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Thursday, Jul 8 2021, 4PM
Lost Horizons is the second studio album from the British electronic duo Lemon Jelly, released on October 7, 2002. Released by XL Recordings and produced by Nick Franglen, the album generated two charting singles in the UK, "Space Walk" and "Nice Weather for Ducks"; the latter has often been called the album's stand-out track.
"Space Walk" is set to a recording of Ed White's 1965 space walk on the Gemini 4 mission. Franglen and Deakin chose to use the sample after listening to an album called Flight to the Moon (1969); the two were struck by how moving and emotive many of the tracks were. Deakin later said, "'One small step' leaves me cold, because it was so obviously scripted. But the spacewalk… even after hearing it so many times, it's so vivid.'" bit.ly
Faye Webster is an American indie folk musician, singer, and photographer based in Atlanta, Georgia. She self-released her debut album Run and Tell in 2013. Webster has released three albums since: Faye Webster (2017) on Awful Records, Atlanta Millionaires Club (2019) on Secretly Canadian, and her most recent, I Know I'm Funny Haha, was released on June 25, 2021. bit.ly
Watch Faye Webster on this incredible Live on KEXP at Home: www.youtube.com
Citing influences including everything from Radiohead to Portishead, and Sufjan Stevens to Solange, Parks recently shared, "'Bluish' is a song about setting boundaries, about feeling suffocated in a friendship and not knowing how to disentangle yourself without causing harm. Can’t wait 2 be singing all together - gonna be some healing in public."
You can catch Parks performing a fabulous Live at Home session for KEXP in February 2021 here: bit.ly
Formerly known as Now, Now Every Children, Now Now is an American indie rock duo formed in Blaine, Minnesota, United States, and based in Minneapolis. The band is composed of Cacie Dalager (vocals, guitar, keyboard) and Bradley Hale (drums, backing vocals).
The band was formed in roughly 2003. Classmates Dalager and Hale met in their high school marching band when they were both sixteen years old; they eventually started writing songs together, starting with an acoustic song dedicated to a college-bound friend. The band's name, according to Dalager, was an in-joke resulting from a typo in an online chat. The band considered using the name for an EP title, but it stuck as the band name when they officially started the project. bit.ly
Norwegian singer-songwriter Annie has shared the first single from her forthcoming EP, Neon Lights.
The song, also called Neon Lights, sees the Chewing Gum singer team up with former Scissor Sisters frontman, Jake Shears.
Released on 10 September, the new 5-track EP will also feature a new track with old production flame Richard X, and covers of The Jesus And Mary Chain’s Just Like Honey and Patrick Swayze’s She’s Like The Wind. bit.ly
Featuring vocals from St. Vincent, who also serves as co-writer on the track!
In a recent interview on KEXP's Sound & Vision podcast, Ambar Lucid talks about how a trip on magic mushrooms inspired the title track of her new EP, Get Lost in the Music. She also talks about a documentary about being reunited with her dad years after he was deported to Mexico, and how she hopes to heal her own and others' generational trauma through her music. bit.ly
Lucid is completely self-taught; she learned piano, guitar, and ukulele on her own, and turned to YouTube once again to refine her vocal technique when she started writing original music at 15. She spent the ages of 5 to 7 moving between the Dominican Republic, where she lived with her grandmother, and New Jersey, where her mom resided. Eventually, Ambar moved to Jersey permanently, but her family was separated once again when she turned 8, as her father was deported to Mexico. Ambar wouldn’t see her dad in person again until 2019, when she traveled to Cabo San Lucas to reunite with him. That trip was captured in a 20-minute documentary called Llegaron Las Flores (The Flowers Have Arrived). bit.ly
Named after Mushaboom, a small village in Nova Scotia, this track is about a simple life in a small town, and taking the time to enjoy life. It contrasts the somewhat melancholy state of the singer's present situation ("It may be years until the day / my dreams will match up with my pay"). bit.ly
As well as this version, which has K-Os remixing the song, beatboxing behind the vocals and adding a few verses of his own, it has also been remixed by The Postal Service and Mocky on Open Season. As well, it was covered by Bright Eyes on the live album Motion Sickness, as well as on their tour to promote I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning. bit.ly
Between her guest spot on SAULT’s new album NINE and the rollout for her own forthcoming LP Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, Little Simz has now released “I Love You, I Hate You,” a powerful, cinematic track about her absent father.
“Flo asked me, what do you love and what do you hate? I knew the answer immediately, but I was adamant I didn’t want to talk about it. Eventually I wrote it to placate him, but I had no idea that it would become one of the most important songs on the record,” Simz says in a statement. bit.ly
Spiral XP is a new project from Max Keyes, drummer from the excellent Seattle indie rock project Versing. Keyes takes center stage in Spiral XP, but retains the volume and some of the disaffected, feverish stylings of his other band with added fuzz and shoegaze aesthetics. It’s a style he wears well on the project’s upcoming debut EP, Drop Me In, out June 18 on Canadian label Peaceful Tapes and produced by JooJoo Ashworth (Sasami, Froth).
His track, Atrophy, was premiered on KEXP last month, which you can read more about here: bit.ly
“Strange Lights” is the first Deerhunter song on record written by Lockett Pundt — well, in a musical sense, since the lyrics were written by Bradford Cox and based on Pundt’s recounting of an odd dream — and it’s immediately apparent how his compositional voice differs from Cox’s, as he employs more conventional song structures and places greater emphasis on melody than texture or rhythm. Pundt’s songs tend to stand out on all subsequent Deerhunter releases, serving as oases of melody and tradition and anchoring their parent records.
With its smeared, motion-blurry guitars and uneasy double-layer vocals, “Strange Lights” is the perfect soundtrack for drunken, suburban autumn stumbles home. bit.ly
Mike Caridi, former LVL UPer and current Double Double Whammy head honcho, has had his own project called the Glow for a while now. In 2019, he released a proper debut album, Am I, and the project has only expanded from there, blooming into a full-fledged band that also includes LVL UP drummer Greg Rutkin
Caridi shares, "'Love Only' and 'Heavy Glow' are the first two songs written by The Glow, sorta. I’ve been releasing music under The Glow moniker since 2016 or so, but until now I’d considered it a solo outlet. The Glow live band came together around the 2019 record Am I, and somehow I got lucky enough to play with a bunch of musicians who I’ve known and admired for years; Greg Rutkin, Kate Meizner, Nicola Leel, and Madeline Babuka Black. To be surrounded by so much talent and not be open to collaboration would have been a major misstep on my part.
"There’s so much joy in collaboration that I missed a lot while trying to do things on my own. 'Love Only' is about reflection and growth; I feel extremely lucky to be playing music with my friends, and with these two songs The Glow feels like it’s just beginning to bloom." bit.ly
Wishing a huge, Happy Birthday to Beck, who turns 51 today!
The son of American visual artist Bibbe Hansen and Canadian arranger, composer, and conductor David Campbell, Bek David Campbell was born in Los Angeles, California. Bibbe grew up amid New York's Andy Warhol Factory art scene of the 1960s and was a Warhol superstar, but moved to California at age 17 and met David there. She was also a midwife who delivered actors Giovanni and Marissa Ribisi; Beck would go on to eventually marry, then divorce, Marissa.
Beck's maternal grandmother was Jewish, while his maternal grandfather, artist Al Hansen, was of Norwegian descent and was a pioneer in the avant-garde Fluxus movement. Beck has said that he was "raised celebrating Jewish holidays" and that he considers himself Jewish. bit.ly
This album was reportedly inspired by the majesty of outer space, the light from celestial bodies, and the romance between starry-eyed scientists Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan, who attempted to encapsulate the human experience on a pair of golden records blasted into space in 1977 — mixtapes of a sort that included everything from Beethoven to Navajo chants to a recording of Druyan’s brain waves while she thought about "the wonder of love, of being in love." (The album art is a photo of Druyan run through a spectograph, turned into sound, then processed back into an image.)
Spanning 25 tracks over 72 minutes, the resulting album mimics the beautiful, mysterious sprawl of the nighttime horizon as it explores questions about death, the afterlife, and the stars. Though tinged with a similar awe, the emotions it conjures aren’t always as warm and fuzzy as Druyan’s lovestruck elation. bit.ly
On this day in 1972, David Bowie performs as Ziggy Stardust for the first time at a "Save The Whales" benefit concert in London. He announces on stage, "I'm Ziggy."
The chorus of this essential Bowie track is loosely based on Harold Arlen's immortal song "Over the Rainbow" from the film The Wizard of Oz, alluding to the "Starman"'s extraterrestrial origins (over the rainbow). The octave leap on ("Starman") is identical to that of Judy Garland's ("some-where") in "Over the Rainbow."
On this day in 1947, New Mexico's Roswell Daily Record reports an alien aircraft has crashed near a local ranch with the headline "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer In Roswell Region."
Thom Yorke has revealed of this track, "A lot of the song stems from the idea of when I was at school, the first essay I wrote was: 'You are an alien from another planet. You’ve landed and you’re standing in the middle of Oxford. What do you see? If you’re an alien from another planet, how would you see these people?' And that’s a lot of where it came from, from someone who is not involved. Laughing and recording, taking home movies back to their home planet to show to their friends."
Johnny Greenwood went on to say later, "'I feel the song is more about hope than any other subject. I’m an enormous cynic. I side with science, I’m afraid… That song is more about how for every generation, it’s a different thing. Before UFOs it was the Virgin Mary, and before that it was something else. People flock to the same places with their cameras and hope to see the same things. And it’s just about hope and faith, I think, more than aliens." bit.ly
On this day in 1947, New Mexico's Roswell Daily Record reports an alien aircraft has crashed near a local ranch with the headline "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer In Roswell Region."
"The Happening" is about a UFO landing in Las Vegas. When the narrator hears the news coming across the radio band he swings his car around to check it out, and everyone else on the road does the same. How could they miss this?
"I’m almost there to Vegas where they’re puttin’ on a show / They’ve come so far, I’ve lived this long, at least I must just go and say hello."
Recorded in Burbank, California, Paris and London, the album was produced by Gil Norton, and was Pixies' final studio effort before their subsequent break-up two years later. Trompe le Monde is the last album to feature founding bass guitarist Kim Deal.
The album name comes from the title of the first track, "Trompe le Monde", a French phrase meaning "Fool the World." Unlike previous albums, the title of the album comes from the name of a song (rather than a song lyric), and is a play on the French phrase "Trompe-l'œil"—a painting technique in which the painter fools the viewer into thinking objects presented are real. bit.ly
Songs on the album were inspired by the Dean Stockwell-Herb Bermann screenplay for the unmade film After the Gold Rush. Young had read the screenplay and asked Stockwell if he could produce the soundtrack. Tracks that Young recalls as being written specifically for the film are "After the Gold Rush" and "Cripple Creek Ferry".
The script has since been lost, though it has been described as "sort of an end-of-the-world movie." Stockwell said of it, "I was gonna write a movie that was personal, a Jungian self-discovery of the gnosis... it involved the Kabala [sic], it involved a lot of arcane stuff." Graham Nash has claimed that "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" was written for him in the aftermath of his breakup with Joni Mitchell. bit.ly
Rare acoustic version of the Husker Du song that Grant played for me on my 30th birthday!
Mermaid Avenue Vol. II is a 2000 album of previously unheard lyrics written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie, put to music written and performed by British singer Billy Bragg and American band Wilco. It continues the project originally conceived by Guthrie's daughter, Nora Guthrie which resulted in the release of Mermaid Avenue in 1998. Both volumes were collected in a 2012 box set along with volume three as Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions.
Man in the Sand, a documentary about the collaboration between Bragg and Wilco, was released in 1999. bit.ly
The untitled ninth studio album by American rapper Nas, commonly referred to eponymously as Nigger, was released on July 15, 2008 by The Jones Experience and Def Jam Recordings. Its original title was omitted due to controversy surrounding the racial epithet. The album is distinguished for its political content, diverse sources of production, and provocative subject matter. The album features guest appearances from Chris Brown, Keri Hilson, Busta Rhymes, and The Game, among others.
The original title of the album, Nigger, was mentioned by Nas several times, as well as on an October 12, 2007, performance at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City where he announced the title and release date. Def Jam made no comment on the title. This was similar to attempts to name his 2006 album, eventually titled Hip Hop Is Dead, to both Nigga and Hip Hop Is Dead... The N. On May 19, 2008, it was confirmed that Nas changed the name of the album to an untitled one (although on the iTunes Store, the album is self-titled), stating that "the people will always know what the real title of this album is and what to call it."
The cover of the album depicts the back of a shirtless Nas with flagellation scars forming the shape of the letter N, a reference to the racial slur and how slaves were tortured. Fort Greene, Brooklyn assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries requested New York's Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to withdraw $84 million from the state pension fund that has been invested into Universal and its parent company, Vivendi, if the album's title was not changed. bit.ly
"Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" is a power ballad by Klaatu, originally released in 1976 on their first album 3:47 EST. The song would open night transmission of the pirate radio station Radio Caroline.
The year following its release, the Carpenters covered the song, using a crew of 160 musicians. Their version reached the top 10 in the UK and Canada, and charted at number 1 in Ireland.
John Woloschuk, a member of Klaatu and one of the song's composers, has said: "The idea for this track was suggested by an actual event that is described in The Flying Saucer Reader, a book by Jay David published in 1967. In March 1953 an organization known as the 'International Flying Saucer Bureau' sent a bulletin to all its members urging them to participate in an experiment termed 'World Contact Day' whereby, at a predetermined date and time, they would attempt to collectively send out a telepathic message to visitors from outer space. The message began with the words, 'Calling occupants of interplanetary craft!'" bit.ly
Brooklyn-based Nation of Language will be playing the Crocodile in Seattle on October 14th!
"'Wounds of Love' is a song about getting caught in a mental feedback loop when a relationship ends," notes songwriter Ian Devaney. "It's an endless inner argument - wanting to move on defiantly, but feeling utterly lost about how to do it when the other person has informed so much about how you see yourself. For every bit of progress there's just as much retreating, and eventually it seems like this back-and-forth becomes the new root of your identity - still tied to the same person, just without them actually being there.
"During its creation, the song was really born out of the main riff - I was experimenting with synth sounds and delay pedals, trying to find something that felt kind of like 'Man Machine'-era Kraftwerk, and this simple melody just flowed out. At first the urge was to go very robotic with it, but a laid-back groove fell into place and gave everything a really warm, spacey, stoned feeling, which felt like it amplified the emotional haze that the song deals with." bit.ly
Released this day in 2003, this single was released by Seattle group composed of Ben Gibbard, Jimmy Tamborello, and Jenny Lewis. Give Up is the only album they made together as The Postal Service.
The actual USPS sold the band's CD briefly through their website, and here's the statement made about it: "[T]his week the United States Postal Service - the real one, as in stamps and letters - signed an agreement with Sub Pop granting a free license to use the name in exchange for working to promote using the mail. Future copies of the album and the group's follow-up work will have a notice about the trademark, while the federal Postal Service will sell the band's CDs on its Web site, potentially earning a profit. The band may do some television commercials for the post office."
Inspired by vocalist Charlie Drinkwater’s grandfather’s life’s work as a photojournalist and war correspondent on Fleet Street from the 1950s to the early 1980s, the new track is accompanied by a video directed by Joe Wheatley. "Press Gang" is about the media’s changing role in disseminating information and ideas, and also ''how the prevailing narrative that the ‘Death of Print Media’ has contributed to a ‘post-truth’ world."
Hosted by Kevin Cole, enjoy the full interview and performance from TV Priest's recent Live on KEXP at Home session in its entirety here: bit.ly
Talking about their latest number, the band’s Charlie Drinkwater says, "You know those days where you just move from screen to screen to screen? 'Slideshow' is about feeling mediated, manipulated, engaged, buoyed and repulsed in equal measures in our relationship to information, digital culture, and the algorithmic pace of 21st-century life. It’s a track that acknowledges that I’m a fully culpable participant in a behaviour 'market' developed by faceless tech which insists it’s the best thing for all humanity (as long as it can be monetised ). And most of the time I LIKE IT (or at least tolerate it) while I scroll and scroll and scroll. I suppose all I can do is talk… On to the next one, content consumer…" bit.ly
Hosted by Kevin Cole, enjoy the full interview and performance from TV Priest's recent Live on KEXP at Home session in its entirety here: bit.ly
TV Priest's frontman Charlie Drinkwater shares: "'This Island' is about incoherence and inarticulate responses, both personal and political, in a time and place you don’t fully understand anymore. It’s an unrequited love letter, and a howl of frustration; a mea culpa and a call to arms." bit.ly
The band was borne out of a need to create together once again, and brings with it a wealth of experience and exhaustion picked up in the band’s years of pursuing “real life” and “real jobs,” something those teenagers never had. "The process of making music had always been very cathartic for us," they say, "and we probably didn't realise that until we stopped doing it for a while and realised what was missing."
Hosted by Kevin Cole, enjoy the full interview and performance from TV Priest's recent Live on KEXP at Home session in its entirety here: bit.ly
Hosted by Kevin Cole, enjoy the full interview and performance from TV Priest's recent Live on KEXP at Home session in its entirety here: bit.ly
Typical of the band's irreverant sense of humor is that opening line (“I’ve never seen a dog do what that dog does”) is a misremembered quote Simon Cowell gave about a performing dog on Britain’s Got Talent. The nature of the surreal continues into the "Decoration" video, created as a comic version of the dreaded endless scroll only with full English breakfasts and open graves instead of breaking news and Kim Kardashian memes.
Speaking about the song and video, Drinkwater told The FADER: "'Decoration' has always felt like a song full of little vignettes; like you’re walking down the street and realising the absurdity of human existence for the first time. Joe perfectly encapsulated this in his idea, which was based on an ‘endless scroll’ of images, like a filmic representation of a meme account crossed with 1970s durational performance art. Each situation becomes more absurd and dada as we progress."
Hosted by Kevin Cole, enjoy the full interview and performance from TV Priest's recent Live on KEXP at Home session in its entirety here: bit.ly
Hosted by Kevin Cole, enjoy the full interview and performance from TV Priest's recent Live on KEXP at Home session in its entirety here: bit.ly
Wet Leg, made up of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers, seem to want to contrast any chance of being seen as an all-singing, all-dancing, carefully manicured band. "Chaise Longue" features a deadpan recital of tongue-in-cheek lyrics that are refreshingly light; the duo asks, "Is your muffin buttered? Would you like us to assign someone to butter your muffin?" a line which is surely saturated in innuendos and undertones.
The video for the track offers no more explanation, taking a similar route to the aesthetic choices of Let’s Eat Grandma, as the duo are featured standing far apart with straight faces, wearing long white dresses and large straw hats. "Chaise Longue" is imaginative, infectious, and fresh. It offers many implications, but no straight answers – an excellent introduction to an intriguingly mysterious band. bit.ly
Watch that utterly delightful video here: bit.ly
Wales Online writes of the Cardiff-based band, "The Vega Bodegas trip the light fantastic between surreal stand-up and unhinged rock and roll."
"Echoing the smart lyricism of The Fall, the passion and intensity of The Pixies, and the zing of more underappreciated acts like Clinic, Ikara Colt or Mission of Burma, A Complete History of Witchcraft sounds too rugged and biting for the mainstream, but enticing enough to attract all kinds of audiences." bit.ly
The band has helpfully added the lyrics to this track on their band camp page. Check it out here thevegabodegas.bandcamp.com
The cover art of the original vinyl LP was designed to give the illusion that no certain side of the record was the front, back, up or down of the record. This was achieved by placing a barcode on both sides of the record and by printing the band and record name on all four sides of every edge of the record sleeve. Instead of an ordered track listing the tracks were listed haphazardly between both sides with each song title printed in a different contradictory direction. Finally, each side showed three of the six band members also oriented at opposite angles from each other.
When someone handling the record saw where the record jacket opened they may have realized the two most likely correct orientations for the album cover. However the illusion was impaired by the inclusion of a parental advisory sticker on only one side of the record and the artwork of the CD version of the album which used the side with singer Angelo Moore on the cover and placed the entire track list on the opposite side. bit.ly
Celebrating the birthday of bandleader Louis Jordan, who was born this day in 1908 in Brinkley, Arkansas. He is credited with creating the bridge between jazz and blues music to modern rock and roll.
"Let the Good Times Roll" is a jump blues song recorded in 1946 by Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five. A mid-tempo twelve-bar blues, the song became a blues standard and one of Jordan's best-known songs.
The song was written by Sam Theard, a New Orleans-born blues singer and songwriter, and was co-credited to Fleecie Moore, Jordan's wife. Jordan and the Tympany Five performed the song in the 1947 film Reet, Petite, and Gone, although the studio recording rather than a live performance is used in the soundtrack. bit.ly
"This was written at a dark point in a relationship where the end is clearly imminent but the thought of letting go feels too close to mourning," explains the London-based Winter. "Realising that it’s better to live in happy memories; Not hold on until there’s nothing left."
Courtney Barnett has announced her third solo studio album, Things Take Time, Take Time. The follow-up to the 2018 LP Tell Me How You Really Feel arrives November 12 (via Mom+Pop Music/Marathon Artists). Ahead of the new record, Barnett has shared the opening track “Rae Street” along with a music video.
Barnett wrote Things Take Time, Take Time over a period of two years and recorded the LP between the end of 2020 and early 2021 between Sydney and Melbourne. She laid down the album with producer/drummer Stella Mozgawa.
Earlier this year, she teamed up with Vagabon for two covers: In January, they played a version of Tim Hardin’s "Reason to Believe," and, in April, they shared a rendition of Sharon Van Etten’s "Don’t Do It." bit.ly
You can catch the video here: bit.ly
"I have loved Angel Olsen’s music for a long time," Van Etten wrote on Twitter. "She has sent me inspirations and support in my high and lows along the way. I never thought I would get the courage to send her an unfinished song and ask her to do a duet with me and here we are… Thank you, @AngelOlsen, for calling my bluff and lifting me up, and making this song better than it ever could have been. I hope you all enjoy this collaboration that has spanned a year in the making. I am so happy to share it with you. Xo"
This track's also on Kevin's Weekly List podcast 'Roadtrippin' Tunes' from July 2nd: bit.ly
Mia Day discovered her love for storytelling on a half broken typewriter under her parents stairwell, moving to songwriting and making music soon after. Inspired by the vivid imagery crafted by Benjamin Gibbard and Leonard Cohen, as well as the writer's heartbeat of Taylor Swift, Day has claimed a songwriting style that embraces the weight that small moments carry.
"Sitting on Top of the World" (also "Sittin' on Top of the World") is a country blues song written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon . They were core members of the Mississippi Sheiks, who first recorded it in 1930. Vinson claimed to have composed the song one morning after playing at a white dance in Greenwood, Mississippi. It became a popular crossover hit, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. bit.ly
In May of this year, The Flatlanders announced their new album Treasure of Love, which was embraced by American Songwriter, Rolling Stone, and more. Completed during COVID-19 lockdowns with the help of longtime friend and collaborator Lloyd Maines, Treasure of Love finds The Flatlanders in classic form, serving up a rollicking collection of twang-fueled, harmony-laden performances full of wry humor and raw heartbreak.
While a few of the songs here are never-before-heard originals, the vast majority of the tracklist consists of vintage tunes the band picked up during their 50-year career, some stretching as far back as the group's earliest performances in the honky tonks around Lubbock, TX. bit.ly