Alex Cameron – Candy May
A while back, after having caught Australian musician Alex Cameron as an opener for Angel Olsen, I was pretty enamored of his performance, and the assuredness of its shtickyness (and yes, it is shticky). If you can appreciate Lana Del Rey for her mellifluous lists of hollowed signifiers and decoupaged images of millennial-imagined withering Americana, you might likewise find it easy to appreciate elements of Cameron’s aesthetic (though perhaps there’s some withering Austral..iana there, too). Incidentally, his persona – of a washed up performer — often reflects kind of a young (?) version of the fantasy of the lascivious old man we hear every time LDR coos “Daddy” or rides a leathery biker in a music video. Just as LDR tries very hard to fit into a Lynchian aesthetic of the past, Alex Cameron exists there too, and his “Take Care of Business” video (off his last album) could easily be a Roadhouse scene in Twin Peaks: The Return. His just-released new track/video “Candy May,” from his likewise just-announced new album Forced Witness, follows suit.
Read the rest of this article at Flavorwire
Ryan Adams – Do You Still Love Me?
Ryan Adams has opened up about what went into writing the ‘Prince and AC/DC’ inspired new single ‘Do You Still Love Me’. Watch the NME ‘Song Stories’ video above.
The song was the first taster and lead single from his upcoming 16th album ‘Prisoner’, and saw him adventurously experimenting with what was possible with the rock guitar format.
“I came up with the idea of these false starts on guitar, which is kinda AC/DC,” Adams told NME. “That juxtaposition is weird, but I imagine it in my mind as being like ‘this is Prince, but this is Prince with a couple of Les Pauls. From the first taste of it I was like, ‘this is rad’.”
Describing the meaning of the song and how the lyrics automatically came to him, Adams continued: “I think it’s direct, but I think there’s subtext in it. I think that there are two ways of looking at it: ‘if you have to ask’ [is one], but then there are all these indicators of stuff never being resolved. Resolution is a way of saying that you have decided to stop participating in act of feeling. I like the idea that I ask a question in the chorus but then I talk about an effect in the verse.”
He added: “I didn’t feel connected to it the way that I do now. It wasn’t until I tried to play it myself on acoustic guitar, because I wrote it myself on an electric guitar with my bros around. When I first played it by myself a little later I was like ‘this is a completely different thing than I thought.”
Read the rest of this article at NME
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Tennis – Minutes 10 Years
There seems to be a general feeling that pop music should stay a bit simple or escapist and not move through a multitude of moods and notions in the span of one song. That’s could be why, six years in and four albums deep, there’s still some hesitation toward categorizing Tennis as a “pop group.” The duo’s latest, Yours Conditionally should settle that issue at last. It’s a collection that explores the uncertainty of one’s identity and their understanding of past experiences and current trajectory. And it’s as poppy as anything.
For this new album, singer/guitarist Alaina Moore and keyboardist/bassist Patrick Riley returned to their roots as a means of jumpstarting new inspiration. Tennis famously wrote/recorded their first album after an adventurous sailboat journey along the east coast. Five years later, the married couple took another 10-day ocean voyage from San Diego down to the Sea of Cortez, where they docked and set up a makeshift recording space.
Musically, Yours Conditionally is much softer, slowing its pulse to something closer to the swoon and sway early ‘70s soul, with shuffling tempos and sentimental organ purrs orbited by an electric guitar’s fiery simmer. The tone is certainly slow dances at twilight, but given a shimmer by the understated elegance of Moore’s voice, something that has always sound fragile but defiant at the same time.
Read the rest of this article at Paste
PUMAROSA – Priestess (Mr Dan Edit)
Pumarosa are releasing their debut album ‘The Witch’ next month, and have shared a new version of their debut single ‘Priestess’.
The ‘Mr Dan Edit’, re-worked by Dan Carey, the album’s producer, cuts down the epic, eight-minute monster the band emerged with towards the end of 2015.
‘The Witch’ was previewed by lead single ‘Dragonfly’ earlier this year, and the band are set to showcase the record on an upcoming UK tour next week, a run that includes their biggest show to date at London’s Oval Space.
Read the rest of this article at DIY
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Fireproof
It’s been more than a decade since the phrase “Clap Your Hands Say Yeah” became synonymous with a sort of internet-borne buzz-band status. And while the band never became the iconic indie force that some predicted, frontman Alec Ounsworth has been soldiering on, cranking out these scraggly and personal albums largely on his own. Next month, he’ll follow up 2014’s Only Run with a new album called The Tourist. Ounsworth calls the new album “a purge of certain emotional confusion that manifested itself in the last several years.” And while he recorded his last album entirely on his own, this time he had the help of a bassist and drummer, as well as engineer Nick Krill and iconic indie producer Dave Fridmann, who mixed the album.
Read the rest of this article at Stereogum
