studio.

The announcement comes accompanied by a new single in the form of the eponymous “Is This What It Feels Like To Feel Like This?.” Blending The Wombats’ trademark infectious energy with an earworm of a riff, frontman Matthew “Murph” Murphy explains how the single came about: “I remember driving past an extremely rundown hotel and wondering what the hell could be going on in there, and that’s where this song was born. It’s about catching someone in a compromising situation that’s very unusual for their specific character and is far more fitting for your own.”

If anyone doubted it, “Is This What It Feels Like To Feel Like This?” confirmed the fact that The Wombats are a band at the peak of their powers. Built over sixteen years, their ever-expanding fanbase has continued to swell, boosted first by a new generation of fans discovering their vast catalogue of indie bangers through streaming, then via TikTok following the viral success of Oliver Nelson’s remix of their 2015 hit “Greek Tragedy.” The album was included in Vulture magazine’s “33 Albums We Can’t Wait to Hear in 2022” and Inside Hook’s “The Best Movies, TV, Books and Music for January.”

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | Today, 8x GRAMMY® Award-nominated rock band Death Cab for Cutie releases new track “Foxglove Through The Clearcut.” Featuring meditative instrumentation and moving spoken word elements that ultimately crescendo into a sweeping outro, the song arrives accompanied by a striking lyric video designed by frequent visual collaborator Juliet Bryant (Justin Vernon, Japanese Breakfast, Laura Jane Grace).

Of “Foxglove Through The Clearcut,” lead vocalist and guitarist Ben Gibbard shares: “Foxglove is by far the most personal song on the record. While I was writing it, I thought I was merely the narrator. But the longer I sat with it, I realized I was both the protagonist AND the narrator.”

Today’s new song follows “Here to Forever,” which was the most-added song at AAA and Alternative radio upon its release in mid-July. Currently, the single sits at #2 at AAA radio and has already quickly risen to #13 at Alternative. The track has also amassed tremendous critical acclaim, with Stereogum hailing it: “a grand and stirring rocker, one that mixes the soft-eyed sensitivity of the band’s early days with their arena-sized major-label work.”

The first song to be released off the album, “Roman Candles,” arrived with a (quite literally) explosive one-take music video directed by Lance Bangs (Sonic Youth, Nirvana). That track was featured on NPR’s All Songs Considered, with host Bob Boilen highlighting its “two bursting minutes.” All three songs are lifted off the band’s highly-anticipated tenth studio album Asphalt Meadows, due out September 16th. Pre-orders are available here.

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VIA PRESS RELEASE | One of the most important reggae artists of all-time, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame® inductee, and GRAMMY® Award-winning icon Jimmy Cliff makes his long-awaited return with a new single entitled “Refugees” (feat. Wyclef Jean). This international anthem paves the way for his first album in over a decade, Refugees, on August 12, 2022 via UMe.

With a Dance Version now and Rap Version (due out later), “Refugees” captures the spirit of Cliff’s most classic output with a neo-soul hip-hop twist courtesy of the legendary Fugees co-founder Wyclef Jean. It also continues the creative and spiritual connection between these two mavericks as Wyclef famously inducted Cliff into the Roll Hall of Fame® in 2010.

Regarding this generational collaboration, Wyclef commented, “For me, coming to America wasn’t easy when I first got here. Having family members who suffered political torment, it wasn’t easy for us. When I say ‘Fugees,’ ‘Fugees’ is short for ‘Refugees.’ I was always like, ‘If I could penetrate a message, it would be that.’ And who inspires that? Jimmy Cliff is one of my biggest inspirations ever, and he has always stayed on message when it comes to peace, love, and unity.”

“The collaboration with this record is just what we are, talking for the forgotten. In an era where love is needed, I don’t think anybody can convey that better than the king.” That’s what the “King” does best on Refugees. Jimmy said, “I’m very proud of this, because it sees Jimmy Cliff in a new musical direction. I’ll always go into something new. Even though Refugees is a heavy title, you’re going to be moving your feet, because it’s on the dancefloor. There we go. I love it.”

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