Apr 29, 2022 By Celine Teo-Blockey Web Exclusive

UK band Bloc Party return today with Alpha Games, their much-awaited sixth album and the first where founding members Kele Okereke and Russell Lissack created songs from the ground up with new members, bassist Justin Harris and drummer Louise Bartle. The two members joined in 2015—after the departure of Gordon Moakes and Matt Tong—and whilst they both did some touring to promote 2016’s Hymns, it was an album and song cycle that highlighted the trials of a band in transition, that they had no hand in songwriting. Harris was involved in recording some of the studio tracks while Bartle was completely uninvolved. More

Apr 28, 2022 By Andy Von Pip Issue #69 - 20th Anniversary Issue

Two Ribbons, the third album from British duo Let’s Eat Grandma and the follow-up to 2018’s acclaimed I’m All Ears, is a beautifully honest body of work that explores themes of love, loss, and friendship, as well as reconnection and hope. It also reflects on an incredibly emotionally challenging period in the lives of Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton as they attempted to reconnect and figure out how to move forward as artists whilst protecting their friendship. More

Apr 28, 2022 By Austin Saalman Web Exclusive

Founded as a high school vocal group in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood in 1959, The Chi-Lites eventually emerged as one of the most influential soul acts of their generation. More

Apr 27, 2022 By Hayden Merrick Web Exclusive

Melody Prochet is an architect of euphonic sanctuaries. Listening to her music, produced under the moniker Melody’s Echo Chamber with co-conspirators Fredrik Swahn and Reine Fiske, is to enter an enveloping, otherwise inaccessible sonic reverie—an escape from the real world, a place in which to idle and fade away for a few minutes. That may sound highfalutin or imprecise, but one of Prochet’s primary inspirations is the natural world—a peninsula in the south of France near her grandmother’s house, a forest of pine trees in the Alps. In that way, she invites parallels to songwriters such as Cassandra Jenkins, whose 2021 album was titled, very literally, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature. More

Apr 26, 2022 By Nicholas Russell Web Exclusive

In the summer of 2019, I emailed Daniel Rossen out of the blue because I had been listening to the Department of Eagles and felt like conveying how much his music moved me. By then, it had been two years since Grizzly Bear’s Painted Ruins and seven years since Rossen’s solo EP Silent Hour/Golden Mile. Rossen released the single “Deerslayer” for Record Store Day in 2018, but I hadn’t heard it until long after I reached out, which I did by visiting his then-spare website, the only text displaying a brief note to fans that he was taking some time for himself and his family, the possibility of new music real, if a little distant. More

Apr 22, 2022 By Andy Von Pip Web Exclusive

Australian musician Harriette Pilbeam, aka Hatchie, like many artists, began to feel she might be approaching some sort of artistic existential crossroads as the global pandemic turned the world upside down. Would people have forgotten about her during the lockdown? Would she be able to maintain the momentum she’d established following her acclaimed debut album? Did she, musically, continue in the same vein or push herself out of her comfort zone and expand her sound into other areas? More

Apr 21, 2022 By Mark Moody Web Exclusive

Lily Konigsberg has been kicking around as part of the NYC punk/no wave outfit Palberta for the better part of 10 years. She also recently released her first, and much more pop oriented, solo album (Lily We Need to Talk Now) late last year. Nate Amos is the musical mind behind the quickly rising synth pop duo Water From Your Eyes. He also records solo as This Is Lorelai, and in a prior life performed with his father’s bluegrass band. So how (and why) did these two find time to create yet another outlet for their musical musings with their new band, My Idea? More

Apr 20, 2022 By Hayden Godfrey Web Exclusive

There’s a certain eerie vulnerability present in every second of S. Carey’s music. While some of that musical ambience can be attributed to his on-record identity—using only the first letter of his first name, Sean, in his stage name lends some mystique to his persona—his soft-spoken vocal delivery, layered harmonies, and scrupulous attention to detail all contribute heartily to a divine atmosphere that goes beyond that of a traditional folk singer/songwriter. But, in his words, there is still much work to be done, especially when it comes to the expression of his own emotions. More

Apr 19, 2022 By Celine Teo-Blockey Web Exclusive

When COVID-19 took hold in 2020, the work of Albert Camus took on special meaning for Jake Webb—frontman and songwriter for Perth, Australia-based band, Methyl Ethel. At the time he happened to be reading the French philosopher and novelist’s most famed work, The Plague. “Come to terms with death. Thereafter, anything is possible,” wrote Camus, whose essays, plays and novels rooted largely in Existential and Absurdist modes of thought, often explored the right and wrong ways to live. More