Alt-pop artist Ships Have Sailed have a new single “Escape”, and it will make you feel what the title suggests. The LA based duo has been diligently working since their debut EP in 2013, releasing a slew of projects over the years. Indie rock, pop, and alternative sounds ring out in all of their works, and those genres are put on full display in their new single “Escape”.
“Escape” kicks off a series of singles coming from Ships Have sailed that “promise to express a deeper level of sentiment than ever before”. The single is accompanied by a video that is all about escaping ones problems, doubts, and struggles. Sometimes all you can do is scream out and try to escape your reality through other activities, and even this new single from Ships Have Sailed can help one do this.
You can keep up with Ships Have Sailed through their socials listed below. Don’t be surprised when this alt-pop collective has a massive 2019.
Fashion-conscious artist Daniel Donskoy’s debut single “Cry by the River” is here and it is making waves. With the release of the accompanying music video, the singer/songwriter and TV star has broke through the music industry with a chart topping alternative hit.
Daniel Donskoy, artist name DONSKOY, infuses the feeling of alternative-pop with experimental sounds. He utilizes a very interesting auto-tune in portions of the track that are reminiscent of Kanye West from the “808s and Heartbreak” era, or that of Justin Vernon from Bon Iver. The song makes you want to cry and dance at the same time. Pair those feelings with a very profound and artistic music video, and you have “Cry by the River”.
You can stream or purchase the song here. Keep up with DONSKOY here.
Alternative collective Emarosa – expertly comprised of Bradley Scott Walden, ER White, Robert Joffred, and Matthew Marcellus – is back and bringing the heat with the official music video for “Don’t Cry”. The song itself is off their upcoming album Peach Club, due out February 8th. The video was directed, edited, and animated in its entirety by Jessica Severn, an effort that perfectly balances the emotion of the song. It’s time to delve into the lyrics and mood with some Emarosa on repeat, don’t you think?
We’ve been in the holiday spirit on and off all year, if you’re truly asking me. Every once in a while on a Friday, we have been known to break out into a rendition of a 98 Degrees Christmas song, or to envision the Hanson boys singing “Run Run Rudolph” directly at us. And this year, we wanted to acknowledge and highlight the alternatives to our “classic” options – and the real OG options by Sinatra and the like – so you have something a little bit different, but just as historically magical, to share with your holiday crowds and hordes of friends!
We will continue to update it as we see fit, so check back for more!
Have any holiday track suggestions for us? Share on social media with #imperfectfifth and we might just add your song selections to our soundtrack!
Recently, Samuel Proffitt and Yoke Lore partnered on a track release, and we’re all about it. Seriously, take indie electronic musician Samuel Proffitt and pair him with the talents of indie alternative favorite Yoke Lore, and you’ve got the gorgeous, echoing sounds of “Stringnoise”. A meandering, delicate track, there is a hard-hitting quality to it, glittered with the magic of the season in each note.
We probably don’t have to convince you at this point, but it’s definitely worth a listen.
Lyrics: You can wait through the hours and days for the dark nights to find you Silicon weights on your neck every day don’t trigger the good man inside you Make it hot sweat, feel it in your chest Put it in a body maybe that will save us Before you get a heart, you gotta get taken apart
Keep up with Yoke Lore here and Samuel Proffitt here.
Run Tiny Human is your 8th album with Jeff Stuart Saltzman, what makes the musical relationship between you and Jeff last so long?
Rachel: When you work with someone for that long–especially on something so personal as your own music–you’ve both seen one another at your very best and very worst. It’s intense, recording an album. And we’re both kind of intense, very opinionated people, on top of that.
I learned to trust Jeff. We became very good friends at some point, but even early on, he won my trust because he was clearly not one to b.s. or throw compliments around. I could tell I’d get the truth out of him–he’s brutally honest, though not in a mean way. He can’t help it. I tend to like people like that. Critical, but not cruel. And unstinting with honest praise. And he wanted to help me to get to what I want–not what he wanted, though his contribution to my records is vast and invaluable.
We’ve been working together long enough that we have a kind of shorthand, now. We know each other, and he really knows my music and the way I work–the way my mind works and the way I actually like to work while recording. I become aware, working on Run Tiny Human, that Jeff’s been very observant and made a lot of changes over the years in working with me, on the process, based on his observations–trying to go with my flow and make it easier for me. It’s not always easy with two such strong-willed people in a room, but I rely on him to give it to me straight, and he has never failed.
Many artists have contributed on Run Tiny Human from some amazing bands, who were they and what was it about their style that fit so well with your sound?
Rachel: Ben Landsverk (Wonderly, Hawks & Doves, OK Chorale) is a dear friend and has been playing with me for many years, now. When we met we were singing a concert of Bach and Charpentier for Trinity Consort, which is weird to think about, now! We discovered one another’s other musical lives and we started playing together in a few bands. Ben’s my righthand man–he does everything. He’s a super quick, versatile singer with a freakish range (it’s just him and me, multi-tracked and asthmatic, singing that backup on Wedding Song/Bag of Bones), he can play anything–viola, bass, guitars, keys, percussion–and he’s just beautifully musical. He makes everything seem so easy, but it’s not.
Jeff Langston (Antony and the Johnsons, Mo Phillips) is in my band and has also become a treasured friend. He grew up in Oregon and moved back from NYC with his wife and son a few years ago. We met backing up a mutual friend for a radio show. Jeff’s an incredibly sensitive player–he pays attention more closely than almost anyone I know to what’s happening musically, and he always tries to serve that. He’s been a real stalwart for me–a total pro and supportive in myriad ways.
Leigh Marble (Leigh Marble) has also been in my band for years now and is a well-regarded songwriter/performer and also a great friend of mine. I like the way Leigh thinks, and I like the way he plays guitar. He can get a very raw sound and he’s never noodly–doesn’t overplay. He makes interesting choices and he’s way more fun to watch play than I am!
Justin Harris is a good friend of Jeff’s and a friend of mine, too. He happened to be in town between tours with Bloc Party and kindly came over and played bari sax and bass on Gitcher. He and Danny Seim (Menomena) played on a coupla songs on my album World So Sweet. What I had him doing on Gitcher was incredibly repetitive but Justin’s got a loose, kind of loopy way of playing that I really like, and it gives life to the repeated bits.
Joe Mengis (Eels) and Mark Powers (Robert Wynia) were both suggestions of Jeff’s–he’d worked with both of them right before we started recording. Both are pros and lovely people. Mark is a fiend at anything you set before him–no limits. And Joe took a very weird, counterintuitive request from me and hit it out of the park.
Katie Taylor (Opera Theater Oregon) is my sister, who also does the graphics for my albums, and who is my guinea pig whenever I’m writing songs. I can sing a harmony or melody or whatever to her and she can immediately sing it back. Katie’s one of the most talented people I’ve ever known, and we’ve sung together forever. She sings in the choir on “Heir Apparent” and “Yourself/You Reprise.” That’s her doing the high “C” on Heir (if you can hear it!).
Lisa Stringfield-Prescott (Ages and Ages) is a prized friend who was in the bands Carmina Piranha and Carmina Luna. She’s sung on several of my albums and I love the quality of her voice, and her stage presence. Lisa’s also been a huge support over the years–I don’t know what I’d do without her.
Jim Brunberg (Box Set, Wonderly, Roam Schooled) is a friend and I asked him and his daughters, Dana and Vern, to come sing on a track. Jim’s a truly great musician and one of those people who can sing anything in any range, so I grabbed him. Jim’s also been a good friend to me and my music.
Phil and Gayle Neuman (De Organographia) have played on, I think, four of my albums, now? They’re specialist on Renaissance and Baroque (and some ancient) instruments. They are famous in those circles–hence their playing on the Ben Hur remake soundtrack. 🙂 They’re good friends of mine and can play any instrument, and their collection of instruments–most of them made by Gayle and Phil–is awe-inspiring!
Jeff Stuart Saltzman (Cerebral Corps, Sunset Valley) I talked about already….but not many know he’s a great musician and songwriter. I exploit Jeff’s musical talents for all I’m worth when we’re recording–he’s very handy. That’s him muttering on “Gitcher,” at my request.
How did you interpret what your mind was thinking about the world in to a lyrical and musical form?
Rachel: I don’t know! I don’t really think about it so clearly when it’s happening. Ideas just knock around and then they come out. I’ll get up and go record them, I’ll get up and go to the piano, I’ll write down a lyric. It all kind of comes together when you look at it as a whole, later. Then, I see the pattern and where my brain was dwelling.
I personally love the idea behind Little Gyre, can you tell us more about that specific song?
Rachel: I was lying in bed, half awake, and I don’t know what prompted the thought but I started thinking about the junk in space peering down at the ocean garbage (the Pacific Garbage Gyre). Garbage high, garbage low! I have no idea why I thought I might want to write a song about that. I got down (on digital recorder) what I was thinking and I went to sleep. When I worked on it later in my typical misty fashion, the space garbage began to morph into a kind of stalkerish entity, obsessing over the ocean garbage. In the end, it breaks orbit to fall into the sea. I feel bad for the ocean garbage (forgive me, ocean garbage)…
I think this came from my almost constant stewing over climate change and our fucked over world. I am chock full of Apocalypse.
When do you feel was the era when Americans had sense and at what point do you feel it started to get crazy?
Rachel: I keep coming back to the FDR era (for sense), and that’s a sad thought because it was so long ago. But one of the things I most admire about that era is the community-mindedness, as opposed to the lunatic focus on the individual in the America of now. Americans are so belligerently self-serving now, nothing gets done. It’s literally impossible for so many hellbent “individuals” to pull together. We all want what we want when we want it, and we all deserve it, and damn you to hell if you get in the way of what I want, cuz I got muh rights!
I think the ’60s and ’70s took a kind of latent, inbred American crazy and tipped it into overdrive, what with the whole “reality is subjective” thing, the questioning of fact and truth, etc., coloring it all relative, nothing tethered to anything real anymore, just free-floating bullshit. An early triumph for the wretched Cult of the Individual.
Kurt Andersen wrote a wonderful, horrifying book called Fantasyland; How America Went Haywire: A 500 Year History. He posits that we started out crazy–that the people who settled America set the groundwork for the crazy. And I think he’s right–I think Americans from the get-go regarded themselves as exceptional and that that, unfortunately, has stuck and transmogrified into something truly sick–what we have now. I like how a reviewer of Andersen’s book put it (Hanna Rosin): “Fake news. Post-truth. Alternative facts…. The country’s initial devotion to religious and intellectual freedom, Andersen argues, has over the centuries morphed into a fierce entitlement to custom-made reality. So your right to believe in angels and your neighbour’s right to believe in U.F.O.s and Rachel Dolezal’s right to believe she is black lead naturally to our president’s right to insist that his crowds were bigger.”
The Reagan years were another milestone of crazy, of a different sort. The onset of the GOP’s ever-so-patient-and-deliberate, decades-long Grand Plan of Selfishness–deregulation, the handing over of America to corporate interests, circling the wagons, the insistence on America First!… all wrapped up in shameful jingoistic posturing, one hand waving a flag and the other taking your wallet. USA! We had gone from the heartening scenario of the gas crisis in the Carter years, which is, I think, the last true example of Americans actually acting with a sense of pulling together. They did real things, made real (if not great) sacrifices–drove less, got smaller, more gas-efficient cars, etc. It almost seems mythical to me when I think about it now, because everything around us (climate change, for one) dictates bigger sacrifices and changes than we successfully effected back then; only today’s Americans do exactly the opposite of what is required–buying bigger bigger BIGGER vehicles, traveling/flying more, ordering more shit from Amazon, building bigger homes, getting bigger appliances, sucking up more resources and eating everything in sight. That those Keurig machines could even exist in this day and age boggles the mind. Americans, of course, love them.
What is your own favourite part of American history and what makes it special to you?
Rachel: Well, this is cheating on the question a little, but I’d sure like to see pre-Columbian America, mainly so I could see what nature–flora and fauna and sea–was like, pre-trampling and despoiling. I know big civilizations already existed with the tribes, and land clearing was happening even then. But–as far as I know–First Peoples weren’t hunting things to extinction or extracting/cutting/plundering nearly so well as later peoples did. I’d love to see my own region (Pacific NW/US) when the forests were full of gigantic trees, and that dense forest floor. I’d like to see the land and all the creatures, the ocean and all its creatures, breathe the air. I’d really like to see it all pre-people, actually. The answer, therefore, to “what would make it special to me” is: no people at all. 😉
I’ve heard you are a fan of BBC costume dramas, which is your favourite one and why? Also if you could star in one of them then which character do you think suits you as a person?
Rachel: OOOHhhhh! So many! So many! I do love a good costume drama! And the BBC really does do them best. 🙂 Gah, how to choose? Faves include: Jane Eyre (1983–I’m a purist–but I do like the 2006 version–Ruth Wilson is the only actress I’ve seen who approaches the greatness of Zelah Clarke’s Eyre); The Forsyte Saga; The House of Eliot; Our Mutual Friend; Middlemarch. But I’d have to pick either Persuasion (1995) or Pride and Prejudice (1995–wow! That was a good year!) for my absolute favorites. I have watched those too many times to count. If I could star in one, which character suits me?… hmmm. I’d like to think I’m Lizzy Bennet, but I’m probably more Mr. Rochester. 😉 NOTE TO THE BBC: Please make Villette!
For the majority of your life you have lived in Portland, what is it about Portland that keeps you there?
Rachel: Ugh. Nothing, anymore. I and mine and my sister moved out a year ago because we couldn’t take living there anymore. It’s changed so drastically over the past 10-20 years, it’s unrecognizable…so depressing. I went through a long period of frantically dragging my poor husband all over town to try to escape the awfulness (constant construction/overdevelopment/razing, decades of it now; increased crime; tagging, garbage, lines and cars everywhere; displacement; pollution; soaring prices; noise; and some really up-their-own-asses new residents hashtag NOT ALL NEW RESIDENTS) and find peace. Alas, it was not to be had, so we finally got out. I only wish we’d done it sooner. I feel like I was in mourning for my city for the past decade plus. I felt like a stranger there in my hometown, my lifelong home. By the time we left, I didn’t care anymore what happened to it. Just exhausted and sad. It has been “loved” to death death death.
Can you please tell us of your aunt Mette who formed inspiration for one of your songs on your album Half Hours With The Lower Creatures?
Rachel: I don’t remember much about her because I was so little when she was still alive. I never met her in person. But she corresponded with me from Madagascar, where she was a missionary. I remember writing to her and I remember her spidery handwriting–she was very very old when she was writing to me. She was from Norway. I would give anything to be able to talk to her now.
Can you remember the first demo tape you ever did? How did it feel to hear your music recorded for the first time?
Rachel: My brothers and sister and I recorded ourselves doing stupid shite, growing up, so I was pretty familiar with the sound of my own voice. My husband bought me a Tascam Porta 05 when I was in my twenties, not long after we married, and that was a turning point–he made me start to take my songwriting more seriously. It was so wonderful to be able to record multiple tracks, because I’d been using two tape machines to do that! Going back and forth until things got faster and faster and higher and higher, hah! Anyway–it was a great spur to creativity and made my brain just GO. I really loved it.
I think I just felt….satisfied, when I first heard my music recorded. And also twitchy and dissatisfied, because there are always things you wish you’d done differently. But I generally self examine as I go along with a ruthless rigor that prevents (most) later regret. If I don’t like something, I can always tell, and I’m not shy about changing it. I follow my gut and my ear. That’s a weird visual…
I picked these songs to help inspire sounds for the new project I’m working on. I named it Antimatter bc that’s the name of my project. I grew up listening to rap, alternative, pop punk, and reggaeton so I’m looking to create something that incorporates all of that. Picked current hits from these different genres.
Today, Berlin-based alternative indie pop quartet The Flavians – comprised of Liam Blomqvist, Anna Vaverková, Tom Wills, and Joakim Jägerhult – releases their latest single “Non Stop Fun (All I Wanted)” along with an entertaining throwback of a music video. The song itself has vocal parts reminiscent of 60’s folk/pop stars, the tongue-in-cheek video comprised of scenes of a man’s life that one might find particularly dull – traveling on public transit, getting yelled at at the office, getting a drink in a dark bar – that, when etched together, tell a story most anyone can relate to.
Alternative musician Novo Amor may have written and recorded the entirety of his new album in his home studio in Whales, but the sound is so polished and ethereal in its disposition that you would think it came to be in a garden somewhere. Beginning with tranquil, tone-setting track “Emigrate”, the album slowly layers in like a delectable dream sequence. “Birthplace” brings in more staccato notes – invoking a sense of excitement during parts of the song – and percussion that will change the rate of your heartbeat. “Utican” can be described as nothing if not as a freeing, energetic anthem, while “Seneca” dances delicately along the edges of your shoulders, as if to wrap you in an other-worldly hug.
“Anniversary” is largely instrumental, ushering in an energy and sound that feels like everyone you know is singing along. “13494” follows a similar feel to its predecessor, though darker in tone in a way that makes the track feel more robust. “State Lines” falls into the more conventional “folk singer-songwriter” category, and we’re eating it up like there’s no tomorrow. Seriously, turn this one on, turn your most twinkling lights on, and gaze out the window for a while. Pure bliss.
“Sleepless” is a more conventional anthem in its composition, but equally ethereal as the vocals maintain their light as a feather tone. Even “Repeat Until Death” doesn’t have the negative or dark tones to it as implied in the title, but to categorize it as anything other than melancholic would be a miss in our minds. And that’s fine, as the range of emotion and writing styles allows us a more intense peek into the creative mind of Novo Amor. He ends it all with “Oh, Round Lake”, a simplistic by impactful track that leaves you wanting to dance in that fairy-lit garden, breathing in the autumn night air.
Novo Amor kicks off his UK tour tonight. Head out to one of the dates below to check it out!
NOVOAMOR INTERNATIONAL TOUR DATES:
Fri 19 Oct – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds UK
Sat 20 Oct – The Haunt, Brighton, UK
Mon 22 Oct – Union Chapel, London, UK
Tue 23 Oct – Union Chapel, London, UK
Wed 24 Oct – La Maroquinerie, Paris, FR
Thu 25 Oct – Kulturhaus Karlstorbahnhof, Heidelberg, DE
Sat 27 Oct – Vega, Copenhagen, DK
Sun 28 Oct – Kagelbanan, Stockholm, SE
Tue 30 Oct – Botanique Orangerie, Brussels, Belgium BE
Wed 31 Oct – Paradiso Noord, Amsterdam, NL
Thu 1 Nov – Gruenspan, Hamburg DE
Fri 2 Nov – Funkhaus Berlin Nalepastrasse, Berlin DE
Mon 12 Nov – Atlanta GA, US
Wed 14 Nov – Union Stage, Washington DC, US
Thu 15 Nov – Bowery Ballroom, New York NY, US
Sat 17 Nov – The Sinclair, Cambridge MA, US
Tue 20 Nov – Theatre Farimount, Montreal, CA
Wed 21 Nov – Velvet Underground, Toronto, CA
Fri 23 Nov – Lincoln Hall, Chicago IL, US
Sat 24 Nov – Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis MN, US
Tue 27 Nov – Bluebird Theater, Denver CO, US
Wed Nov 28 – The Commonwealth Room, Salt Lake City UT, US
Fri 30 Nov – St. James Hall, Vancouver, CA
Sat 1 Dec – Columbia City Theater, Seattle WA US
Sun 2 Dec – Doug Fir Lounge, Portland OR, US
Tue 4 Dec – Swedish American Hall, San Francisco CA, US
Thu 6 Dec – Lodge Room, Los Angeles CA, US
Birthplace is available now. Keep up with Novo Amor here.
