by Meredith Schneider | Nov 8, 2017 | wolf tracks
In the lead up to the release of their album bad Radio, San Francisco based rock outfit Down and Outlaws – comprised of Peter Danzig, Kyle Luck, Chris Danzig, and Jon Carr – have unleashed a new psychedelic single titled “Imposter” on us. As the first cords hit, the listener becomes enveloped in a thin, silky layer of softly swirling nostalgia. The guitars wane like sepia toned photos are the closest we’ve got to color, back during yet another time when facial hair, middle parted hair, and bell bottoms were popular. (They’re still a thing now, right? No?) Its mellow tone and vocal reverb will make you want to play it on repeat for hours.
So go ahead.
Keep up with the band here.
by Meredith Schneider | Nov 8, 2017 | wolf tracks
Los Angeles based pop musician Luna Shadows just released new reverb-filled, trance-like track “Youth”, and we’re planning to add it to every holiday playlist and beyond. Singing with her signature featherweight – almost celestial – vocals, the track has been produced in a very layered way, that almost feels inspired by an Owl City track. One thing is certain: This lady has taken the reigns with her art and really begun to carve a name for herself in pop music. We can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!
Keep up with Luna Shadows here.
by Meredith Schneider | Nov 8, 2017 | wolf tracks
Self-proclaimed “dancy dream pop” New York-based quartet Fovea – comprised of Steve Shaw (bass, guitar, vocals), Max Weigel (guitar, vocals, keys, electronics), Jake Denicola (drums, vids, foley), and Halley Furlong-Mitchell (vocals, keys, violin) – just dropped one of the most tantalizing tracks we have ever set ears on. It begins in an ethereal sound space, and you feel like you’re in line for Space Mountain at Disneyland as the glittering robotic sounds slow down and make way for even more robotic vocals. What is perhaps so interesting about this track is that the vocals are lush, vibrant, and warm in their delivery, directly contrasting with the idea of detachment that often comes with the sound effects that have been poured into the track. As they repeat “How we gonna function?” we ask ourselves the same thing, allowing our minds to let loose under the cacophony of sound that splinters the track apart at the end.
Keep up with Fovea here.
by Meredith Schneider | Nov 8, 2017 | wolf tracks
While the Barcelona-based psychedelic beach pop quartet The Zephyr Bones – comprised of Brian (guitar, vocals), Jossip (guitar, vocals, synth), Carlitos (bass), and Marc (drums) – was busy releasing singles from their debut album Secret Place, we clearly had our heads up our asses. But thankfully, we got a little taste of what’s to come just days ahead of its November 10th release. Packed to the brim with sparkling, nostalgic charm, we’re sure any number of the ten tracks on Secret Place will be on your permanent “good mood” playlist.
First track “Hurricanes” establishes that lazy, waning guitar sound we’ve come to admire in beach wave music. The vocals are layered, but almost fragile in the way they are delivered. That upbeat momentum continues into “Penny’s Week”, with its mesmerizing guitar riffs and and slightly-punk feel. “Juglar Child on the Carousel” might have one of the most odd titles we have heard in a while, but the track has a not-so-off-the-beaten-path 80’s synth wave aspect to it, which absolutely makes it the best song to premiere as the first single from the collection. It maintains a head-bobbing beat that revels in line with Bleachers and Grimes, almost catapulting you into fourth track “Las Olas”, which takes a contrasting acoustic path.
It’s with “I’ve Lost My Dinosaur” that an almost melancholic feeling overtakes the album. The song has this smooth, almost sensual, feel to the instrumentals, but the vocals are almost sad. That is, until mid-track when the tempo picks up and feels more frantic than anything for a stretch of time before heading back into its regularly maintained tempo-range. The title track begins with quirky, staccato notes that pull you into another sound space completely, as you experience the instruments almost fight for attention atop a bed of soft echoes. “Black Lips” exudes a little more edge in the beginning – Or is that the title talking? – but its overall feel is very “50s sock hop slow song” and we’re totally on board with that.
“September” slows the entire album down exponentially, and is one of those songs that really makes you appreciate the guitar as an instrument. We can imagine almost anyone sitting back in their chair, just reveling in the sounds that come from the speakers. (We suggest vinyl for this track to be totally nestled in the warmth of the moment.) “Telephone” is – without a doubt – a toe-tapper that eventually encapsulates you in fizzy, otherworldly bits of synth. For reasons unbeknownst to us, this is the one we have been playing on repeat. (Try to figure that one out for us, ok?) The Zephyr Bones have chosen to round everything out with tenth track “The Arrow of Our Youth”, which hilariously feels a little less throwback – despite its clear nods to the 80s and 90s – than its predecessors. Once again, the instrumentals take center stage and give you a feeling of being carried away.
Before the album abruptly stops and you cry a bit because you just didn’t want it to end. (Just hit “repeat all.” We get it.)
Secret Place is out November 10th and is available for preorder now. Keep up with the band here.
by ImperfectFifth | Nov 8, 2017 | 5 to 7
On December 1st, the debut full-length from
Sunset Neon – the nostalgia pop music project from multi-genre musician and producer Bret Autrey – will be released. His intention with this project was to hone in on 80’s inspired pop sound, a far cry from his work as Blue Stahli. In honor of the release of his new lyric video for “You Are The Sun” – which makes us wish it were about to be summer instead of winter – we spent a few minutes with the artist to get the low down on his process and the eighties.
What is the first song or album you ever remember hearing, and who introduced it to you?
There’s two that stick out. Once was the small window of time that my mom had a record player and would put the soundtrack to Top Gun on. I’d get so amped up on stuff like Dangerzone, I’d just bounce around the entire living room. The other was visiting family on a farm in Oregon and I was running around in a Max Headroom mask. My cousin had just started driving, so she would drive me into town and play Front 242 extremely loud. I’ve been in love with drum machines, synths and samplers ever since.
Was there a moment that it struck you and you realized you were going to pursue music, or did it kind of slowly evolve?
This is really the only thing I know how to do. I’m just lucky enough that I can make a living doing it. The first recording I ever made was when I got ahold of a tape player and blank tape and recorded myself humming the theme to the A-Team. We had a piano in the house that was saved from being taken to the dump by some church. I would plink around and work out melodies on that beat up old thing. Later on I discovered programming music and sequencing chopped up one-shot samples in DOS in the glorious mono 8bit of Scream Tracker. After getting better sound quality in Impulse Tracker I started sampling that old piano, and loading in synth loops I sequenced on a Roland keyboard to warp and twist in weird ways. I absolutely lived for the times I could be messing with programming music in hexadecimal in a DOS tracker or chopping out atmospheres and sound FX recorded in from VHS movies. It’s what I lived for then, and what I have to do now.
Historically, you’ve been a rock musician. When you chose to go into this 80s music project, did you already have an idea for what you were doing or did it kind of develop organically?
With my main project, Blue Stahli, I genre-hop all the way from upbeat funky breakbeat stuff to purely electronic sound design to riff-heavy electronic rock. While doing all this genre-flailing, I would kick out a few nu disco-esque tracks or start leaning towards a more indie pop type of sound. Once the itch for this started lining up even more, it became clear that a lot of these tracks that didn’t really have a home before could all exist under a dedicated project for exploring all the more colorful lo-fi 80s influenced stuff. So I’d say it all reached a point where Sunset Neon *had* to exist.
You were quoted saying “I’m freakishly excited to create some weirdo VHS music.” Could you elaborate on what “weirdo VHS music” is, at least in your opinion?
Some of my favorite things are lost movies or straight to video fare on VHS. The memories of a room lit only by the small screen (in this case, I was watching everything on one of those small portable TV’s hooked up to a clunker of a VCR), and the feeling of the synth scores and lesser known songs that would accompany some of these movies just washed over me. I see the “weirdo VHS music” as Sunset Neonbeing part of the soundtrack to a strange forgotten VHS from 1986 who’s music you love so much you record it to cassette and listen to it until the tape snaps. You’ll hear bits of these songs warp and glitch, sometimes like you’re hearing the process of them being sampled from VHS to an old sampler while the power is flickering.
How was the writing/production process different this time around, creating this “weirdo VHS music?”
This was really all about going back to my roots with tracker music. So just destroying the audio and one shot synth sounds (some of which were made by stacking single cycle waveforms on top of each other and getting all wonky with the layers and filters) and exploring warping stuff with the effects you have to enter in hexadecimal and revel in the fact that all those little bits of information are coming together to form a beat that makes you want to move and evokes emotions. It’s a more stripped down approach, while somehow also being a bit more complicated in other ways.
Everything we’ve heard from your debut album feels like it could be used in a kitchy 80s “throwback” movie (a la Hot Rod) or a fun musical. If you could create anything with this music, what would it be and who would you collaborate with?
Oh hell yes, that is absolutely the intent. It *should* feel like a pure fun jolt of video haze from a guilty pleasure movie you’ve seen 87 times. I would love for this to show up in a movie or tv show (even something animated!) built on the same love for that glow. Stranger Things, Ready Player One, anything that is fully in love with this atmosphere. I have a feeling there are some astounding people who will be creating in this realm that we still have yet to see, and I can’t wait for all of it.
If you could be any character in an 80s movie, who would you choose and why?
A cross between Wolff from Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone for the way he always seemed to know what to do, and Fletch or Axel Foley for always having the perfect string of jokes to accompany getting out of situations in the most hilariously badass way possible.
What are you most looking forward to about this release?
I’m really just excited for this to be out there and connect with people. I do this because I adore it and try to create songs that have an atmosphere you can get lost in, so I hope that these songs serve their emotional purpose for someone out there whether they’re connecting with the more dance-oriented fun material, or the dreamy lo-fi love songs.
___
Starlight is available for preorder
now. Keep up with Sunset Neon
here.
by Meredith Schneider | Nov 7, 2017 | wolf tracks
London-raised multi-instrumentalist and electro alt-pop extraordinaire Harlequiin (Rory Simmons) has set his sights on the industry with flare, releasing his Something To Believe In EP recently, a follow-up to earlier 2017’s Clock That’s Stopped. Although he’s no stranger to music – he has been both a touring and studio musician with acts like the 1975, Paolo Nutini, Labyrinth, and more – it wasn’t until Clock That’s Stopped that he was releasing music his own music on his own terms, and we’ve been impressed with his chops ever since. Beginning with the smooth sounds of the title track – which later reveals early 2000’s quirks interwoven into its sound -, Harlequiin establishes his sound as one of all-encapsulating calm teetering on the edge of a sea of frenetic energy. This energy can be found audibly in every song, most notably toward the end of second track “Dream Deep Bloodlines” and throughout the seductive lyrics and vocals in “Kloro”. Last track “Heal Me” has a mainstream pop draw to the initial beat, layering in these beautiful, off-kilter sound effects that continue in the frenetic vein as its predecessors.
Not a single track on this EP is even remotely like the one before it, and somehow Harlequiin has found a way to truly create a signature, driving sound that aims to get your hips moving.
Every. Single. Time.
Something To Believe In is out now. Keep up with Harlequiin here.
by Meredith Schneider | Nov 7, 2017 | wolf tracks
If you’ve got a pension for bands who come up with long, educated album and song titles and intricate lyrics that are both highly relatable and super specific to their own lives at the same time, then you’ll want to look no further than Boston-based psych/indie rock project Bad History Month‘s new album Dead and Loving It: An Introductory Exploration of Pessimysticism. The album itself was created out of a moment of inspiration when brainchild Sean Bean – who “Wrote the songs, played whatever’s not noted otherwise, pissed and moaned mercilessly, ended up doing some editing and arranging and having a lot of fun eventually.” – witnessed Dust From 1000 Years perform “Black Rot” in 2013 during a time when he was reading War and Peace. Because of this, a sense of triviality is sprinkled over the entire album, as we get a peek into Bean’s existential ponderings.
We begin our journey with a track called “The Church of Nothing Matters”, which is an instrumental cacophony of sorts that really starts out quite beautifully and then launches into an eery few stanzas of crashing cymbals and off-key, waling guitars. It isn’t until 2:04 that we get vocals, monotone and honest as lines like “nothing matters” and “I don’t go to church” jump out from the folds. While “Gazing At My Navel” certainly doesn’t evoke that exact feeling for its listeners, it is a calming track with quirky chords that don’t seem to want to fit into the track gently layered in every once in a while. The song picks up, and around 4:12 is when the vocals hit the track. “A Small Life” seems to play with dissonance, almost making you beg for the song to come forth. Which it does, but it’s closer to the 2 minute mark before jarring, sung/spoken vocals are inserted into the track.
“The Nonexistent Distance” is when we see vocals pick up at a more acceptable rate (Sorry, guys, we’re lyrics people!) about twenty seconds in, Bean asking simplistic, almost rhetorical, questions that trigger a jumping off point for a thought process in the listener. By the time you get to “The Imaginary Tone”, the entire album has mellowed out substantially and it seems as though each syllable comes out for this track as practices and defined as possible. It is here at we realize the precision with which this release was made, though not the first time the idea has occurred to us. “Being Nothing” certainly calls into question our existence, as it layers together and he quietly repeats “you are nothing.” The song speeds up as he echoes the same sentiment we’ve all been feeling as of late in the lyrics “I’m tired of wasting all my time talking the same shit to myself over and over.”
“A Warm Recollection” is adorable in its own way, discussing the ways that love is so intimate when you’re familiar and beautiful to one another without putting on a face necessarily. The instrumentals suggest a slight eeriness, but it’s beautiful the way he pairs simplistic ideas of love with layers of sound, almost “fumbling” in places as he expresses in the track. What we glean from it is that this is raw, this is real. And is that not what Bean meant for us, as we head into final track “A Platitude And A Final Understanding”? Slow, practiced, over ten minutes of instrumentals paired with bursts of narrative in which we witness Bean expressing the sentiment “I’m lucky” repeatedly. But he’s not wrong, and we’re all lucky in a way. Because our lives have led us to a space where we can share this music, – relatable or not in our current situation – and bond over the eery beauty that has been created in a world that is slowly reaching a spiritual awakening.
Dead and Loving It: An Introductory Exploration of Pessimysticism might be the next step in that collective journey.
DEAD AND LOVING IT TOUR
Nov 7 Burlington VT, SEABA, 404 Pine St
Nov 8 Cambridge, Elks Lodge w/ Pile, Ovlov
Nov 9 Portland ME Apahodion Theater
Nov 10 Hamden CT, Counterweight Brewery, 23 Raccio Park Rd. w/Stevia, Dave Go
Nov 11 Brooklyn, Alphaville (18+), 140 Wilson Ave
Nov 12 Jersey, New Brunswick, The Grand Exchange
Nov 13 Philly, Kung Fu Necktie w/Soft Fangs, Left and Right
MIDWEST, locations tentative
Nov 25 Pittsburgh tba
Nov 26 Lexington/Indy/Bloomington ? somewhere betwn pitts n nash, get in touch…
Nov 27 Nashville tba
Nov 28 St. Louis, Foam Coffee and Beer, 3359 S Jefferson Ave
Nov 29 Milwaukee, Cactus Club
Nov 30 Madison, Williamson Magnetic, 1019 Williamson St
Dec 1 Chicago, Landland w/Spencer Radcliffe, Date Stuff
Dec 2 Kalamazoo, Rupert’s Brewhouse, 773 W Michigan Ave
Dec 3 Ann Arbor MI, The Blue House, 712 E Kingsley St,
Dec 4 Detroit/Windsor?
Dec 5 Toronto, The Burdock
Dec 6 Montreal, Quai des Brumes, 4481 Saint-Denis
Dec 7 Burlington, The Monkey House
Dec 8 Woodstock, 51 Rock City Rd
Dec 9 NYC Market Hotel w/Pile
and many more …
Dead and Loving it: AN Introductory Exploration of Pessimysticism is out now.
by Meredith Schneider | Nov 7, 2017 | wolf tracks
At the end of September, Austin-based indie/blues artist Jackie Venson released her dazzling five track Transcends EP. Starting it out with the upbeat track “Flying”, lines like “from the ashes something new grows” bring you into a more positive head space, more than adequately preparing you for the rest of the release. From second track “Fast” – which borders on 80s/early 90s synth rock with a Fefe Dobson-esque attitude to it – to smooth listening track “Mysterious” with its wider display of Venson’s range and exceptional use of ensemble vocals. “Fight” draws some more rasp from Venson’s voice, keeping an 80s sound to the instrumentals while singing about vibrational energy and – once again – looking forward to a positive existence and “the good fight.” Transcends closes out with its most completely rock track of them all – beginning with waning, rough guitar – the title track, which brings with it an edge to Venson’s voice that enhances the fact that not only did she come to play, she came to win.
Transcends is available now. Keep up with Jackie Venson here.
by Meredith Schneider | Nov 7, 2017 | soundtrack
Americana indie folk musician B.R. Lively recently released his eleven track stunner of an album, titled Into the Blue. Packed from start to finish with textured, alluring sounds and B.R.’s signature lackadaisical vocals meandering along, the album experienced conception during a moment of pure growth for B.R. an serves as an inspired departure from his past work. Check out the album below, then peek a little playlist B.R. curated exclusively for Imperfect Fifth in celebration of Into the Blue!
Into the Blue is the result of finding a lot of peace within myself. Here are some tunes that have brought a peaceful feeling to me over the years. There are themes of nature, love, loss… mostly slow-burners that are perfect for chasing down sunsets or a long meditative drive.
Check out the “This Kind of Peace” playlist made exclusively for Imperfect Fifth on Spotify.
Place To be, Way To Blue (Nick Drake):
– I put a lot of Nick Drake on here because he was the biggest influence on this record. We tried to capture the warm, mellow guitar tone by putting flat-wound strings on my guitar. He’s such a percussive player, which I feel I take from. Also, his use of strings prompted our similar approach to using them on ours, sweeping in an out giving it a 3rd dimension.
Simple Twist of Fate (Bob Dylan):
– My favorite track off this record. It’s one of the records that got me messing around with different guitar tunings, like “The Day That I Die.” Also, Bob’s style of storytelling found its way in my writing very early on, so I had to show him some love on here.
So What (Miles Davis):
– Definitely get my laid back feel from Miles on this record; the way he sits back in the groove behind the beat. I’ve always identified with slower tempos which is why I write more ballads than anything. Miles has also taught me a lot about the importance of using space in music; that most of the time not playing something is better than playing something.
Trapeze Swinger (Iron & Wine):
– I used to fall asleep to this song every night after I discovered it. It’s rolling stream of imagery has such a dreamlike quality to it. I love the progression of instruments, textures, and counter melodies that get introduced throughout the song. It keeps a steady consistent soft beat that is very meditative and pleasant to listen to.
Orange Sky (Alexi Murdoch):
– A tune we took direct influence from for the record sonically. It’s also got that meditative rhythm and constant beat with a myriad of instruments and textures flowing in and out yet kept very sparse at the same time.
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Keep up with B.R. Lively here.
