The Murder Capital have been deservedly generating lots of interest and plaudits with the propulsive post-punk darkness of their first two singles, both from their forthcoming debut album When I Have Fears, which will be released on 16th August via Human Season Records.
The Dublin band have now shared a third, the anthemic Don’t Cling To Life. Another cracker – watch the video below and pre-order the album here.
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Melbourne’s post-punk masters Terry are back with a new single – Bizzo And Top Hat – which comes from a new EP Who’s terry?, out on the 19th July via Upset The Rhythm.
Typically, catchy, typically sharp, typically sardonic, typically excellent.
Stream it here.
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Famed for their wall of sound, and notoriously difficult to label (they themselves describe their music as “psychedelic, socialist, utopian, death raga, erroneous funk, trapdoor jazz, bastard muzak“), the origins of Meatraffle are lost in obscurity although it has been said that they came about as the result of a drunken afternoon shared by Clams Baker and Zsa Zsa Sapien in a South London Wetherspoon pub, and that the original idea was to actually do a meat raffle. Indeed, early photos of the band feature raffle tickets and pig’s heads. Whatever the truth may be Meatraffle took shape in places like the fetid cauldrons of the Queen’s Head and the Windmill in Brixton alongside former label and tour mates The Fat White Family.
They released their first album, the truly excellent HiFi Classics on Trashmouth Records back in 2015, and their new album Bastard Music is out on August 30th on Delayed Records (pre-order here). The first single from it is The Day The Earth Stood Still, a love letter to the working class on an imagined global holiday, and is backed with Meatraffle On The Moon.
You can listen to both below.
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David Berman of the wonderfully literate and melancholic indie rockers Silver Jews is back after an absence of ten long years, with a new band Purple Mountains, and a self-titled debut album of the same name. I have to confess I’d missed the news and a couple of tracks have been floating around for a few weeks now – the marvellously named All My Happiness Is Gone and the possibly marginally more upbeat title Darkness and Cold.
More recently a third track Margaritas at the Mall has also surfaced. Listen to them all below and rejoice at his return with lines like “Lately I’ve been making strangers wherever I go” – just brilliant!
Order from Bandcamp here.
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Long term MM faves Lightning Dust, the Vancouver based duo of Amber Webber and Josh Wells, formerly of Black Mountain have announced their fourth album, Spectre.
It will be released on October 4th, via Western Vinyl and the band have also shared lead single Devoted To.
Webber wrote the moving and haunting songs on Spectre during a challenging, introspective time of self-discovery that resulted in her rededication to music. It is a collection of songs that range from expertly sculpted folk-rock ear candy, to sparse Judee Sill-esque ballads consisting of little more than piano and voice.
Written during the devastating forest fires that filled her hometown of Vancouver with smoke and a sense of apocalyptic doom, album opener Devoted To captures Webber’s resilience and determination to reestablish her creative independence as she sings “I will find my way back in even if I never sleep…Gotta find my way back in, it’s all that I believe.”
Listen below.
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After four years, Californian punks CEREMONY are back with a new album, In The Spirit World Now.
The album explores some pretty amorphous lyrical territory about arrested development, botched relationships, and the never-ending hamster wheel of self-destruction so many creative people succumb to – it’s out on the 23rd August, but for now content yourself with a pretty fine lead single, Turn Away The Bad Thing.
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We posted about LA band Black Adidas way back at the start of 2018, and we’re becoming rather fond of raucous new single Be Cool.
The band deliver some pretty rugged punk rock that nods slyly to its origins without beating their listeners over the head with replica or reproduction. Sure, you might hear some Rancid in there and even (rather nostalgically for us) some Sham 69, but Be Cool stands proudly on its own two feet and eagerly tries to cave your skull in with some proper sonic skulduggery and a storming anthem chorus.
You know the rules… play loud.
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In honour of Independence Day, Lucy Dacus has released a new single titled Forever Half Mast.
It follows her Valentine’s Day-inspired La Vie En Rose cover and her ode to Mother’s Day and Taurus Season, an original song titled My Mother & I. Her ongoing 2019 singles series will also include tracks tied to Springsteen’s Birthday, Halloween, Christmas, and New Year’s, with a physical EP coming in the fall.
In her latest single, the twang of a steel guitar compliments gentle strumming and lends a distinctly ‘American’ sound to the song — yet the lyrics convey an attitude towards her home country that is decidedly more ambivalent. She drew inspiration for the song from her experiences touring over here in Europe, where she was starkly confronted by the complexities of her American identity, and by what it means to be a proud American in these trying times.
Give it a spin.
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Drug Dealer is the new single from Toronto based singer-songwriter Mike Riley.
He says of the song, “it was born from a feeling of hopelessness in a small, shitty one-store-town where the only thriving business is the local drug trade. It’s about feeling stuck, full of envy and betrayal as you watch the only people you care about move on.”
Sounds pretty damn good to us… you have a listen.
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We’ve already shared a couple of excellent tracks from Stanley Brinks & The Wave Pictures’ new album Tequila Island.
Now we have a third for you – Living Without You – which is another lo-fi cracker.
“I like the experience, the change, but living without you is strange,” laments Brinks in his signature nasal tones over a lazy lo-fi Americana roll. It is an ode to the cruel pain of distance between lovers—all beautifully propelled along by a softly brushed drumroll, a wandering bassline, and a hair-raising duelling mandolin/guitar solo.
Listen below. Buy the album here.
See them live:
Sept 10th – LONDON – The Lexington
Sept 11th – HUDDERSFIELD – Northern Quarter
Sept 13th – MIDDLESBROUGH – Middlesbrough Town Hall – Courtroom Sessions
Sept 14th – EDINBURGH – Sneaky Petes
