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Tuesday, Nov 12 2019, 6AM
The phrase “terms of surrender” implies defeat, but surrender can mean also liberation. On his fourth album for Merge Records, Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C. Taylor splits the difference between the two meanings of the phrase as he tries to make sense of his own increasingly complicated life. Terms of Surrender arrived not through clarity, but what Taylor has called a “fog of depression” – he wrote the songs, he said, as therapy, creating “a last will and testament”.
Red House Painters were signed to 4AD in 1992, on the strength of a demo tape passed to 4AD boss Ivo Watts-Russell by American Music Club frontman Mark Eitzel.
"Journalist Martin Aston passed on a tape that Mark Eitzel had given to him. Never before or since had I received a demo that was 90 minutes long! In fact, it was quite some time before I actually listened to the whole thing all the way through. Every morning and evening, driving to and from work, I would start at the beginning, "24" (I know, I know, what more do you need to hear, right? What a song.), but only get about half way through that and whatever the second song on the tape was before arriving home/at 4AD. When I finally did listen to the full 90 minutes I called young Mark K. and left him a message. I learned later he was sitting in the bath listening to me talk. It was a perfect time for me to hear that brilliant band."
— Ivo Watts-Russell
"Sucker Punch" was released as the B-side to "Tokyo" for the vinyl-only Sub Pop Singles collection. Since then it has be released digitally as well.
The lyrics of 'Steep Angles on The Back Wheels' take their cue from the great Sinead O’connor song, “Black Boys on Mopeds”. Tanton explains, "At night during summer I would wake up to the sound of the 12 O’clock Boys, a black dirt bike racing crew, humming across North Avenue just a few blocks from where I lived. Their path takes them past Greenmount Cemetery where John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin, is buried. This song was written during a time in Baltimore when, in response to the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, our mayor had ordered lingering Confederate statues throughout the city to be removed in the middle of the night. One of these statues was less than 50 yards from my door and another in the park where I learned to throw a baseball with my dad. They’d always been there, and I had never bothered to read the memorialized script wrapping around their marbled pedestals. I felt bowled over by the confluence of so many divergent elements of American culture - the repurposing of dirt bikes for city racing, with the man who killed the president to defend the slavery system buried within earshot of the screaming engines, while the country reckoned with itself over the integrity or insult of Confederate statues still standing - whether they were a mournful history preserved or latent sympathies eager to be revived. Flowing from Sinead’s song, a maturing from mopeds to dirt bikes seemed a potent metaphor for the rising stakes in our cultural clashes, and the elastic fabric of American life."
Happy birthday to Neil Young! 74 today! Linda Ronstadt provides the backing vocals on "Harvest Moon".
“This is a song about a handsome soldier who may or may not ever come home. And we named our band after [the song] not because it sounds kind of cool, but because it’s somewhat emblematic of what we’re trying to d here,” bandmember Eric Johnson said in a statement. “Sing you ancient love songs of timeless humanity and heartbreak. Songs that are gonna make you feel something no matter what century you’re in.” See Bonny Light Horseman at the Tractor on January 25th! bit.ly
“U.F.O.F. is meant to be more focused on the immeasurable, sort of suspended ethereal playing with textures and colors and layering in the production, staring out into the abyss,” lead singer/songwriter Adrianne Lenker told Stereogum when talking about the two albums Big Thief released in 2019. “And Two Hands is more the micro, zooming into the blood and tissue and guts of being a human, the raw, bare, naked bones, not much layering, capturing just our performances in the room, just very dry, no reverbs, just skin and flesh and human, finite, physical. But I think each of them contains parts of the others.”
Win Butler describes the overall sound of The Suburbs as "a mix of Depeche Mode and Neil Young", stating that he wanted the album to sound like "the bands that I heard when I was very young, and wondered what those crazy noises were".
Amen Dunes performed "Miki Dora" live on the Morning Show, August 14, 2018.
Watch it here: bit.ly
Because sometimes you need a double. Whiskey, I'm looking at you.
Mon Duo will be live on KEXP at noon on Tuesday the 26th! That night you can catch them again at Neumos. Tickets & info: bit.ly
Chapterhouse was from Reading, Berkshire, England. Formed in 1987 by Andrew Sherriff and Stephen Patman, the band began performing alongside Spacemen 3. They released two albums entitled Whirlpool (1991) and Blood Music (1993). They split in 1994.
While Lost Wisdom came out in 2008, Lost Wisdom Pt 2 was just released Friday. You can see Mount Eerie at the Neptune on December 3rd bit.ly
"Listening to 'Hearts of palm', one is staggered by the chronic lack of success of this miraculous group." Liberation review
Film School is rumored to be working on a 5th album. We'll keep our fingers crossed that it is true.
Writing on his Facebook profile page, band member Brandon Cox stated "The album's title is a reference to a collection of fond memories and even invented ones, like my friendship with Ricky Wilson or the fact that I live in an abandoned victorian autoharp factory. The way that we write and rewrite and edit our memories to be a digest version of what we want to remember, and how that's kind of sad."
Michael Kiwanuka is playing a sold out show at the Showbox on January 29th
Black Pumas are out on tour. They'll be in the US in December/January but no west coast dates. Hopefully they're stopping near you: www.theblackpumas.com
The Dip were live on the Morning show May 7th. See the full performance here: bit.ly
If you haven't yet checked out Rudy's cutout images you should. Here is his Instagram: www.instagram.com
Wolf Parade are coming to the Showbox on February 11th. Tickets & info: bit.ly
"In A Big Country" was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal, but lost out to "Synchronicity" by the Police.
Quivers are touring in their native Australia but you can see their Morning Show performance from March here: bit.ly
Art Brut are a Berlin-based English and German indie rock band. They're named after French painter Jean Dubuffet's definition of outsider art - art by prisoners, loners, the mentally ill, and other marginalized people, and made without thought to imitation or presentation
The Twilight Sad performed live on KEXP, October 19, 2018. See it here: bit.ly
Belgian band SONS just played live on KEXP for day 3 of Iceland Airwaves. Find it in the streaming archive: The 7th at 1:30pm. The band has been on an insane trajectory after winning the Studio Brussels music competition last year. They’ve been touring nonstop the past year around Europe and as such their live show is a fine-tuned, vivacious beast. Fans of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Ty Segall are sure to fall in love with this band. Riff begets another riff that smacks against your eardrum. The band sweat profusely, downing beers as they ripped on their instruments and let out mangled howls.
Superstition is the 10th studio album by Siouxsie and the Banshees, released in 1991. The first single, "Kiss Them for Me", gave the band its first top 40 Billboard Hot 100 hit in the United States
When CCFX were on the Morning Show April 3, 2018, they opened with "The One to Wait": bit.ly
If you missed Phantogram in Seattle this summer you can see them in Portland on December 10th with O, Rose! bit.ly
Vagabon are performing live on KEXP Thursday, December 12th at 1pm! They're playing the night before with Angel Olsen at the Moore.
"FKA Twigs Strips Off Expectations on Her New Album ‘Magdalene’" Read the Rolling Stone interview with FKA Twigs here: bit.ly
Risingson samples "I Found a Reason" by The Velvet Underground.
Versi is from 'It Should Be Us', Andy Stott’s first release since 2016 and first EP since 2011.
There’ll be a new Andy Stott album in 2020.
Find TR/ST's KEXP in-studio performance from May hosted by DJ Abbie here: bit.ly
The "Aggro Mix" was the B-side to the 12" "Never Let Me Down". It was also a bonus track on the CD and cassette versions of Music for the Masses.
Wye Oak have announced a 2020 tour called JOIN today. The outing will feature an expanded Wye Oak live band of four to six musicians each night, with a setlist incorporating Joyero songs and tracks from Wasner’s fruitful Flock Of Dimes project. They’ll also supposedly be digging deep into the Wye Oak catalog and reinterpreting some of those songs. Sounds like it will be a unique Wye Oak experience. Tickets for the JOIN shows go on sale this Friday, 11/15, at 10AM. The tour hits The Crocodile on March 20th!
In a press release, Mackenzie Scott reflected on her latest single as Torres:
"I guess I could say that falling in love is a lot like the Superman crawl. If you’re not familiar with Superman’s crawl, it’s a terrifying maneuver used in spelunking that’s only performed when certain passages are too narrow, so a person has to hold one arm against the body and the other above the head, all while trying to crawl forward. When you fall in love with someone, it’s scary like the Superman’s crawl, but you have no choice but to keep moving forward even though you have no idea what’s ahead of you."
KEXP wants to send you and a guest on a trip to Mexico from January 18 - 22, 2020 to attend Wilco’s one of a kind Sky Blue Sky festival vacation, a four-night concert getaway! Info here: www.kexp.org
"Elbow’s eighth album comes wreathed in a ghostly pallor. Recorded over two years in which too many of the band’s friends and family passed away, the easy sentimentality of their biggest songs has been abandoned for something grittier, angrier and greyer. Giants of All Sizes is not an album to be filleted and squashed into playlists; it’s the sort of deeply serious and carefully crafted work that would sprout a beard and a cable-knit jumper if you turned your back on it for a second." - The Guardian
"The Middle East: The Greatest Band That Never Was" Read all about their rise and fall here: junkee.com
The Lighthouse and the Whaler are working on a new album... no release date but they're mixing it according to their facebook.
In a 1993 interview, Eddie Vedder explained that he came up with the long title because he was "Fed up with one word titles."
Cornell’s moving, understated solo contribution to the Singles soundtrack grew out of a piece of fiction: a solo cassette made by Matt Dillon’s Cliff Poncier after parting with his band, Citizen Dick. Cornell took it upon himself to actually write songs for the tape, one of which was this reflective folk ballad. “Holy shit, this is Chris Cornell, as Cliff Poncier, recording all of these songs, with lyrics, and total creative vision, and he has recorded the entire fake, solo cassette,” director Cameron Crowe recalled of first hearing the EP that would come to be known simply as Poncier. “And it’s fantastic. And ‘Seasons’ comes on. And you just can’t help but go, ‘Wow.’ This is a guy who we’ve only known in Soundgarden. And of course he’s incredibly creative, but who’s heard him like this?”
"After the basic rhythm tracks were finally completed to Jimi’s satisfaction, he turned his attention to the song’s four distinct solo sections, each of which were recorded separately. “Once Jimi started working on his solos, the session moved very quickly,” says engineer Eddie Kramer.
“The thing that occurs to me was how completely prepared he was. One thing that people don’t realize is that Jimi always did his homework. He and producer Chas Chandler always got together to work out ideas well before he walked into the studio. Jimi knew exactly what he wanted to play...." Learn more about the guitar solo in this wonderful song by Seattle musician Jimi Hendrix: www.guitarworld.com